Songs for the Four Corners of the Room

"Keep Trying" is one.

"Squares One through Four" (another title for the "Square One/Set the Prisoners Free" Song) is another.

For now "Chimney Flu/Heigh Ho" can be the two others.

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The conclusion of the assignment of a counting numeral is always an opportunity to examine all that it contains, and the year 2006 is no exception.

Well, for now there is too much hidden meaning in everything I write for me to write an assessment of the year that was. Suffice it to say, in addition to turning a national election tide, and a low level grade of generalized optimism bolstered by a return to interpersonal enlightenment (how upbeat can I be?), 2006 was eventful on a personal level.

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In the One Dream stage production of "Legs Like These," in 1989, the director suggested that all the participants would find each other and marry. In retrospect, I see something like that happened to four of them. I wonder how they are today. That composing job for me arose from a recommendation from one of my fellow participants in the BMI Music Theatre Workshop, and it was great challenging fun...

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In case it is not already apparent, I have been ploughing through the Memoirs of Tennesse Williams (Tennessee Williams Memoirs "A raw display of private life"--New York Times Book Review), actually reading them after all these years, thanks to Mr. John Waters' recent essay published in the New York Times Book Review. Previously I'd only opened to the index to find some fragment, particularly those on Williams' collaborations with one of the guiding forces of Italian Cinema, Luchino Visconti (What a name that fellow had! It just looks great as a title on the screen.). Tennesse Williams has a credit in Visconti's Senso, a vaguely annoying Italian Nationalism period story of the choice, such as it is, between military glory in the field of battle and cowardice in the field of the bedroom, with tennis player Farley Granger. I guess that story is an expression and examination of challenging human conditions. Furthermore, I guess the weight of Visconti's name connects with the weight of his work product. He was an independent Hollywood. Mr. Williams' book touches briefly on how TW got or gave the film that gratis TW credit; it was in appreciation to LV for making a woman named Maria part of the production. The comprehension test question for readers of the Memoirs is, Who was Maria?

Obviously at this rate I'll never get to a full examination of the Memoirs, which I imagine myself comprehending, so consider this fingernail journal entry something containing the DNA strand to generate an entire human body, living, breathing, interactive. So, thank you, John Waters, for alerting me to the readability of Tennessee Williams Memoirs, illustrative of the personal breakthrough that followed his hobo years. It looks like he used his heart problem to good effect in that it got him, not just out of gym class the way mine did, but out of his job as a shoe salesman.

That's one 2006 personal event worth mentioning, after all those years ingesting oral beta blockers I never had a heart problem. My debilitating palpitations break when I do the opposite of cringe and wilt into them, which is to stick out my chest in silly defiance.

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