Written in the first week of October, I originally began preparing this piece for a competition hosted by Antigone, an open forum for articles on the classics of Ancient Greece and Rome. Very heady stuff, worth checking out. Alas, the scope of my ambition for this particular piece went beyond the limits of the competition and so did the word count by quite a wide margin. But as they say, "Whatevs." I enjoyed the process and continued to tinker with the piece over the month as I put it into a respectable and presentable format. I would've published it sooner had my family and I not--finally!--succumbed to the scourge that is Covid-19 over the Halloween weekend. With our recoveries well under way, and without further delay, it is time at last to share my latest work. Enjoy! - DH
Thursday, November 10, 2022
Old Gods with New Eyes - A Script
Tuesday, October 11, 2022
Fragment: The Hidden World
Another little piece, this one dates back many years and I just happened upon it again the other day. For what it's worth, it's based on a true story; what you read here are events I witnessed with my very own eyes. The inset artwork is a detail (slightly manipulated) from 'Cubic Space Division' by M.C. Escher, a lithograph from 1952. Besides being fascinated by Escher's work, general aesthetic and philosophy, much of his work speaks to the idea of hidden worlds, and I find a peculiar resonance between this particular work and the subject of this Fragment. Perhaps you will sense it as well.
Wednesday, August 31, 2022
Fragment: The Misplaced Cog
Monday, August 1, 2022
Fragment: Pia Mater
Wednesday, July 6, 2022
"We See" - Lyrics for an unrecorded song
"We See" was written in November of 2019, only a few weeks before the Coronavirus pandemic's first infections became news. In many ways, it was a different world then; in other ways, nothing much has changed at all. I can't even remember for sure which mass shooting had taken place around that time, spurring me to write this particular song. Mark Darvill and I had written a handful of songs around that period, however, and I remember being hesitant about this one, though I shared it with him at the time. It felt exploitative in a way to make a song out of such suffering, so I left the music unfinished. However, as time has gone on, this particular aspect of life in my home country has, sadly and frustratingly, continued to be a consistent facet of American life.
So it is not with pleasure but with regret that I share with you the lyrics of a song I wrote two and a half years ago about the rash of mass shootings plaguing the U.S., because nothing has changed. Not yet anyway. What with recent events in Uvalde and the July 4th parade shooting (and less-noteworthy-because-fewer-casualties shootings occurring with regularity elsewhere), maybe ... maybe somehow, somewhere, in someone, something will start to change. And the grammatical premise of this song will no longer be accurate.