PANIC STATE: The Lead Vocalist for DAVE MATTHEWS BAND likes it! They told me in Charlottesville, in 1992 when I wrote it. I was playing through it, in a piano rehearsal room in the U Virginia Music School. DAVE MATTHEWS was trying out different configurations for his band: word was, "Something big is in the works."
Playing through it, tonight, I LOVE it. I'm astounded.
My bass teacher in Florida is a Berkeley School of Music graduate. He said the chord changes were too hard for him. They were for me, too--almost. I can play them now, and soon will make a recording.
When you write a note three bars down from the staff, it can get hard to count. I thought it is an Fb, but it's an Eb, below the third bar line down. It doesn't make me smart or anything: it means it has to be written down. So, you figure out how to write it, and there isn't any other way.
My Music Partner in Charlottesville always respected my musicianship--some other players did, too. But but I didn't realize it, and didn't have a strong profile. I was a Ph.D. Religious Studies Major.
I asked the singer for DAVE MATTHEWS BAND, because I wrote it just before my psychotic hospitalization. I had lost my perspective. I couldn't evaluate anything--was an author's point a solid argument I could rely on to quote? Why does everything look like a cartoon of reality? My close friend told me I'd list my gift for poetry. He'd read my poems at Harvard, and said my poems as a Ph.D. Candidate lost it. Now, 34 years later, I'm astounded. Can a composer say that about their own compositions?
It hurts, which makes me bitter and I can lash out that Edmonton does nor not credit me as someone who can write PANIC STATE.
The Internet world changes what "local" means. I consider a poet in Portugal my brother. An Architect in Transylvania, my sister. I have a colleague who is an Art Professor in Italy who travels and posts photographs of Temples and Statues in India, and orher places in Asia. When PANIC STATE gets a good recording, "locals" on the Internet will give me a listen. Maybe a friend I knew in 1992 in THE DAVE MATTHEWS BAND will hear it, and then it doesn't matter if someone on Edmonton's streets listens, or knows who I am. Edmonton favours its own. I like a lot of Edmonton Players.
MY MUSE is a hard taskmaster. Last summer, 2025, I just finished two books:
LINES DRAWN AUTHENTIC: A Realized Man
THE FOUR ELEMENTS: Seasons Bleeding into Existence
I thought it was time to relax and recuperate. The two books were 7 years in the making. But NO!
My Muse called me to start a new, original project: a Quest. I have studied much in Quest Literature of Medieval Europe–particularly the various cycles of the Holy Grail Quest. I read several Grail accounts from different authors–each story rather different. The most famous Grail story is in Sir Thomas Malory. Jessie Weston in the Early Modern Period theorized that the Grail Quest happened on the Astral Plane!
My Muse called me to write a greater Quest. The Human Quest we all go through: birth through maturity to the next plane of existence. I wanted this work to be truly collaborative–my words and a visual artist. They and I would collaborate on what this Quest looks like in art form.
It would be truly original. This was not a book in which my poems were illustrated by their pictures. It was as much a visual artist’s book as it was a writer’s book.
I spoke with a small number of visual artists. Some said they’d think about it. Others rejected it outright.
I just realized Tuesday night (last night) that I am in the midst of the project, and it’s going to be all me. I have four new poems recently completed. I have a mine of more already written to draw on. Fate is tumbling me into making my own visual Art for the book, also.
Last summer, I came up with the title:
“A QUEST THROUGH QUESTIONS OF TIME”
These missions are Destiny. It’s not like I can slough of not doing this. Circumstances are and I believe that they will make it manifest.
Currently, we see this as another picture book. Probably Trade Paperback. That will be 3 recent Art books.
Still working on URBAN SHAMAN, and still on the Alchemy Shaman part from a year ago. Except I don’t write in public now.
Hey, Sir Thomas Malory wrote the whole Morte DArthur in jail. Knights and whatnot were always getting captured and thrown “in thrall” if they sided with the “wrong” faction trying to overthrow the “right” faction.” That’s where we get our English word “enthral.” It means literally to be captured and held prisoner. Like love—there’s no way out; in honour of Valentines Day, yesterday.
Words. The world words generate. Genesis. Poesis. I love the world I enter when I’m talking with Carol The things Carol talks about are good things Words are about things Recently, Carol talked about how hard it is to practice The Principles In the midst of arrangements for her father’s dementia Carol talks about what makes her happy Like the bobble-head that came with a ticket to a football game Watching dancers two-step The things Carol cares about are good things Carol talks about what the good thing to do is Like her health administrator friend, debating mandatory vaccines Caring shapes itself into words Words enter into conversations I enter into conversations with words Words I speak shape my soul into existence I love to shape my soul through good words In the world invoked by good words as if the genesis of Sacred Scripture And so I love when Carol and I talk about good things And shape the world into a place I love I am a friend in all the world I meet Though involvement with distasteful words strains my friendship When I don’t love the words I speak, or hear Words that shape me into a conversation distant from my soul Not like the world I enter when I’m talking with Carol The world of good things talking with Carol generates Oh, the way I can slough through life When there are good things I can do Some days I have no will to do any good thing Then I’ll start a few scales and the music seduces me Into the fulness of hours without CNN or Facebook Words are used in ways Words are about things and words are active Words do things Intentionality generates word choice and contrives to render an effect Rooted unmoveable in the good as who she is Carol’s intentionality can’t but effect the good in me Carol talks to me and tries to make me feel good Carol makes me feel good, feel better, when I’m feeling bad Feel better about myself when I doubtful about the good in me Which is other than being OK with whatever Feeling good is being brought into good regions of my soul Those regions religion has brought me to love Regions that fill my soul with the impulse to manifest what is good So, I’ll be at the piano, write a sermon, compose a poem |I love the world I enter when I talk with Carol It is a good place to be, a place I love, a place of love Carol and I are in love and it generates good words For and to each other, generates the world our words make
These words are taking me away from my piano All art requires dedication, but music, a special dedication Art gives grace to the human who decides to dedicate A life, or even part of a life, to art When I’m done with these words, I’ll be at the piano Finding my way around the key of E Alone, just me and the piano keys When you make music, mind flows into body, maybe like dance, Music involves you with inflexible laws of physics Which become laws of the musician’s heart and soul and muscle memory I write these words in a dive with Alternative Rock in the background I glance at the waitress, the bartender, customers As I manifest this poem into these words And I am not alone—just me and these words Hemingway wrote in La Closerie des Lilas for the same reason None of this can happen when I am in the key of E It is only the articulation of my fingers on certain select piano keys No music can be in the background; the only music that is I make Writing poetry is closer to waking life than playing music is We are immersed in words much of the day Not so, the specific piano keys you must depress—and no others—in E You must wrench yourself away from everything When you come to the piano That is why it is sometimes hard to practice You don’t want to leave everything Unless music is everything to you And it is when you are playing A spell overtakes you and the ecstasy Makes you wonder later why you weren’t at the piano sooner
David Fekete 