Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

I met Jim Erwin when I was a young poet. I had published my first book and somehow Jim got hold of it and called me up. "Come on over and let's talk." he said.

Jim was a Public Relations Man. He had worked for everybody in Texas, Lyndon Johnson, John Connally, Willie Nelson and most of the fools in the Texas Legislature. He had more press connections than Paris Hilton.

When I went to his house, I found him squinting at my book through the glasses he wore that were thick as old Dr. Pepper bottle bottoms. As I walked into the room he waved my book and said, "I knew yer daddy, and I knew your uncle...this is good copy."

So Jim took an interest in my career. Within a hot two weeks after meeting him, my picture was on the front page of the Dallas Morning News, above the fold and in color. Then he calls me up and says, "How would you like to go and play in the State Capitol?" I said, "How much?" He said, "Expenses and publicity."

"Let's go."

By this time in Jim's career, he was strictly in the game for recreation. He was pushing seventy and he only worked on the projects that amused him. I certainly wasn't paying him. He also represented an artist, a painter. Jim had managed to arrange for the Texas Legislature to issue a proclamation that declared that this artist was a Great Artist of The State of Texas (legislation is cheap in Texas.) They were going to hang one of his paintings in the Capitol building, and have an unveiling ceremony with a reception in the apartments of the Speaker of the House.

Jim had a great sense of show business. For the reception, he dressed me up in a formal black artist's smock with a big black beret and I strolled around the reception playing my flute as all the dignitaries sipped their wine and munched their canapes.

As I strolled and played, I looked across the room and recognized Dr. Loraine Neuman, the President of the University of Texas. She was a cute little red-headed lady and she was wearing a green graduation gown and a platter hat. Just for fun, I locked her eyes and slowly walked across the room toward her playing "The Eyes of Texas," which is the University of Texas school song. When I reached her she broke out in a big smile and took me by the hand. "Come here," she said, and led me out of the Speakers apartments and into the rotunda of the Capitol.

The Capitol of Texas is almost as magnificent a building as the National Capitol. It's an elegant red granite structure with a dome and a rotunda just a few feet shorter than the National Capitol. On the floor of the rotunda there is a huge star inlaid in the floor. Dr. Neuman took me down to the center of the star and stood me there and commanded me to play my flute. "There is perfect acoustics when you are standing right there," she said.

I played and it was like playing in the Taj Mahal. The space resounded. There are tourists milling around in the rotunda and Lrod and the President of the University of Texas are standing on the star both dressed in floor-length gowns and funny hats when a Capitol guard on the second level mezzanine leans over the railing and shouts for me to "Stop that."

In unison, about six or eight of the tourists looked at the guard and said, "Why?"

I love it when the people speak. I kept on playing.

Well told.



That Texas star reminds me of the pendulum in the Glen L Martin Engineering Building at College Park. The world turns under it as it swings, and the clock face mosaic in the floor tells the time.
Foucault's Pendulum?

http://www.physics.umd.edu/lecdem/servi ... /refsd.htm
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Thinking about the one you wrote about playing your flute in the capital building on that Texas star. I can almost here it and feel that star spinning under your feet.


http://plus.maths.org/issue9/xfile/

What makes a Foucault pendulum different from a normal pendulum is that it is attached at the top to a universal joint which allows the pendulum to rotate freely around its fixing point as it swings. Once you set one in motion, its direction of swing will rotate at a rate of about 0.2 degrees every minute. But in fact, it isn't really the pendulum that's rotating: the pendulum is swinging back and forth in exactly the same direction. It's the Earth which is rotating underneath the pendulum, which makes it appear that the pendulum is in fact changing direction.

So what happen in the end then LR did you play all the way????
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So what happen in the end then LR did you play all the way????
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I think he did. I wish I had a bin dare.


I only posted this so you couldn't delete your redundant post. Dontcha just hate it when that happens