Brandon L. Rucker's Blog
Fell asleep early (just after 10) woke up early as hell (a little before 4) and couldn’t get back to sleep and eventually fired up Netflix to finally put on Scorsese’s The Irishman. One hour in and it is excellent filmmaking. The casting, acting, scripting, direction, cinematography, costuming, production . . . the whole nine. Easily The Godfather and Goodfellas of these modern times. #RuckFlix #MovieRuckus #CrimeFilmFetish
Understatment: my bibliophillia has gotten out of hand. Today I hit up the library for eight nonfiction books and Barnes and Noble for four novels. Smh. I foresee future posts showcasing and/or quoting these tomes of knowledge, wisdom and entertainment. #BookwormRuckus #Bibliophile #LiteraryLife
When it’s warm enough in February to rock the sunroof 👍🏾 Coming out of 6 straight days of hidden sun, which is a tough stretch for those of us who suffer from SAD. This is a nice reprieve before next week’s stretch of gray daze 🌞 #SunnyB #TheSunshineKid #ChildOfTheSun #SunshineBear #SolBrotherNumberOne #WeatherRuckus
It was 10 years ago today that my original compositions produced for the LIQUID IMAGINATION web zine first went live. Today I am reissuing all 16 tracks in one complete compilation under my instrumental music project Brandon: Unsung.
This featured music was composed, performed, programmed, produced and recorded by Brandon L. Rucker. Originally published on the web by Liquid Imagination web zine.
On December 1, 2009, John Arthur Miller (“JAM”), then-publisher of the online web zine LIQUID IMAGINATION, contacted me via email to, firstly, pile on enough kind words to make a grown man blush, and secondly, to discuss the possibility of merging my music-making abilities with the featured poetry published in the Liquid Imagination web zine. He had read my bio. He saw that I had spent over half my life playing music in various underground bands, and had evolved into something like a one-man musical franchise of sorts, composing, performing, recording and releasing my own original music all over the web as well as on CD.
Ultimately, I was asked to join LI’s amazing staff as the Music Composer/Coordinator, working very closely with then-managing editor (and now publisher) Sue Babcock. What a wonderful opportunity and journey it was. I remain truly honored and grateful for the opportunity, and I admit, quite proud of the work.
The way it worked was: a web page was created for each individual poem, with a layout creatively adorned by photos, graphics and the poem’s text. Once that was in place I then took inspiration from the words and images and composed the musical piece from my own unique interpretation of the whole — whether the results of my interpretation was accurate to the author’s intentions or not was not the point of the confluence and sum of the parts in conjunction.
I wrote more extensively about the process and each piece in an article published in the fifth issue of Liquid Imagination, which can be accessed via: The Synergy of Poetry and Music.
Coming soon: I have plenty more music to upload and reissue on Bandcamp for the ease of sharing.
Holy mother of . . . what is this great ball of fire in the sky? Is that . . . is that Sol, otherwise commonly known as The Sun . . . the solitary great star of our ever-expanding stellar system? Oh, this is glorious! I’ve been home for four days and this is the first I’ve seen of it since. What a wonderful discovery! I am the sunshine kid, so please forgive my exuberant response to such a momentous occasion 😉
Every morning. Without fail. The reset. For me it’s almost like a complete reboot because the internal processor that is my brain does this total cache-ing of whatever negative energy or static was effecting me by the previous day’s end. Thus, mentally and emotionally (maybe not physically as I am a middle-aged man) I awake completely refreshed, happy-go-lucky and with a positive mindset for the day and very little-to-no nasty residue from the day before. This can be annoying (sometimes I’d like to hold on to that intense energy from the day before) but I can’t deny that it’s a good thing too. Comes in real handy if you need to apologize the next day for how you acted the day before, or on the flip side of that, be more receptive to the mea culpas of others.
By nature I’m not what one would call “a morning person” because I always (well, used to) stay up late and I’m not exactly anxious to rise early to go to work, but in the last couple of years as I’ve eased into middle-age (and have a weekday grind that starts a 8 AM) I’ve found that even when I don’t need to rise early on weekends and days off that I’ve been rising well before my preferred 10 o’ clock rising time of the good ol’ days (of course that may have something to do with my falling asleep earlier than planned like some old man). This earlier awakening happens by default now but I appreciate it because as a sunshine kid I do like to enjoy as much of the daylight hours as possible as well as those ‘quiet hours’ in my house as they’re perfect for thinking, reading and writing without distraction and interruption. The universe knows my eternal struggle with distractions.
Anyway, good morning to the two or three of you reading this after it posts. I am reset for this glorious new day! Here’s hoping it’s not downhill from here. I need tea.
I wish the hawk would return to one of our trees so I could capture an image of it, though it would probably take flight before I could get the snap. I love the wild kingdom we have in our neighborhood. The hawks and owls being my favorites since I love raptors. I do miss the toads, though.
Anyway, not much change from yesterday’s weather photo snap. Such is winter in the Midwest. Consecutive days of gray overcast . . . you might mistake our region for the Pacific Northwest were it more green.
An hour ago I made breakfast for the child and I (and yes I did have my tea today). At our home I am famously the Breakfast Guy (you’d agree if you’d had my World Famous French Toast). I will stop short of saying that preparing breakfast is inherently a ‘guy thing’ but for me there’s no meal I’d rather prepare for my family. So when the rare opportunity to stay home with my youngest daughter and make breakfast for her arises, I relish it in both an instinctual and loving way.
Lost Signal 
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