The Red Muse

Chianti and I have a very special relationship. I'm not even quite sure when it began, but I think it was in Laurel Canyon one night when I and several other people sat on a livingroom floor playing guitars and singing songs for each other while enveloped in plumes of incense and illuminated by silken, flickering candlelight.

Through the years, Chianti has juiced my creativity more times than I can count. Poems, songs, and journal entries have been inspired by her, and short-lived love affairs have been forged by her; I cannot imagine my life story without her...



Although she has lately begun to tickle my sinuses and make me sniff and snuffle when I drink her, she has not lost her poetic hold on me. Nothing sets me into a flight of verbosity quite like she does. I don't drink her often, but when I do I always wonder why I forsake her for obsequious whites, or flippant reds who want only to be her.

And so tonight, as I sit sipping a glass or three, I dedicate this post to the red-blooded muse who resides so passionately within the basket bottle, waiting to be set free upon the hapless artist.

“We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine.”
(Eduardo Galeano)