Quelle marque Big Do You Prefer?

Message Topic Search Topic Options Post Reply Create New Topic Printable Version

   "There was no evidence of a heart attack," Deputy Coroner Craig Stevens said.

Just before 6 p.m. Thursday, Merkel, a driver for the Ventura Intercity Service Transit Authority, dropped off her last passengers of the day at The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks and was heading back to a bus depot in Oxnard when the accident occurred.

Witnesses told officers that the bus--which was traveling about 55 m.p.h. in the middle lane--suddenly swerved left, hit the center divider and then swerved right across all three lanes through the guardrail and over the side of the hill, a CHP spokeswoman said.

Officials from Antelope Valley Bus, which operates the bus line for the Ventura County Transportation Commission, said the accident was the first traffic fatality involving one of their buses in the county.

A woman was killed in an accident with a VISTA bus earlier this year, but she suffered a heart attack before her car slammed into the bus on the Simi Valley Freeway near Moorpark, bus company officials said.

VISTA buses are regularly inspected by company mechanics and are also given random inspections by the CHP, said Elizabeth January, a spokeswoman for the company.

"We are very safety-conscious," she said. "These buses are constantly being inspected."

The 17-year-old MCI bus driven by Merkel had just been inspected by the CHP, January said, but investigators were looking for evidence of any possible mechanical failure.

"We don't want to comment on the accident until the investigation is complete," January said.

Merkel, who worked out of Antelope's Oxnard bus yard for the past year, had driven a county school bus for several years before joining the company.

Merkel's 26-year-old daughter, Tanya, also drove a school bus. When Merkel started working for Antelope, her daughter joined the company, diving for VISTA.

"The two were very close," said Kimberly Knox, the mother of one of Sharon Merkel's three grandchildren.

Merkel is survived by her husband, Lesley Merkel, her son Jesse, 26, her daughter Tanya, and three grandchildren, all of Oxnard.

The idea behind the bus tour was to bring poetry to its readers by making it accessible in the most public way. Poetry, after all, remains on a fundamental level aural, a form in which meaning is as much a matter of sound, of music and rhythm, as it is of the content of the words.

As a musician, Zapruder understood this, and when he left the tour, he took a sheaf of poems with the intention of using them as the basis for a suite of songs. Six years later, the result is (Black Ocean: 64 pages, $24.95), an artist book featuring the work of 23 poets, along with illustrations by Arrington de Dionyso and a CD of Zapruder’s musical adaptations of the poems.

I’m a sucker for this kind of project, I’ll admit; back in college, I was even known to put Jim Morrison’s poetry album on the turntable, although it’s been a long time since I queued that up. Still, I’ve listened to a lot of other poetry/music collaborations, going back to Allen Ginsberg’s and — experiments that speak to a different strategy for interacting with language, in which we bypass the intellect for a more direct emotional approach.

This is what “Pink Thunder” achieves too, although in issuing the CD as part of a book, Zapruder gives a nod to the primacy of the text. His music is delightfully eclectic, reminiscent of everything from Kurt Weill to Elliot Smith, and he builds space around the language, taking his lead from the words.

Some songs — “Word,” based on a poem by Joe Wenderoth, or built around a piece by Travis Nichols — almost seem to operate in verse/chorus format, despite the fact that none of the poetry here was produced with music in mind.

And yet, if “Pink Thunder” has a message, it’s that the relationship between poetry and music is more elusive, more conditional, than that of traditional lyrics in a song. This is the best thing about the project, the way Zapruder uses his music to mirror, or echo, his own reading of the material, and its emotional effect.

When at the end of “Pennsylvania” (a collaboration by Nichols, Joshua Beckman, Anthony McCann and Matthew Zapruder), he sings, “like technology you are like technology / Everything you do other people want to do it too,” his voice goes up quizzically as if commenting on the image, which is both absurd and precisely accurate. (That’s where its beauty resides.)

“I started out wondering if a song can be as specific, as particular as a poem,” Zapruder writes at the beginning of “Pink Thunder.” “After doing this, I think the answer is yes, but not in the way I thought it would be. Nothing can equal silence as a background for communications. Silence is the full spectrum. It’s power lies in its potential, which is infinite. Within that silence, these poets can achieve the ultimate, most accurate communication.”