Blake Hodgetts IF

Blake Hodgetts has been a willful filker since falling in with Los Angeles Filkers Anonymous towards the end of 2000. Now living in Eugene, Oregon, he has written nearly forty songs since then and has found audiences at numerous conventions. His appearances have been mostly along the West Coast, although he has made it out to GAFilk and was honored to be the InterFilk guest at OVFF in 2003. He's an unusually well-credentialled filker, holding a Master's degree in music composition from the University of Oregon. When not engineering computer software for a living or making music, Blake enjoys flummoxing people with languages, dabbling in computer graphics, wasting time on LiveJournal (mrlogic), and occasionally acting in musical theatre productions.

Blake's songs are eclectic, painstakingly crafted, and highly individual; the majority include original music as well as lyrics. With serious and humorous songs on many topics, he considers nothing off-limits. His arrangements often make the most of his skills at the keyboard, and unusual modulations and chord progressions lend many of his songs a unique sound. Blake began learning the guitar this year and hopes to use this facility to further broaden his palette, as well as to make it easier to room-hop during open filking.

In 2003 Blake released his first album, Blindsight, containing 15 songs in a wide range of styles and moods. (Samples from Blindsight can be heard at his web page for the album: http://www.efn.org/~bch/blindsight.html; longer samples are also available at his page at cdbaby.com) Plans for a second album are in the early stages. Blake has also appeared as a guest artist on Echo's Children's fourth album, From the Hazel Tree, and on Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff's parody album, Aliens Ate My Homework. 2004 also marked Blake's first airplay on the Dr. Demento show, with his twisted love song "Hot Point, Warm Heart".

(Note: this song is NOT a Pegasus nominated song- it is a representative work for Best Performer and/or Best Writer/Composer categories):

Boundless?

Music and lyrics copyright ©2002 by Blake Hodgetts
Used by permission

Soft in the corridors, light as a cat,
I prowl in the night.
Seeking the long-hidden portal to gaze at the sight:
Cold as a liquid crystal they burn
As round their circle they turn,
Full of their mysteries no-one can learn,
Indifferent pinpoints of light.

[Chorus:]
Hear me oh, hear me oh,
There's a hundred and seventy-four years to go. (2x)

I am in school and it's here with my class
My future is made:
Physics, electromechanics, the tools of my trade.
We have no doubts of our destiny:
A Core Technician I'll be,
To work for the Ship and for what she grants me...
But some tenets must be obeyed.

[Chorus]

Uncounted times I have heard it explained:
The Ship is our place.
Here we were born, here we die, it's the home of our race.
Who made the Ship? That's not ours to know,
So many ages ago,
Thus I've been taught, I suppose that it's so...
But sometimes there's doubt in a face.

[Chorus]

I am a seeker by nature, it seems...
I yearn to explore.
I have found secrets that challenge my soul to ignore.
Pinpoints of light--the least of my fears.
This puzzle far stranger appears:
A plate bearing numbers and labeled as "years"
Reads one hundred seventy-four.

[Chorus]

Why this discovery shook my foundations,
I must here relate:
When I first found it its import did not seem so great.
Imagine my thoughts the day I arrived,
Having been one year longer alive,
To find the last digit was no longer "five"...
What is our implacable fate?

[Chorus]

Here is my struggle: how can I continue
To bear this alone?
There must be reason and meaning in what I've been shown.
Though I have gone to places taboo,
Soon I must guide others there too.
We may never learn what we're counting down to,
But some truths have got to be known.

[Chorus]