I don’t know if it’s so, but it is similar to the one in the Bentley Farm Cookbook.
I also made Mango chutney and Raita yesterday.
Planning to make a curry today as well as a quiche. Busy busy busy.
Yesterday evening while waiting for my brother and his wife to arrive I read another graphic thingo:
Cool. Another good one. These stories alternate between one reality and another quite nicely. I especially liked the second story which is more cartoon like. This is the first page of this story:
Granpa Greenbax is a sort of McScrooge Duck character. But the story gets darker when he kills his nephew and then suddenly is pulled out of the reality of the story into a larger reality that shows that he is actually a frog which has a computer implant and is acting out his story for a live tv show. I don’t want to ruin the ending but I do recommend these authors. Good stuff.
After I finished that book, I segued into Anthony Burgess’s book length poem called Moses.
Originally a very unique screen play treatment, it seems never to have been used for a movie. Hard not to picture Charleton Heston however. But it is Burgess I haven’t read, so what the hey.
I now have a shitload dishes to do and even some work for church (I want to pick out some renaissance anthems to do in Lent and in our Feb recital before Sunday. We’ll see if I succeed.)
I’m still looking for more conversation on my insularity. Nothing so far. Oh well. Fun while it lasted.
Hey check it out. I had TWO comments for the last post. I hope I wasn’t rude in my response to Hitchhiker. Instead of us both being insular, maybe we just live in different worlds. I’m willing to accept the world of stories, literature, music, poetry, history and art is a bit insular. But it also has some broad aspects that interest me. Generalizing about “most” people doesn’t help me that much anyway. I’m just flattered someone read my blog and posted.
My daughter Elizabeth gave me this to read while she was here:
It’s mildly disturbing in an entertaining way.
Last year (I think) my daughter Sarah gave me this one:
I finally read it this week. Hard to say what my reaction to it is. I guess I found it kind of interesting and entertaining as well. Seems to be a good time to read these books. Plus I’m expecting a visit from the famous graphic artist, Jeremy Bastian (who happens to be engaged to my lovely niece, Emily).
I interlibrary loaned a few 2009 graphic whatchacallits. Read these yesterday:
The first is really quite well done. It takes place mostly in Detroit and is about a kid who actually has a story to tell. It seems to me that many of these writer/artists are fixated on a sort of narcisstic R. Crumbish writing down of their lives or something close to. Unfortunately they often don’t interest me as much Crumb used to.
The second is a retelling of the Invisible Man. Not bad.
Couldn’t resist putting this into today’s blog.
Okay, I’ve got stuff to go do. I made pies yesterday. Today I make bread.
I have sketched out a menu for my brother’s fam’s visit:
The idea was that Seinfeld held us together because so many Americans had watched the show that they got the jokes and references. Now fewer watch American Idol.
I wondered why this annoyed me.
I think it was because it was obvious the woman who had written and/or narrated the piece hadn’t really thought much about what she was reporting on.
She did suggest the absence of a common cultural referent like Seinfeld made it harder to create a united sense of purpose in the society.
I doubt if she had heard of E.D. Hirsch’s idea of “cultural literacy.” He published back in the stone ages of 1987, two years before Seinfeld even began to air. Even then it was obvious that he wasn’t trying for a deep insight, just some observations about what common notions were needed for one to communicate well to others in U.S. society.
Further, the idea that there is a system of thinking about meaning (semiotics) may never enter the brain of the people who made the annoying report that got me moving this morning.
I sometimes think of these kinds of ideas as resonance and context. It is difficult for me to believe in the mirror that radio, tv and other sources of information seem to hold before us these days.
Are we really so shallow that we do not detect the false comparison of a story (Seinfeld) to the marketing ploy referred to as American Idol. Not that Seinfeld is sacrosanct or terrible significant. It’s just that narrative always beats shallow commerce.
Reality shows viewed from afar seem to be more unreal than real. (Viewed from afar because I’m not sure I ever watched one all the way through). I suspect they are the Gong show of my youth writ large.
Like the dancers of the marathon in the movie, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” the contestants are locked into a false story of humiliation and simple carnival-like lies.
This is the cultural referent that the narrator of this morning’s reporter is suggesting we lack? God help us. Surely we are not the shallow simple people that politicians and TV pundits and NPR radio report announcers seem to think we are.
What about the idea that each life is a life of genius worthy of reflection?
That there is a common humanity that draws us out of our simple mundane narcissistic tendency for the easy way out and toward our better selves, our bliss, our daemon.
I think this is what Joyce is pointing to in Ulysses by enshrining the common hero of Leopold Bloom and having him lead the arrogant image of youthful preoccupation with the artifice of culture, Stephen Dedaelus, to a deeper insight into living.
This may even be a basic insight of much human art: to draw us from the shallows of selfishness and stupidity into the larger realm of historical human community and beauty and truth.
I know that in addition to being very interested in what music and art is being created now, I still am drawn into the world of the previously created…
I increasingly think that the world of ideas and words is important to realizing any sort of human potential. Of course it’s not the only way to be human. But if we discard systematic thought in favor of image and only the spoken (or viewed) word is important, we will need to return to a deeper use of our memories in order to think thoughts and live lives that are not advertisement shallow. I think that the human will persist whatever the context. But I admit to an unreasoning belief in the individual and his/her worth and capacity.
The evil and dishonesty that we all must confront is most of all that which is inevitably in ourselves not our neighbors.
Puts me in mind of Martin Buber’s ideas of I/Thou or even Christ’s deep belief in people’s potential.
Sigh.
Heavy thoughts for this early in the morning, I guess.
Surprising how fatigued I have been this week. Yesterday I spent some time with Ned Rorem’s lovely Barcarolles for piano. Right now I’m listening to an hour long interview of him which includes most of a performance of the first one of these. Here’s a link: [link to PRX web site interview of Ned Rorem]. Warning that you have to sign up for a log on in order to listen to it. I glanced over some of the other programs available and they looked interesting so I signed up for a free membership.
Written in 1954 (3 years after the year of my birth), these piano pieces of Rorem are beautiful.
Earlier this morning I listened to BBC broadcast of a Bavarian Chorus singing Saint-Saens’ entire Christmas Oratorio and then two Christmas carols by Arvo Part. Serendipity for sure. Since we performed excerpts from the Saint-Saens at Xmas eve this week and did a piece by Part last Sunday. [temporary link to the BBC IPlayer of this program]
By the way, the BBC programs online are amazing. You can listen to dramas and music. They even post recordings of recent bell change ringing going on in English churches. cool.
While I listened I cleaned the kitchen and made blueberry muffins. The muffins are cooling right now.
I have scheduled two Noels by Dandrieu. I love the French organ Noels and try to do a few this time of year.
whew. So Xmas did take quite a bit out of me. Feeling guilty that I haven’t gotten back to my bud, Jordan about playing sax pieces while he’s home from “collage”. He gave me scores and linked me in to downloads of recordings of the pieces. I am just getting to messing with it today. Lovely music. But I don’t think I will have time while he is home to work up the accompaniments. As the great bigoted Healey Willan used to say of himself, “Can’t play for beans.”
Christmas Day found me a bit stunned. I had invited my Mom over for breakfast. She decided to stay warm and safe in her apartment due to the inclement weather. We visited her for about an hour and took her Xmas goodies.
Then we drove up to Whitehall for the Hatch gathering. When we arrived the party was in full swing. The majority of the people crowding the double wide trailer where Eileen’s Mom lives were kids. Happy kids. Good energy.
One of the happier Hatch events I have attended.
After a few hours we were back home in Holland.
I was beginning to tire. Elizabeth’s plane was due in around 10 PM in Grand Rapids. We managed to drive into the new set-up there and pick her up without even having to park. I think we were all glad to see each other. Back home through the dark icy rain to some happy chatter and trading stories. Nice to have Elizabeth home in person. She is planning on taking Edison away which is good news for her partner Jeremy, but slightly sad news for me. Edison is the best cat I’ve ever had to live with. I tried to talk her into taking the crazy cat (also hers) Mischief but to no avail. Mischief is like our slightly dotty cranky old aunt living with us.
I did manage to track down some of the online readings David Brooks recommended in his NYT article recently. [link to his article]
He calls them the Sidney awards.
He recommended (couldn’t give an award to because he made NYT articles ineligible) David Rohde’s series on being held captive by the Taliban. I read these as they were posted on the web. I find that I am most entranced by good writers who spread out and use a few thousand words. I enjoyed this quite a bit.
I haven’t read Atul Gawande’s piece, “The Cost Conundrum,” (David’s Choice no. 1) in The New Yorker. But happily bookmarked it for future reading on health care issues.
On the other hand I have read David’s Choice no. 2 David Goldhill’s “How American Health Care Killed My Father,” in The Atlantic. It was this article that helped me understand that the true customer of American health care is not us patients but the insurance companies.
Speak of Health Care Issues, I clicked on David’s Choice no. 3 and read a wickedly witty little piece by Jonathan Rauch called “Fasten Your Seat Belts – It’s Going to Be a Bumpy Flight” in The National Journal. Rauch develops a hilarious metaphor for the cumbersome antiquated Health care in the U.S. What if airlines were run like health care?
I also read David Grann’s “Trial by Fire” in The New Yorker when it was published . This is a disturbing piece on the botched investigation & execution of Todd Willingham, who was accused of murdering his three children by setting their house on fire in 2004. This was David’s Choice no. 4.
I bookmarked Choice no. 5 for future reading. Matt Labash profiled Marion Barry, the fascinating ex-mayor of DC in “A Rake’s Progress”.
David’s Choice no. 6 was a historical article on the region around Afghanistan, “Rediscovering Central Asia” by Frederick Starr in The Wilson Quarterly. I bookmarked it wryly recalling that Americans learn their geography and history through their wars.
Brooks promises more in his next Op Ed piece. I will check them out. I feel a bit smug because Brooks is on the opposite fence of me philosophically (conservative). But I do find him intelligent and usually well reasoned if not informative.
It could happen.
In addition to David Brooks’s links, I ran across a few more things recently:
http://www.html-kit.com/favicon is a cool online program that will convert graphic files into those neat little icons that appear on your browser when you bookmark a link.
Presumably it would appear without the big yellow one.
http://mypalsatan.com/about.php seems to be an online internet video series. A madcap goofy plot about what it would be like to have Satan for a roommate. I plan to check it out in the future when my brain needs serious rotting.
Joe Sacco is a talented journalist who makes excellent and evocative pictures of his essays. I have read some of his stuff before. This is a link to a review of his new book, “Footnotes in Gaza.” Sacco (along with other historians) points to a tragic event in Gaza in 1956 as seminal in what’s going on in the Middle East right now. I plan to interlibrary loan this book if I can.
I have come to realize that when people talk about the “internets” they are often talking at cross purposes. As I read recently online, when was the last time you heard the phrase, Information Highway.
For me it still is an Information Highway as well as a Information Universe. An amazing place with so many people and resources like articles, mp3s, sheet music, online books… not to mention keeping contact with loved ones and interesting ones.
It’s raining on ice in Western Michigan. Still dark. The late service last night seemed to go amazingly well. We performed excerpts from Saint-Saens’ Christmas Oratorio. I do like the instrumental prelude he wrote for this piece and we performed it last night with violin, viola, cello organ. Also, the Hallelujah chorus from the Messiah benefited from a slightly less pompous rendition than usual with violin, cello and harpsichord accompaniment. At communion we broke out the tone chimes and rang random consonant sounds during “Of the Father’s love begotten.” All in all, a solid service.
I broke down and purchased and downloaded a recording of Cantata 142 from www.baroquecds.com. 5.99 what a bargain. We sang this cantata years ago in Oscoda. Although it’s probably not by Bach, it is a fun little piece about Xmas.
I listened to Christmas music and made bread yesterday afternoon.
Unfortunately I forgot to put in the salt. So I found out what that does to bread. Removing it from the oven I thought it looked funny. The lovely shaped loaves had fallen a bit and the top of each loaf was rippled in an odd way. I cut a piece and immediately thought, “needs salt.” Oops.
Today we plan to drop by to say hi to my Mom. We had planned to have her over for breakfast but she just phoned and said she was going to skip going out due to the weather. Who can blame her?
We are driving up to Whitehall to see Eileen’s fam. Then late this evening we meet my daughter Elizabeth’s plane in Grand Rapids. So we will be on the roads. Hope it’s not too messy out.
My boss preached on the value of the familiar last night. I kept having thoughts about that. I mentioned to her before we left that the familiar is evident in the way people’s minds retain certain things like hymns and poems they have memorized even when most of their personalty and mind has seeped away. Later I thought about how the familiar comes into play with music we love. The resonance and associations we have with certain musics (like Cantata 142) creates a depth of familiarity that is part of why we like it.
Here are a few links to stuff I have been browsing online:
Jeremy Denk is a concert pianist who writes a fascinating, eloquent, intelligent blog.
Recently he had an entry on Chopin:[link to blog]. It was his musings that got me thinking about why I like Chopin again and playing and purchasing his music. Also I listened to chopin for one entire day this week while I made apple pies.
The Boys Choir of Harlem has been defunct for a while. I always admired this combination of good music and helping young people. Too bad. [link to NYT article].
Eunuchs now have the right to be considered a “distinct gender” in Pakistan. Now if we can just get the U.S. to follow the tolerance of this country (just kidding…. they are a bit too tolerant of the violent factions that flourish within their borders). [link to NYT article]
“Saying No, No, No, to Ho-Ho-Ho” by Hilary Stout in the NYT provokes some interesting reflection on how some people are choosing to avoid Christmas this year. [link to NYT article] They don’t go so far as to call it a Christmas fast, but that’s what they’re talking about. It led me to ponder my own evolving thinking about Christmas.
For some reason I am more comfortable than ever with this holiday. I think that I have solidly moved away from seeing my self in terms of religion or popular culture. Falsity is anathema to me right now. So that pretty much cancels out most of the Christian religious expressions about Christmas. Along with abandoning my rigidity and evangelism about the liturgical understandings of this season. And the so called cultural stuff I run up against in the media and popular societal expressions has less and less meaning for me. I just think that we get it wrong. People are not stupid. They’re just like you and me. They just see and experience life differently.
I hasten to add that I have not lapsed into a soft headed relativism. Quite the contrary. I now believe that some things cannot be rationalized away as misunderstandings. Specifically things like the hate that pervades the world. Hate for the starving, the poor, the ugly, the outcast. Hate for those who are different.
So as my secretary at work kept repeating this season, “MFC.” She then would clarify that she meant: “Merry Fucking Christmas.” heh.
My daughter Elizabeth pointed me to a Lifehacker article on a service that claims it will keep your music in the cloud of the internets for you. Not sure about how this would work. Especially their claim that if the local country doesn’t permit sharing music with your friends they will search the internet for a free (presumably legal) copy. Hmmm. [link to Lifehacker article on Tunebag]
goingjesus.com [link to site] seems to have been collecting bizarre nativity sets for a while. Here’s one of the many I like:
I think it’s a gas how the writer of the site points out that the similarity between this Joseph
and you know who:
Finally I do recommend the NYT annual year in ideas. Always fun to pick up on things you missed. Here’s a link to the G page from which you should be able to move around through the whole article. [link to NYT article]
I have been a busy little elf the last few days. Yesterday I spent most of the day in the kitchen. Made four huge apple pies and gave away three (Ahem. Eileen and I are eating the fourth). I baked two of the four and made up ready-to-bake pies of the other two. This was because I had asked the recipients which they preferred.
I used the old apple corer/peeler. After some diddling with it I got it to work quite well.
I interrupted my day to go have my pre-Xmas conference with my boss. I do like working for this person. I told her that I have had a gentle insight recently. I glossed over it in the previous post I believe.
I was talking to daughter Elizabeth on the phone Sunday and mentioned that I was “winning.” Later I thought about this. By resisting reacting to people who misbehave I do not defeat them, rather I defeat those parts of me that would like to respond to them in kind.
The basic insight that you can only really affect you own behavior and not that of others keeps coming back to me in my life.
When working with people who do not seem to be conscious it is helpful to concentrate on your own reaction. In my case, it makes all the difference in the world.
This doesn’t mean that I am complicit in others’ misbehavior. It simply helps me, at least, to be more constructive in how I respond. Usually moving quickly past insult to a discussion of content.
In other words I try to collaborate and problem solve with others despite having quite thin skin myself and often hearing intense emotion incorrectly as though it were in fact directed at myself.
It’s not near as big a deal as it sounds. It’s a gentle late middle aged insight for myself. That’s all.
So on to Xmas.
Christmas has been a time of intense cognitive dissonance for me. Since I learned how the Liturgical year is designed, it bothered me that Christmas is so complex and unattractive in its many forms in U.S. life.
But since realizing that my own beliefs do not coincide with conventional
Christianity and even belief in God, it has helped me not to get too bent out of shape over stuff around like Christmas.
I have eased into just enjoying the parts of Christmas I like and trying to ignore or tolerate the rest.
I wouldn’t dream of not having a real Christmas tree in my house. But now it’s a bit like not letting Halloween go past without carving a pumpkin.
And here’s something weird. I actually like all the goofy music, the goofier the better. John Waters put out a perverted mix of Christmas tunes that I find hilarious. And I like all the jazz tunes as well.
Managed some decent improvs yesterday at church. The best was probably the postlude on “O Come, o come, Emmanuel.” I find this tune very easy to improvise on. I scheduled improvs both for the prelude and postlude. The prelude I called “Improvisation in the style of Arvo Part by Steve Jenkins.” Presumptuous I know.
I began with a carefully worked out set of notes on the harpsichord based on the hymn tune “Conditor Alme siderum” (Creator of the stars of night) which was scheduled for use later in the service. Then I cued in three people with tone chimes in their hands to begin a carefully worked out pattern of hand chimes. Both of these patterns were based on Arvo Part’s theories of composition. I gradually increased the complexity of the harpsichord part using only notes in Part’s theories. This turned out to be a good thing because the harpsichord was out of tune when I arrived and I only had time to tune notes to be used in the prelude. Then I added a flute and a soprano singing “Ahh” on the hymn melody pausing between each phrase.
After the melody was done. I gradually simplified the harpsichord part and then cued the hand chimes to stop. Finished with the same fixed improv I began with.
That was fun.
I managed to keep my head above water yesterday.
I am coming to the resolve that my take on music and listeners is a coherent one even if it differs from others. My understanding of what want to buy diazepam seems musical to me as I perform is deepening. I find that thinking of music as something one does, instead of reifying it especially into some sort of Platonic ideal is helpful to me.
The common listener (like the common reader) seems important to my understanding. In fact more and more I see myself in the role of the common listener and reader. My previous youthful ideas of complexity for its own sake which often disguised a rigidity I now find distasteful in myself plays a much smaller role in my thinking.
What I’m saying is that performing music in a room where there are many others who have a literally academic understanding of what music is can be a bit of an internal battle. Yesterday I won. I found myself connected to the music throughout the morning while realizing that some of the musicians in the room probably disapproved of or were confused by my musicality.
Someone asked if I was varying tempos on purpose in certain areas. This actually ended up being a clarifying moment for me because I asked the person if what I was doing seemed unmusical to her because I simply was trying to interpret musically.
Later it occurred to me that I seem to use different parts of my brain for thinking musically and thinking analytically (i.e. determining if I am unintentionally distorting something like tempo).
I emerged yesterday with a strengthened notion of my own approach to music. Very encouraging.
I have been thinking a lot about my personality and my family recently. I think as a young person thrust into the midst of an upbringing in a Church of God parsonage (that’s what we called them), that somehow I withdrew myself into my own world made up of music, poetry and books.
This was facilitated by having big (to me) empty buildings available to me to sit and play a piano in an empty room. Come to think of it, “Empty rooms” is the name of the song I wrote to deal with my relationships to the men in my family. I haven’t been writing these “bad Paul Simon songs” as I call them, for a while. I have come to the conclusion they were therapeutic for me and that was why I persisted in writing them. Maybe my adolescence is truly over. Probably not.
JIM MORRISON
Anyway so many things in my life are therapeutic these days: cooking, music, being with fam.
RICHARD NIXON
The building I remember the most is the one in Flint on West Court Street. I spent hours in the chapel plunking away at the piano. Also I organized an ensemble that met in the balcony of the chapel which I christened “Christian Youth Ensemble.” I talked some young musicians into playing through music that seemed to have been laying around. I remember wondering what an “Agnus Dei” by Bizet could possibly mean.
NOT RICHARD NIXON
These memories were stirred yesterday when my brother and I emailed links to the current West Court Street Church of God Nativity Scene web site stuff. Both of us participated in this public ritual as young people.
Also I have been thinking a great deal about recently deceased father. I have difficulty understanding his personality and connecting it to my own. This is probably because we have been on separate wave lengths for a long time. And of course now I am working on my internalized father and find him not seeming incredibly important to me at this point in my life. But I’m still working on it.
In the meantime, last night Eileen and I watched Julie and Julia.
A dear and respected friend had suggested that it was possible to begin to see the real Julia Child instead of Meryl Streep after a while. You know the basic willing suspension of disbelief.
Unfortunately this did not happen for me. Instead the differences between Streep’s performance and my memory stood out annoyingly to me. Streep had Child’s voice down. But I could see Streepisms creeping through in her performance.
Plus the Julia Child in my head was always shrewd and possessed a steel trap of a mind which is not the way the movie interprets her and possibly is not even the way she actually was.
After the movie I pulled up several Youtube videos of Julia Child and confirmed the mannerisms I missed in Streep’s performance. Streep ended up doing a physical mimic of her which looked a bit like a caricature to me.
I have resisted visual approaches to history before. I find movie plots based on so called true stuff annoying. I find historical personages reinterpreted even more annoying.
Maybe I am basically a person of the book and the word. Figures.
In the last blog, I mentioned Firesign Theatre. I have strong visual images of their record, “I think we’re all bozos on this bus.” After several google image searches, I realized that the pictures I was searching for (the bozo bus, the future park) were firmly lodged in my brain but probably no where else.
Wow. For some reason my online buds Cheryl and George made very nice comments to the last two posts. Cool. To Cheryl: Thank you so much for your kind words. I wish you lived a bit closer. We definitely would have to get together and shoot the shit in person. Though I like online stuff, I find nothing is like face to face. To George: I do miss checking your blog. But this sort of thing can be time consuming and people come and go in the strangest ways. If you write it, I will come. And I don’t get the need for you to behave yourself. But maybe that’s because I don’t behave myself that well online. Heh.
I have been considering what to do with my electronic connections such as internet, phone and cable.
I have just about come to the conclusion I should get cable back for my lovely wife. The other night she was watching her beloved NCIS on our desktop as she treadmilled. The damn thing kept stopping. She patiently explained that if she paused it, sometimes (SOMETIMES) it would load for a few minutes. Oy. I told her we should definitely think about putting cable in the bundle we eventually get.
I’m disappointed that the tech isn’t better for stupid tv and movies. Almost every time I stream, I have stutters and glitches. This includes Youtube, by the way. It’s probably my aging equipment plus my dsl connection.
I have been talking with my very connected daughter Elizabeth regarding this stuff. She said I would be very disappointed with a wireless only connection to the internet with Verizon. That’s what she has been using. She has two connections, one at work and one for home. This wireless connection is sort of new for her, I think. She finds herself going over the limit of the combined allowance of these two connections (10 G, 5 G each).
She mentioned that since I say I live in the cloud, that wouldn’t be enough.
This has caused me to think about the way I use the internet some more. Last week I installed a bandwidth meter on all three of the computers Eileen and I use. On my netbook (which I am using to write this entry) so far I have only used 810.32 Megabytes. I think this is about 6 days usage. This means that I am only approaching 1 Kilobyte Gigabyte with one week’s worth of usage on one of my machines. Since a Kilobyte is 1024 Megabytes, a Megabyte is 1024 Kilobytes, it doesn’t look(s) like I’m going to average (around or maybe a bit) more than 5 Gigabytes per month. (Thank you to Elizabeth for correcting me!)
But on the other hand, Elizabeth points out that streaming is a problem.
I figured out that I mostly read the internet. I use it as a great big old reference library instantly fact checking stuff or finding out exactly what a word or reference means. Also the usual text stuff: email, blog, news, books, articles. And then there’s purchasing. Ahem.
I also stream audio much more than video. But having said that, I’m embedding this video:
I mentioned to my boss recently that I feel a bit like Lurch since I play my harpsichord so much.
She thanked me and said that now she was going to think of that when I played in church. Sweet. (That word has a nice resonance since rewatching the opening to the Addams fam tv show
:
[in Lurch’s voice:] Neat…… sweet….. petite….. )
This was brought home yesterday when I was rehearsing harpsichord at church and glanced up and saw a good size bat swooping around. Cool.
I am thinking the Lurch self image is about right for me in Holland Michigan. Hardly a day goes by that someone is rude to me or stares (unconsciously) at me. I don’t think it’s just the hair and beard. I think I am like other people in their lives. Also that they are a bit frightened of me. Not everyone mind you and not even a majority of people I run into. Just enough to be amusing.
Or maybe they do see me more like this:
Another good self image for Jupe.
Anyway. Harpischord. I have had an exhausting week but have still managed to find a lot of time for music on the harpsichord. Yesterday I broke something else on my aging instrument. The plectrum on one of the jacks snapped off.
Oops. When I stole a jack from one of the extremely high notes, I noticed that it was about the fourth one I had stolen from that range. I have stolen them from the outer notes to the point that my range on my instrument is considerably diminished on both ends. This is not too much of a problem because much of the literature was written and played on small instruments with not so much range.
When I chatted with the Zuckerman guy this week on the phone, I pointed out what an important influence building a harpsichord had been on my life. He said that it wasn’t unusual that it was a life changing event for people who did it. For me, this is true in a sort of gradual way.
When I and my cohorts (I was living in a basement with another high school student and all of friends would drop in and assist us in putting together the harpsichord kit) put my harpsichord together,
I wasn’t much a musician really. I played trumpet, guitar and piano but had no real facility at anything but pop music and Churchagod music. (Churchagod being my fam of origin’s denomination of choice).
Since then, I have actually studied harpsichord and acquired some facility at the repertoire. Enough facility that it is extremely fun to rehearsing and perform it.
In the handbook of the original kit, it suggested that builders should not only play their instrument but purchase Dover editions of Bach and the Fitzwilliam Virginal book. This I dutifully did at the time.
Since then I have used these books extensively, even purchasing a second copy of the Bach due to wear.
Now I keep a one copy of the Bach Dover (suites, inventions, Goldberg) at church and one at home.
Yesterday when I was chatting with the janitor at work, talking to him about my love and history with the harpsichord, I realized that I had just spent the previous hour practicing music from the Fitzwillian Virginal book and that volume one lay spread open on my creaky aging harpsichord.
I find this very satisfying.
I also have recently had a rewakened connection to the music of Couperin and the English Virginalists (in the Fitzwillian Viriginal book).
I remember when I quit college the first time. I told the counselor I was going to compose and possibly study harpsichord. Who would have thunk that I would have actually done those things in my life? But there you have it.
Consolation for living in the future (“Living in the future is a lot like having bees live in your head”… possibly inaccurate recollection of a quote from Fireside Theater).
Hey! I found a pic of my type of harpsichord online:
I actually just got off the phone with Zuckerman. I ordered a set of strings. He had some copies of the old hand book for the harpsichord above and sold me one.
The one in the picture is a refurbished one they recently sold for 1650.00! Very cool. The guy told me I should upgrade my jacks. They would sell me a kit.
I have been thinking quite a bit about fatherhood lately.
Some of this is pondering the mystery of my father who died this year. I say mystery because for me my dad always held himself back a bit and didn’t reveal himself largely to me.
I also have been pondering James Joyce’s Ulysses. This book partly works with the idea of fatherhood. Stephen is looking for a father, since his own father has failed him in some manner. The first part of the book is the remnants of Stephen’s failed life of the mind. Then we meet Bloom. Bloom is the leading character who shows a calm, accepting, very domesticated and low class beauty in his thoughts and actions. Although he is as flawed as any human, he does end up a bit of the father figure to Stephen in the book. The book is about many other things, but I do think that both Bloom and Stephen hold forth the idea that we become our own father or that we find that father that we seek in ourselves more than anywhere else. It is not lost on me that Joyce’s character and I share a name.
When I think of my own father, I realize how different I am from him. Even though recently old friends of my Mom remarked how much I look like him. I wonder if my last moment of intimacy with him was when he broke down weeping in my arms years ago over my divorce. I do mark that scene as the end of my adolescence or the beginning of the end or something. I have long thought we internalize our parents.
As a parent, I saw my children internalize who they experienced me to be. Later as they approached maturity I was often bemused that I could no longer get into the conversation they were having with their internalized father. Since I have understood my life as one that stands a bit a part from my family of origin. That is, that my values are different. My father and mother spent a lot of their lives as believers and ministers of the Christian church. Even though I do church music, my relationship with the church is completely different from theirs.
Plus I have found greater value in the world of music, poetry, the arts and literature. It confuses me that this is so. Not sure exactly how I got here. I do think the idealism transmitted to me from my parents from the Christ of the New Testament has a great deal to do with my own values. Also I received the mantle of outsider from both sides of my family
(my father’s father I think of as a self made intellectual in an anti-intellectual environment of the Church of God, my mother’s father was a castigated illegitimate child …. his mother was not married to the man who fathered him, her husband kept him at arm’s length). And I am comfortable with this stance. Actually I am more than comfortable with it. I value the outsider point of view. Once again Kiberd has a quote:
“… Bloom himself is valued by Joyce to the extent that he can recognize the ‘stranger’ within himself. He is more Christlike than any of his fellow citizens, being constantly willing to put himself in the other fellow’s position. Joyce was following Paul of Tarsus in the attempt to imagine a world without foreigners, a world made possible once men and women accept the foreigner within the self and the necessarily fictive nature of all nationalisms.” p. 310 in Ulysses and Us by Declan Kiberd
This passage identifies one of the things I embrace in being an outsider, accepting the “foreigner within the self.” And most of all “constantly willing” to put myself in the other fellow’s position.
Trying to finish up Declan Giberd’s Ulysses and Us, I came upon the following:
“As late as the 1980s, many older readers were still unready to meet the challenge, routinely denying that Molly could have been masturbating. When the Irish actress, Fionnula Flanagan, performed the soliloquy in this way, scholars in Minnesota walked out in protest, angrily handing back memberships of the James Joyce Foundation like war veterans handing back their bravery medals. The very idea of this lonely woman pleasuring herself was too much for them. These scholars had been educated in an upbeat American tradition which saw Molly as saying ‘yes’ to love and to life, in the spirit of Stephen’s definition of literature as the affirmation of mankind. But Joyce, more somberly, had been asking: does she? Her ‘yes’ might also be sad, since it is the strategy of a lonely monologist, who hopes that somebody might be there listening. Like the self posted letters, it is the device of a woman left with nobody to talk to but herself. ” p. 263
Although I certainly have some people to talk to, I like the idea that blogging might be the “strategy of a lonely monologist who hopes that somebody might be there listening.” Very nice.
Molly is largely based on Joyce’s wife, Nora, above. If you’ve never checked out Ulysses, it is the voice of Molly that closes the book in a chapter of wonderful streaming words. Recommended.
I find so much false in my day to day life. Intellectual and emotional dishonesty abounds. Not to mention the walking wounded. Good grief.
I need to get on the dang treadmill and blog more later I guess. Eileen and I have watched Hanif Kureishi’s film, “My Beautiful Launderette,” twice this week.
This man’s work fascinates me. I have the screenplay in a collection of his and am thinking about this movie quite a bit. For now let it suffice that I think he has something important to say about racism and living in a time of mixed cultures. More later.
So. I’m looking seriously at Verizon. AT&T was so creepy to me that I would prefer not to give them my measly business bundling up my phones and internet.
Verizon has drawbacks as well. First of all, they are also annoyingly two companies: Verizon (cell phones and wireless internet) & Verizon Communication (land lines). That’s right, two completely different companies. They offer no bundles of any kind however tThey can bill on the same bill, however. Great.
The main drawback that is troubling me right now is that Verizon’s MIFI(tm) wireless modem thingy service is limited to 5 gigabytes a month. After that it’s a nickel a megabyte. I’m thinking I use the internet more than that. I hope not.
I found a little free monitoring software that I have installed on my netbook and desktop. (Link to site of Tautology Bandwidth Meter) So far in the last hour or so, I have used 3.37 megabytes. I will need to let this software monitor me for a while before I can get a sense of how much bandwidth I actually use.
The sales man said to me, what do you use your internet connection for. I began listing off the usual suspects. Basically I live in the cloud.
I have started keeping notes on books on my Diigo site.
This (if you don’t recognize it) is an online bookmarking service (free of course). I used to keep archived articles on the NYT site. Then they dropped the service and passed it onto to some site. Diigo is like my third or fourth leap from one service to another. Supposedly they have kept all my old NYT archived articles. I kind of hope so.
This morning while treadmilling I downloaded a book to my Kindle for my PC thingo. It was a free slow cooker cook book. It’s pretty cool. Click on the book if you want to see it at Amazon:
I’m pretty impressed that this author gives away one of her books. The rest she charges for. Seems like a pretty good marketing strategy. I’m considering actually purchasing one of her books after reading a bit in this one. On kindle, naturally. Heh.
So I played a funeral today. I used the harpsichord and played some Francois and Louis Couperin, natch. Also played Mozart on the piano and Bach on the organ. As I was tuning up, I broke a string on the harpsichord. A low F. This limits what music I can perform on it. Fortunately the little piece I am planning for tomorrow’s prelude doesn’t use this note. I know I have some harpsichord strings around here somewhere. I keep thinking I’m going to call Zuckerman and ask if they have stockpiled old parts for my klunker.
I just google imaged and couldn’t find anything that looks much like my old instrument. This doesn’t bode well.
It’s a bit like this one. But with wood veneer finish. And a straight side not a curved one.Also the legs are different. This one probably lifts right off the base. Mine has three legs screwed right into it. I guess mine’s totally different.
I guess I’ll close this blog with a bit of quote:
The book Ulysses by James Joyce “remains open to the idea of ‘entelechy’: that there are always new forms knowledge destined to emerge, but which despite that inevitability, will take us utterly by surprise. Declan Kiberd, “Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece
For some reason this struck me. I like the idea that new forms of understanding (and even music) continue to inevitably emerge and surprise me.
It has been a weird week for me. I think my recital had a lot of impact on me. I think I am drawing nearer to the things I love, like music and cooking. I spent a lot of this week at the harpsichord. I am loving the Couperins (Louis and Francois). I have scheduled Francois for this Sunday. Prelude on harpsichord and postlude on organ.
Right now it’s evening on Friday. I have bread and chicken in the oven.
I made apple torte and apple cake this morning before Eileen got up. I spent an hour at the harpsichord this afternoon. I have a funeral tomorrow morning and I spent a good hour transcribing a song from a youtube video (River in Judea). I would have bought the dang thing if I could have downloaded it or bought it from a local music store. But noooooooh.
Eileen and I drove up to Verizon and had a heart to heart with a sales person. We are considering dropping our land line. AT&T has totally jerked me around so I’m not in the mood to bundle with them. Verizon has reasonable prices. I think I can get 2 cell phone lines for 80.00 a month with 250 text messages for each month & internet access (via their 3G network) for 60.00 a month. This means I could drop T-Mobile (100.00), AT&T (26.00), TDS Metrocom (70.00). We would have to buy new phones but I think we can get by for 50.00 for the two of us. Anyway, we’re pondering it.
I read Obama’s Nobel speech. (link to the text) He continues to impress despite his obvious realpolitik. I think his speeches are really quite good. This one is worth listening to or reading.
My daughter Elizabeth is coming to visit around Xmas. I am missing my kids. But life goes on.
Eileen and I ran secret Xmas errands for my Mom today.
I tried to teach Pandora radio to only play early French Baroque music this morning. To no avail. I entered Louis Couperin. The music genome project which underlies this web site analyzed the music. It found that it was something like uptempo, played on harpsichord, and some other stylistic comments. I heard a Pandora panel discuss how they do this. They use their musical brains to try to objectively analyze the music. Then the play list can reflect the actual sounds of the music and sometimes come up with other music like the entered musician or song.
Unfortunately, I don’t think they factored in French Baroque which is what I was trying to listen to. They kept suggesting other harpsichord composers. But not French ones. I kept clicking on the I don’t like this song tab in hopes that I could convince the station to play French Baroque. It didn’t work. I also found out something else. Eventually, they quit stopping on the songs you don’t like. I mean you have to listen to it all the way through instead of skipping to the next one. At this point, I closed the frame and preferred the early morning silence. Good grief.
Now I can hear the rain pouring down on the icy ground and pavement. Nice sound, but I hope it doesn’t create bad driving conditions.
I find myself ebbing from post-recital lethargy to a more typical low grade melancholy. French baroque music seems to help this. Also a large dose of Schubert piano sonatas. I mean of course playing these things myself mostly. It’s a bit early to start banging away on music with Eileen still sleeping upstairs although she has told me it doesn’t bother her if I play the piano in the morning.
I have been going over our finances and it continues to look a bit shaky. Yesterday I figured out our medical costs for 2009 so far so that we can have a working total to create a flex plan at Eileen’s work. Out of pocket we spent around 2800.00 on medical costs last year. It promises to be much more next year. Oy.
I’m afraid my Xmas gift giving will have to reflect this to some extent. Damn. I wanted to compose something for people this Xmas. The composing is relatively easy to do. But recording is another animal altogether. I continue to be unhappy with my recordings. But not unhappy enough to sink time and money into making better recordings. I’d rather practice and perform. Selfish git that I am.
Maybe I can bake stuff for people for Xmas.
I donated 10 lb sterling to Pawel Siwczak’s web site yesterday via Paypal. I did this since I have downloaded all free MP3s he offers on his web site. http://www.pawelsiwczak.com/
I also called my Senators (Stabenow & Levin) to urge them to vote against the Nelson/Hatch amendment to the health care plan prohibiting federal monies for abortion coverage.
I keep stopping and listening to the rain. Definitely better than Pandora this morning.
I was pretty lethargic yesterday. My recital turned out to be sort of a major project, so I needed a bit of a rest.
I spent most of the day reading and playing piano. Tough life, eh?
Found myself playing Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and both Louis and Francois Couperin.
I did a bit of actual rehearsing on the Mendelssohn piano trio I am learning.
It was the sort of day, I found myself dozing off while reading.
Besides reading Declan Kibard on Joyce, Ulysses by Joyce and The Recording Angel by Eisenberg, I bookmarked the following articles online:
Wife of Chinese Dissident, Liu Xiaobo, losing hope for his release by Tania Branigan for Guardian UK. (link to article)
Liu Xiaobo was taken away on 8 December last year, a day before the publication of Charter 08, a plea for democratic reforms that he co-authored. He was formally arrested in June on suspicion of inciting the subversion of state power.
The wife (Liu Xia) looks very sad to me in the photo. What a bunch of crap. Tomorrow is the anniversary of Liu Xiaobo being taken away.
Transparency International has done a study of corruption in governments in the world. (link to site). New Zealand is the number one least corrupt, Somalia the most at number 180. China is number 79 from New Zealand, the U.S. is 19 just below the U.K.
How Obama Came to Plan for “Surge” in Afghanistan by by Peter Baker (link to NYT article) is an interesting study in that boring topic, policy making and governing. I am okay with political back and forth, but what drives me nuts is the rancor and ideologies that are driving our political rhetoric. It seems to have so little to do with the job of governing. Obama is obviously trying to govern. Good luck to him.
Eisenberg (The Recording Angel guy) discusses the private use of music in our lives. He points out how some people listen to certain musics in their homes on certain days: Messiah on Xmas, Klemperer’s recording of Beethoven’s 6th on Shabbat, Mothers of Invention of Mother’s day.
He describes at length Thomas Mann’s use of character’s listening to music on a phonograph in The Magic Mountain. I have read this book and vaguely remember this.
But his most startling example comes from Aldous Huxley:
Aldous Huxley, who had as good an ear as anyone for the resonances of technology, also cast the phonograph as an instrument of death and the hope of afterlife. In Point Counterpoint the world-weary cynic Spandrell, who is ‘not a man – either a demon or a dead angel,’ plays Beethoven’s ‘Holy thanks-song of a convalescent’ from the A minor Quartet – music which he finds the only proof of God, the soul, heaven – and kills himself. ‘Long notes, a chord repeated, protracted, bright and pure, hanging, floating, effortlessly soaring on and on. And then suddenly there was no more music; only the scratching of the needle on the revolving disc.” from Chapter Four Ceremonies of a Solitary in The Recording Angel by
Evan Eisenberg
Bleak little image there. But fitting, I think. Music like life itself is transient and gains meaning from its transience.
I’m still processing my recital yesterday, of course. I did several things differently. For one thing I rehearsed practically right up to the recital. Of the eight pieces on the program, I played five in public for the first time. All (except the harpsichord piece) were challenging. And an added challenge was performing on my busiest day of the week after a morning of church music.
I think I was happiest with my rendition of the Arvo Part. During the Mendelssohn prelude, I had ciphers and almost stopped playing. Fortunately, I banged away at some of the low pedal notes where I suspected the cipher to be originating and they went away. It made for some interesting Mendelssohn, however. Heh.
I was most disappointed with my Bolcom. This was one of the pieces I rehearsed on Sunday. I didn’t lose control of it, but there were some funny moments (as one of my colleagues used to say, I took a dump on that one… heh). One listener remarked it was her favorite of the program. It is a cool piece and it was mostly there. I just like it quite a bit and wanted to render it a bit more faithfully.
The Mendelssohn fugue went pretty well. For some reason the fugues had me a bit worried yesterday. I rehearsed them both right up until the recital. It seemed to help in their cases. Also the Messiaen went surprisingly well.
It’s been a while since I’ve asked this much of myself in a recital/concert situation. It was a good experience. Next time I am probably going to be in the company of the violinist and cellist I have been working with. Now it’s time to start rehearsing my piano trios (Mendelssohn and Mozart) a bit more seriously.
The number (35-40) of people who chose to come out on a busy Dec afternoon surprised me. Pastor Jen and I were observing it was an interesting mix of people who were attending an organ recital and people who supporting someone who was supporting lesbian/gay/bi-sexual/transgendered people. I had several people indicate they couldn’t make it because of the annual Vespers Xmas concert at the local gay hating college. Every year they give multiple performances of Xmas music. The conductor is a parishioner as well as other music faculty there. I counted one faculty member at my recital yesterday. Plus one retired faculty member. There could have been more. I didn’t recognize everyone.
At least two people came because they follow my music at the local coffee shop. They like my song, “Moneyland.” Interestingly, one of them insists they heard someone sing it on Prairie Home Companion. I have quit denying this is possible. It’s totally news to me. heh.
I was pleased to publicly show my support using my music in the face of such local hate and intolerance. There was an ad in the paper and also a little blurb about the recital. Both of which specifically mentioned lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people. This was probably my biggest accomplishment yesterday.
Marguerite Moritz’s article, “Four Lessons on School Shootings,” has some interesting observations on how journalists should cover traumatic events.
I like this comment:
“The written text is about sequential argumentation. Visuals are about emotion and are associative, non-sequential and perceived as highly authentic… “
The four recommendations are:
1. Don’t offer a single cause for a complex event
2. Images have more power than almost anything you write
3. Don’t make heroes out of villains
4.Listen to your readers and viewers
All comments worthy of pondering.
Another article, “Caught in the Crossfire,” by Sheila Coronel, prompted me to observe the attention a recent weird Philippines incident is receiving in the Western press. The story is that a local family which controls an area in the Philippines methodically killed 57 people on their way to file (just to FILE) papers to run for office. They already had used a back hoe to dig their graves when they stopped their cars at a check point. Wow.
Since then I have read several articles in the NYT which seem to miss what is going on.
I should remark how wonderfully the music went at church yesterday.
I had a number of parishioners assisting on instruments: violin, viola, cello, alto sax, bass and guitar. Bill Bier, the alto sax player, is an amazing musician. His addition was substantial. We had applause at the end of communion music. Ahem. We are a far bit away from the quiet and introspection I have decided this group needs during its communion. But it was cool, nonetheless. I used the viola as a fiddle for the Canticle we are doing during Advent. And harpsichord, violin and cello to accompany “And the Glory” by Handel for the choral anthem. A number of extra singers showed up to sing the Handel. We had a satisfyingly wide gambit of musical styles yesterday. All played well and as far as I could tell high congregational participation. This is what we’re shooting for.
I’m waiting for Eileen’s shower to finish so that I may shower after treadmilling. One of the joys of having an old house is the plumbing which dictates that one can only shower upstairs if there is no water running any where else in the house. This includes the washing machine which I have just shut off…..
I am notorious for starting books but not for finishing them. Last night I started a very entertaining and interesting read:
The Recording Angel: Music, Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa, Second Edition by Evan Eisenberg is lots of fun, even if it can’t help being dated.
The first chapter is called “Clarence” and is about an eccentric who has been collecting records for years in NYC. His house has no heat. He smells bad. His collection is unbelievable. His anecdotes about various famous people he has known and received autographs and interesting stuff from is mind boggling.
The second chapter (which is the one that really caught my attention) is called “Music becomes a thing.” He not only charmingly rants about how music goes from being something you do (okay that’s my phrase) to something you can have and collect, he lists off five needs humans satisfy by collecting cultural objects:
1. The need to make beauty and pleasure permanent.
2. The need to comprehend beauty.
3. The need to distinguish oneself as a consumer.
4. The need to belong.
5. The need to impress others, or onself.
This guy is my kind of thinker. He ranges wide, humorously and with lots of knowledge. Here’s a link to his current website which is not as impressive as this book: link to Evan Eisenberg’s web site
I spent a good deal of time yesterday writing the program for the four people who will attend my recital Sunday. Actually I’m planning on publishing 25 to 30 copies which is incredibly optimistic I think.
I experimented around with ways of practicing yesterday. I have been doing a lot of slow practice for weeks, but realize that I need to practice up to tempo as well. This is especially true of the new pieces I am planning to perform.
Anyway, the day before the recital it all becomes a bit more moot, although the words of my dead teacher keep ringing in my ears: “sometimes you have to practice something right up until the performance.”
I know that I am attempting quite a bit tomorrow afternoon. Fifty minutes of recital material is quite a bit for someone like me who usually practices two hours a day. The majority of the program is in good shape, but I continue to learn about myself as a performer and practicer.
Also I am aging. This year I had some pain in my left hand presumably arthritic. It has affected me. But “toujour gai, archy, toujour gai, there’s some life in the old gal yet.”
Blogging from my desktop this morning. The “Mainframe” as I think of it.
I have a ton of things to do this morning (like write the program for Sunday’s recital, due bills & put sheets on the bed for weekend guest… Barb Phillips), but I still wanted to blab a bit.
Eileen just came back in from trying to get the doors open on her car.
She asked if she could take the other car because she’s in hurry. Oh sure. Heh.
So I also have to make sure the doors on the car are going to open before I leave to do errands.
This morning while treadmilling I read two old articles by Janis Ian on the merits of giving away your music free (re-read in the case of the first article).
“The Internet Debacle” Originally written for Performing Songwriter Magazine, May 2002* Shortly after this article was turned in, Michael Greene resigned as president of NARAS. * Please note that this was written well before the advent of iTunes.
I realize that her 2002 article was probably about the time when I myself was beginning to believe that music should be free. (And ideas and other stuff). Pace Dave the artist and Cheryl the writer, old buds with whom I recently disagreed about this stuff.
Interesting how Janis Ian has continued to pop up on my horizon throughout my life.
I bought her first album and liked some of the album cuts. After that I occasionally would buy one of her albums. I liked it when she brought her “At Seventeen” album. Then a while back I noticed her marriage announcement in the New York Times with glee. I kind of approve of same sex marriages (see this Sunday’s Organ recital dedicated to all the local lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, & transgendered pipples). Then a few years ago, I went and saw her live in Ann Arbor just for kicks.
Somewhere in there I’m pretty sure I read her 2002 article.
I think my relationship to making money with music is pretty weird. I am a musician and have made money doing music. But not that much. I have a house that Eileen and I are just about done paying for. I remember when the church I was working for fronted me a couple of thou for the downpayment thinking that I never thought I would be able to afford a house. I came to this conclusion in the seventies when I read that Grace Slick was turned down for a mortgage loan for a bank. If working Rock & rollers couldn’t get a loan, church musicians just didn’t make enough to do so.
But here we are.
And I have come to think of money as a necessary evil with an emphasis on the evil.
At the same time I have realized that I don’t have a large draw with my music. Not enough commercial potential for church music publications or pop music recordings. No prob. I also don’t have the temperament to drive a career in these areas. I’m mostly just an old nerd who likes to play and write music and is happy if left alone to come out once in a while and play for people who are interested.
This Sunday will be a current barometer of just how many that is. Stay tuned to this space for observations and results. Heh.
In the meantime, go to http://www.janisian.com/ , download some music and then donate to Pearl Foundation. I’m going to.
Also I have been inspired by this guy:
He is a harpsichordist and organist who also gives his music away on his site:
