Jeremy Bastian is the fiancée of my niece Emily so I guess he is soon to be my nephew-in-law. Is that correct? Hmmmm Anyway, he’s visiting and I got to read a publicity mag and made a note of web sites he is associated with. Click on the pic above to get to Olympian Publishers site where he sells some of his cool stuff.

Finished reading my second Sam Lipsyte novel yesterday. “Home Land” is a romp framed in reports of an alumni who “did not pan out” to graduates from his high school. Submissions to the “Eastern Valley High School Alumni Newsletter” never see the light of day except in the novel.

Like the other Lipsyste novel I have read, the book seems to build characters and plot through a distinctly attractive warped voice of a narrator. The ending passage is typical of what Lipsyte achieves throughout. Dirtfuck otherwise known as Gary has just obscenely and casually insulted the memory of Teabag’s mother [Teabag is the main character,the first person reporter & Gary is his stalwart companion] :

“I’ve never punched someone smack in the jaw before, Catamounts. It was a strange combination of sickening satisfaction and searing pain that shot through my wrist like something electrical. Dirtfuck teetered on his wrought-iron chair, pitched over to the patio stones. He looked up from where he lay, rubbed his teeth, shook off the daze.

“What the fuck was that?” said Dirtfuck.

“That would be love,” I said.

Catamounts is what Teabag calls his readers from the get go. [His nickname comes from the practice of pinning a person on the ground and covering their face with your loose testicles] Lipsyte has an ear for euphonious obscene comic word usage. I rilly liked it. I am now reading his novel “The Subject Steve.”

My meeting with my boss yesterday left me drained and depressed. After discussing at length the problems we have been up against recently we talked instead about the basic insight that the task before us is probably to draw an Episcopalian community that is enthusiastic about its good works to connect their belief and actions to their public prayer.

This is weird because a more stereotypical notion is that Christians are a pious lot who love to go to church and pray but fail to connect their faith to their daily lives.

In this case, it seems more like our parishioners are drawn to issues like gay rights and feeding the hungry, but find themselves vaguely disconnected from traditional liturgical prayer. It is little more than churchy tradition which they tolerate in order to be part of the community.

This means drawing on the energy and enthusiasm people feel naturally about doing stuff like peopling (as opposed to manning) the distribution of free food to the community-at-large and channeling it into representative aspects of the public prayer.

Simple ideas like connecting the Holy Thursday ritual which centers on the meal Christ institutes in the Eucharist and the model of service he himself is as he bends to wash the feet of his motley disciples,

connecting this to the people in the church community who are actually involved in the food program. I suggested why not have the good hearted man who has been so active in this program (and was present at Holy Thursday) assist at distribution of Communion that evening. Doing this replete with written explanation to the community of why he was asked to do so.

Silly fucking me, I know.

So my boss and I did discuss this stuff and I think it might have been a new insight for her into this situation.

The problematic stuff (which I am deliberately being vague about) on the other hand is very depressing to me. It seems connected to the way I confuse people (especially but not limited to the local professional community) by my one-of-a-kind musical personalty that is intense, passionate and in their opinion a just plain weird and wrong approach. It would probably help if I could suppress myself a bit more…  turn it down some, even though I am already keeping it pretty quiet.

I keep seeing the face of the cop last Monday: “Could you just turn it down a smidgeon?” With a smile of course.

But I refuse to do this entirely. I do not apologize for who I am just the mistakes I make.

I have company coming this evening. My niece and her fiancee, my brother and my brother’s wife. So yesterday I cleaned house and cooked.

As I worked my mind continued to buzz with ideas about music and church music.

on "What's my line?"”]I have thought long and hard about the function of music. For me all sound is music. I think I learned this from John Cage’s writings and thinkings.

Yes, as Ray says in his comment yesterday, music is a form of communication. But it is much more than that to me. Encompassing communication,  music is also a basic factor in making meaning for humans. Neurologists are increasingly discovering how important this aspect of being is to the physiology of the brain and therefore the physiology of thinking and being.

At the same time after wondering “what music is for?” I have concluded it is to make meaning.

The insights of neurologists coincide nicely with my own predilection to be human is to be one who seeks and construes meaning from the confusing and chaos of life.

So if music is a conversation of meaning it is one not only between breathing living people (in person and alive!), it also means to be in conversation with humans who have already lived (like but not limited to great composers) and humans who will live in the future.

This is a bit cosmic I know. But it is the way I see this stuff.

I also find it interesting to wonder “where” the music is. I have been reading “The Changing Sound of Music” by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson [link to entire work online]. He confirms my own intuitions and conclusions that music is much more than what is written on a page or even what makes up one recording.

Among the many concepts I have learned from Leech-Wilkinson is the importance of every occurrence of a piece of music whether that be in the form of performances over the life of the piece or existing editions and performance practices regarding the creation of those editions.

Of the first, the people who make the music happen, the performers, are restored to their position as essential. Music notation is an imperfect process. Ultimately, it is suggestions for a fluid improvisation of sound by one musician (the composer) to another (the performer or even recordist).

Leech-Wilkinson uses historical recordings to make this point. Chopin writes three quarter notes. How did he play them? Surely not always evenly. We can tell from recorded performances that excellent pianists will play them markedly different from each other. Each performance is part of the piece. Where is the music?

Leech-Wilkinson suggests convincingly to me that the a piece of music as a concept extends to all performances of it. And more than that, individual performances add to the what ultimately makes up the piece of music.

He does not discuss editions of music. Probably because he is in the process of demystifying the printed music which has dominated academic thinking for about a hundred years or so. When I was in school most teachers (and probably students) thought that the music of Bach and other great composers was solely what was on the page. They and we used the page to think about form and compositional technique.

There is truth to this but like the blind men and the elephant it is only a part of the truth.

It omitted the transformations a piece goes through via its performances and recordings.

I like including them. It makes more sense to me.

It also answers a question I have about whether performing historical music  is some sort of museum ritual activity of preservation.

If one thinks of music this way, every time a piece of music is performed it is changed and added on to. It is recreated in the context of now which is always different.

In the comic novel I am reading, “Home Land” by Sam Lipsyte, there is a noxious father figure who despite his own repulsiveness Lipsyte has yell at his son the phrase: “Gravy boat! Stay in the now!”

The main character remembers his dad yelling this at him at supper. Apparently they didn’t have a gravy boat only something “more on the order of a mason jar filled with pan-spooned turkey juice.” But the dad was trying to get the kid’s attention.

If all we really have is “the now,” then remaking music in the now is very important. Especially to me.

After taking my Mom to the doctor and “Miracle Ear” (I love the names people give to business), I am meeting with my boss for the first time since Hell Week. I think the main thing I might suggest we think about is the impact of the growing size of our church community on the rituals of Holy Week.

There is a whole theory of church size and our community is rapidly moving into what is called “program size.” At this size, you lose the folksy “every body knows your name” style and have to have paid staff and programs to help the situation thrive.

We have staff now, but the head priest is the only full timer. The rest of us do full time on a part time salary (pretty usual in church work, sometimes hardly avoidable). This is another aspect of a shifting church size. I have been talking to my boss for a while about the difference between what they pay me and my skills, experience, education and knowledge,  what the business community calls, in its ugly phrase, credentials and expertise. I’m not expecting them to pay me what professionally they should. It would just help my morale if it was acknowledge that I am worth what the American Guild of Organists says someone with my experience and degrees is.

My boss does recognize my expertise and regularly consults me on many aspects of church life. I like that she is not dependent on my observations and advice but just likes to hear it and think about them. I don’t want the responsibility of leadership of any institution, but I do think I sometimes have insights that people inside institutions miss.

And I try to balance quietly doing my job and not keeping insights to myself when they occur.

My boss will probably be happy to hear whatever I have to say and then will ponder or discard it.

I think that’s  good.

But of course it’s just my usual hubris-filled opinion. Heh.

My friend Ray asks why I go and play on the street.

Since I have been doing this for several years, I’m not exactly sure of all the reasons I do it. There is something attractive and pure about doing music just to do music. Part of music is not just spending hours practicing but going and finding listeners. This is a time when very few people listen to live music. Live music is a rarity in people’s lives. I find that doing music on the street puts it in a context I find very satisfying. If people would like to listen, they may. If they choose to ignore me (which is the usual choice here in Holland….), that’s fine, too.

My best listeners are usually children. I have taken my harpsichord out and played on the street as well as my marimba.

Kids are drawn to live music and I find that very satisfying.

The best answer is that I like music that is done gratuitously just for its own sake. This is for me the essential reason to make any art.

Since I make my money with church music and understand that music in church must frame another activity,namely prayer and is never totally purely done just for its own sake, it is refreshing and satisfying to play in the open air.

This past Monday I was prepared to play not only Mozart but also Bach, Bartok, Couperin, some Jazz and my own compositions. I had prepared little signs saying “Now Playing” so and so (Eileen’s idea). I probably would have done more if I hadn’t been discouraged by the local peace officer. I accept the responsibility for my own over sensitive nature the day after Easter.

I have also spoken to the violinist and cellist in my trio about performing Mendelssohn and Mozart on the street.

I have seen buskers all over the world and think it’s a great idea.

When I was in Barcelona I heard some fabulous classical guitarists as well as a wide variety of styles and abilities on the street. We stayed in a major quay which had a huge island in the middle of the street where all kinds of music played late in the evening outside our window.

I have heard buskers in New York subways and the London tube .

I always think of them as the front line of live music no matter how electrified they are.
There’s more no doubt, but that’s all I can think of this morning.

Last night I re-read the first twenty or so chapters of War and Peace on my Netbook. I have started this tome before and now I’m starting it again. It seemed relaxing to stare at the screen and listen to the wind and rain last night.

I spent several hours working on choosing hymns and anthems for the period between now and this summer.  I even went to church and chose Sunday’s postlude. I decided to do Dandrieu’s wonderful 18th century setting of the tune: O Filii et Fillia. This hymn tells the story of the readings on Easter II which is always the story of Thomas the doubter. I think of it as a Sunday I can relate to.

Dandrieu is one of the many French organ composers who not only wrote a ton of ritual organ music for the Mass but also  set folk melodies (mostly Xmas ones) and performed them at church.

They are very cool pieces and are usually called  Noels.   They were so popular with people at the time that they were eventually forbidden to be played before or after Mass by the church.

I am still trying to shake the dismal mood I have fallen into after Holy Week.

My fam (niece Emily and her fiancee Jeremy, brother Mark and his wife Leigh) is planning to visit this week so I will need to do some cleaning and straightening today. I also am planning to contact the tax people and see how my Mom’s taxes are coming.

I will probably also finish up planning hymns and anthems.  I keep thinking about music and beauty. Rilke reminds me that

“Beauty is only
the first touch of terror
we can still bear
and it awes us so much
because it so coolly
disdains to destroy us.”

from First Elegy by Rainer Maria Rilke

This is David Young’s translation. Here’s a [link] to a different translation of the entire work .

Woke up wondering if maybe I did play too loud on the street yesterday. I looked at the volume knob yesterday and it did seem higher than I thought it was.

I situated the amplifier behind me so that I could monitor the volume. But of course it was sitting on grass at my feet so it would absorb some of the initial impact.

I had a vision this morning of me putting on my work clothes (i.e. suit and tie) and putting my hair back in a bun and setting a flower in a vase on my piano next time.

Because it seems that the sounds I make are not near as important as people’s visual and gestalt impression that I am a dangerous homeless person.

I told Eileen last night that I would prefer to be identified with the marginal people in our society anyway. If there are lines forming please put me in the one with the losers, the outcasts, those who are shunned.

The trick here for me will be to force myself to go out and play on the streets again. It’s a moot question because I accidentally left my piano power cord hanging out the door and it is wrecked. So I will need a new one before I can play my electric piano again. Also it’s raining

and I have to do work today and take my Mom to the shrink.

On the upside, I received a phone call yesterday from a choir member telling me how much the music of Holy Week meant to her and thanking and complimenting me for my work.

It’s nice that she let me know. It’s nice to know that someone noticed although intellectually I am sure people do notice.

I am feeling a bit like a child who misbehaved this morning for some reason.

I usually take myself to task for feeling sorry for myself and lacking perspective and generally contributing to the nonsense that bothers me (like when a police officer asks me to turn down my music).

This is the downside of trying to take responsibility for my own actions and realizing that in any given situation one can only truly affect one’s self and one’s behavior not that of others.

I spent some time with Bartok yesterday.

Played entirely through the fourth volume of his Mikrokosmos. Like Bach’s 2 and 3 part invention, it boggles the mind that he wrote these six volumes for learners.

I even dreamed about the cool peasant music rhythms he uses.

I also worked on the jazz rhythms of Yellowjacket’s tune, “One Family.” I’ve always liked this tune and found its slow funky melody challenging to play and count consistently. It would make a great church prelude. I have a killer sax player who attends my church whose sweet tone would ring out on this piece. Now if I could just master it.

My understanding of what music is and why we play it is changing. If music is not a discrete composition or performance but a collection of these, then when we choose to learn and perform historical music (like Bartok or Jazz) we are actually not only recreating the piece but adding to it by our own use of it. Our understanding which is shaped by our lives contributes a unique portion of what makes up the entire piece itself.

This changes performance of historical music from museum stuff to living breathing art. I like that a lot.

I have asked numerous Jazz performers and professors why should we study and recreate the Jazz of the  past? I ask the question because my understanding of Jazz history is that the style was always a moving target. It is a history of experimentation and music in the moment.

So when a young musician plays a great Jazz solo note for note that was spontaneously crafted by a practitioner he or she admires haven’t they changed the music from something that is free and alive to something that is trapped in amber?

But now I can answer my own question.

Every time a musician makes or remakes music she or he makes something unrepeatable and uniquely expressive of the music itself. So whether it is an original (whatever that is) improvisation or composition or an interp or even a note for note recreation of someone’s improvisation, there is a level at which the music is continuing to breathe, live, thrive and transform in the hands of the human making it.

I like this idea quite a bit.

I’m probably in a pretty normal space for me on Monday of Holy Week. While the services went fine and it was encouraging that so many people were doing their best to make things work, I found myself just barely getting by mentally.

One woman confided to me that the Easter frontal (the cloth banner that covers the altar) always reminds her of her son’s funeral some 27 years ago. He was buried in a local Reformed church which did not allow palls (the thing that covers the casket). Her husband is now a retired teacher at the local Reformed seminary and dearly wanted a pall to cover their son’s casket.

“Of course the casket had to stay closed,” she said making me picture a death by mutilated car accident or something.  A young Episcopalian priest mentioned they were making a new Easter frontal. This priest managed to borrow it and they used it as a pall on their son’s casket.

This same piece of fabric was draped on the altar yesterday as it is every Easter at this church. The woman said it had a great meaning for her to see it as we celebrate the mystery of resurrection.

Resurrection is a prominent Christian theology of funerals.

She mentioned the first time she realized it was the same thing was at an Easter service when the lights came up at the Vigil. I asked her if this was a good memory and she said yes.

“How old was your son when he died?” “25”

I played a postlude by Helmut Walcha. He was my teacher’s teacher when he (my teacher Ray Ferguson) was a young man on a Fulbright scholarship to Germany. Ray taught me several things he learned from Walcha. One was how to play and conduct. I used this skill yesterday. I was expecting the children’s choir director to conduct one of the pieces yesterday. This didn’t happen so I ended up quickly learning to play and conduct the piece myself from the organ. And there was another anthem that I did in this manner as well.

A parishioner chatted me up after the postlude commenting that Walcha was a famous performer. I replied that he was not that famous actually. And the parishioner (godblesshim) said he is to music lovers.

This piece is an amazing work. It’s based on the Easter Hymn tune CHRIST IS ERSTANDEN (as was one of the choral anthems). In the second half of the piece the soprano voice in the right hand and the pedal were the hymn melody in canon at the octave. Walcha composed another melody for the alto and tenor line which was also played in canon at the octave. It was an amazing technical feat especially consider that the result sounded very cool to my ears.

After the last service a woman handed me a score of a Mozart flute trio she is playing next Sunday so I could put the information in the bulletin. As my wife commented this is very refreshing. I am always looking for ways to include people in the performing of music in this talented parish. So nice when they actually volunteer.

There was a glitch in planning this Holy week and it was very difficult for me to receive communion. At the Thursday service (which is pretty informal at this parish), my boss came by and left me some Jesus on the piano as I was playing.

Yesterday at both services I was busy playing and conducting throughout communion.  At the second service I spotted my boss about half way down the church giving a wheelchair person communion. I was just finishing one of the hymns and thought I would slip down and get some Jesus. But she turned away just before I stopped playing.

I don’t know why I receive communion being a nonbeliever and all.

Actually I do. The first Episcopalian priest I ever worked for told me to receive even if I didn’t believe. Since then I have struggled with belief but have continued to receive communion.

Catholics don’t like it when people not in the club receive communion. It’s actually against their rules. For the decades I worked in the Catholic church I only recall receiving communion twice, once at Gethsemani Kentucky in a Trappist Monastery and once with the staff from a church I was working at. It was the only two times I think I was invited.

I obviously like open communion. My boss has evolved in the time I have known her. In the first year or so of our work together she said she had decided we should open communion to anyone. I told her she would first have to explain to people that it was closed because most didn’t realize it. I turned out to call that one right.

Anyway, now she gives communion to  anyone. If there was a Jesus this seems more like how I figure he was.

I walked in on my boss madly trying to write Easter sermons this week. She told me she was having difficulty shaking South Park images from her mind. I told her that was a sign of sanity for me.

Sorry to be so dang religious today but I have sort of a religion hangover.

No drinky poo for steve yesterday. I have been cutting down on alcohol and calories and exercising more due to a warning from my doctor about blood pressure and cholesterol.

I had one martini last week. Skipped wine at the Holy Thursday meal. When I pointed out that there was a bar open in downtown Holland yesterday and that I could go have a martini, my lovely wife told me I had martinis on the brain. I replied that you bet your bippy I do.

Then I took my sorry ass into the kitchen and made tea.

I tried to revive my spirits with music by Telemann and Touzet (the cuban composer). Also played through some of my own compositions.

I dug out my batteries that I use when I busk outdoors with the electric piano and set them up to recharge. It looks like one of them is not taking the charge this morning.

I keep fantasizing about playing on the street.

Got up the this morning and read this poem online:

The Windhover
To Christ Our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier! 

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

by Gerard Manley Hopkins [link to site where I found it]

I do find that poetry works on me like a good piece of music. According to the web, “sillion” is the “thick, voluminous, and shiny soil turned over by a plow.” I like the lines “No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,”

I also read a depressing poem by Georg Trakl this morning called “De Profundis” It seems to be a meditation on what it’s like to be dead on the top of a garbage heap. [link to beautiful depressing poem] “De Profundis” usually refers to Psalm 130, “Out of the deeps.” We did a setting of this text this Lent by John Rutter. It was kind of poppy and sort of missed the depth that this poem actually captures for me.

I found a temporary link to an entire Sci Fi novella that has been “short-listed” for upcoming Hugo Awards [link to site].The novel is Palimpsest by Charles Stross. This would be more impressive if the Hugo Awards had not also announced they were short listing the screenplays for Avatar and District 9. Both of these movies really struck me as poorly written. But there goes my hubris filled opinion again of something when it doesn’t seem to be that well done to me.

I think that phrase from Hopkins poem describes how I felt and continue to feel after Holy Week: “my heart in hiding.” Sometimes it best for me to hide my heart because I am so dam thin skinned and eccentric. I find myself caught up in giving a shit about things that I can’t control. At the same time I did have some good experiences this week.

In the words of T.S. Eliot “Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.”

There are things I sometimes do when certain times of year roll around. I try to listen to Schuman’s Spring Symphony in the spring. I also like Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony around this time of year.

I also try to pull out this poem by James Dickey.

SLEEPING OUT AT EASTER

All dark is now no more.
The forest is drawing a light.
All Presences change into trees.
One eye opens slowly without me.
My sight is the same as the sun’s,
For this is the grave of the king,
When the earth turns, waking a choir.
All dark is now no more.

Birds speak, their voices beyond them.
A light has told them their song.
My animal eyes become human
As the Word rises out of the darkness
Where my right hand, buried beneath me,
Hoveringly tingles, with grasping
The source of all song at the root.
Birds speak, their voices beyond them.

Put down those seeds in your hand.
These trees have not yet been planted.
A light should come round the world,
Yet my army blanket is dark,
That shall sparkle with dew in the sun.
My magical sheperd’s cloak
Is not yet alive on my flesh.
Put down those seeds in your hand.

In your palm is the secret of waking.
Unclasp your purple-nailed fingers
And the woods and the sunlight together
Shall spring, and make good the world.
The sounds in the air shall find bodies,
And a feather shall drift from the pine-top
You shall feel, with your long-buried hand.
In your palm is the secret of waking,

For the king’s grave turns him to light.
A woman shall look through the window
And see me here, huddled and blazing.
My child, mouth open, still sleeping,
Hears the song in the egg of a bird.
The sun shall have told him that song
Of a father returning from darkness,
For the king’s grave turns you to light.

All dark is now no more.
In your palm is the secret of waking.
Put down those seeds in your hand;
All Presences change into trees.
A feather shall drift from the pine-top.
The sun shall have told you this song,
For this is the grave of the king;
For the king’s grave turns you to light.

—James Dickey

So all that’s left of Holy Week is the celebration of the Vigil. My community does it as sort of a faux sunrise service on Sunday morning instead of the more traditional Saturday evening.

This has been an exceptionally troubling holy week for me. I think I have once again been caught into the struggling idealism of Christianity.  For me this is one of those truth is beauty and beauty is truth sort of things.

And there have been some very good parts to this week. My choir has been very good about showing up for rehearsals and services. Having the choir sing at all Holy Week services was something I think is a logical expression of these rituals and a goal I have been working towards.

If Christ lives at all (a big If for me) he lives in the bodies and actions of those around us. Salinger’s “Jesus Christ is the fat lady in the fifth row” and admittedly pious expressions of the community as the “Body of Christ” are a couple examples that spring to mind.

“I remember about the fifth time I ever went on ‘Wise Child.’ I subbed for Walt a few times when he was in a cast — remember when he was in that cast? Anyway, I started bitching one night before the broadcast. Seymour’d told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn’t going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn’t see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again — all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don’t think I missed more than just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and — I don’t know. Anyway, it seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on the air. It made sense.”

“I don’t care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I’ll tell you a terrible secret — Are you listening to me?There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn’t anyone anywhere that isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that goddam secret yet? And don’t you know — listen to me, now —don’t you know who that Fat Lady really is? … Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It’s Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

from Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

While the choir and the priests have been inspiring, there have been other moments which have challenged my optimism and my notion that there is any importance to beauty and  music.

I can’t shake the feeling that my life has been one that has been warped by church. I have embraced aspects of my Christian background. The beautiful stories and historical music and ritual.  I have also admittedly tried in my weak human way to pursue the radical teachings of the New Testament Christ of human love and acceptance.

But my life lived in the church has been a pretty typical human life full not only of fragile beauty and idealism but also weakness, betrayal, phoniness and hypocrisy.

For me the redeeming moments are the ones where I witness the strength of kindness that opposes cruelty and beauty that persists even when ignored and actively discouraged.

Last night, a parishioner played a movement from a Bach unaccompanied cello suite as the prelude.  This was an incredible moment for me. Lovely lovely profound music in a good context (Good Friday).

One of the choir’s two anthems was based on Faure’s  Pavanne. The arranger gave this famous melody of this piece to the right hand of the organist (that would be me in this case).

This is kind of a hokey movie music kind of thing, but I did sweat some bullets trying to pull off this accompaniment. It seemed to go okay.

The other choral anthem was an arrangement (transcription) I myself did of one of Brahm’s religious pieces he wrote for women’s voices.  The choir did a good job, but I don’t think my conducting was served by trying to keep some of them on pitch with the piano at the same time I was conducting. Oh well.

Yesterday afternoon I walked into the local city office and bought my street musician licence for this year.  Right now I feel like I would be much more comfortable playing on the street than anywhere else. Listening for Dickey’s “song in the egg of a bird.”

There’s a a bat in the basement. We get them from time to time. I discovered him last night before I went to bed. Couldn’t manage to coax him out the door. Couldn’t find him this morning to catch or coax.

I found a credit card transaction on my online statement that I’m pretty sure neither Eileen nor I initiated.

Contacted the bank yesterday to dispute it. Eileen thinks someone might have transposed a number when giving it over the phone or online (it was identified as that kind of transaction). My first thought was of card number theft. At any rate that number is no longer connected to an account.

So mr thief if you are reading my blog, I hope this further thwarts any transactions you make in my name.

I am in a numb mood this morning. I found myself reading articles online.

Snobs in the Groves of Academes by Naomi Schaeffer Riley explores the reason so many profs are under the illusion they are privileged experts when in fact they have abandoned a vocation to guide learners.

“how did we get from Socrates’ famous dictum, “All I know is that I know nothing” to [professor] Skip Gates’s “Don’t you know who I am?”” [LINK TO ARTICLE]

Articles like this often lead me to the new interesting sources in which they appear. This one is in “In Character: A Journal of Everyday Virtues” which seems to be worth bookmarking or checking out from time to time. [LINK TO SITE]

Another interesting site I found this morning is Lapham’s Quarterly: a magazine of history and ideas [LINK TO SITE]

On it was a nice new poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti: “At Sea” [LINK TO POEM]

I found two interesting articles on the New Statesmen Site [LINK TO SITE]

I found “Soul of the Party” by Slavoj Žižek  an antidote to the whole day after the beginning of the Xtian Triduum numbness.

He says a God who only doesn’t exist but knows he doesn’t exist is what is called for these days.

“… rather like the God from the old Bolshevik joke about a communist propagandist who, after his death, finds himself in hell, where he quickly convinces the guards to let him leave and go to heaven. When the devil notices his absence, he pays a visit to God, demanding that He return to hell what belongs to Satan. However, as soon as he addresses God as “my Lord”, God interrupts him: “First, I am not ‘Lord’, but a comrade. Second, are you crazy, talking to fictions? I don’t exist! And third, be short — otherwise, I’ll miss my party cell meeting!”

He later says

“Christianity is anti-wisdom: wisdom tells us that our efforts are in vain, that everything ends in chaos, while Christianity madly insists on the impossible. Love, especially a Christian one, is definitely not wise. This is why Paul said: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise” (“Sapientiam sapientum perdam,” as his saying is usually known in Latin). We should take the term “wisdom” literally here: it is wisdom (in the sense of “realistic” acceptance of the way things are) that Paul is challenging, not knowledge as such.”

I think he is on to something. This morning I am feeling tired of anti-intellectual religion. A religion that seems to rely more on the doctrine of victimhood, ignorance and superficiality that permeate our society. I like this guy’s take a lot better. He even has me admiring my old archenemy St. Paul.

“It was St Paul who provided a surprisingly relevant definition of the emancipatory struggle: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against leaders, against authorities, against the world rulers [kosmokratoras] of this darkness, against the spiritual wickedness in the heavens” (Ephesians 6:12). Or, translated into today’s language: “Our struggle is not against concrete, corrupted individuals, but against those in power in general, against their authority, against the global order and the ideological mystification that sustains it.”

[LINK TO ARTICLE]

“Of Men and Monsters” by Terry Eagleton is a bemused humanist non-religious look at evil using the child murderers and an instant response of identifying them as evil by the policeman who arrested them. [LINK TO ARTICLE] I haven’t finished reading this one yet.

So there you have it. Last night’s service and rehearsals went okay. It was all a bit demoralizing to me when I realized that in my heart I don’t relate to the situation in the way most of the people I am serving do. This is fine. God help them and me (that marxist fiction above, eh?) Heh.

Today I have do bills, grocery shopping, clean the kitchen, practice organ, have a quick phone conversation with the boss about tonights service. I wonder if I will thaw at all today. I did start thawing when I played through the C major prelude and fugue of Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier, vol II. My life’s conversation is certainly enriched by the music I play and stories and ideas I read and think about.

The weather was wonderful here in Western Michigan yesterday.  My walks to the church and to downtown were relaxing. The sunshine coaxed me out of my usual reading spot inside and I sat in the sun and read waiting for lovely wife Eileen.

After she got home we walked down to the faux Irish pub we like and ate sitting outside.  I succumbed and had a pre-dinner martini, my first alcohol in two weeks.  I have been rigorously watching my diet and exercising ever since my blood pressure hit an all time high recently in the doctor’s office.

I was feeling smug yesterday because in two weeks I had pulled it down not only from the high at the doctor’s office (150/100) but well into recommended zones with a shockingly low reading of 110/78. I am also slowly but surely on the way to losing weight and have lost about four pounds in two weeks.

And Eileen said ONE martini would be okay. She is after all my numero uno co-dependent. Heh.

My cyber buddy Ray Hinkle seems to think that I am getting signals from Grand Rapids Community College that they are planning to pull me in to do some teaching. I remain skeptical but interested.

Holy week can be such a cynical time for me. Since I have some in depth background on the Christian rituals and their intention, it is always better to not focus too much on how they actually play out in any given situation.  Not only that but church people are pretty predictable in their misbehavior around this time. I had some unpleasantness Sunday but also I was on the phone yesterday trying to reinforce mental health in a climate of anxiety and self-absorption.

My dead mentor Rabbi Friedman taught that pathological misbehavior was often the result of success in challenging the system to grow and mature. This disruption naturally causes the system to attempt to reassert it’s status quo. Never from the same quarter and hardly ever expected. This has the benefit of understanding individual bad behavior as expressions of a resistance that is present in the situation and shifting from one person to another who will act out reactivity and sabotage via bad behavior.

Friedman taught that one should learn not only to identify it but look forward to it as evidence of leadership.

Whew. My task is to not give in to my own weaknesses of cynicism, self-pity and depression. Not always an easy task.

Anyway.

Whippy skippy.

I had a very encouraging meeting with my boss yesterday. She asked me to submit the fact that my Dec organ recital from last year was published in the April issue of the AGO mag to the church bulletin newsletter.  She is calmly supportive of my exploring other avenues of employment like teaching even though she knows there is an extremely remote possible it might lead to my quitting.  And she is also very supportive and insightful about how we are working out way through an unpleasant situation at Grace that will loom over my work during Holy Week.

I hate being mysterious but this public venue (public but obscure, granted) is no place to be airing the church’s dirty laundry while it’s going on. Maybe later. Heh.

So I also managed to get in organ and piano practice yesterday. Plus some time alone in the coffee shop reading and thinking.

It actually doesn’t get any better than this. Life is good. Today is the first day of the Christian Triduum. Before I arrived at my present gig, I doubt that anyone had used that word. I have gradually discussed these rituals with the boss and together we have brainstormed our way into a more coherent approach to this time.

So tonight we celebrate most of the service in the basement of the church with a meal, footwashing and Eucharist. I pointed out yesterday that as we approach program size church it will become more difficult to pull off the informal. Program size church is church jargon for changing from a smaller church where everyone basically knows each other to the size of church that needs programs and staff. Nevertheless there are ways to keep the esprit going.

I have insisted that all choirs be present at all of these rituals in an effort to underscore the community nature of Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil.

This was a new idea when I arrived and of course there is still lots of resistance (see the Friedman comments above).  But there are going to be some rilly cool moments. Tonight at the Holy Thursday ritual, the  chamber choir will perform Durufle’s Ubi Caritas. A lovely lovely setting. Tomorrow night at Good Friday service, the prelude is a gorgeous Bach unaccompanied cello suite movement and the Chamber Choir anthem is a setting of the Adoramus Te text by Brahms.

I am glad to be working in a denomination that values intellectual honesty enough to accept my own fixed struggle with the idea of God and the terrible nature of religion in general and Christianity in specific.

Like Zappa said, the last time someone checked unlike the Bible and Christianity no one has ever been killed from applying the ideas in the Kama Sutra.

Anway, into the fray I go.