Yesterday I spent time on the phone with people from Comcast (my bill skyrocketed from $122 to $214) and AT&T (Mom’s billing was confused due to switching service from digital to “High Speed Internet” when she switched rooms. They were preparing a shut off on an unpaid balance I was unaware of).  This was in the course of the weekly session of balancing my checkbook and my Mom’s checkbook and paying bills.

By the end of the day, I felt like I had spent the day working.  Good thing I did some composition work early in the day.

I met with the organ maintenance guy at church. I have been having a cipher (note stuck on). I also asked him to do some other minor maintenance while he was there. I promised to email him details on the upcoming organ project.

Today I need to do that and prepare parts to give to my jazzers for my setting of the “Holy, holy” (mentioned in yesterday’s blog).

Eileen and I did manage to talk to our daughter in England for an hour or so on Skype.

We haven’t spoken in a while so that was nice.

I’m hoping today I can have more time to relax.

I’ve been working my way through this issue of the New Yorker. There is some fine prose in it including a piece by Ray Bradbury. Ironic that he died on June 5 and this is the issue for June 4 & 11.

One of the amazing stories in it is online. “The Black Box” by Jennifer Egan loses some of its punch online due to the conceit of the story. There are 47 little sections of objective phrases of instructions and comments like “You must remain conscious.” Through these Egan tells a wild story of a woman posing as a spy.  The loss on line is that each section in print is inside a box. So there is a delicious pun on the title which is also important to the story.

Speaking of Bradbury, Neil Gaiman has written a tribute to him for the Guardian.

This morning I read Sonnet 12 by Shakespeare.

I find the online site (link to sonnet 12 on it) very helpful. Dr. G. R. Ledger, formerly Honorary Fellow, Classics, University of Reading, U.K., now retired is the creator of the site. He says that this sonnet is one of the “finest sonnets in the history of language.”

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New Account of Bo Xilai Meeting With Wang Lijun – NYTimes.com

Real life murder mystery.

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Far-Right Politician in Greece Slaps Rival on TV – NYTimes.com

I found this description amusing: “Golden Dawn … has rejected the neo-Nazi label attributed to it despite its use of a symbol resembling the swastika and the tendency of its followers to perform Nazi salutes in public ”

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In Italy, Blind Baseball League Fosters ‘Freedom’ – NYTimes.com

Blind baseball. Who knew?

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What Pogue Actually Bought – NYTimes.com

What techie equipment David Pogue is currently using.

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The Moral Diet – NYTimes.com

David Brooks muses on recent studies of small dishonesties in our lives.

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I have been up working on editing compositions. I now have a completed version of the Little Recessional Dance ready. I want to let it sit a bit to see if I will continue to feel like it’s ready to submit to the Greater Kansas City American Guild of Organists organ composition contest. Here’s a link to the PDF of it I put up on my music page if you’re curious.

I received permission from my boss yesterday to use my setting of the “Holy, Holy” this Sunday. It’s in a sort of faux Jazz style and I thought it would be fun to do with the musicians who will be there.

I have thought of changing a note in this piece. I think my original melody presents some problems for a congregation to sing.

If you look at the “Hosanna” above, you can see that the word is repeated. I think the melodic twist in the second Hosanna might be too much change from the first one to be as user friendly as I try to make congregational music these days.

A friend at church agreed with me about this. She may even have been the one to point it out to me. Last time we sang it, I mentioned to her I was contemplating changing the note. She had changed her mind and told me I should leave it.

Then there’s the problem of changing something on the congregation after they have learned one way.

Fuck it. I’m going to leave it.

I had fun at my piano trio rehearsal yesterday. We played through the first movement of Faure’s Opus 120 twice.  We all liked it. Then we played through some of the Tchaikowsky piano trio.

At first our tempo was much too ambitious. We started over and did it slower with more success.

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Ray Bradbury, Science Fiction Master, Dies at 91 – NYTimes.com

Not news I’m sure, but this is a solid obit of a good writer.

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The hard truth about political compromise – Boston.com

Haven’t read this, but it looks interesting. It does annoy me when a site does not provide an option to read an article on a single page. The way I read I often refer back to sections in an article. Searching through three or four URLs for something can be frustrating. In face, I usually skip articles that don’t allow the single page option. In this case, I thought it might be worth it to bit the bullet and click through.

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What your Facebook picture says about your background

They are actually doing research about this? Who knew?

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No Recall – NYTimes.com

Ross Douthat observes that America is no longer in the position it once was of being able to provide benefits for parts of the population without shortchanging other parts. He quotes this article which I have bookmarked to look at further:

The Politics of Loss > Publications > National Affairs

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I had a very full day yesterday. I took Mom to the doctor, attended a fine organ recital, lunched with Eileen, practiced organ, rehearsed with young jazzers, treadmilled and then had drinks and food with Eileen at one of our favorite local restaurants (Citi-Vu). In between I reworked an organ composition.

I am looking for ways to more precisely notate it.

It did look like this:

Now it’s more like this:

I actually just noticed that I sped up the tempo. I think I like it at the slower tempo and will probably change it back.

I spent a good amount of time yesterday trying to get Finale (the music software I use) to work for me. For some reason, the version of the document I was editing omitted the ability to use short cuts when adding articulations. After much fussing with it I ended up making a new doc which did have the short cuts and dumping the entire data into it. Sigh.

I finished reading Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn sitting in my Mom’s shrink’s office.

When I was visiting my brother and his wife in New Hampshire we went to see the movie, “Being Flynn,” which was based on this book.

De Niro plays the father in the story.

His presence is very strong in the movie.  Earlier on the day we saw the movie, I had noticed the book in one of the bookstores my brother was taking me around to.

After seeing the movie, I thought it might be interesting to read the book.

It’s unfair to compare a good movie to an excellent book. The story that the author tells is one that seems to be embedded in his own life. It’s hard to tell how much is real and how much is invented. Even whether much is invented.

By the end of the book, I finally saw the character De Niro plays much differently. The movie, of course, took liberties with the story in the book. I have learned to forgive movies for doing that. How else can you cram a long complex story into a two hour visual experience?

But Flynn can write. Reading this book makes me want to read more of his work. His hand is sure as he uses techniques like suddenly turning the story into a movie script. He also produces some of the prose of the mythical book, The Button Man,  the father is writing in the movie. One wonders if it is actually something his father wrote or that he invented. Probably the former.

He compares the book to Moby Dick.

In Moby Dick, he writes, the whale doesn’t appear until the last part of the book and then to destroy Ahab. Likewise, the son in the story (Flynn himself) doesn’t get to see  The Button Man until the last part of his own book.

The book is about sorting out your own personality in relationship to your parents and your family.

It did help me to see the movie first. I’m sure it affected how I read the book. But I now much prefer the story from the book.

On discovering that the wild tale his father told him about his grandfather (his father’s father) having invented a life boat was actually true,  Flynn writes

“The problem was to keep the body above the waves. The trick was to breathe only air. My grandfather’s patent was used by seven countries during both World Wars. Thousands of heads floating above the waves. I’ll be damned.”

I think this sums the book up nicely.

Flynn never really believed the stories his father told about his grandfather testing his life rafts by dropping them in the lake from a great height. But the chapter after he reads his father’s book (which he ultimately describes as dissolving into incoherence) is the one where he discovers his grandfather’s  patent.

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City is full of the bullshit and wonderful stuff that you can discover about your family if you look long and hard enough.

I spent all morning yesterday staring at my computer screen and poking at the keyboard. I started out by picking hymns for this Sunday and then after blogging went back to it and picked out hymns through August. Whew! Now that’s done anyway.

It’s been a luxury this week not to have to practice primarily on the upcoming Sunday’s prelude and/or postlude. I have been picking pieces that require daily diligence and eat up a good portion of my rehearsal time. Not so, this week.

Oddly enough I recently found a Buxtehude prelude completely fingered and unlearned. I have been spending time with it the last few days. I don’t usually write every finger like I did in grad school. But it does help learn the piece very thoroughly, if slowly.

I keep thinking of my teacher, Craig Cramer, being amused when I would be frustrated at playing the right note with the wrong finger. Right notes. That’s the idea, right? So what’s the big deal, I ask myself, if I happen to use the wrong finger?

Now I think more about what’s on the page that will distract me in a performance. Often less is more with little written instructions to myself.

But since the hard part (writing in the finger numbers) is done on this particular Buxtehude I’m experimenting with learning a piece in the grad school way.

I also have been spending copious time with Bolcom’s setting of “What a  friend we have in Jesus” and Hampton’s “The Primitives” from his Five Dances for Organ. This will be the second dance I have learned from that collection. The other one was called “An Exalted Ritual.”

I quite like these pieces by Hampton but am not sure how “The Primitives” would work as a piece in church. No matter.

Also learning a couple little Dupres pieces from his “Fifteen Pieces for Organ Founded on Antiphons.” I own a ton of Dupre’s music. Organists learn this stuff. I’m not sold on most of his work. But since I own it, I thought I would learn some of it.

Interestingly I haven’t been pulling out Bach who is usually my favorite.

Who knows why.

I also have actually gone over the selection the jazzers are planning to play Sunday: “Green Dolphin Street,”  “There is No Greater Love,”  and “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.”

Today I’m planning to arrive as soon as possible at a noon recital by a new acquaintance, Rhonda Edgington. She is playing at Pillar Church. They run noon recitals about once a month (?) in the summer. My Mom has a doctor’s appointment at 11 AM so I will be cutting it close.

Then lunch with beautiful wife and rehearse with the jazzers. Life is good.

Just finished choosing hymns for Sunday. I did this before blogging this morning so I’m writing a bit later than usual. The jazz trio (Jordan VanHemert, Nathan Walker and Drew Belanger) invited me to sit in Sunday when they play at Grace, so I guess I am playing Sunday.  Anyway I don’t have to prepare the prelude and postlude other than meet with these players tomorrow afternoon.

Recently finished reading Fussell’s memoir, Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic. It’s an odd little book. It has a strong beginning and middle. But nearing the end as he works himself closer to the present it gets weak. The weakest moment is his dispassionate description of his divorce. He talks about it very matter-of-factedly then throws in a sentence saying it was as messy and hurtful as those things usually are.

My copy of his BAD or the Dumbing of America arrived in time for me to immediately begin reading it after the memoirs. It’s even weaker. Much of this is due to its novelty structure (Each chapter is a BAD something or other like BAD behavior or BAD banks).  Written in 1991, it is very dated in its criticisms. Fussell is sometimes witty but this book is a disappointment. Not sure I’ll even bother to finish it.

My copy of his Class: A Guide through the American Status System also came in the mail. I received both it and BAD from my Book Exchange Web Site that I belong to and participate in (You agree to enter titles of books you are willing to mail to others. When you are called on to do so, you earn a point for each book which allows you to request other members’ listed books. I like this.)

I am very interested in America’s class system. Fussell’s book is probably dated and a bit superficial but I’m still interested despite some disappointment in his other books. I am also planning to read the book that made his name.

The Great War and Modern Memory seems to have been influential in informing the discussion of war with a reminder of its horror and madness from the point of view of the soldier, something I think America has forgotten.

In his memoirs, Fussell describes sitting in a British research library and going through thousands and thousands of personal letters and documents of soldiers from WWI, most of which had not been looked at since they died.

I think it’s worth looking at. Thinking of reading it as an ebook though.

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The North West London Blues by Zadie Smith | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

I am a fan of Zadie Smith’s writing. This article is about the plans to tear down the library and bookstore in her hometown in England and put up housing.

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Yoko Ono talks to Simon Schama – FT.com

Schame and Ono. Short but worth reading.

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The One,’ RJ Smith’s Biography of James Brown – NYTimes.com

Rev Al Sharpton reviews a James Brown bio. The review is kind of like listening to him talk…  lots of purple prose and bias. But what the heck, I love Brown.

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Jonathan Lethem on Talking Heads’ ‘Fear of Music’ – NYTimes.com

Bought this book as an ebook after reading this review.

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This Republican Economy – NYTimes.com

What should be done about the economy? Republicans claim to have the answer: slash spending and cut taxes. What they hope voters won’t notice is that that’s precisely the policy we’ve been following the past couple of years…

So why don’t voters know any of this?

Part of the answer is that far too much economic reporting is still of the he-said, she-said variety, with dueling quotes from hired guns on either side

Paul Krugman quoted from the article linked above

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Music, Books and Online Piracy – WSJ.com

This doesn’t prove that music lovers are crooks. Rather, it shows that actually selling things to early adopters is wise. Publishers did this—unlike the record labels, which essentially insisted that the first digital generation either steal online music or do without it entirely.

quote from article linked

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I played pretty well yesterday. My 9.5 minute piece by Sowerby went well. I managed to play 99% of the convoluted chords he wrote as written. I flubbed several exposed pedal solo notes which can happen. But I thought I brought the music to the listeners.

That is until after service when a parishioner was quite adamant that Sowerby was far too dissonant for her ears.

“Is all his stuff like that?” she asked. It’s certainly not all based on hymn tunes, I replied.

Unfortunately I am not always as tactful as I want to be when people come at me before or after service. I told the woman that Sowerby was actually a conservative composer. I knew that she would recognize Messiaen’s name and mentioned him to her. She wrinkled her nose. I told her it was all part of the Christian song, n’est pas?

She admitted that, but detests “dissonance.” I told her that many of us don’t really hear this music as dissonant. I asked her if she liked movie music. She said yes but that the movies she goes to do not use dissonant music.

By this time I had abandoned my usual attempts at deflecting comments with techniques like reflective listening and calm. I told her that John Williams used dissonance. She protested. I told her Williams steals whole hog from dissonant old Hindemith. I even cited the piece, Mathis der Maler because I think it’s where Williams found the Star Wars theme.

Dam.

Before we were done I was begging the woman to continue to tell me when she dislikes things because I do in fact find this information helpful.

I wish I could control my reactions better but sometimes I don’t and there you are.

On the positive side, my Mom agreed to come over to my house and sit in the yard with me, Eileen and friend Barb. She even stayed for supper. Very nice. By the end of the day I was pretty exhausted.

Onward. Upward.

Here’s couple of quotes from today’s reading. Byte size.

“I am a machine of ideas. I adore (in a funny way) to think.”

Anne Sexton in a letter to fellow poet, W.D. Snodgrass

Me, too! I also “adore to think.”

Attentiveness! The pinpoint is the locus
Of Excellence in lands of softened focus.

John Updike, Midpoint, Canto IV

Such a gentle way to talk about the USA: a land of softened focus.

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In Economic Deluge, a World That’s Unable to Bail Together – NYTimes.com

Observations on recent developments in the world economy.

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In Pakistan, 4 Acquitted in New York Bomb Plot – NYTimes.com

Not sure what this means. Certainly bad for U.S./Pakistan relations which are not stellar right now.

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Dreaming of a Superhero – NYTimes.com

Dowd continues her salient critique of President Obama.

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Out of Tragedy, a Good Life – NYTimes.com

Senator Snowe will soon retire. Here’s an interesting article by her about her life.

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Starving Its Own Children – NYTimes.com

Sudan.

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The Amazon Effect | The Nation

As in Amazon.com.

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Politics – Lawrence Lessig – An Open Letter to the Citizens Against Citizens United – The Atlantic

I totally admire Lessig. I also abhor Citizens United.

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My sense of my own mortality seemed to dog me through out yesterday. Most likely due to the high BP reading. It’s still kind of high this morning, but I resisted checking it a second time in the right arm. That’s when I had my scary high reading. I hate worrying about this.

I managed to get a good rehearsal in yesterday. Eileen practiced turning pages for me on the Sowerby. Then I worked over the score for a while. Besides the clever little Gerald Near postlude I have scheduled today, I ended up attending to the rest of the pieces I am learning as well: Dupres, Hampton, & Bolcom.

Eileen picked me up and we took Barb to lunch at Crane’s. Then off to an estate sale. Eileen bought a chair, a scrub board, an antique fork and an antique screwdriver. I bought four linen napkins.

The chair wouldn’t fit in the Mini so we came home. I went back to pick it up with the Subaru. Eileen and Barb went to drop off books to my Mom and trim her fingernails for her.

After we went to see the movie, The Avengers.

I wasn’t too taken with it. Like many movies seeking a wide appeal (to make money) it’s more of a ride than a story.  There were a few humorous wisecracks very like Marvel comic books. I guess I prefer Watchmen (the book anyway).  We weren’t the only ones to sit through the credits this time. It is truly amazing how many people of differing skills and talents it takes to make a movie like this.

Came home from the movie and grilled veggies and burgers (for the carnivores). A good time was had by all. Treadmilled. Onward.

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Gospel Music Book Challenges Black Homophobia – NYTimes.com

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I would be remiss to neglect to mention that my silly blood pressure seems to be on the rise again. Actually I’ve only had a high reading today. But I have not believed a couple of readings at Miejer’s which were high.  The reason being that a couple of times I had a high reading before grocery shopping at the store’s machine. Then rechecked it after shopping and it was back to normal. It could be that as I am aging, it will swing more from high to low. Anyway, if it continues for a week I will call my doctor. I don’t want a new drug. But I don’t want to walk around with high blood pressure.

I am playing a big piece for the prelude tomorrow. It’s about ten pages long. Written by Leo Sowerby and based on the offertory hymn of the day, “I Bind unto Myself This Day. I’ve mentioned it here in the last few days. Sowerby is a workmanlike composer and I admire his work. He writes careful voice leading to lovely dissonant chords. This morning working slowly over the manual (keyboard) parts, I discovered wrong notes in the middle of huge chords in two different places. Yikes. Spent much time rehearsing them correctly.

Our friend, Barb, is visiting. I will sneak off later and practice. Also, I have asked Eileen to practice page turning for me today and to turn pages for me tomorrow. I have it worked out with photocopies.

I have had to scale the registration (choice of which sets of pipes to use when) down a bit from Sowerby’s suggestions. Otherwise the entire ten minute piece would sound the same, mostly loud.

Recently I read a pretty disturbing poem by Anne Sexton.

Red Roses

by Anne Sexton

Tommy is three and when he’s bad
his mother dances with him.
She puts on the record,
“Red Roses for a Blue Lady”
and throws him across the room.
Mind you,
she never laid a hand on him.
He gets red roses in different places,
the head, that time he was as sleepy as a river,
the back, that time he was a broken scarecrow,
the arm like a diamond had bitten it,
the leg, twisted like a licorice stick,
all the dance they did together,
Blue Lady and Tommy.
You fell, she said, just remember you fell.
I fell, is all he told the doctors
in the big hospital. A nice lady came
and asked him questions but because
he didn’t want to be sent away he said, I fell.
He never said anything else although he could talk fine.
He never told about the music
or how she’d sing and shout
holding him up and throwing him.

He pretends he is her ball.
He tries to fold up and bounce
but he squashes like fruit.
For he loves Blue Lady and the spots
of red roses he gives her

Yikes. Great. A horribly beautiful child-abuse poem.

The day I read the poem, I found reference to it in the intermittent biographical essays in Sexton’s collected poems.

It turns out that Sexton threw her baby daughter, Joy, the same way the Blue Lady in the poem throws Tommy. After that, her parents take one of the kids and the in-laws take the other. It is around this time Sexton attempts suicide. Joy is kept from her for three years and doesn’t recognize her when Sexton is deemed well enough to parent her again.

Sexton was quite taken with the poetry of W.D. Snodgrass.

She much admired this long poem:

Heart’s Needle by W. D. Snodgrass

Reading it recently, I found weird typos in one poetry site’s version. I emailed them.

I’m not as taken with Snodgrass as Sexton was. I think she’s better. I at least like her more.

As I’m reading the letters of Sexton (which are autobiographical and sent to people like Snodgrass and Robert Lowell both of whom she studied with),  I am drawn back to poems as she talks about them in the letters.

When I re-read The Double Image (linked below) I now understood two things about it. One, that it was addressed to Joy, Sexton’s daughter. Two, that she was under the influence of Snodgrass’s “Hearts Needle” which is addressed to his own estranged child from a first marriage (not sure if this is autobiographical in his case or not).

The link below also has an embedded recording of Sexton reading her poem “The Double Image.” Haven’t had the courage to listen to it yet.

The Double Image by Anne Sexton : The Poetry Foundation

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Third Witness to Massacre in Philippines Is Murdered – NYTimes.com

I remember this massacre. Now the crooks are killing off the witnesses.

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When the President Orders a Killing – NYTimes.com

This link is to letters responding to a recent NYT editorial. I concur with the writer who says “If we recognize terrorism as a crime, then suspects need to be captured and tried on the basis of evidence, with due process.”

I have felt this way all through the so-called war on terror. Europeans (England, Italy, Spain) seem to have had much more luck than us by treating terrorists as criminals instead of warriors.

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Obama Video on Fox News Criticized as Attack Ad – NYTimes.com

Distinction between reporting and entertaining continues to blur. Not just a problem on Fox.

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Markets and Morals – NYTimes.com

Kristoff asks “Do we want a society where everything is up for sale?”

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Patching U.S. Troops Together in Afghanistan, an Ache at a Time – NYTimes.com

I haven’t made it through this painful article. It reminds me of the horrific experience of war Paul Fussell describes in his  memoirs.

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I have found that when I grocery shop on Friday as I plan to do today, it’s pretty crazy if I wait too long. So I’m going to try to keep the time I work on my blog short.

At the funeral yesterday I was pretty impressed with the way this group of people chose to remember Harry Hatch, the man who died.

In the morning, the family had a private prayer service and put his ashes where he asked. Later they were talking about it. His ashes are near his mother’s who died pretty recently. His sisters all agreed they could hear their mother’s voice in their heads saying, “Harry! What are you doing here?”

I heard this repeated throughout the afternoon with each person saying it in a precise imitation of Harry’s mom.

The memorial began at the VFW bar. People were sitting around. Some were nursing drinks. After a  while,  the VFW rep quietened down the group and did the standard VFW memorial.

If you’ve never seen it, it consists of several Veterans marching to where the flag is laying and saluting it and the shrine for the dead Veteran.  Two remain, on either side of the shrine. One gives speeches, the other prays. The speeches seem to be made to order for a memorial for a veteran and are read or said from memory. I’ve seen several of these and the speeches don’t seem to vary from funeral to funeral. The prayers are a bit more free and probably left up to the chaplain.

Then, the remaining veterans who have quietly marched outside and prepared to do so, fire a 21 gun salute. Then taps is played.

It is much more moving when Taps is played live than a recording is used.

Yesterday they had a live player. When I was talking to relatives about it, they seemed surprised that anything other than live music was used. I found that charming.

Then the flag is presented to a member of the family and they are thanked for the service of deceased. In this case Harry was a Marine and probably served in Vietnam.

Then everyone was invited to walk across the street to the VFW rec hall where a meal would be served. It was announced that all drinks would be a dollar for the rest of day in honor of Harry.

Harry lived next door to these buildings and worked as a bartender for the VFW.

At the rec center, many were drinking White Zinfandel which was Harry’s drink.

There was much weeping and hugging in the middle of conversations.  I am present at many funerals and I was impressed with the way this one worked.

At one point every one toasted Harry.