I made it to Monday. Over the course of three auditions the last three days, I worked with three people I had never seen before the audition, two men and one woman. They all three ended up being very complimentary to me in ways that seemed authentic. I think that I have come to doubt the authenticity of the compliments of the people in local dance department. They are very complimentary to my face, but I have had to draw their attention to the monetary worth of my work which seems slightly contradictory to all the love and roses they lavish on me otherwise.

But these three outside people who live in the rigorous world of professional ballet seem to appreciate the subtleties of what I do when I improvise in this kind of situation. The fun part of this work is when dancers begin to dance like they are listening to the music. When this happens then I can make up music that reflects their response. This kind of ensemble is very exciting. It happened a few times in the last three days.

Some of the fun is that both teachers and students are more likely to have my own eclectic musical tastes than other college trained musicians. So it’s a more level aesthetic playing field in which to improvise.

I especially enjoyed working with the improvisation teacher the past two Fridays (who teaches at at Hope and with whom I have never worked before these series of Hope auditions). Through prompts of emotion and other descriptions often pried from the students themselves, this teacher attempts to fire the imagination of the dancers. The restrictions of the 4 and 8 bar measure phrasing goes out the window when playing piano for these exercises. I am able to speak a musical language closer to my own heart. Lots of fun.

In addition to the three auditions, I met with my flute player again. In our meeting, I seem to have convinced her to skip playing with the choir and play her premier piece, “I’m just a wayfaring stranger,” for service as well as helping with the sequence hymn. I saw her yesterday and she seemed more happy in her greeting to me than I remember her every being.

Then there was church.

This was our first Sunday with our new sound system. The people who installed it came to church to help adjust it in a real live situation. I was surprised that there were so many glitches (feed back, static) since this system was expensive and the people installing it were touted as very good at what they do.

One of the upsides is that they moved an ugly metal cabinet that had been taking up space in the choir area. We had more room yesterday and that was nice.

The removal of this monstrosity was part of the reason I pushed myself on Saturday to clean the organ and choir area.

The music went well. The gathering chant worked better. The psalm went well. These weekly Anglican chant psalms have worked their way into my preparation time. The organ has to be solid to lead them and of course they are different every week.

The anthem was a setting of Aus Tiefer by Distler and was lovely.

I played the Distler organ piece I have been working on and nailed it. Unfortunately due to Distler’s registration requirements (what sets of pipes play what notes) there was no way I could register it loudly. So of course very few people heard it. But what the heck. Toujours gai, Archy, toujours gai. There’s a dance in the old dame yet!

Dan Savage Lovecast Episode 487

I have had Dan Savage’s Lovecast on my podcast subscription for a while. I admire this man. He is a voice of sanity in an insane world. This morning I listened to the beginning of this episode and it is excellent.

He makes a very good point about Clinton and Sanders. He supports them both. Many of Savage’s listeners hate Clinton because she was against same sex marriage. Savage makes the salient point that it’s bad politics to try to convince someone to change their mind and when they do, tell them: Fuck you! You didn’t always think this way!

Ah, yes.

After an exhausting day for both of us, Eileen and I met our friends, Rhonda and Mark, at a new restaurant last night, Mizo Sushi.

This seems to be a prevalent name for a restaurant on Google. I can’t quickly tell if it’s a franchise, but I can tell you the food was spectacular. I had something that looked like this:

Eileen doesn’t like Sushi, but she found something to order that was also excellent. All of our meals were.

Then we walked to the concert. The musicians were the Bang on a Can All Stars.

This was the first piece. Here’s a better recording:

The concert was amazing. There was a carefully worked out evolving emotional scheme between the pieces that seemed lost on people who were leaving during the concert.

Sunray is about waking up next to a cleaners (named Sunray) and having coffee and listening to the sounds and looking at the sun. It is dedicated to the father of the composer (David Lang). I think it captures this interior/exterior moment very well. Eileen like this one a lot.

Then came this piece by Julia Wolfe.

She says she was influenced by John Lennon’s “Tomorrow never knows.” She explores the dimensions of the act of believing. The people in the video are the people we heard play last night.

This is the song she had in mind. I remember it now that I hear it.

I think I’m going to stop here. I have to get going and gear up for the home stretch of my marathon few days: church this morning and one last audition this afternoon.

Maybe I’ll continue looking for videos of the music we heard last night. It really was fantastic.

Eileen has already left for her day long Weaving workshop she and a friend are attending in Grand Rapids.

In my dreams last nights, there was weeping. First, I wept when someone gave me an original manuscript of Mozart. For some reason it was very emotional for me in the dream.

In a later dream I was talking to a precocious little girl.

She and her mother and father were in a room with me. She was telling them that she was “new” meaning young I gathered in the dream. I told her that she was “new” and I was “old.” She began weeping presumably out of pity for me. For my part, I wanted to explain to her that this was how life worked and that it was wonderful.

I guess she was the child in me? Who knows?

Today I am meeting with a flute player from church. This woman is very interesting. She has pretty good skills on the instrument. At the same time she was nervous throughout our entire session on Thursday. She and her husband both have Parkinson’s. His is more advanced than hers. They met at a Parkinson’s support group. I find that very cool and romantic.

As we prepared to do some playing, she launched into a long memorized version of “I am a poor wayfaring stranger.”

After she finished playing it she told me that while she and her ex-husband had been stationed in Mannheim, Germany, she had played a beautiful flute in a shop there. She had played this same arrangement of “I am a poor wayfaring stranger” (by James Galway her hero).

Sometime thereafter she was contacted by someone from the Mannheim Symphony Orchestra who had heard her play in the shop and offered a position (an audition?). She turned it down she said because she had babies and could not stay in Germany.

She was not able to read accurately the music I put in front of her. Today we are going to go over the flute part for the choral anthem scheduled for a week from tomorrow. It’s kind of tricky. I have decided that if it’s still giving her problems today I will tell her that it’s not falling together quick enough for her to play it this time.

In the meantime I was looking for something for her to play at the beginning of communion, something to show her off and build her confidence (which is understandably kind of shaky).

Thursday, we landed on another Galway arrangement of a piece called “A Spanish Lovesong.” She only had the piano part so I photocopied it and put the flute part into a finale doc for ease of use.

Since then it has occurred to me, that the piece she played in Mannheim is probably the piece to schedule. She has it memorized and a history of performing it in public. I’ll see what she thinks of this idea today.

That way, even if the anthem flute part is not ready I will still ask her to come and play that piece at the beginning of communion and also play along on the sequence hymn for that day. During Lent there are no preludes since we begin with a gather Taize chant. Otherwise I would have her play in the prelude as well.

My blood pressure machine quit working yesterday morning. It showed error messages. After my morning audition I went to the grocery store and bought a new one. While there I took my blood pressure. It was sky high (155/99). I came home and took it with my new machine and it was 143/97 then 149/111. These are pretty high readings.

This morning I took it twice. The first time it was 157/107. After making coffee and cleaning the kitchen it was 140/104. That last one is a bit better but still high. The good news is that it looks like my new machine’s accuracy is confirmed by the grocery store machine.

I am in the middle of a stressful few days. Hopefully this trend will not continue.

I ran into a friend and regular reader of this blog at the grocery store (Hi Jonny!). He was perplexed that my blood pressure is high since I am vegetarian. I think it’s connected both to aging and my obesity.

My weight is falling a bit, but not enough. Jonny has lost weight for health reasons.

I keep telling the child in me that being old is not a bad thing. In my dreams, she weeps.

The Governing Cancer of Our Time – The New York Times

This  David Brooks article is being passed around on Fakebook. It is becoming increasingly clear that we the people are the problem, not our leaders or would-be leaders.

Here a couple sections of this article I read out loud to Eileen.

The antipolitics people elect legislators who have no political skills or experience. That incompetence leads to dysfunctional government, which leads to more disgust with government, which leads to a demand for even more outsiders.

The antipolitics people don’t accept that politics is a limited activity. They make soaring promises and raise ridiculous expectations. When those expectations are not met, voters grow cynical and, disgusted, turn even further in the direction of antipolitics.

The antipolitics people refuse compromise and so block the legislative process. The absence of accomplishment destroys public trust. The decline in trust makes deal-making harder.

The point is that we have met the antipolitics people and they is us.

The Party of ‘No Way!’ – The New York Times

This has a handy table of justices confirmed in the last year of a president.

Sedition Arrests in India Inflame Old Free-Speech Tensions – The New York Times

 Crackdowns on Free Speech Rise Across a Europe Wary of Terror – The New York Times

Everything is fine at Jupe’s. I didn’t have much time to blog this morning. Boggled with Eileen instead before leaving for playing ballet auditions.

Possibly more later.

Snow has returned to Western Michigan. It was heavy and wet. I think we are supposed to get more today. My cellist has already canceled our rehearsal for today. Local schools are closed. Another winter day in Helland.

It is beautiful, no denying that.

I have been taking pictures of Michigan snow since I was a young man.

Jan 1970. At any rate it’s in Flint, Michigan.

There you have it. Eileen ordered a rug through the mail. It came yesterday. I think it’s pretty cool.

As they say: “It really ties the room together.”

Because of the weather I had a few absences in choir last night. They were up to their usual stuff requiring me to make an effort to be the one person in the room in a good mood. One soprano refused to move closer to the altos at my request. I don’t want to sit in front of the piano, it’s too loud, it hurts my ears, she complained. How can I get the altos and sopranos next to each other, I asked. Have them move, she responded. So that’s what we did.

I don’t know why they say running a church choir is like herding cats.

When Eileen and I left the parking lot, two choristers who are sisters were still bickering as they cleared each other’s car of the heavy snow.

Working on my Greek with the real text (as opposed to the ebook version) is much different. I have been able to reread the first 14 sections in the text with comparative ease. This makes me hopeful.

I scheduled another organ piece that will require some practice: Recessional by Francis Jackson. I chose it to sort of rhyme with the choral anthem of the day which was written by Erik Routley.

As Eileen and I work on the harpsichord I realize that I am motivated by missing playing the great literature of the instrument by the Couperins, Rameau, and the English Virginalists. It’s too bad I’m so alienated from the organ teacher at Hope. Hope owns a beautiful French double harpsichord along the lines of the one I performed on at Wayne State years ago. It’s hopeless (sic) to think that a guy who won’t accept my “friending” on Facebooger would even consider allowing me time on the instrument. Hence, I bear down on refurbishing my old clunky harpsichord. “Modernizing” is the term the instructions use.

Eileen and I did two more jacks today. That’s 4 down and 53 to go. I don’t think I’m actually “voicing” them all that much. Our goal is to get them to work consistently. That seems like a good goal because adjusting the sound can take months and is best done when actually practicing music.

Iran’s Hard-Line Press Adds to Bounty on Salman Rushdie – The New York Times

I’m reading the book that motivated the Ayatollah and now the hardliners in Iran to want Rushdie dead.

How Does It Feel, Chief Justice Roberts, to Hone a Dylan Quote? – The New York Times

I think it’s kind of goofy but also kind of neat that these dudes are quoting Dylan. Here’s a link to the actual usages as compiled by the New York Times:

Dylan Citings in Court – The New York Times

Eileen and I managed to get one jack working properly yesterday. I admit that I was getting discouraged and skeptical about this project. Last time we worked on it, we had problems getting this jack to work. This time we reviewed the instructions, filed a bit off the bottom of the jack and worked on voicing the plectrum. Now it seems more doable.

A big part of yesterday was getting everything ready to work on the jacks again. As you can see above, a couple days ago we moved the table back into the room. Then it was a matter of getting all the tools out. I also had to work on lighting which is very important for this step.

This morning I skipped reading Finnegans Wake and went directly to work on my Greek. I was inspired because I received two real copies of the texts I have been working with as Kindle books. I plan to read Finnegans Wake later today, but it was certainly a luxury to have these texts as real books this morning. I’m hoping this might speed up my progress and I will be reading Homeric texts in Greek before too long.

There are 118 sections in the book. I have read 21 of them. After 22 more I will be reading Aristophanes. Homer comes later near the end of this text, but I’m hoping not too much later timewise.

Legionnaires’ Outbreak in Flint Was Met With Silence – The New York Times

I love reading about disaster in my old home town on the front page of the New York Times. Sheesh.

Pivotal Nursing Home Suit Raises a Simple Question: Who Signed the Contract? – The New York Times

A patient with Alzheimers murders another patient. Who is responsible? Certainly not the Nursing Home which has insisted that residents sign a contract agreeing to go to private arbitration and not court even in the case of murder.

Seas Are Rising at Fastest Rate in Last 28 Centuries – The New York Times

It looks like Climate Change is happening. Sorry, hate radio and brain dead dittoheads.

I resumed my recording project this morning.

I put on a tape marked “church service.” It sounds like more of my Grandfather’s church. I couldn’t bring myself to listen to it, but I am recording it as I write.

I’m trying not to think too much about work and yesterday’s service. It was a weird service. On Saturday, I sent my boss this incoherent email:

I share this because Eileen thought this was funny. I used the talk function on my tablet to write the email. I was trying to warn Jen that there was a different Kyrie in the bulletin from what I was expecting. As I hit send I remember thinking, I should have proofed that.

Oh well. I was going through the Kyrie in the bulletin when Rev Jen came into the choir room with new-improved bulletins. The new improvement was that Jen had taped in a Kyrie in all the bulletins. This is a curious procedure in my opinion. But I’m just the music guy. So we went with it.

Unfortunately, the Kyrie she taped in was not the one we had said that we would do. This is not a problem as long as she did it on purpose.

The choir was particularly rude yesterday and has left me a bit chastened. Three members were especially difficult to work with. They attempted to control how I rehearsed their part. I resisted but wondered at their rudeness. I don’t think I have much professional credibility with this group. One of these three is skipping rehearsal this week to go practice when Nick Palmer’s choral group for an upcoming concert.

Discouraging when we are so small. But on the other hand the person going needs a boost so what the fuck.

We began our service with a Taize chant as Rev Jen decided. People were standing in the back and talking loudly for most of it. Oy. I’ll be interested to see how Jen thought this went.

I know that my mood was colored by learning of Trump’s win in South Carolina.

Another triumph for ignorance brought on in part by hate radio and tv. Ay yi yi.

I think a lot about ideological bubbles these days.

I am convinced that many people are getting their news and ideas from polemically based sources like Limbaugh and Hannity. I’m not sure they have the ability to even think about how they are learning. An article coming out this week in the New Yorker echoes my own thoughts when learning that Supreme Court Justice Antonio Scalia had limited his news sources to the Washington Times and Wall Street journal. It mentions he listened to conservative radio. Who do you think he was listening to?

Looking Back – The New Yorker

Looking back at the damage Scalia did.

I stumbled at the beginning of the Passacaglia by Buxtehude, my postlude yesterday.

I quickly recovered and little harm to the piece was done. It’s not that big a deal. Only two people lasted for the entire piece: Eileen and another choir member (Phil the Methodist). I’m convinced they do so out of sheer loyalty to me. Nice.

But I’m not ungrateful, I hope. Just typically melancholy on the Monday after Sunday.

I decided yesterday to abandon using my tablet for page turns for the Buxtehude Passacaglia (in D minor) I am playing today. Instead I reverted to shrinking the pages down to a size where I can see the entire piece and there is no need for page turns.

I was working on this piece when the sound system workers were around. After I finished it once, one of them said under his breath, “And the crowd goes wild.” Sarcasm? Maybe not.

I am annoyed that I seem to have less energy as I get older. Yesterday pretty much kicked my butt. I will need to lay low Monday and Tuesday because next week I have myself set up for a bit of a marathon beginning with my usual Wednesday stuff (meetings, choir rehearsal), Thursday rehearsals, Friday: ballet auditions for Hope College, Saturday: ballet auditions for the Joffrey Ballet, Saturday evening: a Bang on a Can concert we have tickets for, Sunday: church and in the afternoon another ballet audition session.

I am a bit tired this morning but braced for the day. My psalm article is in today’s bulletin. My boss tinkered with it and added a the last paragraph. Eileen found numerous typos in it yesterday. I will have to pass these along. I think the church will print this several weeks in order to expose it to the widest number of parishioners.

Here’s a link to the google doc of this little article.

Eileen DID get up earlier this morning. Consequently, we went grocery shopping, came home and put away stuff, back  in the car for a trek checking out local shops where we might buy an area rug for the living room. Three stores later, nothing but an exhausted jupe. At least now, Eileen knows she can’t buy what she wants locally.

This is today’s blog. I only have energy left to practice and visit Mom.

The Party Crashers – The New Yorker

I like this article. The author is on the ground in the recent New Hampshire primaries.

Taliban Used Child Soldiers in Kunduz Battle, Rights Group Says – The New York Times

I have been following the child soldier story since before the internet. It makes me ill.

Should Obama Pick Nominee? Your Answer May Depend on How Much History You Know – The New York Times

Although this is one of the statistical takes, it makes sense that the better you understand the history and the facts, the more likely you are to think that the President has the obligation to nominate and the Congress the obligation to advise and consent.

Resetting the Post-Scalia Supreme Court – The New York Times

I am a fan of Linda Greenhouse, the author of this excellent article.

America’s Stacked Deck – The New York Times

 After a characteristically brilliant speech by Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for president in 1952 and 1956, a supporter is said to have , “Every thinking American will vote for you!” Legend has it that Stevenson shouted back: “That’s not enough. I need a majority!

This quote says it all.

Yesterday was my grandson’s 15th birthday. I keep hoping I will be able to connect to him better via the internet as he matures. Unfortunately at this point email is not a good option for us. He’s not on Facebooger. Last time I saw him he had lost his cell phone. I don’t know if he has a new one that he texts from. It’s frustrating not to be more connected but maybe this will change as he gets older. And he is a busy dude!

I belatedly drop shipped him some birthday stuff. It’s fun to do this since he is both a reader and a good pianist. I picked out some music (Satie, Jazz) and Brooke Gladstone’s excellent Influencing Machine.

Eileen spent several hours midday at Evergreen Center. I think she did Yoga before lunch and Water Aerobics after. I had rehearsals with my cellist and violinist. We holed up in the choir room since the church is in disarray and full of workers.

‘Today I have at least one ballet audition session.

The chair of the department emailed me yesterday confirming that and some other auditions. In his email he didn’t mention the afternoon session I thought he had previously booked. I emailed me back and asked about this afternoon as well as confirming the other dates.

It is with a certain sense of dread that I return to this venue. Again there was no mention of how much he plans to pay me or how. Probably he expects me to claim extra hours to cover this. That’s what he did last time. Cumbersome, but at least that way they take out taxes.

I just checked my email and he hasn’t responded to me yet. Sigh.

I put in some serous work on Buxtehude and Distler. Listening to the YouTube recordings gave me some good ideas on how to solo out a few lines in Buxtehude. I think my interpretation will be better this way even on my bad instrument. Distler is devilish, but I’m hoping I will be ready a week from this Sunday to play it well.

Eileen has been trying to get up earlier. There are classes that are offered in the morning that she would like to consider attending. But since retiring she often lazes around until later in the morning. I’m hoping she will get up this morning and we will have a bit of time before my 9 AM audition.

I have been enjoying listening to Jamie Woon. I think he is definitely in the line of Stevie Wonder and Michael McDonald, both people I like. KCRW does this in studio recordings and I tend to like them. They also keep me listening to new music.

YouTube is quite a resource for me. Yesterday I came home from rehearsing the Buxtehude Passacaglia in D minor I plan to play Sunday. I was wondering about registration (which pipes to use to play it). There is a tradition among organists of using lots of register changes in these repetitive pieces. It’s a tradition, but I’m not aware of historical evidence for this kind of performing in the writers of these pieces and their students.

Still I wanted to find out about what players were doing with the Passacaglia. I listened to three live performances. In them, each performer made different decisions about how to change stops during Buxtehude’s Passacaglia. Very helpful. I was also a bit surprised that these highly polished videos had lapses of mistakes and confusion in the players. It was reassuring. I have quite posting videos of myself because I’m unhappy with the quality of recording and my performances. Maybe I’ll get back to that at some point.

My boss told me yesterday the church will buy me this refurbished version of the computer Yale provided my son-in-law. Cool.

My new AGO mag came yesterday (featuring the above Nichols & Simpson instrument in Dallas Texas). I have been reading this magazine for about for about forty years and continue to find it informative and inspiring. There were a couple of articles in the March issue that I found interesting. The first was Timothy Tikker’s review of Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra’s Bach and Improvisation, vol I. 

At first I thought this was probably a book I wanted to read. However, Tikker made so many intelligent critiques of it that I’m reconsidering. (I am unable to link in these article or even a link to the March issue due to the stupid stupid policy of this organization to build firewalls between people and information…. )

Also Gregory Hand makes an intelligent plea for more careful preparation and organization of one’s learning process in his article, “Writing It All Down: An Old-Fashioned Way to Learn New Music.” As you can tell from the title, he advocates writing in all fingers every time.

I did that in grad school but only occasionally since then. In fact, yesterday I decided to learn Distler’s Variations on “Christ du Lamm Gottes” (“Drei Vorspiele und Satz ‘Christe, du Lamm Gottes”). At some point I fingered this work. At first I thought this was a bit annoying but I’m finding myself paying some attention to the fingers.

I’m probably just lazy and Gregory Hand makes some good points.

Weirdly I spent an hour or so, composing yesterday. I’m working on an organ piece. But it seems to be better not to talk too much about this kind of work. It tends to sabotage it for me.

I have been listening to a collection of songs used by James Joyce in his works on Spotify. Yesterday Eileen and I were playing boggle after lunch and I heard the song, “The Holy City,” start playing.

Most of the songs used by Joyce are ones I do not recognize. They tend to be parlor songs of Ireland and England from the late 19th and early 20th century. This particular song has also worked its way into American ears and is one that I usually shudder to hear.

I associate the high Irish tenor with my father and his father. This song evoked a memory of my Dad. We were visiting my brother and his wife in the suburb of Detroit where they lived for many years. My Dad was already suffering a lot of debilitation at the time: shaking hands, memory loss, aphasia (inability to communicate), among others.

Somehow I ended up at the piano and my Dad was behind me singing a song I was playing.  If it wasn’t “The Holy City,” it was something similar. My Dad (who at the time often could not talk fluently) sang the entire piece. In the climatic high notes, he broke off and began weeping.

He said he was surprised, that he did not think he could sing anymore. He was obviously deeply moved probably in a good way.

These remembered tears of my father help me understand that my own sensitivity is not just in my Mother’s genes but also in my Dad’s. I remember my Father as a guarded man especially where our relationship was concerned.

It wasn’t so much that he did not want to talk directly to me about himself and who he was. It was more that he wasn’t able to articulate it. He forced himself to tell me he loved me and often used humor to express deep feelings.

I was listening to the Slate Lexicon broadcast: “A British MP called Donald Trump a Wazzock. What’s a Wazzock?” this morning.

As the episode unfurled I pulled up the OED’s page on this word.

The speculative etymologies in this podcast are kind of funny.

I attempted to move towards personal balance and perspective yesterday as I did the Tuesday before. Eileen and I walked back forth to see my Mom. This is good not only to have daily contact with her, but when we walk I see it as some good exercise. It’s over two miles back and forth.

After we got back, we agreed that Eileen would go grocery shopping and I would go separately to the library, pick up books for Mom and then swing by the church for a quick organ practice.

I was dreading the church visit.

Some days I am so sensitive to omnipresent religion that I can only darken the door at church if I’m sure I’m alone and sometimes not even then. The prospect of workmen everywhere was not a happy one despite the fact that they all seemed like decent locals.

I took a deep breath and started getting ready to go to the library. I couldn’t find my keys. I remembered that I had left them on the kitchen table which is something Eileen does more often than me. A quick phone call and I found out that Eileen had all the keys. I breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn’t go anywhere.

So I went to the basement and bagged up two large garbage bags of stuff. After Eileen came home, I realized that I couldn’t face church and only went to the library.

While I was there I was chatting with an older guy who is sort of a security guy for the library. He told me that he had just come as close as he ever had to having a fist fight with someone in the library.

This guy is a gentle guy. He is also pretty sophisticated and has spent years of life overseas. He said that someone got in his face and told him that if he shushed him again they would have a problem. My friend the security guy informed the angry patron, they already had a problem.

My friend and I talked about how angry people are now in the USA. When I mentioned hate radio, he said his wife listens to Limbaugh and watches Hannity.

I told him that I can see that these people are good entertainers but I think they are hurting the country. He seemed to agree with me.

I walked to church yesterday. I have designated today and yesterday as “non-church” days, but I would like to perform a Passacaglia by Buxtehude for Sunday’s postlude. It’s not that difficult but in order to perform it well I need to practice it daily.

This week and next week have been set aside by my church for the installation of a badly needed new sound system. The sound system company rep announced to the committee of people gathered to install the organ that he was the natural enemy of organists. In my presence. This left a bad taste in my mouth of course.

I have nothing against the contemporary understandings of recording and sound reproduction. By that I mean that recordings and sound reproductions are different animals from live music and congregational singing. In dealing with people who see sound as something to capture and inhibit (via panels that absorb ambient sound), I try to get them to see that in liturgical churches that emphasize participation of everyone in the room, it is the congregation that is the main actor, not the people in front.

This is of course futile and you find excellent sound people seeing themselves as opposed to old fashioned notions of reverberations of live music.

I am reminded of the Snarky Puppy videos where the music is live, but everyone in the room is wearing headphones.

So I was braced on the walk over. I wasn’t sure if the sound people would let me practice. But I needed the exercise. It turned out that the sound people had not arrived yet. Instead the electricians were wiring the congregation in preparation for installation of the new system. They had scaffolding to the top of the church and were draping lines and moving stuff. When I asked if they minded if I practiced organ, they said no.

I eventually toned down the organ when I noticed that they were shouting to each other.  It seemed to me that loud music wasn’t helping.

As I was preparing to come back home, the head electrician told me one of his workers was part of the “music worship team” at his church. Yeah, the worker in questions said, sorry I play guitar. Why are you sorry, I asked him. I play guitar. I own a D 18 Martin.

I would say he was surprised. As I was leaving he called out to me: “Good by! Bring your martin tomorrow.” “Hah!,” I said.

I attacked the basement yesterday. I put  up lights in the stairwell and proceeded to vacuum the steps. They were filthy. I will probably have to keep repeating this process. I cleaned out a small corner of the basement at the bottom of the steps. I wore one of those masks that people wear in Beijing to keep stray particles entering my body at a minimum.

Eileen walked around with me beforehand. She okayed throwing some stuff out. Which is what I did. The plan is to work on it again today.

I also did some composing, but didn’t get around to the harpsichord. Maybe today I will working on the harpsichord as well.

Civility in Politics – The New York Times

Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary writes a letter in which he demonstrates that politics can be civil.

Pee-wee’s Big Comeback – The New York Times

Another movie I will want to see. Pew-wee is great!

Antonin Scalia, Justice on the Supreme Court, Dies at 79 – The New York Times

This may work out badly for the Republicans. I hope so. By that I mean, it may be that if they block a nomination it will help the nation see that Republicans are more interested in politics than governing and that they will not only lose the presidency but the Senate as well. Then the next president can nominate whoever he/she wants.

Saturday I figured out why I had problems using my tablet at Solo and Ensemble for music for accompaniments. When I need to adjust the tablet by moving the music up or down on the screen, I must be careful to only use ONE finger to do so. Otherwise I have a tendency to active the screen enlargement function which also seems to flip me around in unpredictable ways in the music.

I used the tablet for both the prelude and postlude yesterday and had no problems with it. It is an easy way to deal with difficult page turns.

It is bloody cold here in Holland Michigan. My phone says it is 17 degrees Fahrenheit. However, it has been windy and ice has been forming on our back steps. Eileen and I walked back and forth to church yesterday. It was definitely a cold walk.

I am hoping to get some non church stuff done in the next two days. I would like to begin to clean the basement in anticipation of putting a treadmill down there. This is a big job. I worry that the peeling paint has lead in it. Eileen and I slept down there for years and we are not discernibly worse for the wear. Eileen thinks it won’t be unhealthy.

The problem is I don’t really have a place on the main floor to put a treadmill.

Also I want to get back to working on the harpsichord and doing some serious composing.

I am enjoying the company of my books and music immensely. I do notice that a lot of the humans I come in contact with find me perplexing. So be it. The other night I was asking Eileen about preparing to pull stops for my friend Rhonda’s concert. Dress and look inconspicuous, she advised. Unfortunately I don’t think I can look inconspicuous in Holland Michigan no matter how I dress.

I have been thinking about the inanity of Facebooger. I think it is a bit of an abomination that this social media has the word, “book,” in its name. People on Fecesbooger seem to be moving away from the world of books and thoughtful ideas at the speed of light.

I have been reading Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. His ideas do not compact easily into little quotes or “memes” that are the basis of so much social media communication. He does, however, have wonderful insights for me. 

His reading of myth and psychology is a good counterbalance to Friedman’s family system understanding of life. I especially like how he sees the common truths in all of humankind’s myths and religions. This is a complex undertaking, but I am finding it helpful.

Just for giggles here’s a section of Lore Segal’s Half the Kingdom I read to Eileen last night:

“Hope opened the door into the ladies’ room and saw, in the mirror above the basins, how her hair was coming out of its pins. She removed all the pins and stood gazing at the crone with the gray, girlishly loosened locks around her shoulders and saw what Diane Arbus might have seen and was appalled, and being appalled pricked her interest right up: ‘I’ve got an agenda: The Arbus Factor of old age.”

Kirchner in Joyce’s Kaleidoscope begins his discussion with book IV and suggests that this is a good place to begin an understanding of the Wake. Oddly enough this is exactly what I did this time when attempting to read Finnegans Wake. The main woman character, ALP, begins a morning musing about herself, her husband HCE and the river Liffy who is of course also herself in the book… all rivers running is the main feminine symbol and representation in the Wake. So I stumbled onto a way that another reader recommends. How about that?

I ordered my own copy of Kirchner and Campbells’ Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Although Campbell’s book was published in 1949, I found references in the footnotes for articles written in the 90s (after his death). This editorial addition was not clearly attributed. The editors of the series are named, but it’s not clear where these additions came from. Nevertheless I am happy to get them. I reread the first chapter in the library copy just so I could carefully read the footnotes some of which I had skipped in my ecopy.

Eileen and I attended Rhonda’s recital last night.

I find it perplexing that I was the only local musician in attendance (or at least that I recognized). Her recital purported to be a part of a recital series presented by St. Francis de Sales. However, the musician from St. Francis was not in attendance (as far as I could tell…. I’m not 100 per cent certain I would recognize him). And no one introduced the concert. Local weird shit.

Rhonda and the two French Horn players (Greg Bassett and Lisa Honeycutt) played well. I think the program was a bit long. I count 24 movements (and this is not counting the separate variations  in a couple of the pieces). This is a lot of music. I also think it would have been interested to have fucked with the order and made it a bit less like an academic recital and more like an interesting concert.

Rhonda performed a movement from Frescobaldi’s Fiori Musicali and also three short movements from living composer, Carson Cooman,  which were taken from a work also called Fiori Musicali…. Piccoli foiri musicali in Cooman’s case.

These were separated by 3 pieces. I think it was an opportunity to put the “musical flowers” closer to each other, maybe even interpolating the Frescobaldi in the middle of Cooman’s movements.

I especially liked the “Suite for Two Horns” by Telemann. This would have made a good ending choice.

Anyway, all the music was well played and people who chose not to attend missed a good one however long.

The Year of the Angry Voter – The New York Times

Jennifer Finney Boylan makes a good point. We need forgiveness, not anger. Also, what about all those angry religious types some of whose faith says anger can be a sin?

Gravitational Waves Detected, Confirming Einstein’s Theory – The New York Times

This is a big deal!!

Britain Accuses China of Violating Treaty in Hong Kong Bookseller’s Case – The New York Times

It has occurred to me to wonder about this. It has also occurred to me that China doesn’t give a lovey fuck.

Madeleine Albright: My Undiplomatic Moment – The New York Times

You know that thing I said? About women not supporting women going to a special place in hell? You need some context.

James Joyce | Songs – Music | Ulysses, Portrait, Dubliners, Finnegans Wake

Following up on Kitchner’s ideas about Finnegans Wake and Joyce’s other work having strong connections with the music in them, I found that there are a couple of CDs where recordings of pieces are pulled together. They’re on Spotify.

I don’t have too much to write about this morning.

I ran across this lovely passage in Kitcher’s Joyce’s Kaleidoscope.

“The last story of Dubliners, “The Dead,” opens with a long scene at the Morkans’ annual epiphany party, a party at which the guests make music, at which the old songs are sung around the household piano. That activity of music-making, centered on familiar songs to which the Wake alludes, again and again, was a large part of the culture Joyce knew (and the culture of my own youth, my generation probably being the last to enjoy it)—virtually everyone would join in. Considered as a musical work, a gigantic songbook, the Wake issues the same invitation. Joyce may have a fine voice, one that lilts beautifully over affecting cadences—although his tongue does occasionally trip—but he should inspire us to sing with him and not merely to listen admirably. Readers of the Wake can join in even if they feel like party guests who don’t all the words and are sometimes hazy about where the tune goes.” p. xxi

Kitchner apparently goes on to develop the musical metaphor in his reading of the Wake. I find this very satisfying.

This morning I read a bit in “The Dead.” It unfolded differently after reading the Wake and realizing that all of Joyce’s work fits together. Gabriel Conroy, the main character and the Joyce figure in the story, worries over a speech he is giving. Should he quote Browning? His audience won’t recognize it. He should quote Shakespeare or “from the Melodies.” Before the paragraph is over Gabriel is convinced that his speech “from first to last” would be “an utter failure.”

There is some self mocking going on here  by Joyce. Gabriel’s attitude towards his speech is sometimes the stance Joyce takes towards his Wake. A self mocking tone surfaces throughout the Wake. But finally the “song” of the Wake is one of “kindness, generosity, patience, tolerance, forgiveness.” (Kitchner, xxii)

Yesterday I put the prelude and postlude into my table for page turns. I then practiced using the tablet for the music, adjusting the way it scrolls. The prelude by Marilyn Biery changes tempos throughout. This makes scrolling tricky but I think I have it worked out. Fortunately, I can scroll through the postlude (a fugue by Clara Schumann) with the same settings.

I am meeting my friend, Rhonda, this morning at 9 AM at St. Francis church. She has asked me to pull stops for her concert tomorrow night. Interestingly, while I had little interest in going to the whoopydoo organ concert at Hope this week, I was already thinking of showing up for Rhonda’s Saturday concert. Mostly I think of her as a colleague and want to be supportive.

The little instrument she is performing on is quite charming. It’s a one manual with pull down pedals (this means most of the pipes for the pedals are drawn from the pipes the keyboard plays and that the keys on the keyboard depress as you play the pedal). I’m assuming that Rhonda will need some help with manipulating stops as she wrings music out of this tiny organ.

The instrument we are having built for our church has no buttons that enable the player to instantly change the stops (pistons). This is the same as the instrument Rhonda is practicing on this morning. I wasn’t aware of this until sometime last year when I directly asked the builder about it. He said that his proposal had no provision for pistons and that it would be expensive and cumbersome for this kind of instrument to have them. I acquiesced. I hope this ends up being a wise decision. It will put me in the position Rhonda is in for this concert. If I want to change pipe sounds in a clever way (as one often needs to), I will have to have people helping with this. Stop pullers, they are called.

All three of my rehearsals canceled in succession yesterday. First the cellist emailed me and the violinist that she wasn’t up to digging out and driving in for rehearsal. Next the flute player messaged me on Fecesbook that she had hurt her back shoveling snow and wasn’t up to a rehearsal. Finally the violinist phoned me that she had to take her car into the shop and wait for it there and had to cancel.

These cancellations fit my mood which was one of low motivation…. sort of a blah feeling. I eventually built up enough steam to go to the library, visit my Mom, and go  to church to practice. After I got home, Eileen asked me how practice went. “Lousy,” I said. “I wasn’t going to tell you about it but you asked. I couldn’t concentrate. I sound like shit.”

The restaurant that Eileen and I spent many hours of fun time together is closing. The CityVu Bistro will close after Sunday. Eileen wanted to go for one last time last night. I said okey dokey and off we went. It was a bit weird. We’re poor these days so we used a gift certificate from daughter Sarah (Thank you, Sarah!) and had drinks and starters.

The manager chatted us up as he usually does. We found out that he is losing his job as of Sunday. He said his job was hard anyway now that he’s married. It’s a good job for a single guy. He’s planning on trying to sell insurance and spend more time with his wife and six year old kid. It sounds to me like he kind of got screwed, but he was matter of fact about it.

One of the reasons I went to the library was to pick my my inter-library loan copy of Kitcher’s Joyce’s Kaleidoscope. Coincidentally  My copy of A Word in Your Ear: How & Why to Read James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake by Eric Rosenbloom arrived in the mail.

I am once again reading Finnegans Wake. Maybe this time I will go much slower. So far that has been the case. I savor the beauty and comedy with a slow read. I’m thinking Kichner is going to be more interesting than Rosenbloom after perusing both of these. Kichner drew me in with his experience of being a common reader and connecting with Joyce. He calls Finnegans Wake, Portrait of an Artist as an Aging Man and refutes the idea that Joyce was building a puzzle for readers. This is more the way I am experiencing the book.

Rosenbloom is trying to talk readers into Finnegans Wake. Unfortunately in the first few pages he made some comments that I found confusing if not incorrect. But I’m still thinking about it.

I see reading books like this as a substitution for conversations with like minded smarter readers. Once again my books are keeping me going.

Traditionalists Rebuffed as Parliament Turns the Page on Parchment – The New York Times

This is the way Parliament comes into the digital age.

Finding Beauty in the Darkness – The New York Times

This is a big deal.

While the political displays we have been treated to over the past weeks may reflect some of the worst about what it means to be human, this jiggle, discovered in an exotic physics experiment, reflects the best.

My day with Eileen on Tuesday continues to reverberate with insight for me. Namely to spend my time and effort on the parts of my life that are truly important to me and not worry so much about the other stuff. I mentioned this yesterday to my boss, Jen, and called an “attack of perspective.”

My copy of Annotations to Finnegans Wake by Roland McHugh arrived in the mail yesterday.

I was happy to see that it was a later edition than the one I have been using from Hope’s library. The introductory material was completely rewritten to situate this book in the evolving literature around Finnegans Wake. Also this edition (the third) incorporates new understandings of the text. Cool beans.

I finished the first chapter in Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Campbell wrote his book on Finnegans Wake early in his career. He is known for his subsequent work more than the Skeleton Key. It looks like Joyce kicked off a life of pondering the myths of humans in Campbell. I like Campbell’s ideas and enjoy his prose style. I am reading an ebook of it. I may have to dig up a real copy in order to better process it.

After my perspective insight I am hoping to get back to some of my projects like working on the harpsichord and transferring recordings from tape to mp3s soon.

I have the usual Thursday fatigue this morning.

But I am looking forward to an afternoon of rehearsals. In addition to my piano trio rehearsal, a cello rehearsal and a violin rehearsal I have invited a woman who plays flute to meet with me. She is a parishioner and piped up the other day when I was seated near her and her husband at the Annual Meeting. I was talking about Solo and Ensemble and she mentioned that she remembered taking her kid to it. I asked her if she had ever played at Solo and Ensemble herself. She held up her fingers and said for four years. I asked her if she was sure she wanted me to know that. And then told her I would be contacting her soon for a meet up to do some playing.

Today might be that day if she shows.

I’m starting to blog a bit early today. My friend, Rhonda, is threatening to come by for some tea and talk at 8 AM. This gives me an hour.

I finished the last section of Finnegans Wake this morning. I began reading this book last August with this last section. Now I have read it straight through from beginning to end with the completion of this section. Once again as he did in Ulysses Joyce closes out with a wonderful feminine gasp of beauty.

In Finnegans Wake it is Anna Livia/Livy riverwoman who closes out the morning with a rushing monologue as she sits on the banks of the river and is herself the river. I love Joyce’s love of life and his dance of beauty. Tomorrow I will begin again to read this excellent work from the beginning.

Yesterday was sort of a day long date with Eileen. We already spend regular times each day together: having breakfast together, playing Boggle. Yesterday we went to see a movie together. The movie was “Hail Caesar” and was  a bit of a disappointment.

It’s not a bad move and lord knows the Coen brothers have made those. But it can’t seem to make up its mind what kind of a move it wants to be. Is it a comedy? Sometimes. Is it a 21st century Hollywood combination extravaganza and largely drawn characters and story? Sometimes. Is it a sly look at the underbelly of the movie industry of the forties? Sometimes. Finally it tells the story of Mannix, a weirdly devout man (we see him several times in the confessional), straight shooter, tough guy. Unfortunately it never drew me in to care much about his story. But it is clearly delineated. As I say, disappointing.

After the movie, we dropped by to say hi to my Mom. Then we went off to El Rancho and had margaritas and excellent food for our meal together. Plus lots of good conversation. I marvel that Eileen still seems interested in and interesting to me. This is beyond lucky. More like blessed.

In the course of our conversation yesterday, I bounced the notion off Eileen that local college and organ politics are nothing I ever signed up for. I felt a small twinge of guilt for not attending the first organ extravaganza at Hope College last night. However, I definitely had no interest in attending. The music is not that interesting to me. The people involved (the performers) live in a completely different world than I do though we are near each other physically.

Although I enjoy church work, my passions do not lie exactly there and are explicitly in different places than the college musicians. My books, my music, my composing, these are the things that I have cherished all my life. They are my ambitions. I want to go deeper into them.

I often write here about the disconnect between me and local stuff.  Recently I have been recalling that this disconnect is between the way I have wanted to live my life and the way the people here live theirs. This is not blameworthy. On either side.

New Ways Into the Brain’s ‘Music Room’ – The New York Times

This isn’t that great an article. But I do find the science interesting.

The Adventurer’s Guide to Finnegans Wake

I am increasingly realizing that there are tons of people interested in Finnegans Wake online. Here’s a site that looks cool.