I was thinking about and practicing some Chopin nocturnes yesterday. I recently had an insight that I am largely a self taught pianist. This is good to remember. I have found Chopin’s use of quick scale gestures over a steady rhythm confusing. For example in the B flat minor nocturne he does 22 quick notes over 12 eight notes. This is means 11s over 6s.

Fortunately there is a great deal discussion of this online. I came to the conclusion that (surprise, surprise) Chopin means exactly what he has written. This is the way recordings are usually done as well. This means working on polyrhythms with a vengeance if I ever want to play some of my favorite music well at the piano. There are lots of self help videos on this online and I garnered some good ideas yesterday.

I found someone who has also read Finnegans Wake.

Unfortunately she is a fictional character in Rushdie’s Satanic Verses.

She went icy. ‘Chamcha, listen up. I’ll discuss this with you one time because behind all your bullshit you do maybe care for me a little. So comprehend, please, that I am an intelligent female. I have read Finnegans Wake and am conversant with post-modernist critques of the West, e. g. that we have here a society capable of only a “flattened” world.” The Satanic Verses, 261

Organ committee meeting

I walked to church yesterday for a meeting. My boss, Jen, asked me to meet with the architect who is redesigning the back of the church to fit the specs of the new organ. There was also a parishioner at this meeting.

Jen assured me afterwards I had been helpful. I know she was right, but I wasn’t happy with my contribution. Neither was she entirely. I think (and hope) it was due to a combination of fatigue and bouncing back from illness. As they discussed the particulars, I resisted putting up a barrier between the player and the church area to protect him for safety. However later I said it didn’t really matter to me.

Jen said it was confusing to determine what was important to me. I told her it was simple to me. The physical adaptations of the area and the room to provide better acoustics for our worship are much more important to me.

At first the architect proposed extending the platform into the church area. Later I realized that he had not entirely recalled our particular situation. I (along with Jen) explained to him that we didn’t have room for that kind of expansion no matter how minimal.

When we moved our discussion to the church, the architect recalled his original ideas which were exactly what I had talked about in our meeting. This was comforting. I also brought up the hardening of the walls. Apparently this is still going to happen. I guess I’m a bit antsy since in my last church renovation hardening of surfaces was part of the plan which was ultimately abandoned (accidentally?).

Also I mentioned the air conditioning and repeated John Boody’s wise words that “prayer deserves quiet.” (I love a good constructive quote)

Being part of a project like this that takes so long and so much discussion and so many meetings leads me to wonder exactly what the outcome will be. I hope we can put in a good instrument, improve the area in the back of the church and improve the singing acoustics. This would satisfy me.

I liked it that the architect focused on where we were planning to put the piano. After some discussion he came up with a brilliant idea. We have four areas in the church for people in wheelchairs where we have shortened pews. Since we don’t feel comfortable removing pews because our community is growing, he proposed swapping one of these areas out with a pew in the back of the church. We would need a bit shorter pew to accommodate a spinet piano such as we have.

But the upshot is that there would be more room for the piano and we would only lose about one person’s worth of pew and one of four areas for wheelchair people. That’s cool.

The next step for the organ committee is for the architect to consult with our accoustician and for Jen to find out from our builder what kind of wood he is using and what his color scheme of staining it is to help the architect think about some acoustical panels he is planning to put in.

Step by Step on a Desperate Trek by Migrants Through Mexico – The New York Times

An amazing look at the trek across Mexico on  the ground with real people.

Google has this as it’s image for today. Chinese New Year: Year of the Monkey. I prefer this picture for that:

Grand daughter Alex looking good in China!

I think this morning I am no longer ill.

But I am typically exhausted for Monday and still a bit shaky.

It was interesting performing Philip Glass at church yesterday. In the first few measures, a woman leaned over between me and some of the notes I needed to play. She looked in my face and observe how clever it was use an ipad for music. I fumbled and tried to look pleasant and keep my place in the music.

I noticed and Eileen corroborated that it seemed like the music was affecting the mood in the room. It became slightly more subdued as I played the piece (Metamorphoses One).

I wondered if more people were listening. Eileen thought it was subtler than that. Some sort of dim awareness of the group that music was different and kept changing.

I have found performing music of this style (Pärt, Glass, Adams) that it somehow has a meaning that comes forth in performance that eludes my understanding but not my perception. In other words, people “get” this music.

Later in the service, a parishioner told me he liked “that piano piece in the prelude.” After service, a different parishioner remarked that he had never walked in to church hearing Philip Glass being played.

This was far more reaction than I thought would come from this use of this piece. That’s kind of cool.

I was shaky all morning. This did not prevent me from pointing out the horns on Moses on the bulletin cover to the choir. They seemed skeptical about my explanation (Moses got his horns on Michelangelo’s famous sculpture due to a mistranslation in the Vulgate).

I even mentioned that there is a picture of Salvador Dali holding his hair in horns making fun of this. Unfortunately I couldn’t find it online to put here.

I finished Lori Segal’s Shakespeare’s Kitchen last night.

I like the fact that it is a series of interlocking short stories. But read together they seem to have a weird theme of finding fleeting happiness in an extra marital affair between two of the main characters, Ika and Leslie.

It was a hard theme for me to swallow despite liking all the characters involved.

I do like the way Segal moves back and forth in time in the story. In the first short story she introduces a character, Nat Cohn, and shows his entire life and death. Then she moves on in the next story to back up and talk about the time before he died in which he is a minor character in the ensuing plot.

Not only that but we end up liking him a bit more by learning more how he acted in the context of his life as a poet in the Concordance Institute, the think tank of published people who make up the characters in the stories.

My favorite story remains the one that attracted me to the collection: “The Reverse Bug.” But I think its theme of the breaking in of the universality of human suffering on the cosseted life of the lucky is a less important one to the overall story of the stories.

I had an insight into Finnegans Wake this morning that Joyce was making a statement about the interrelatedness of all people. His use of languages and stories from multiple cultures puts me in mind of the inverse of Friedman’s insistence that human behavior can be understood no matter what the local social construction of reality consists of. 

There is a weird universality to that thought that seems to connect to Joyce’s dream world which connects all human cultures or at least as many of them as he could jam into his book. This is even more cool when you think that he completed this book just before WWII. Colonialism was rife in the first half of the 20th century. The rest of the century is the history of its demise in between the rich Western countries and the rest of the world.

We badly need Joyce’s vision today.

Although, I am definitely not as ill as I was, I’m still struggling towards normal. Yesterday I had a plunge in morale. One of the things I think about in my sixties is how my sensitivity (hyper sensitivity) has shaped my personality. I seem to walk through life exposed and vulnerable. I find myself weeping at perplexing things. Weeping at beauty, at sentimental stuff, weeping for reasons I can’t put into words.

The weeping is the physical part of an inner turmoil that is part of my daily life. I have worked at keeping this hidden. You know, boys aren’t supposed to cry kind of thing.

It occurs to me that this sensitivity has contributed to my own hyper self critical nature. I have wondered where that came from. I didn’t experience my family of origin as critical of me or ostracizing me. Quite the opposite really.

I do think this morass of emotion has driven me to improve my musical abilities and to create. Weird, eh? I guess we must befriend our demons.

So yesterday I felt insecure and depressed. Whippy skippy.

This morning a typical Sunday morning is a bit daunting after being in bed for a few days. Eileen helped me prepare at church yesterday by posting hymns for me. I sat at the organ and rehearsed the psalm and some of the hymns for today. I know it will go fine.

I timed the Philip Glass piano piece I am performing today twice. The tricky part for me is that the piece alternates sections with clearly marked tempos. I found that I have a tendency to think I am going too slow and end up rushing these. There was a difference of about two minutes between interpretations (4 minutes versus 6 minutes). This was helpful. I practiced the separate sections with the metronome. Tempos are tricky enough when the adrenaline is going much less when one is recovering from illness.

As always part of me is amused at the pains I take in my work when it seems so peripheral to all the humans in the room. Like Langston Hughes I live in books and also in the music.

I think I will  be okay today.

French Spelling Changes, 26 Years in the Making, Cause a Fracas – The New York

Good-by mr. circumflex!

Lexicon Valley

If you’re a word freak like me and you like Bob Garfield (OTM) you might like this podcast.

I was hoping yesterday to recover but it was not to be. After an energetic start to the day I began to feel weak and had to spend a good deal of time in bed. This does not portend well for tomorrow. Eileen is still not a hundred per cent. If my illness goes like hers is I have several days left of being incapacitated. I think I can probably stagger through work tomorrow, but it would be nice if I could get some energy back today.

Tonight is the second of two local concerts given by Hope College. I admit to lots of ignorance around their practice of Musical Showcase.

These annual recitals have been given in Grand Rapids at Devos Hall. This year they are doing them locally at the new Musical Arts auditorium. It seems odd to me that they charge for these here since they involve students both as soloists and as ensemble participants. It’s even odder to me tonight that they are charging for a faculty recital by Andre Le, piano, and Hew Lewis, organ. [Note added later: This is wrong. This recital is next Tuesday. Tonight’s recital is probably a repeat of last night. They are, however, charging for next Tuesday.]

I begin to suspect that the purpose of these recitals is to reward (attract?) donors.

I think tonight that the floor of the hall is reserved for free seats for donors or “friends of Hope.” Students and other plebians can pay $10 to sit in the bad seats. I could be wrong about this because I haven’t been paying too much attention.

It strikes me as odd for a college to charge for this sort of thing. I see us at a time when the arts need support and exposure. I feel the same way about choral and organ music. Maybe it’s a combination of old man crankiness and weakness from being ill, but the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my brain.

Last night around 3 AM I found myself downstairs searching for my current composition notebook. I had awoken and for some reason had some ideas. Usually when this happens I can convince myself that in the morning they will be insipid and there was no need to get up and write them down. Not so last night. More evidence of illness?

Both my weigh and my blood pressure have plummeted. Nice. I guess the way to get healthy is to get sick, eh?

Eileen was kind enough to check out a book for me at the library yesterday, Shakespeare’s Kitchen by Lori Segal. I have been taking advantage of being bed bound to stay abreast with all my reading. This book is a good addition to my current list because it is engaging and not too hard to read.

Besides that I have been reading Virginia Woolf, Yukio Mishima, Samuel Beckett and Salmon Rushdie.

Yesterday I reached a section in Rushdie’s Satanic Verses which reminded me a great deal of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Quite abruptly Rushdie changes his story from the main characters introduced so far to an Imam living in exile in Great Britian. The picture he paints of the Iman is, of course, far from flattering.

A little googling reveals that Rushdie has admitted that Khomeini was the model for this character. It makes one wonder if Khomeini’s subsequent fatwa was influenced by this section of the book as much as the sections which tell stories about Muhammad .

I’m feeling a little better this morning. No aches other than the usual old guy ones. I’m feeling weak the way you do after an illness. I hope it’s gone.

I plunged back into Finnegans Wake yesterday for round two.

I am definitely learning to read this book better.

I was discouraged when in a New Yorker podcast I was listening to, author Cynthia Ozick and editor Deborah Treisman agreed that nobody but scholars have actually read Finnegans Wake.

This undermines the whole aesthetic of Finnegans Wake which is one of playful jokiness and joie de vivre. Nora, James Joyce’s wife, said that she could often hear him laughing uproariously as he worked on the book. And it is funny!

But maybe I am more like a scholar then a common reader in an age where headlines like this appear on my Google News Feed:

1 Dead, Another Injured After Real-Life ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ Car Chase – ABC News

Excuse me? Bonnie and Clyde were themselves, were, you know, part of real life being  real people.

Nevertheless I feel like and think of myself as a more of a common reader.

I probably picked up on this term from Virginia Woolf’s great two volumes of essays called The Common Reader.

These volumes are sit on my reading stack right now. Woolf is definitely wonderful and I have been enjoying dipping into these.

I also think of myself as more of a lover of music than a conventional musician in almost any sense.

Usually not too below the surface of my thoughts about music is Duke Elington’s great maxim, “If it sounds good, it is good.”

This doesn’t mean if it sounds good to ME, it’s good. It means that music is defined by how it sounds. Not how popular or unpopular, current or obscure. At least that how I think of it.

There are a ton of books available these days for readers of Finnegans Wake. The Oxford Edition which was done by two guys who translated Finnegans Wake into Dutch (the “Dutchifcation” of it, as they refer to it) has an updated bibliography of books about Finnegans Wake.

I looked over the list and interlibrary loaned this one.

A Guide through Finnegans Wake by Edmund Lloyd Epstein was published in 2009. It looks like it could be helpful through a second read. So many of the books I have looked at are authors trying to ease the way for readers into Joyce’s last book. I understand why these are necessary and am even tempted to read one or two. However, it would be more interesting if I could dig a little deeper the second read.

Speaking of The New Yorker Fiction Podcast, last night I listened to a reading of “The Reverse Bug” by Lore Segal (pdf).

Although written in 1989, this fascinating little story has a lot to say about how we connect to each other these days. The plot is basically about two people in an “Conversational English for Adults Class.” Both are connected to family with a dubious past. Paulino Patillo, a Bolivian whose Father was a census taker of Jewish families in Germany during WWII, presumably making lists of those to die. Paulio himself sadly takes out newspaper clippings about his father and reads them to the class. Matsue, an acoustical engineer who was “employed in soundproofing the Dachau ovens so that what went on inside could not be heard on the outside.”

A “reverse bug” is a device that pumps sound into a room instead of taking it out of a room. By the end of the story it is obvious that Matsue has installed such a devise in the local college’s “New Theatre” where a panel on genocide was scheduled to happen. After Paulino is removed for spontaneously reading newspaper clippings about his dead father, screams begin to fill the hall. Their source cannot be found.

I see this 1989 story as a commentary on how our lives are now filled with the screams of those who suffer. This can happen via so many ways but mostly on the Internet. We are now aware of so much. A “reverse bug” is one way to think of the Interwebs.

In Democratic Debate, Candidates Clash on Money’s Role – The New York Times

I read this report this morning about last night’s debate. Although I think Clinton has had a sincere liberal career, the pragmatism of her and her husband, Bill, has done at least as much harm as good. I agree with Bernie. I think he is telling the truth about money and influence in our government.

Journalist Who Sought Refuge in Thailand Is Said to Return to China – The New York Times

 Of course I am more aware of all this China stuff since I have loved ones living there. This is disturbing as is the next link.

Taiwan Families Receive Goodbye Letters Decades After Executions – The New York Times

I have been listening to a lot more public radio (ill, you know?). I am appalled at the rapidly diminishing quality of the journalism. Triviality and emotionally manipulative stories (like, shudder, Story Corps) have crowded out stories like the one at this link. It is a story worth of reading and thinking about.

Yesterday afternoon I came home exhausted after a couple hours of meetings at church and prepping for the evening rehearsal. I lay down in hopes of getting a second wind. Unfortunately, my body aches increased and I could tell I was coming down with something.

I dragged myself to rehearsal last night. The choir was patient with me. Eileen was not well enough to attend this rehearsal.

This morning I am still not a hundred per cent. I have canceled rehearsals for today in hopes that I can rest and get better.

Children who fear being sent back to Nauru attempt to commit suicide – Business Insider

This popped up on my Google news feed. I’m not sure I have a handle on the entire situation. Illegals seem to be living in terrible conditions on islands off Australia. They don’t seem to mention where they were from originally. I guess this is not that pertinent a fact in the age of displacing large numbers of people seeking safety and security.

To Prevent Back Pain, Orthotics Are Out, Exercise Is In – The New York Times

I love these science news flashes of stuff that seems like common sense.

This morning I finished the third section of Finnegans Wake. This means technically I have now read the entire work. Last Fall, I began reading the fourth section. When I finished it, I immediately began the book again. This makes some sense. The last sentence of the book is completed in the opening passage.

I plan to continue reading this book. It’s an amazing and hilarious read.

I was tickled to see that George Saunders has a short story in The New Yorker Magazine for this week.

It came in the mail yesterday and I immediately read it. I do like this guy. He’s just warped enough for me. The story is called “Mother’s Day” and revolves around two equally repellent women and their relationship to their off spring.

Speaking of family, I ran across an idea this morning in Burgess’s book on Finnegans Wake that I’m not sure I had thought much about before.

Speaking of the blurring of lines in the narrative in Finnegans Wake, Burgess says that “wars are merely a vast projection of family conflict.” Having thought a bit about how families work, I hadn’t really connected family dysfunction to war. I’ll have to ponder that.

Eileen has been ill since Sunday night. She has stayed in bed. I have made sure she has what she needs during this period. I have been recuperating myself from my crazy weekend. Usually by now, I am more rested than I am this morning.

My friend, Rhonda, has invited me over to her house this morning. I texted her to let me know when she’s ready for company. In the meantime, I will wait and see how Eileen’s morning unfolds. If she’s not up and Rhonda texts me, I will text her (Eileen) to let me know when she’s awake and I will return to make her breakfast.

If she needs me before Rhonda texts then I will hang around here this morning nursing her.

I was disappointed that by afternoon yesterday I didn’t have energy for the two mile walk back and forth to Mom’s and also go to the bank and the grocery store.

I had to opt for the latter because we were out of Chicken Noodle Soup. When Eileen is ill, she often lives on Campbells Chicken Noodle Soup. I have to have some of that in the house.

We have staff meeting today at church. Then I have choir this evening. I have three new anthems to “stuff” in choir slots. Eileen was going to do this for me, but I’m not sure she will go to choir tonight.

John Kerry keeps calling the Islamic State ‘apostates.’ Maybe he should stop. – The Washington Post

Words and meaning matter. After reading this article, I understand why it might not be a good idea for a Western Non-Muslim to use the term, apostate, for terrorists.

Closing Arguments Given in Key Voter Rights Trial – The New York Times

I find it unconscionable, that one political side has decided that limiting the right to vote will help them. Fuck that.

This video was on Fakebook yesterday. I am definitely closer to agreeing with Sanders than any other candidate.

Poems are made by fools like Blake,

But only Joyce can make a Wake.

Anthony Burgess, Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader

I finished Tenth of December by George Saunders yesterday. It’s been laying around waiting for me to pick it up again. Saunders has the kind of mind that intrigues and entertains. I especially liked the short story, “The Semplica Girl Diaries.”

In it, he has his usual hapless narrator rambling on while the reader tries to figure out in exactly what universe the story is being told. I especially like the way Saunders gradualy introduces the main characters, the Semplica Girls. It’s not until the sixth page of this 60 page short story that they are obliquely alluded to:

In front of house, on sweeping lawn, largest SG arrangement every seen, all in white, white smocks blowing in breeze and Lilly says: Can we go closer?

Leslie, her friend: We can but don’t, usually.

After a few more pages of wondering what “SG” referred to, it occurred to me that they were probably the Semplica Girls of the title. The narrator is the diary writer, however, not the Girls themselves. And his sentences are bumpy constructions as above, often omitting words.

Gradually you learn that the Semplica Girls are imported from foreign countries, have a “microline” that runs through each of their heads that connects and shackles them,  that they are suspended eerily in a supposedly aesthetic arrangement and whose presence in lawns indicates social status even as the owners talk about how having them helps the Girls themselves.

They come voluntarily both to escape terrible situations from their own countries and to send money home to their families.

Sound familiar?

I picked up Saunders to read after Nathan Lane confessed in a New York Times celebrity interview that he had not read Saunders new book yet, but it was on his list of mandatory reading. I can see why. Saunders is just warped enough to help me understand how to live in the future (It IS, in the words of Firesign Theater, a lot like having bees live in your head).

Yesterday was Langston Huges’s birthday.

I love the quote below put up by Writers Almanac.

After pointing out that Hughes haunted the public library in Lawrence, Kansas, because it was one of the few integrated builds there, Hughes is quoted as saying:

 “Then it was that books began to happen to me, and I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas.”

“I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books….” I relate.

curious dreamers,

curious dramas,

curious deman,

plagiast dayman,

playajest dearest,

plaguiest dourest

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

Joyce is describing his two main characters, HCE and ALP, man and wife, but I think the lovely jokey words apply to the world of books as well.

Apparently, today is Joyce’s birthday. At least according to Writers Almanac.

I’ll quote a toast from Joyce to celebrate:

And may he be too an intrepidation of our dreams which we foregot at wiking when the morn hath razed our limpalove and the bleakfrost chilled our ravery!

Paul Krugman Reviews ‘The Rise and Fall of American Growth’ by Robert J. Gordon – The New York Times

This review is worth reading for its own sake. Although we think we are living at a time of immense change, Gordon insists that the present does not measure up to the Industrial revolution in terms of radical change. History helps.

Bill Bryson’s ‘The Road to Little Dribbling’ – The New York Times

Daughter Sarah loves this guy. New book.

Richard A. Posner’s ‘Divergent Paths: The Academy and the Judiciary’ – The New York Times

This looks like an interesting read.

How Moon Dust Languished in a Downing Street Cupboard – The New York Times

What to do with gifts from the cousins?

This morning I am feeling tired but satisfied about the past week of intense activity. I think I was a bit punchy at church yesterday. Right after the quiet prelude based on Ubi Caritas which could not be clearly heard over talking, I mentioned to Jen, my boss, and Jodi, one of our curates, that I had fantasized while playing the prelude about suddenly shouting out: “Will you all PLEASE BE QUIET! I AM PLAYING A SONG ABOUT CHARITY AND LOVE!”

For some reason that had struck me as a bit funny.

The service went well. I played the Bach B minor Fantasia credibly.

I think I had Bach on the brain for some reason yesterday. I began my day taking a shower listening to Glenn Gould play the Goldberg variations on my tablet. Before we left for church, I played through several Preludes and Fugues from the Well Tempered Clavier.

After we got back, I put on the Brandenburgs on Spotify performed by Jordi Savall.

After a rest in my chair during which I actually napped, I was inspired to play through the harpsichord part of the movement of the Fifth Brandenburg concerto on the piano.

Just before we left for the Annual Meeting at Grace, I played through the last movement of the Italian concerto by Bach on the piano.

That’s a lot of Bach randomly accessed and performed yesterday.

My boss gave me permission to post some of the pics I put up yesterday here on Facebooger. I will probably do that today.

I’m going to try to rest today. I have an organ committee meeting sometime this afternoon, but besides that I shouldn’t have much I have to do today.

Her Father Shot Her in the Head, as an ‘Honor Killing’ – The New York Times

This stuff is so sad and insane.

China Is Said to Force Closing of Women’s Legal Aid Center – The New York Times

No reason was given for the order. A notice on the center’s website read: “Beijing Zhongze Women’s Legal Counseling Service Center (formerly the Center for Women’s Law Studies and Legal Services of Peking University) will take a rest from Feb. 1, 2016. Thank you everyone for your attention and constant support for the center in the past!”