My brother, Mark, who is familiar with clinical depression, told me yesterday that I am exhibiting symptoms of depression. My rising blood pressure (which is down another coupe notches but still high this morning, 144/99),  lack of perspective at my work, anxiety, weeping, all, Mark sees as possible evidence of depression. Eileen agreed with him. So. I will ask my doctor to refer me to a psychiatrist when I see her.

I have always thought that I haven’t quite entered into actual depression. I remember that people with clinical depression have low motivation and often are debilitated to the point they cannot get out of bed.

That has never happened to me. Plus I know that I am basically not unhappy with my life.

On the other hand, a quick google reveals that much of the stuff I am dealing with is associated with depression including hypertension (high blood pressure).

Things like

early morning rising (ahem)

feelings of worthlessness (a lifelong struggle that I combat almost daily)

difficulty making decisions (I can make them but it takes a toll)

mood swings

feelings of anxiety and fatigue

self medication with alcohol

emotional eating

There’s probably other stuff but it’s enough for me that two of the people I love deeply, Mark and Eileen, both think I should pursue this.

I wonder about starting therapy at the age of 64.

I love to talk so talk therapy is not something I dread particularly. I also have a tendency to over confide which might or might not come in to play if I reach therapy.

I was thinking last night that the complex thing that is a personality is difficult to unravel with any clarity.

I have difficulty imagining where I would begin with a shrink. Plus I would want someone a bit literate and, of course, intelligent.

I have ceased to write the “bad paul simon songs” I wrote in my youth.

I have wondered if the real purpose of these songs was for me to work out my personality problems. I know they have always felt therapeutic.

And it’s hard to admit, but I am having difficulty getting off the ground with active composition.

When I think about this, I immediately think of my daily stress and the pressures I find myself under.

So I guess I’m going to follow up on my hypertension and possible depression with medical professionals.

I wonder what that will be like.

We had to turn back just as we began our trip over here to Mark’s yesterday. I had forgotten my organ shoes. I hesitated before turning around. But I knew I wouldn’t do very well if I couldn’t rehearse Sunday’s postlude for two entire days. I enjoy practicing. I enjoy putting myself through the paces of learning new music that is challenging and attractive to me. Sunday’s postlude fits this description. And my rehearsing this week seems to be paying off as the difficult little fugue by Gerald Near I want to perform falls into place.

As I was leaving the little church that allows me to practice on their terrible Allen organ, one of the ministers asked me what I thought of their new organ. I had to tell him I wasn’t in love with it, that I preferred pipe organs. But I quickly added how grateful I was to be able to practice on it.

Depression and High Blood Pressure

One of the sites I looked at this morning.

Signs of Clinical Depression: Symptoms to Watch For

another

Doing my blog first this morning, before Greek. Blood pressure is a bit down again this morning but still high enough that barring a dramatic drop I will probably contact my doctor next week.

I learned something about myself yesterday. After my higher BP read mentioned in yesterday’s blog, I was concerned.  However, I quit taking my BP telling myself I didn’t want to know. Eileen went grocery shopping (!) and I went to church to practice. I found it difficult to concentrate since I was worrying about my BP. It seemed hot in the church. Was I exhibiting symptoms of some sort connected to my high BP? Was my worrying actually making my BP worse?

Finally I checked the thermostat at the church and it was 75. That’s hot, right? I asked myself. I came home and immediately took my BP. It was down, but I had learned that I increased my anxiety by NOT checking it if I was wondering about it. Sheesh.

So I desperately need some time off, eh? I’m hoping three days away will at least help me regain a bit of perspective.  The choir seemed a bit more restrained last night than last Sunday. I was probably imagining it, but I felt the choir was a bit kinder to me.

After rehearsal, we dropped Mom’s headboard to her bed off at Mark Edgington’s for him to spot weld. It’s more like her sideboard than headboard.

For the Best – The New Yorker

This is a story by Ann Beatie in the current New Yorker mag. I am attempting to sequester myself a bit on Wednesday afternoons to allow myself some down time on a hard day. Yesterday, I read my new New Yorker and got sucked into this story.

I think it’s a story about aging. At least I found that it was for me. I only gradually realized that the main character, Gerald, Is 80 years old by my guess. At one point his ex-wife who he has not seen for  years,  startlingly mentions she was seventy years old. Earlier we learn that she is nine or ten years younger than him.

As I realized that Gerald was that age, many quaint things about him come into focus, like not being on Facebooger, kissing a young woman’s hand in greeting, and generally exhibit quaint and old fashion manners and lack of vulgarity.

The story ends nicely with him seeing himself in the elevator mirror and think to himself: “It was as he thought: he had grown old.”

Roddy Doyle reads Maeve Brennan – The New Yorker

Then there’s this artful short story, “Christmas Eve,” by Maeve Brennan. I think this story is about the gift of love between undemonstrative people.

The Love A Life Can Show Below Poem by Emily Dickinson 

This is the poem for today on Writers Almanac. the above link has the poem if you want to read it. I’m not too impressed with the way Garrison Keillor reads this poem, but I do think it is a beautiful poem. Emily Dickinson’s best poems are hard and shining like diamonds. This is, for me, a deep and beautiful song about the “love a life can show.”

I especially like the closing lines:

‘Tis this—invites—appalls—endows—
Flits—glimmer—proves—dissolves—
Returns—suggests—convicts—enchants—
Then—flings in Paradise—

There was a typo on the Writer’s Almanac online for today. I went on their Facebooger page and informed them.

Elections Podcast: The Biggest Primary Polling Upset Ever | FiveThirtyEight

This is interesting. It’s mostly about the polls getting Michigan wrong. However, despite the moderator’s enthusiasm, Nate Silver ultimately observes that it’s not THAT big a deal.

small-choirs.org.uk

And for all you people out there looking for music, here’s a link where I think there might be free music. Haven’t waded in yet since I’m trying not to think about church all the time.

My blood pressure continues to fall although it’s not quite acceptable yet. When I first took it this morning it was 149/114. Just now it was  160/117. Yikes. This disproves Eileen’s theory that since my blood pressure tends to go down after I clean the kitchen, I need to keep doing that daily to help it. If these readings persist I will have to contact my doctor. Damn.

The weather has been lovely here in Holland, Michigan. The piles of snow are receding making small streams of water running to the drains. Eileen and I went to Mom’s yesterday, but we didn’t walk. We drove so that Eileen could disassemble Mom’s bed. The back of the bed has come loose and needs to be spot welded. Rhonda’s husband, Mark, has a welder and likes to do this sort of thing. He has agreed to do Mom’s bed.

We drove home and then walked to the church. It was a lovely day.

I am surprised Sanders won the Michigan Democratic primary yesterday but not surprised that Trump won the Republican one. It’s hard not to think that the hate engendered by hate radio and the far right is coming home to roost in the persons of the extreme candidates in the Republican party. It’s almost like there has been a systematic dumbing down of the popular of the USA so that ludicrous non-reasoning undisguised bigotry works better than content in luring people out to vote.

Here in Ottawa county  Trump didn’t win. Instead Cruz did, who in my opinion is as crazy as Trump. Kasich beat Trump as well here. Of course there were many more Republicans voting than Democrats. There are 194,707 registered voters in this county. 83,379 voted yesterday. Republicans 60,043, Democrats 22,327. You get the picture.

For some reason in addition to my usual practicing I have been working on some Jazz tunes. I have been learning Affirmation by Jose Felciano.

I have been listening to this version. Here’s one by the composer himself.

Okay, Windows wants to update in a big way so I need to stop.

Blood pressure still high this morning but beginning to drop. That’s good. I hope I can modify my behavior enough to help stave off high blood pressure for a few years.

In the meantime, I seem to be assailed by scenes of life.

A man with one eye, the other covered by a jaunty eye patch, talks intensely to a woman who is facing surgery. He listens intently to her, attempts to ameliorate her anxiety with his own expansive responses, gesturing. He anticipates her reactions to her surgery. It seems to be based upon his own surgery in which he lost his eye. He doesn’t specifically say that. But it does seem that way. And so the woman’s impending surgery is to the man as much about the his experience as her own future.

I listened to a New Yorker Fiction Podcast of Joyce Carol Oates reading Eudora Welty’s short story, “Where is the Voice Coming From?” Welty wrote this story within twenty four hours of Medgar Evers murder.

It’s an amazing story written in the clear prose of Welty. As is sometimes the case when I listen to these podcasts, I find myself distinguishing between the writer of the story and the reader. Oates has never been someone who interested me as an author. When she said that Flannery O’Connor never wrote in the first person, I thought she was wrong.

I checked it out and it seems she was right. O’Connor’s vivid stories spring to life in my brain containing such unique and bizarre characters that I remembered them as though they had been written in the first person.

Another thing Oates said that inspired me to ponder was that no one in 1963 was reading The New Yorker magazine if they were racists in the south. I thought that was weird. Welty herself was born and died in Mississippi. Flannery O’Connor was born and died in Georgia. Surely they had white racists friends who read the New Yorker occasionally.

The Princeton prof Oates seemed to be falling into the weird stereotype that all bigots were/are southerners and that northerners are more sophisticated and bigotry free.

I’m probably reading into her comments, but it got me thinking about my own early life in the south. As an adult, I realize that I was raised on the white side of town in Greeneville, Tennessee. It took me a while to understand that many of the gentle good people I knew at that time were, in fact, most probably convinced of the supremacy of white people, i.e. racists.

I only remember a few times noticing black people in Greeneville. One time is not so much a memory as an apocryphal family story that when I saw my first black person, I remarked that he was a “chocolate person.” All very cute. Although my memory of this story does not include how the person being talked about by the little white boy reacted.

Another memory (scene) was watching Ralph Waddell, father of my childhood friend, Reggie Waddell, at a Harlem Globetrotter’s game in Greeneville. My Dad had told friends that he knew one of the players on this team, had gone to school with him, I believe. Ralph, a stalwart church leader in Dad’s church, walked over during half-time and stood near where the player Dad had identified was practicing lay ups.

I remember Ralph as natty in the southern way. Bowtie, pressed wool plaid pants, standing with his hands in his pockets near the basketball player. How did he look to the player? It must have been disconcerting to have this white man (whom I now remember had puffy almost childlike cheeks and horn rim glasses) standing there before asking him if he knew Paul Jenkins. I remember the player admitting that he did know Dad in a very few words. This seemed to satisfy Ralph. He, Reggie and I returned to our seats for the game.

Ralph was good man. He might never have read The New Yorker. However, my beloved 2nd Grade Teacher, magically named Mrs. Disney (like the TV show!) may have. I like to think that she did. I think of her as sensitive and intelligent. I seem to remember her as a classic aging southern beauty with age spots showing on an exposed throat.

I’m pretty sure Mrs. Disney was complicit in the racism of the south at the time, the Jim Crow, and other terrible things.

Welty wrote her story the day after Medgar Evans was shot in June 1963. She mentions the Kennedys in it. JFK was to be shot a few months after Evans murder and the publishing of Welty’s thinly disguised fiction.

Shed no tears for Antonin Scalia: Let us not praise the man who gave us Citizens United and Bush v Gore – Salon.com

I think I’m becoming addicted to the FAIR podcast, Counterspin. I was listening to an old one this morning while cleaning the kitchen. They interviewed the author of this article as a corrective on the dominant media take on Scalia. Worth reading and thinking about.

Violence in Blue | Patrick Ball | Granta Magazine

I have this bookmarked to read. I have found some top notch writing in Granta Magazine and even subscribed to it for a while. Patrick Ball, the author of this article and a statistician, is doing work about gathering information about police violence world wide.

I am still stressed and burned out this morning. At least according to my several high blood pressure readings this morning. Nice. Then I discovered I neglected to take my meds yesterday. Not sure how related that is to my high readings, but it does show I was stressed enough yesterday to forget to take my daily meds.

Church was a bit out of control yesterday.

I had choir members unhappy. In the pregame rehearsal, they were unhappy with my rehearsal techniques, two of them visibly annoyed when I didn’t do what they wanted me to do fast enough, another picked up on the fact that I was doing something and waited until I was done to tell me what I should do next. Good grief. And there was the soprano who was weeping throughout the rehearsal (not one of the ones yelling at me).

I managed to at least act like I was the person in the room in a good mood despite all the weird behavior.

When we finally got downstairs to start the service, the crowd noise was louder than usual. There were two visiting children sitting in the back row shouting at themselves and other people. We start services in Lent with a Taize chant. Jen has put a note in the bulletin to the effect that we want to begin with a contemplative moment.  I have asked the choir to “oo” the chant through twice before singing it softly to help this.

Yesterday in the pandemonium preceding this moment, my boss looked at me as I was approaching the piano eyeing the screaming kids. She quietly said to me, “Good luck!”

The only thing I could think to do was what I did the previous week, begin improvising very softly with a sort of minimalist pattern of high notes kind of like very quiet bells. I couldn’t really hear what I was doing. I added a bit of a chord with the left hand. Gradually the crowd noise began to grow  less.

I cued the choir to “oo” and we were off. It was an artful moment in the face of the usual American lack of politeness and awareness.  I did notice that the children in the back row had begun to whisper loudly instead of shouting. I thought that was a bit of a successful thing.

My head was spinning after church. I played a difficult setting by Francis Jackson as the postlude and did it pretty well if under the ideal tempo. Of course, the crowd noise made me glad that at least this week I had schedule a postlude that wasn’t soft.

We drove over to say hi to my Mom and then came home. I suggested to Eileen we go to the Sushi place for lunch. We can’t keep doing this. It costs too much. It’s not an expensive place to eat. Yesterday’s meal was around $50 with no booze.

I decided to go practice organ before I lost all of my ebbing energy. I carefully rehearsed the postludes for the next two Sundays (a charming fugue by Gerald Near and the first movement of the Art of Fugue by Bach).

Came home and listened to this lovely video.

Esperanza Spalding is the real deal. I put this up on Facebooger. Martini time came an hour earlier last night.

I have spent the last few mornings thinking about terminology in relation to the accents of Greek. It leaves my head spinning, frankly, but I think I’m beginning to get a handle on the precise naming of exactly where and which accents fall on the various transformations words go through in Greek to indicate their function.

I’ll try to keep this brief and clear (sparing you dear reader). Suffice it to say that the position’s names exist in both Latin and Greek.

The last syllable of a word is the “ultimate” syllable in Latin and the “oxytone” in Greek. The next to the last syllable of a word is the “penultimate” in Latin and the “paroxytone” in Greek. Three syllables from the end is the “antepenultimate” in Latin and the “proparoxytone” in Greek.

I figured this all out when the writers of my text dropped the term “paroxytone” into a sentence perplexing this reader.

Similarly when reading about “enclictics” (don’t ask), the writers of the text used the abbreviations “q.v.” and “e.g.” back to back in a sentence.

I could figure out what “q.v.” probably meant by context but realized I didn’t know exactly what these abbreviations meant.

A quick google revealed the answers.

Thinking about it, I knew that I distinguished “i.e.” and “e.g.” without thinking much about it. I used the mnemonic “in other words” to help me remember what “i.e.” means and then just remembered “e.g.” meant for example. I’m sure I read what they meant exactly but did not retain that. “Q.v.” was a new one for me, but I did guess the meaning correctly from context.

Are you asleep yet, dear reader?

In Xi Jinping’s Tears, a Message for China’s People – The New York Times

As the Facebooger meme says, 1984 by Orwell was not meant to be a handbook. Cult of personality, indeed!

I’m using my new computer this morning to write this.

Hopefully, I will be able to make it do what I want it to. After the restart and updates yesterday, the touch pad was allowing me to right click which is an improvement. I like the size and weight of my Thinkpad X1 Carbon. I also like the speakers sound.

I usually try to remember what I would put up with the old transistor radios I used to listen to. Compared with that, most laptops are a bit better and this one is.

My blood pressure has been slowing dropping back into a range acceptable to me. This morning’s reading was 127/96. The lowest it’s been in a week or so. Fascinating, eh?

I’m hoping I can get a bit of balance back soon. My planned trip out of town will probably help.

Eileen and I voiced one more note yesterday on the old Zuckerman harpsichord.

We are now up to 8 notes. I didn’t feel like doing much of anything yesterday much less the exacting act of adjust a jack and a quill. It took us about 45 minutes.

I miss playing Francois Couperin’s music, so I have been playing it on the piano. It’s not quite the same. For some reason, I’m a bit of purist about this music. It’s weird. I was thinking yesterday that I have a taste for the French Baroque primarily because of my late teacher, Ray Ferguson.

He loved it. He taught it to me. Now I love it, too.

While learning more about my new computer I discovered that it has the feature of being able to back light the keyboard. I like this quite a bit.

A Comedy Team in Mexico Takes the Law Into Its Own Hands – The New York Times

Great story in yesterday’s paper. Humor combined with activism.

How to Remove the Mildew Smell from Books: 15 Steps

I was reading a poetry book I bought recently and realized that I always notice it smells mildewy. I should be able to fix that, eh?

‘The Sense That Everybody Thought They Had WMDs Is a Total Fantasy’ — FAIR

I like FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting).

So I began this morning blogging from my new Thinkpad which arrived at church yesterday. So far I like it quite a bit. I’m still learning it, of course. It has one of those track pointing devices.

I managed to get it to work last night, but this morning I can’t even get the touch pad to right click. So, my learning curve is such that I switched to the old computer for blogging, while the new one updated itself.

I forgot about Windows 8 (which is what this machine came with). I will have to relearn/readapt it. But I am grateful to have this new machine bought for me by the church (and I get to keep it!).

My friend Dave Barber emailed me a video by Wintergartan a few days ago. I just got around to checking it out this morning. I loved it and immediately subscribed to the group’s YouTube channel. This video of his amazing Marble Machine is wonderful. I put it up on Vicebook this morning.

So Eileen and I are planning some time away next week.

My cri de coeur yesterday elicited sympathetic responses from loved ones (thanks and love to brother Mark and daughter Elizabeth!). Time to get away to attempt to gain some perspective.

Donald Trump Favorable Rating – Polls – HuffPost Pollster

Donald Trump Is Really Unpopular With General Election Voters | FiveThirtyEight

These are the links Mark put in his comment yesterday. I only hope that they reflect some sort of reality that the majority of US citizens are repulsed by Trump.

Donald Trump and Reconstruction-Era Politics – The New York Times

Speaking of perspective (and also history), Brent Staples refreshes our collective memory.

Egypt’s Parliament Expels Lawmaker Who Dined With Israel’s Ambassador – The New York Times

The photograph accompanying this article is arresting (so to speak).

A Fiery Debate on the K.K.K. in 2016. Who Figured? – The New York Times

I didn’t think they allowed actual content on TV these days. Kudos to Van Jones for being coherent and sane.

Garlic Roasted Broccoli (I Could Eat This Everyday) | Paleo Grubs

Simple, good. I should try this soon.

Yesterday, I had a meltdown privately before choir rehearsal. The sheer banality of my day, the pressure, the stress, all blinded and constricted me.

It’s not that necessary to rehearse it all here. But stupid shit is getting me down and putting me off balance.

Although outside of the house I try to keep quiet, I am losing perspective about stupid shit.

Stupid shit like the new sound system at church actually hums and fills the quiet of the choir area with a sound just a bit louder than our wheezy old pipe organ blower which I can clearly hear in every service. I sometimes close the swell box just to lessen the noise from the old organ. Now, I will also have a little humming sound unless the case that will be coming soon will dampen it.

Stupid shit like the fact that people at church are worried about the color (THE COLOR) of the new pipe organ and have asked the builder to darken the beautiful wood of his
lovely instrument.

Stupid shit like the fact that I spent an hour in a staff meeting listening to tech people explain Windows Outlook and how wonderful it is despite the fact that my boss and I
privatedly later confided to each other that we have both have decided to
limit our use of it to church shit. All this of course, so that our small little staff can have
emails with a cute churchy domain name. Stupid shit like the tech guy telling us he would take all the contacts of our present email and email them our new email address. This was the point at which I raised my hand and asked him not to do that for me. I guess jupe is not quite the team player, eh?

So I found myself in a nonsensical argument with the love of my life, beautiful Eileen, with jupe spluttering and spouting nonsense as I am wont to do.

As I realized what was happening, I was overcome by a sense of quiet despair and sadness. I quieted down. We went to the Sushi restaurant for for a quiet supper. Choir rehearsal was the usual little bit of hell with people acting out. It’s my job.

On the other hand in between the banality, I rehearsed organ and piano. Excellent music by Francis Jackson and The Art of Fugue by Bach. The music keeps me going.

From the Aeneid Book VI – The New Yorker

My six issue discount subscription with the New Yorker is now over. I put the magazine on trial in my mind. Could I find anything redeeming or interesting in each issue besides the cartoons. This poem was a redeeming aspect of the last issue. I guess I’ll keep the subscription. I hope it’s not too expensive.

My deceased Father’s birthday is next Wednesday. This poem is about Aeneas’s father. The last lines of this translation of an excerpt I found haunting.

… And as he [Aeneas’s father] spoke he wept.
Three times he [Aeneas] tried to reach arms round that neck.
Three times the form, reached for in vain, escaped.
Like a breeze between his hands, a dream on wings.

FiveThirtyEight Explains Super Tuesday – On The Media

Okay. This is a podcast that On the Media excerpted recently that was done just prior to Tuesday’s primaries. In it, one of the staff talks about the fact that a large percentage of the American people (60 or so per cent) disapprove of Trump and that does not get reported much. I couldn’t find anything online to back this up. It would be a bit of comfort if it were true.

Super Tuesday Results 2016 – The New York Times

Trump’s victories yesterday are note surprise. But they are disturbing. I think that America has lost its bearing when so many people can vote for a personality so devoid of content and direction.

In ‘Half Earth,’ E.O. Wilson Calls for a Grand Retreat – The New York Times

A hero of mine.

After the concert the other night, Eileen and I ran into a couple of people from Our Lady of the Lake where I used to be music director. It was nice to see them. They are our age or a bit younger. The husband told me I was looking like a “retro hippie.” Then he said something like he meant a “hippie.”

I am definitely primitive (hippie?) in the way I see music. I need a visceral reaction these days, a feeling in my gut, to convince myself that something is music I want to hear. I do like all kinds of music. But like food, I prefer a balanced diet of well prepared and executed genres.

Recently, an organist from Grand Rapids mentioned on Vicebook that he had a parishioner request the Art of Fugue. He was, of course, bragging a bit. This reminded me how much I love this work. During my stressful marathon last week, I rehearsed Countrapunctus IX from it.

I will always hear it the way the Swingle Singers do it. I have been playing it much slower and going for accuracy, especially the duration of pitches. This is a bit tricky in such a thick texture.

Before my ballet audition on Sunday I was playing through it. Tim, the principal ballet master from the Connecticut based Nutmeg Ballet Conservatory, came over to the piano before beginning the class.

He saw my copy of “The Art of Fugue” sitting on the piano. He tapped it and said that he liked my playing of it. I told him I was still learning it.

When we parted later that day, after he had paid me, he said, “Good luck with The Art of Fugue.”

Funny how a little encouragement goes a long way these days for me.

I was touched that he remembered I was working on it and maybe even understood how rewarding it was for me to have first hand contact with this masterpiece.

Yesterday, when I went to practice organ, I meant to take my cheapo version of The Art of Fugue with me. It was transcribed from the original multiple staves to to two staves by Czerny in the 19th Century. The Dover edition is inexpensive. Fancier editions of this kind of thing (especially for piano) can be quite expensive. The nicer edition would have much less editorial additions. I use the Czerny at the piano and ignore his editing (dynamics, articulation and such).

Anyway I forgot to take it with me. So I went and thumbed through my organ music and found three versions of Contapunctus I. Right now, I am in love with the simple basic theme that runs through so many of these pieces.

I rehearsed Walcha’s version for organ (which for some reason I have a photocopy of) and decided to perform it soon at church.

This morning besides working on 9 I also worked on 1 and 2 from this work. I also contacted the guy on Vicebook in hopes he would tell me what version he was working from and if he recommends one.

I feel like a bit of an outsider (hippie) when talking to people in the rarefied world of academic music and the organ world. I know there are people in these fields that I have a lot in common with. However (besides my friend Rhonda) there are few around the Holland area who seem to see me with credibility. It’s hard to tell how much is the effect of being an intimidating old hippie musician and how much these people see me at all.

Nevertheless, I like the way I connect to the music in my life. It’s like that food analogy. Many musicians feel that the way they see their little slice of music is the only legitimate (existing?) way to connect to music. When I meet these people I am interiorly relieved that I don’t have to see music that way. That my retro hippie way fits me like a glove. I do love Art of Fugue.

I know I promised to talk about the rest of the concert I went to the other night, but I’m suspecting most of my readers are not that interested in more of that. I know Rhonda was interested, but she was at the concert and doesn’t need my blather about it.