For the first time in ages, Grace Episcopal celebrated a full Eucharist together in person yesterday. It was out of doors and the weather cooperated. Rev Jen kept some restrictions while guiding the community through this transition. She began with her mask on but she preached and the readers read  unmasked.  We all only received bread during communion and did so as we have been doing in small plastic sealed bags.

The piano trio played and did okay. I suspect  my violinist of having some misgivings about performing. I’m not sure what. I know she was having some issues with a last minute broken chin rest or something. Whatever it was she was able to borrow one to use yesterday. She seemed to play much softer out of doors than she usually plays at our weekly rehearsals. The only comment she made was that she deliberately played softer on the postlude because she was badly out of tune, but I and the cellist noticed it throughout the service.

Later when I was pondering our performance, it occurred to me how many people remarked to me personally on the music for the day. One of regular readers came up right after service and told me that the music was all good but he especially enjoyed the piano playing on “It’s a sweet, sweet spirit.”

The piano I use outdoors is one that is unusually loud. When I use it indoors I try to play softer. Yesterday I was conscious that even though I had the piano tuned specifically for this Eucharist, it still didn’t sound all that great, so I held back. My cellist said that she thought piano was not too loud and she is quick to tell me when it is, so I believe her.

The person complimenting me asked if I had improvised the accompaniment. I said yes  and that was the style.

One of the staff was very complimentary. And as I said several other people commented to me.

I mention this because it wasn’t until later in the day that I realized how many people had commented on the music. My emotional space is fragile after a performance and like many performers I think about how it could have been better.

But, it occurs to me that many of my parishioners are more like me in their musical taste than not. By that I mean, we all listen to a lot of music and probably like some of the same styles of music. Recently one of our readers replied to one of those Facebook silly challenges to date oneself by naming a concert you saw live. She surprised me when she said she had seen Zappa live. Cool.

The insight for me from all this is that it’s important for me to listen to people who listen to my music and like it. After all, it’s something we have in common since I strive to play music I like, even at church.

Today, I stumbled across an amazing performance on YouTube of Bach’s Cantata BWV 32. Gorgeous stuff. Here’s the link FWIW.

Edison, my cat, continues to adapt to being blind. So far, so good.

Dear Diary,

I know it’s been a while. A lots been going on with me. My cat is now functionally blind. He’s been like this since Monday. I need some time off, but feel duty bound to care for this animal in person at this stage.

My boss has told me I can take two Sundays off in June. My brother and his wife have consented for us to visit them a bit. However, I think I want to see how Edison (the cat) adapts to his new condition. He is eating well and purrs at me every morning when I pick him up. Eileen says it’s a bit lie having a roomba for a cat.

I finished Kindred by Octavia E.  Butler. I thought it was better than the “Sower” series which I liked. Her Lilith’s Brood came in at Readers World and I have already started reading it.

For some reason I have a real jones for Haydn right now. I am reading the Groves Dictionary article to refresh my memory about him.

Franz Joseph (Guiseppi) Haydn

I have been listening to symphonies and string quarters and piano trios by him.

Speaking of piano trios and being overwhelmed.  My piano trio rehearsed for this upcoming Pentecost Sunday yesterday. My boss decided to pretty much do a full Eucharist out of doors this week. She and I put our heads together on Wednesday and I madly prepped for my trio (hymns, service music). We had scheduled two Mozart Church sonatas with me playing the second violin part with my right hand on the organ and the right hand of the keyboard with my left hand on the organ. That’s how we have been rehearsing it.

Now, since we are outside, we will do it with me on piano covering these parts. This is more different than you might think. But yesterday’s rehearsal went fine.

Except at the end of an hour, I asked if my cohorts would want to run through the two movements of the Haydn piano trio before they left. Not so much. I don’t understand this because the music is as good as anything we have done. But maybe that’s my Haydn jones coming through.

I was gratified to see my Notre Dame prof, Ethan Haimo, in the bibliography of the Grover article on Haydn.

Ethan Haimo

I have picked up his book on Haydn again and am working my way carefully through it. It helps that all these scores are now online. The title is Haydn’s Symphonic Forms: Essays on Compositional Logic. It is brilliant. I took a course from him on Hadyn in grad school. I came away with a new appreciation of Haydn.

I googled Haimo and discovered he is living in Israel and teaching there. He impressed me at Notre Dame. He was a bit of an outlier being a pretty devout Jew and a quiet, brilliant guy. I keep thinking I will email him and let him know that at least of his students is still trying to understand Haydn.

Today’s project is to bibliography the twelve books I have interlibrary loaned. They are mostly, but not all, related to my Greek studies.

Eileen and I have been eating outdoors. The weather has been lovely. Last evening it took a turn for the warmer. We ended up putting on the air conditioning for the night. This morning we sat outside again and had breakfast. Eileen has the yard fixed up beautifully and there are Cardinals and other birds around. Very idyllic.

I continue to read poetry regularly. Also Shakespeare. Charles Burney, the great music historian, compared Haydn to Shakespeare. This is from the Online Groves:

Never, perhaps, was there a richer musical treat. It is not wonderful that to souls capable of being touched by music, HAYDN should be an object of homage, and even of idolatry; for like our own SHAKSPEARE he moves and governs the passions at will.  Charles Burney,  11 March 1791

I recently started another volume of Mary Karr’s poetry, Abacus. I really click with the way she uses language and images. I especially liked a poem called “Courage,” which begins

“This much is clear. You have to be alone
with your grief….

and then later:

“The songs will make it worse. You have
to be alone. Someone you loved is gone,
not dead, but step by step away from you
on purpose, no accident….

The dang thing doesn’t seem to be online or I would link it in. Well, enough. Time to go bibliograph some books and return them to the library.

I see myself as an outsider and a  lot of that is the influence of my Father and his Father. I am comfortable with who I am at this point in my life (69 years old). But I enjoyed listening to a poem called “The Old Man’s Lazy” by Peter Blue Cloud on a recent Poetry Magazine podcast.

Here’s a link to the pod cast (the poem begins around 17:38) and here’s a link to a blog post with the entire poem on it.

It’s in a new anthology, When The Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through edited by Joy Harjo. I have interlibrary loaned this book. It is the first Norton Anthology of Native Nations poems. Crazy,

“The Old Man’s Lazy”  is about a Native American who confronts an Indian agent and a white neighbor about fences. The narrator of the poem (the old man?) says that the agent complains about the broken down fence. In response, the narrator puts up a small shield with hawk feathers on it. But unfortunately, the agent only sees the feathers and does not look inside himself for his hawk.

The narrator goes on to say that someday he might tell the agent that he didn’t build the broken down fence. The white man who used to live next door did.

The narrator describes the fence new as a pretty fence. Here’s the section I like a lot

             It was 
a pretty fence, enclosing
that guy, and I felt lucky
to be on the outside
of it.

Later in the poem, the narrator’s children tell him he’s lucky to be living way out in the sticks.

I’m lucky to be on the outside as well.

I finished Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower yesterday. I started Kindred by her. Time to go read.

I had coffee with my illustrious colleagues, Rhonda and Jordan this morning. It was fun. Since its raining we met at Rhonda’s church under an overhang there and brought our own coffee.

I tried to listen at least as much as I gabbed. I found it amusing that after living in this town for over forty years, I am still spending time listening to people complain about Hope College. Some things don’t change that much. I had to share that with them.

Yesterday afternoon was a beautiful day here in Holland. I sat  in the backyard and read. Eileen put her hammock up and finally lay and listened to the waterfall she has put in her pond this year. This was a goal of hers.

I finished McBride’s Song Yet Sung. It’s a story about a young enslaved woman on the run. Like Harriet Tubman she has suffered a head wound, but in her case this seems to have given her visions of the future (which of course are wonderfully accurate and chilling). McBride draws three dimensional characters in a well told story. I enjoyed it. I think he writes beautifully.

Now I’m madly trying to finish Butler’s Parable of the Sower. I am anxious to start some other novels but would like to finish at least this one before beginning a new one.

I’m about half way through The Singapore Grip by J. G. Farrell. It is a merciless satirical critique of colonialism largely from the point of view of the hapless white people.

Using the word “hapless” reminds me that I recently heard Jon Meacham describe himself as a “hapless Episcopalian” then mutter that this was a redundancy. I do like him.

The Farrell is a New York Review of Books Classic and that’s why i chose to read it. So far, I have found that all of the books in this series are very readable and worthwhile.

I am also about half way through reading The Complete Enderby by Burgess. It is my go to read when I want something delightful and fun.

Plus my brother (Hi Mark!) surprised me with a  book in the mail which I am looking forward to checking out, Shake It Up: Great American Writing on Rock and Pop from Elvis to Jay Z edited by Jonathan Lethem and Kevin Dettmar. Thank you, Mark!

Excuse me I have to go read.