I need to blog a bit and compose before I leave for work this morning. I had strange, disturbing rather wonderful dreams last night. Hard to explain, except that they led my morning musing and thinking in the dark about the fears of others.

I began to wonder if the reason some people keep me at a distance might be their own fear of intimacy. In my second wonderful dream last night I found myself embracing people. They responded guardedly but they did respond.

In my waking, I thought of specific people in my life right now and began to wonder if the vulnerability in intimacy made them uncomfortable.

When I was younger, I realized that I was the kind of person who “wears their heart on their sleeve.” I could move quickly into intimacy with people. I saw this as both an asset and a deficit and sought to control it but not change it in myself.

As I matured, I realized that my passion (and probably knowledge) put people off. The intensity blocked my ability to connect with people and I adjusted my expressions of this even as I grew more and more to value passion in all people.

Also in my second dream last night, I watched a bunch of 20 something people sitting on a couch watching videos on a screen. After each video they applauded. I was struck by how this weird this was. Later I asked them as a group why people clapped at movies.

Of course people don’t clap at movies, but that’s the phrase that came out.

In my first dream, Eileen and I somehow had accepted an invite to a compound where we would be  inundated with attempts to sell us on something. The music was new agey as we lay in our room.  On the wall to the right of the bed was a fantastic colorful intricate multi-level puppet show that was somehow demonstrating the product. Next to it was a large screen where more stories were being told about the product. Once in a while an actual person popped out of nowhere to join the fantastic story. I remember one goofy man clad in a blue suit like the god Mercury. He descended on rope from above and into the ongoing story and then made an exit.

Soon the room was full of people. Some of them were surreal in their get-up. One woman had a name tag which read something like “EVE no. 24.” She was sort of dressed like a nurse or a candy striper.

By this time, Eileen had disappeared. I was getting concerned and began searching for her. As I searched I looked behind walls and in other rooms and everything looked like a set for a movie.

This dream led me to think about how maybe people are not only afraid of intimacy. Maybe they fear reality.

Finally, in my morning reading, I discovered that William Carlos Williams recommended Ginsberg’s poem “Kaddish” to Thomas Merton. This was in a note to one of WCW’s poems. This brings together three people I admire and who have influenced me greatly.

There was a time when I was more concerned with my own spirituality that I read most of everything Thomas Merton wrote including several volumes of his personal journals.

I still admire him, but am grateful and relieved that my preoccupation with liturgical prayer has dampened a bit.

Ah…. the “recovering” church musician who keeps falling off the wagon.

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Santorum’s Gospel of Inequality – NYTimes.com

This article surprised me by saying there are Democrats whose polls say Obama will easily take Michigan this year. I know this little western section of Michigan where I live is a unique area of Calvinism and  conservatism. But I do wonder if this is accurate.

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For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage – NYTimes.com

My how things change.  I know that my own attitude toward marriage in general is not very strong. On the other hand, I am very very glad that I am living with my wife.

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Venezuelans Criticize Hugo Chávez’s Support of El Sistema – NYTimes.com

Interesting conundrum for people who support the arts but despise their leader.

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Drones With an Eye on the Public Cleared to Fly – NYTimes.com

I find the use of drones, especially to kill people, chilling. It reminds me of the movie, “The End of Violence.”

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Ji Chaozhu, Man on Mao’s Right, at Center of History – NYTimes.com

A fly on the wall of history.

I was glad the writer used Zelig as a metaphor and not Forrest Gump.

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I have been thinking a bit about Ray’s comment to the previous post about not allowing his students to use Wikipedia as a reference for research papers or as a source for himself for anything other than quick checks.

Ray was responding to an article I linked in which tells a disturbing story about how Wikipedia values proliferation of inaccurate information if it exists in enough secondary sources. Also, disturbing that it doesn’t accept primary sources as references.

Another excellent online source that I routinely use is IMSLP. This stands for International Music Score Library Project. It has many many music scores online for use for free. Mostly legal. I have followed this web site since first learning of it years ago. I’ve noticed a recent trend. They are putting up more and more original early source scores. So that one can see Bach’s handwriting of a piece one is working on.

This trends against Wikipedia in that these scores are often the primary source of the music.

Besides this development (original music scores online) it occurs to me that much good research is getting more and more difficult. I finished my Masters in ’87. The Internet was around then but the “World Wide Web” was still developing I think. I took a class in music bibliography. I learned what the basic tools for current music research were and how to use many of them. These of course were all books and articles.

But now I think we in a different time. As David Weinberger says in this week’s On the Media show radio program, it is an “awesome time to be a knowledge seeker and also a good time to be a complete idiot…” Or at least something to that effect. His point was that knowledge is no longer limited by controls or filters.

He was speaking as the author of Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room.

So what to do. I think that Howard Rheingold has some interesting ideas around this. (see his “Participatory Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies” for example). In other places he talks about new kinds of literacies. He raised his daughter in the late 90s and walked her through using the internet to learn and do research. He developed the idea of “crap detector” which is just another word for knowing the credibility of your research tools or sources of information. This is not an easy task these days.

I was chatting to Eileen about this and toying with the idea of “provenance.”

The Oxford English Dictionary (online edition) gives these definitions of “provenance.”

2. The fact of coming from some particular source or quarter; origin, derivation.

1999 Independent on Sunday 6 June i. 13/2 Consumers who are weary of?scrutinising labels for production methods and provenance, are latching on to organic food as a safe haven.

I like to read the quotes that follow each definition. Since this is the online edition they keep it up with newer usage quotes. Very cool.

3. The history of the ownership of a work of art or an antique, used as a guide to authenticity or quality; a documented record of this.

A distinction is sometimes drawn between the ‘origin’ and the ‘provenance’ of an article, as in quot. 1960.

1960 E. A. Lowe Eng. Uncial 21 A Canterbury origin is probable, Canterbury provenance is certain.

1967 J. N. Barron Lang. of Painting 156 Provenance, a history or pedigree of a painting: the establishment of the identity of successive owners since its execution. Also included would be all published documents, catalogues, and journals that contain references to the painting, along with reproductions, exhibitions, and sales records, as well as correspondence, especially of the artist, in which mention of it may be made.

1989 L. Deighton Spy Line xv. 208, I know what he’s after: a written statement about the clock’s condition and history. That sort of provenance affects the price in auction.

2003 Wired July 43/3 A panel of experts?declined to authenticate the canvas. Without knowing its provenance?they can’t be sure Horton’s find is legit.

So I’m wondering if scholarly citations will begin to include a provenance which would include ideas like who made the website, what are their credentials, what is the bigger conversation around this idea,  how accurate is the information….

Just a thought.

Seconds after I mentioned this to Eileen, I read this sentence in article I was reading in an online article:

So who cares about the provenance and the so-called errors?

Kind of creepy coincidence. The author of the sentence, Martin Stannard, was referring to dilemmas posed by translations of Chinese poetry. (link to the whole article).

Earlier I had been reading William Carlos Williams’ translations of Chinese poetry. I recognized one by Li Po/Rihaku/Li Bao (all the same dude). I had read Ezra Pound’s translation of this poem many years ago and it made a profound impression on me. I went and pulled my copy from the library and read it again.

Pound and WCW knew each other. They were colleagues but WCW embraced the American experience and language (He said something like “I don’t write English, I write American”). This is opposed to Pound’s odd version of embracing classicism.

Stannard’s cavalier attitude stems from his goal of thinking about poetry and its beauty not its scholarship.

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This is cool.

Here’s a review of a performance.

Leif Ove Andsnes Playing Haydn, Bartok, Debussy and Chopin – NYTimes.com

And here’s the recording of it online to stream.

Carnegie Hall Live: Leif Ove Andsnes Performs Haydn, Chopin and More – WQXR

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Moochers Against Welfare – NYTimes.com

This article carries this startling fact: “44 percent of Social Security recipients, 43 percent of those receiving unemployment benefits, and 40 percent of those on Medicare say that they “have not used a government program.” There is an attribution in the article…. heh

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I have kind of a weird relationship with the idea of community and social networks. I think they are important. But I also feel like I’m pretty isolated from other professionals.

A lot of my work in church is to attempt to create community. I believe that musical performances in general create communities. This is also the theory for a lot of church: people who participate in singing are more unified and connected.

So it’s kind of ironic that I think of myself as so isolated.

Eileen has today off work. She gets every other Friday off and works every other Saturday. This morning she and I walked to the library, then to the coffee shop, then to the bookstore.

We passed a man on a ladder in front of the marquis for the Park Theater. We greeted each other.

I recognized him as Bob a local business owner who was instrumental in promoting the street musician program. He also sponsors concerts at the Park Theater.

His shop is Globe Design and Vision. I would patronize it but he sells designer eye frames that are a bit upscale and not of interest to me.

Then a block or so later we saw a woman who works at the Holland Downtown Development office.  I remember when she first arrived in Holland. She was a member of the Catholic parish where I worked and sang in the choir under my direction. She greeted us.

I started musing on the fact that I actually am sort of part of a local community. I’m definitely connected more and more to the people at the church where I work.

Maybe I am part of a community.

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The New Haven Experiment – NYTimes.com

A teacher’s union that is actually supporting standards of excellence for teachers.

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This War Is Not Over Yet – NYTimes.com

This article made me think about the indefinite detention policy of the USA and it’s relationship to declaring recent wars at an end.

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Sony Apologizes for Whitney Houston Price Hike in U.K. | Music News | Rolling Stone

Sony says it was an unfortunate mistake they raised the price on Whitney Houston albums to cash in on her death. Honest.

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The Death of the Cyberflâneur – NYTimes.com

I missed this article when it came out.  I had not heard of the concept of flâneur before. I like the way this guys thinks about the internet.

The term flâneur comes from the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of “stroller”, “lounger”, “saunterer”, “loafer”—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means “to stroll”. Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of “a person who walks the city in order to experience it. [link to wikipedia article source]

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The ‘Undue Weight’ of Truth on Wikipedia – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education

I had reservations about Wikipedia when it first began. But then I became more comfortable when I realized how flawed most reference books are anyway. This story made me more skeptical of Wikipedia’s general accuracy and worth.

“Wikipedia is not ‘truth,’ Wikipedia is ‘verifiability’ of reliable sources. Hence, if most secondary sources which are taken as reliable happen to repeat a flawed account or description of something, Wikipedia will echo that.”

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I woke early and alternated between dozing in the dark and feeling pressed about stuff. One thing on my mind was my unfinished piano trio composition. On Monday morning I had in mind to try and have a version of it ready for today’s rehearsal. Then Tuesday morning when I was struggling with a section in it I received a phone call from the cellist saying she would have to leave early on the day I had scheduled to perform this piece. It was to have been a postlude. I immediately dropped working on it and turned my limited time and energy to other pressing tasks.

Then yesterday in the midst of a pretty busy day I received an email from the cellist saying she was wrong. She would not have to leave early. Unfortunately I had very few minutes to spare in my schedule yesterday so I put it out of my mind.

Sometimes when I’m working on a piece I actually begin work laying in the morning darkness before I get up.

This morning one of the pressing things in my mind was wondering if I could get together some kind of version for today’s rehearsal before leaving for my morning ballet class.

When I got up I decided not to work on the piece. Instead I followed my usual morning pattern of weighing myself, taking my blood pressure, making coffee and then sitting and reading poetry.

My blood pressure was low as it has been so I had not raised it with my thoughts in the dark. As I read poetry I could literally feel my mind and body relax. What I think of as Alpha waves washed over me.

Sometimes this feeling of well being comes to me unbidden as it did this morning.

I realized that I had done the right thing.  I easily have the discipline to get right to work first thing in the morning. But practically my reason for wanting to have a version of the composition done for today was courtesy to the other players.

The first section has the cello and violin playing the melody in long slow accent notes notes. Very very easy for them. The piano is madly playing an elaborate version of the melody in canon to them. In the second section I planned to reverse the roles of importance and give the melody to the piano and the interesting stuff to the strings.

The first draft was pretty elaborate and I wondered if they would have time to learn it. Hell, I wonder if I will have time to learn my part which is not all that easy. But I was dissatisfied with this draft. In the subsequent very different versions I came up with each one was a bit simpler for the strings than the one before.

Finally the way my thinking is at this point in the composing process this second section will probably be pretty easy for the strings. So I decided that not forcing the issue and making something for today is probably a wise thing. I need time to think creatively, to let my ideas gestate. This will give me some.

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All together now: Montaigne and the art of co-operation | Books | The Guardian

“My premise about co-operation is that we frequently don’t understand what’s passing in the hearts and minds of people with whom we have to work. Yet just as Montaigne kept playing with his enigmatic cat, so too a lack of mutual understanding shouldn’t keep us from engaging with others; we want to get something done together”

I am quite fond of Montaigne’s essays.

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AnDa Union

This group of young Mongolians musicians living in Hohhot, China continue to blow me away. They are on Spotify FWIW.

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Dull Tool Dim Bulb

old time religion by Jim Linderman

Vintage Sleaze

Recently ran across these three collector blogs all made by a guy in Grand Haven (a city just north of here).

Jim Linderman Collects It All, Vintage Sleaze to Baptism Photos – NYTimes.com

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The money has gone, so make love our alternative currency | Life and style | The Guardian

I do admire Jeanette Winterson poet and author of this article.

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Thus ends my winter break with Hope College. I’m not exactly refreshed, but at least I approach my relentless schedule with a sort of calm.

I am scheduled to take my Mom to her new psychologist this morning. I asked the In Home Care people who have been helping Mom to assist her with being up and bathed and ready to roll at 7:45 AM.

Yesterday was sort of a “Mom” day for me. I was on the phone with her health care providers for much of the day. I went to speak with her banker to clear up some misunderstandings around my Power of Attorney. At this point I suspect I inadvertently gave them an old version which confused the matter. It was easy to give them the new one.

After I spoke to the psychologist office yesterday, I downloaded and printed up the entry questionnaire. Before my meeting with the pastoral staff at work, I stopped by and helped Mom fill out this questionnaire.

The staff meeting went better than I expected. We are developing new models of inter-dependent schedules.

I am reconsidering completing the piece I spent so much time working on Monday and Tuesday. At least I could complete it and my piano trio could run through it in rehearsal and I could hear what it sounds like with real players.

I am stuck on the middle section, so I will have to come up with something that satisfies me before I’ll print up a working version to read through.

I don’t see a performance for it in the future, however. It’s based on a Lenten hymn tune (Erhalt uns). So that limits when it would be appropriate to perform at church. At least in my mind it does.

Eileen was ill with a cold all day yesterday. I didn’t bother with Valentine stuff because she was so miserable. She outfoxed me and handed me a little chocolate heart. Usually she doesn’t give me anything for Valentine’s day and usually I manage to get her a flower or something. Yesterday we reversed this.

I did my usual morning reading of poetry and non-fiction this morning. Finished off the section in William Carlos Williams’ collect poems which represents Journey to Love, a little book he published in 1955. It has some beautiful love poetry to his wife and to life in general. He was in seventies.

I was surprised that he quoted a line from Spenser in it. “Sweet Thames run softly till I end my song.”

I didn’t recognize this particularly. I learned it from the notes. The surprise is that it ends up also being a reference to a use of this line by T. S. Eliot in Section III of “The Wasteland.”

This is surprising because WCW seems to have situated himself in opposition to Eliot’s academic aesthetic. As usual, there’s more to it than the simple reactive stance of disdain.

Moved from poetry to the online version of Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self Deception by Daniel Goleman. This books does fascinate me. Finished the introduction this morning.

In it, he compares denial to the physical blind spot at the back of the eye. He even has the little cross and square that you can use to see your own blind spot printed in the book.

He also compares denial to photo cropping and physical framing of pictures.

He states clearly the thesis of his  book:

“The mind can protect itself against anxiety by dimming awareness. This mechanism creates a blind spot: a zone of blocked attention and self-deception. Such blind spots occur at each major level of behavior from the psychological to the social.”  Daniel Goleman, Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self Deception

He ends the introduction with this clear and helpful idea:

“our collective predicament: if we so easily lull ourselves into subtle sleep, how can we awaken? The first step, it seems to me, is to notice how it is that we are asleep.” Daniel Goleman, Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self Deception

I spent most of yesterday composing. Got up early this morning and got right back to it. I have been working on a piece for my piano trio to perform as a postlude on Feb 26.About twenty minutes ago I received a phone call from the cellist  saying she would have to leave early that day. This means no cello on the postlude. As I picked up the phone, I was struggling with the middle section of the piece as she called.

Now I don’t have to struggle, I guess. I could adapt it to just piano and violin. I’ve already done a little messing with this. I don’t think that’s going to work. Mostly I just feel like I got the breath knocked out of me. Ah well.  We’ll still do a movement from a Mozart piano trio as the prelude.

Eileen is home sick with a cold. I took her up some tea, juice and toast a little bit ago. I now have a bad case of the blahs. I have to meet with the pastoral staff at church this afternoon. We’re supposed to brain storm ways to work together better. I suppose I’ll muster some brain power for that.

I guess now I can concentrate on tasks that need to be done today, since there’s no need to finish this composition. I’m pretty funny about writing music. I like to write it for specific players to be played on a specific occasion.  I’ve actually been this way most of my life. Now this helps, because my work is so non-marketable.

Of course it would help if I would submit some of it for possible publication. But you can guess I’m not feeling too up for that right now.

On the up side, I had a lovely chat with my oldest daughter last night. She’s rockin in New York.

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Mart’s Art is Not Just Smart | Standpoint

With a PR smoothichops leading the country and a circus barker as Mayor of London, must we go in for unseemly puffery in the arts as well.

I liked this quote. The link is to a review of a new bio of Martin Amis.

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A Peaceful, But Very Interesting Pursuit – The Rumpus.net

Interesting article on how T.S. Eliot actually enjoyed his day job.

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Reading John Leonard: A Tribute | The Nation

boomarked to read.

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Daddy Issues – Magazine – The Atlantic

Also bookmarked to read. This is about wanting your elderly father to just get over with and die.

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On my google calendar, I have set aside Mondays with the label “Steve composes himself.” It has been a long time since I have had time and energy to do this (relax, drink a cup of coffee, stare out the window and compose music). But today Hope College is on break and I have promised myself that I will basically compose and read today and put off all the little tasks hanging over my head (call my Mom’s doctors, call my Mom’s banker and other stuff).

So far this is working great. I woke up with an idea for a composition. Got up and started sketching it. Read some poetry and non-fiction. Had breakfast with beautiful wife. Put out the garbage (can’t delay that task plus it’s not really onerous to me). Played some Grieg on the piano (don’t ask me why… I associate this composers with the deceased mother of an old friend of mine whom I seem to remember loved Grieg… I could be confused about that.) Composed some more.

Now it’s time to blog a bit.

I ran across a very interesting title in the footnotes of In Search of the Missing Elephant this morning.

When I googled this book one of the auto fills in the google search ended in PDF. When I searched that way, sure enough, there is the whole dang book apparently online in a PDF (link to the pdf). It’s not available in a ebook, but I interlibrary-loaned a hard copy this morning as well.

In the PDF I read that Goleman’s thinking began with a fascinating discussion with Gregory Bateson. Bateson has been on my radar for a while. He was married to Margaret Mead for a while.

Mary Catherine Bateson was their daughter.

I have read books and learned stuff from all three of these people.

Bateson is described on wikipedia as ” an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. In the 1940s he helped extend systems theory/cybernetics to the social/behavioral sciences, and spent the last decade of his life developing a “meta-science” of epistemology to bring together the various early forms of systems theory developing in various fields of science.”

It’s those meta systems that caught Goleman’s imagination.

Goleman quotes Bateson from a conversation they had:

The pattern which connects….

is a ‘metapattern,’ a pattern of patterns. More often than not, we fail to see it. With the exception of music, we have been trained to think of patterns as fixed affairs. The truth is that the right way to begin to think about the pattern which connects is as a dance of interacting parts, secondarily pegged down by various sorts of physical limits and by habits, and by the naming of states and component entities.’ Bateson

Goleman continues in his preface:

“A dance of interacting parts. The pattern that connects. The ideas stuck with me. Over the next few years they gave shape to a search of my own… A seminar with Erving Goffman, the sociologist of ordinary encounters, led me to see how the ground rules of face-to-face interaction keep us comfortable by ruling some zones of awareness out-of-bounds. Research on the psychobiology of consciouness showed me how cognition—and so out experience itself—is the product of a delicate balance between vigilance and inattention.

These disparate bits of evidence struck me as clues to a pattern, one that repeated in complementary ways at each major level of behavior–biological, psychological , social.”

Anyway this shit fascinates me. It combines my interests in system thinking (Friedman), awareness (why do so many people seem unaware) and deception (we are surrounded by lies… we tell lies).

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Charles Murray, Author of ‘The Bell Curve,’ Steps Back Into the Ring – Faculty – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Tried to read The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Murray when it came out.

His bias was so evident to me I couldn’t make it through the book. Now the thinking of Donald N. Michael helps me see how objectivity and reason fail to cover the entire spectrum of understanding needed in our contemporary situation. And that all of us are inside a time that is chaotic and that we trust our objectivity at our own peril. Jes sayin’

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A High-Tech War on Leaks – NYTimes.com

Ironic that Obama’s administration is the worse one yet as far creating and maintaining transparency.

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Amazon.com: Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves Administrative Files Selected Records Bearing on the History of the Slave Narratives eBook: Work Projects Administration: Kindle Store

If you click on this link and look at the “Customers who bought this item also bought” selections you will find a ton of free Slave narratives. Very cool. Thanks to brother Mark for pointing to this.

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Activist: Syrian army uses human shields on tanks – CNN.com

The use of human shields makes me physically ill. Man’s inhumanity to man indeed.

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I knew a stripper once. Her name was Sassy. I remember her two ways. First, she had this corny act where she danced around with a fake man who was actually attached to her body. Her audience at the time was a hundred national guard reserve soldiers drinking in a large rock-n-roll bar where I was playing. They were loud and lewd. One of them tried to put a bottle up her privates as she stooped. She turned and looked furious as she cursed at the entire group.

The other way I remember her was having breakfast with the band. I was in the band. She was gentle, calm, tired and old. She was like a mother. She was a mother and talked about her kid in Chicago (Was it Chicago?).

She came to mind this morning as I read William Carlos Williams’ twelve page poem entitled, “Desert Music.” It’s the last poem in a collection he published in 1954 by the same name. Williams was 71 in 1954 (I was three). I gather that at  this point he had already spent time in a mental hospital being treated for depression. He wrote a striking poem about it called “The Mental Hospital Garden” which is also in Desert Music (the collection, not the poem).

Reading the poem this morning affected me in some striking ways. I remembered Sassy. But I also struggled to reconcile WCW’s stark poem which describes a visit to Mexico with his wife with Steve Reich’s composition, “Desert Music.” I seem to have read somewhere about Reich’s connection with the desert (I think it was Reich). It seems that he was driving across the desert and he began to hear music. I at least  can imagine this sound in his compositions and especially in “Desert Music.”

This is a choral/orchestra piece and uses words from WCW’s book, “Desert Music.” But it doesn’t draw any text from the poem I read this morning.

I wondered about that. The feeling in the poem and the composition are completely different. After reading the poem, “Desert Music,” I began to feel differently about Reich’s work. I still like it. But it doesn’t seem to be at all about what WCW captures in his poem.

WCW is writing about the underside of life in general and American life in specific. He is captive of the details of life however sordid and makes music from them. Reich says something different to me. His beautiful music speaks the language of vision and open spaces. WCW writes about strippers, child beggars, and revels in experience.

I haven’t read the notes about the poem yet. It’s very specific in its description of a visit to Juarez. I went to Juarez as a child with my family. I found Mexico fascinating and frightening. I remember Juarez and Tijuana and the border crossings (The guard stepped into the trailer we were towing. “Special rate,” he grinned in a sterotypic Mexican accent I would later associate with Cheech and Chong, “Ten dollars for the whole trailer.” He was telling my Dad how much his bribe would be. My Dad paid him.).

There is an enigmatic figure in the poem that begins and ends it. It might be a huddled refugee-like figure sleeping under a bridge between Juarez and El Paso. (“Is it alive?—neither a head, legs nor arms!… an inhuman shapelessness, knees hugged right up into the belly Egg-shaped! What a place to sleep!”)

For my money, WCW gets America. He understands us, his “Desert Music” sprawls and is rough like an old blues tune.

In the last lines, he jogged another association for me. His poetic narrator hears something. It is music. “… as when Casals struck and held a deep cello tone and I am speechless    .” (The space after the last word is something WCW does occasionally. I notice when he is quoted this is rarely duplicated)

Pablo Casals has been a pretty huge figure in my life. He led me to the Bach cellos suites. I read his autobiography. I have stood in his Catalan home ground.

Breathing is good. In the middle of the night last night, I sat up wheezing unable to draw a good breath. I frightened Eileen to death (who probably expects me to pop off from a heart attack some night since I talk about death a lot). After several long minutes, I began to be able to breathe. It was a frightening experience. Another reason to be glad to be alive.

I got up this morning and did some more composing. I am doing SATB settings of melodies with the name St. Nicholas. I have had the idea for a while that it would be fun to write three organ pieces based on tunes whose names are the names of my three grandchildren.

I keep finding tunes named St. Nicholas. I even sketched a little organ beginning a few years ago. I thought maybe I could jump start myself by starting over completely, since I wasn’t satisfied with the previous approach.

I began with the melody in the Lutheran Book of Worship (#167) which is  usually called HERR ICH HABE MISGEHANDELT and was composed by Johann Cruger (1598-1662). I did two completely different harmonizations. Here are the midi recordings of these two harmonizations.

I then did a little organ setting.

In the organ setting I used the technique of dividing the piece up into sections based on each line. Each line of the melody is preceded by a short counterpuntal introduction which uses motives from the line it is introducing.

Interestingly I was pleased with all the settings I wrote yesterday.

This morning I turned to the tune named St. Nicholas in the new version of the hymnal, Hymns, Ancient and Modern: Revised. I quite like this little hymnal. I purchased it and The New English Hymnal when I visited England for the first time in 2000. I bought them at the gift shop at Westminster Abbey.

The tune in HA&M (as Lord Peter Wimsey refers to it) was composed by one W. Ellis who lived from 1868 to 1947. It’s a solid example of beautiful English romantic melodies and harmonization.

I found it an interesting challenge to reharmonize it because Ellis made the  melody more harmonic dependent than the sturdy Cruger tune in the LBW.

I’m not as pleased with this reharmonization as I am with yesterday’s, but still I think I learned something doing it.

There is a tune in The Hymnal 1940 also called St. Nicholas. I put it in Finale, but am not considering using except as maybe the subject of another little compositional exercise. What interested me about this one is that it was paired with a translation of the Phos Hilaron which is a very early Christian hymn that was sung as the lights in the home were lit. I admire the text and have seen some very cool musical settings of it.

I know this is a lot of shop talk today, but it’s what’s on my mind.

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my dead father

returns to me damaged

in my dreams

between broken harpsichords

and impossible music

10/14/11

I need to keep it brief today because I have another busy day ahead of me.

I accomplished quite a bit yesterday. I met my Mom’s psych nurse when we dropped by to invite Mom to have lunch with Eileen and me at the cafeteria where she lives. I also had Mom sign a release form for the pain doctor and dropped that off.

After lunch with Mom, I went over to the church and chose several anthems from the extensive library of choral music there.

So now we have some more excellent music to prepare. I decided we should sing “Create in Me” by Brahms for Ash Wed.

It’s the first movement of the piece. Here’s a video of the full piece. We are only singing the slow beginning section. I quite like what follows. we will sing it in English.

Also planning to sing “Adoramus Te, Christe” by Mozart for the first Sunday in Lent. I had chosen a much simpler adaptation of Mozart but I think “Adoramus Te” is lovely and it was sitting in the files.

This is the best video of it I could find. This indicates that it is erroneously attributed to Mozart. If that’s the case it doesn’t diminish my estimation of the it. I still think it’s a decent little piece.

After choosing music, I played a ballet class. Came home and did more phoning and connecting with Mom’s health care providers.

The young player I am accompanying this morning had arranged for a 5:30 rehearsal, but he canceled at the last minute.

I was both disappointed (for his sake) and relieved (for mine). Eileen and I decided to go for drinks and dinner. We always seem to find each other’s company relaxing after a tough day. And the martinis don’t hurt either, heh.

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Violins, Old and New – NYTimes.com

Interesting letter from a violinist.

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Mike Kelley, Influential American Artist, Dies at 57 – NYTimes.com

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Dorothea Tanning, Surrealist Painter, Dies at 101 – NYTimes.com

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I’ve had a busy morning already. I worked on an accompaniment I am playing tomorrow. The piece is a Flute Sonata by Platti which has been arranged for Saxophone and Piano.

When I say arranged, I really mean arranged. The editor, Eugene Rousseau took tremendous liberties with Platti’s original composition.

I was poking around online and found what looks like a copy of a contemporary version of the pieces (link to the PDF). Very interesting to compare this version with the performing version I am working from. I would like to see a better edition of this piece, but don’t think this information would be very helpful at this stage (the day before the performance).

I did use the manuscript to add a couple bass notes where Rousseau completely abandons the bass line in a way that feels inadvertent to me.

I’m trying to take this terrible edition on its own terms so that I could do a good job for the young Saxophonist I am accompanying.

I like this performance which goes a bit slower than Platti recommends (but still seems to be using his edition.

The harpsichord is nice touch. Not sure what kind of music this becomes when rendered in this way. Certainly neo-baroque.

So I spent a good deal of time this morning rehearsing the accompaniment.

Then, I started doing the leg work for my Mom’s continuity of care issues.

My son introduced me to this idea. I understand “continuity of care” to mean connecting multiple health providers with information from each other and providing over view and asking questions.

Mom has not recovered from her recent fall. She is not as sore as she was, but she is complaining of back pain now and taking as many pain meds as she is allowed (1 every six hours). She has been holed up in her room for days.  Yesterday I spoke to her internist’s office and found that they hadn’t contacted the pain doctor. I also talked to her psychologist’s office.

Her psychologist requested a fax of her current med list at Maplewood and recommended a psychiatrist to replace her talk shrink who retired. I called Maplewood this morning and requested they fax the info the psychologist requested. They had the slightly encouraging news that Mom went down for breakfast (first time she has gone to the cafeteria there in days – weeks?) Then booked Mom in for an eval with her new talk shrink.

Busy busy busy.

Eileen and I discussed having lunch with Mom today. We would do this by joining her at the cafeteria where she lives. I have not called her because this entails her getting up and walking across the room to the phone (which is inconveniently placed not by where she sits but by her bed across the room).

I am planning to drop by this morning and have Mom sign a release form so that her pain doctor (who is truly a pain) will at least talk to me.

I also have to drop by the college and turn in my time sheet so I will get paid.

Only one class today. Tomorrow I drive to GR to accompany an 11th grade Saxophonist (mentioned above) then dash madly back to accompany Joffrey Ballet Company tryouts at Hope College.

I miss being a bum, but I like all the stuff I’m doing. I just wish had a whole day off now and again.

Silly me.

Yesterday after the ballet instructor described to her class how 2 dancers dealt with an onstage crisis in a performance a student commented that it showed “presence of mind.” The phrase leapt out at me.

I think it might describe what’s missing from so much of my interaction with people and also much of what passes for rhetorical and political commentary.

Ballet class is an exception to this. Thinking and mind are definitely present there. The teacher’s response to the student’s observation (about “presence of mind”) was “Problem solving!” This is a theme of hers.

I also brushed with present minds briefly (and surprisingly) yesterday when John Erskine, an acquaintance of mine introduced me to Billy Mayer, an art teacher at Hope. We sat and ate salads and chatted about music and art.  I later confided to my wife how seldom this kind of connection happens to me these days. Very pleasant to discuss Zappa, Juan Munoz, King Crimson, guitars, guitar playing, recording, Steve Reich, and other stuff over lunch with a new acquaintance. I’m hoping I get to chat with this dude again soon.

A positive approach to “presence of mind,” however, would be to think of cultivating one’s own “presence of mind.” I abhor the squishy phrase I have sometimes heard that a person is not being “present” to another. That’s not what I mean at all. I’m thinking of “presence of mind” more as being aware and awake, something probably nobody does all the time. We all go unconscious or miss stuff. But like many things I think of it as something to strive for.

I was reading (actually re-reading) Bacevich’s The Limits of Power this morning and believe that his writing and ideas exhibit a certain presence of mind. I was struck by his assessment of the political crisis in the United States right now. Basically he says the government doesn’t work. He quotes the preamble to the Constitution as a definition of the task of government. You know. “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Our current system of government, having abandoned the idea of a system of checks and balances (power continues to concentrate itself in the executive, while the Incumbent Party in the Congress concentrates on getting re-elected) is “dysfunctional” in Bacevich’s estimate. “Grossly incompetent” is another way he describes it. Writing in 2008, he mentions the “bungled efforts to ‘reform”the Social Security and health-care systems,” attempts to “fix the immigration policy,” “the inanity of the ‘war on drugs,” and the “ill-starred federal response to Hurricane Katrina.”

Since then one could add many more at random:  the unseemly display of brinkmanship around the federal debt and the confusion of the recent bill to fund the military pop to my mind.

Anyway, it doesn’t seem like many U.S. politicians exhibit “presence of mind” these days. Just how it seems to me on an exhausted Thursday morning, of course.

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The Atheist Who Challenged Cranston, R.I. – NYTimes.com

Letters to the editor in response to the recent successful challenge of a young atheist to a prayer posted at her school.

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Paavo Berglund, Finnish Conductor, Dies at 82 – NYTimes.com

Winston Riley, Jamaican Music Producer, Is Dead at 68 – NYTimes.com

Two obits which sent me scurrying to look up music by these guys.

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Don N. Michael concludes his essay, “With Both Feet Planted Firmly in the Air,” talking about telling stories.

He is specifically talking about how people who claim to be thinking and planning about the future (i.e. everybody) would benefit from framing their ideas in stories and then examining the stories they tell.

The essays in In Search of the Missing Elephant (by Michael and in which the essay mentioned above resides) are directed toward technological and business oriented thinkers who are developing and thinking about what comes next.

Any clarity about this usually, in Michael’s estimate, creates enough discomfort to cause denial.  Michael says we live in “turbulent” times. This puts it mildly.

I love the way he embraces the chaotic as he tries to outline how to think about who each of is and where we are going.

“All worthy stories are first and foremost occasions, mirrors and contexts…”

He is using “story” in the sense, I believe, of what we say to ourselves about who we are.  This what is meant by “existential.”

He quotes Seymour Sarson who summarizes the basic existential questions:

” How to dilute the individual’s sense of aloneness in the world;

How to engender and maintain a sense of community:

and How to justify living even though one die.”

Semour Sarson, from “The nature of problem solving in social action,” American Psychologist , April 1978, pp 370-390 quoted in Don M. Michael’s In Search of The Missing Elephant

Succinct enough. I was pleased to read in an ensuing paragraph that Michael is intent on enlarging questions “futurists” ask to include asking themselves, “What is it all for?” and “Why am I doing what I am?”

These are the kinds of questions I think about and even sometimes raise in talks with people who are trying to think.

Then Michael talks about the term, “compassionate learners.” He calls compassionate learning a “precondition for a humane future.”

By using the word, “compassion,” Michael specifically means to recognize THREE things:

1. Nobody, including myself, really knows what they are doing

2. Everyone is, to some profound degree, living in illusions…. believing in the “factness” of their world instead of seeing its arbitrarily and unconsciously constructed reality.

3. Everyone needs all the clarity they can muster, regarding their own ignorance and finiteness…

I almost didn’t put this stuff up today since I’m mostly mulling over these ideas and am not really to the point that I can pull them together for myself.

But instead, I basically am throwing up (regurgitating?) the wisdom for anybody who reads this.

A couple last ideas.

First, discovery and being open to unfamiliar ideas and experiences requires a basic stance of vulnerability (again this is from Michael of course).

Even back in 1985 he could see that “those willing to risk a learning stance will be destroyed by the power hungry and hostile” unless compassion becomes a norm for a humane world.

In other words the whole deal is rather impossible.

But Michael looks this right in the face when he insists that he is “hopeful” but not “optimisitic.”

This distinction is very helpful to me.

Hope: the feeling that what is wanted can be had (verb: to believe, desire, or trust) link to source

Optimism: a disposition or tendency to look on the more favorable side of events or conditions and to expect the most favorable outcome… the doctrine that the existing world is the best of all possible worlds.
link to source

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Op-Ed: Get Out Of Your Political Comfort Zone : NPR

I endorse the idea that one must listen to people one disagrees with.

Heitman (the person interviewed at the above link) wrote an article about this back at the beginning of 2012:

New Year’s resolution: Seek the other side in political commentary – CSMonitor.com

He has an online column at the Baton Rouge Advocate called At Random.

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The Obama Memos: How Washington Remade the President : The New Yorker

Sad little article. I’m about half way through it.

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Racial code words obscure real issues – TheHill.com

I’ve had some problems with Juan Williams even though I have read and admired his bio of Justice Thurgood Marshall.

But I think the idea of “code words” needs to keep being raised, especially when we tend to abandon anything that has not be thought in the last 48 hours (like history).

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The Austerity Debacle. – NYTimes.com

Another example of unheed history.  American pundits on the right latched onto PM David Cameron’s experiment with austerity in the U.K. Which has done some damage.

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Who Is to Blame for Polarization? – The Prospect

Even though I subscribe to the magazine, this article is the one that led me to the New Yorker article linked above.

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‘Strategic Vision,’ by Zbigniew Brzezinski – NYTimes.com

new book by Brzezinski.

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I was more in the mood for Beethoven than lunch yesterday in between my classes. So I sat at the piano and continued playing my way through his sonatas. I was playing the Bb major, opus 22, movement 1 when a young ballet instructor walked through the studio returning equipment he had been using.

(I played it much slower than this recording)
He came over and asked me what it was I was playing. He seemed to be attracted to the music. We chatted amiably for a bit. He played french horn in high school and has since studied bagpipes and didgeridoo.

He has recently taken up ukulele and recognized Amanda Palmer’s name when I mentioned it to him.

Pleasant conversations like this diminish my pessimism about universities.

At 5:30 PM I finished my 3rd class and counting the hour of Beethoven finished up 5.5 hours sitting at the piano bench.

I was pretty tired after that. I walked to Mr. You’s (a pretty good Chinese take out housed in a former A&W section of a Shell station nearby) and ordered supper for Eileen and me.

This morning I am still pretty exhausted. I listened to This American Life. They had a disturbing report on the new laws in Alabama aimed at driving out illegal aliens, the so-called self deportation law.

The idea is to make illegals so frightened that they go home.

Nice.

It’s hard for me to swallow since I tend to think that every person is individually more significant than the idea of countries and organizations.  I was surprised when one politician, himself a self professed Xtian, confessed that even with the modifications he was supporting to this law he just couldn’t see Jesus voting for it.

Nice.

On a lighter note, I found this parody by William Carlos Williams in the footnotes to volume one of his collected poetry this morning:

Trees

Of all the things  that I could be
I had to be a lousy tree,

A tree that stands out in the street
With little dogs around my feet.

I’m nothing else but this, alas,
A comfort station in the grass.

I lift my leafy arms to pray,
Get away, little doggie, get away!

A nest of robins I must wear
And what they do gets in my hair.

Of all the things I had to be
I had to be a goddam tree.

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In San Francisco, a Push for Public Benches – NYTimes.com

No benches for the homeless….

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NBC News Asks Romney Campaign to Remove Ad – NYTimes.com

I’m definitely not a Romney guy, but I don’t agree at all with NBC about this. Why is this reporting not public record?

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Slow Freedom of Information Answers a Shade on Window Into Washington – NYTimes.com

The pace of revealing information reminds of Dickens’ Bleak House.

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Gay Won’t Go Away, Genetic or Not – NYTimes.com

Frank Bruni tells a personal and touching story.

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71% See Government Censorship of Internet As Bigger Threat Than Illegal Downloading – Rasmussen Reports™

I love the TM behind Rasmussen Reports.

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Adding It Up: Press Freedom, Democratic Health and Public Media Funding | Save the News

US number 47 in Reporters Without Borders 2011 Press Freedom rating.

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STUDY: The Press And The Pipeline | Media Matters for America

It’s not just the government that is inundated by big business partisans.

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I stupidly have been accepting work on my day off. Last Saturday I drove off and accompanied a young talented violist at her Solo and Ensemble. Next Saturday I have accepted another high school accompaniment gig in Grand Rapids. After which I have committed myself to an afternoon of accompanying Joffrey Ballet tryouts here in Holland.

Ay yi yi.

Yesterday probably due to a snow storm we had low attendance at church. There were four people in the choir. I managed to keep their morale up and they dutifully rallied and sang the anthem. I spent quite a bit of effort adapting the organ registration so that it was strong enough to support these four singers and at the same time didn’t cover them up.

When I began my lovely organ prelude, there seemed to be three people in the room: me, Eileen and the former organist.  I was glad she was there because she is one of the few people who seems to get my work there.

As the morning wore on I looked around and realized that there were as usual many musicians present. I wonder why these people are more supportive of their church choir. It occurred to me that my understanding of church music as an art is an anachronism,

This is ironic because my own faith is pretty weak and I don’t have the strength of religious conviction to sustain my work. What sustains me is a belief in the importance of making beauty in a certain way. And it may this that is making me anachronistic.

I’m trying not to be too negative in this post. One of the dangers of my isolation as a musician and composer is that the critic whose voice is the loudest is me. And artists are almost always their own strongest critics. At least good ones and I do think I am good at what I do.

The isolation makes it easy to undervalue one’s worth. I’ve never been all that ambitious for much other than the doing of my art. I feel like I should expose more listeners to it, but have sort of painted myself into a corner where the few people who might appreciate my work are a small percentage of the local population.

Nevertheless this whole thought process is not too prevalent in my own work and life.  I mostly do music. And have conversations with the dead (composers, poets, authors, painters).

Yesterday I played all the way through Beethoven’s Pathetique Piano Sonata. I took care not to romanticize it too much, tried to think of the quarter note as the consistent beat in the famous opening of this work.

Took the slow movement faster than Karl Haas used to play it at the beginning of his radio show.

Playing this incredible piece in its entirety consoled me considerably for a difficult morning at work.

This morning I was again sucked in and played the next sonata (E major) in its entirety and then began another (the G major).

It’s hard to feel too sorry for oneself in the presence of such noble beauty.

I have a full day of classes today which begin at noon, break for an hour and then run until 5:30 PM.

I think I will skip treadmilling this morning with the idea that I will need the energy for the afternoon.

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The Perils of ‘Bite Size’ Science – NYTimes.com

Publishing more and shorter research articles has its own dangers.

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Fact-Gathering Without the Facts – NYTimes.com

NYT’s readers take it to task.

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Chemical Brothers – the movie: do not adjust your eyeballs | Music | The Guardian

I mostly read this article because Susan Tomes mentioned it in her blog. She was interested that the Chemical Brothers sort of defined live music as not listening to music through computer speakers (which is how I listen to recorded music having purchased a slightly elaborate set of 4 speakers plus a bass speaker). She seemed puzzled that the idea of “live” music didn’t really come into the equation. I’m puzzled that she was puzzled since the Chemical Brothers are an electronica sensation whose live performances rely heavily not only on loops and recordings but also have been known to commission lengthy movies to show in the background. Here’s a sample.

I especially admire that the filmmakers put up signs in Japanese that said ‘Please don’t look in the lens if you’re being filmed, just watch the show.’

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Matthew Adams – The mind ironic (Christopher of Hitchens)

Another admiring article about this incredible writer and thinker.

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I was thinking this morning how the poet, William Carlos Williams, was so observant of his surroundings. This includes both people and what I think of as nature which to my mind includes any physical stuff around us.

He has written many poems which are simple (but actually not so simple) descriptions. They put me in mind of Japanese poetry which I’ve only read in translation but seem to evoke ideas and mood with spare brush strokes of words.

Both traditional Japanese poetry and William Carlos Williams are perhaps unfashionable these days. They go against the grain of the dominance of image. Our language of words is now sifted of its root meanings and changed into advertisements, personality and banal TV and movie plots. WCW seems to me to go from observation to words (ideas) instead of rendering everything into often reductive images.

If this is unclear, what I mean is that the poetry and art of our age seems to be not about beauty and ideas but about sensual and/or seductive pictures that do not reach very deep beyond their own surface.

There is a false simplicity to this process. It appears simple and is probably so. But it misses a lot of the basic human stuff.

I’m also reading the next essay of In Search of the Missing Elephant by Donald N. Michael. It’s title is  intriguing to me: “With Both Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-air” (1985)

On Cause and Effect

“… [E]vents, treated as causes or effects, are discrete only if we do not examine them too closely… everything we experience, especially in an information-dense world, tells us that, individually and collectively, the human condition is overdetermined: everything causes, effects, and is part of, everything else and, in turbulent situations, sensitivity analysis can only refer to a fragment of moot reality and it may well have already changed.”

Donald N. Michael, ” “With Both Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-air”

Donald N. Michael helps me grapple with complexity.

There are many pasts

“Alternative choices of events, time periods, interpretations, and intentions provide unnumbered ways to link past events to a present. And there are unnumbered ways of putting together the present, i.e. what is ‘really’ happening and what is ‘really’ important. Since the present is always constructed out of a presumed past, I have learned that thoughts about the future derive from preferred constructions of the past.”

Donald N. Michael, ” “With Both Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-air”

I especially like that insight. Very helpful when trying to sort out stuff. Finally I love his view of experts:

Experts

“The pronouncements of experts are useful, when thinking about the future, not because their information is based on esoteric and valid knowledge about social change, though that occasionally may be so (but  how is one to know?), but because, by viture of the authority with which they are endowed, i.e. as experts, they are able to influence the definition of social reality others hold. There expertness resides not in a prescience their logic engenders but in the ‘psychologic’ that logic activates: the authority of logic and, therefore, of the expert as a practitioner of  logic, is what carries weight. This source of authority legitimizes the stories they tell. But the source also tends to subvert the storytellers’ own recognition that they are telling stories. Their own belief in their authority, i.e. the authority of logic, leads them to believe they are doing something very different from ‘merely’ telling stories.”

Donald N. Michael, ” “With Both Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-air”

But of course this is the basic human activity – making real meaning or at least substantive believable meaning. No better way for humans to do this than tell stories, the more rich, the more textured, the better.

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3:AM Magazine » Come Hear the Music Play

Reassessing the meaning of the musical, “Cabaret,” today.

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Music Business Tunes for Next Copyright Fight | PCWorld

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Robert Reich (Why No Responsible Democrat Should Want Newt Gingrich to Get the GOP Nomination)

I like Reich.

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Barbarism In Cultured Soil: Rushdie’s Great Pakistani Novel | The India Site | Dishing up Indian news and non aligned views | India: A Portrait by Patrick French

Drawing attention back to one of Rushdie’s lesser known works.

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Putting a Price on Your Work – Shortcuts – NYTimes.com

I continue to accept freelance work. Never sure how much to charge. My church has decided to pull me up to the minimum pay of the American Guild of Organist. Minimum. Even doing this will take them two years – upping my salary by 4K for 2012, and another 4K for 2013.

If I live that long.

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Gerre Hancock, St. Thomas Church Organist, Dies at 77 – NYTimes.com

Finally NYT gives Hancock an obit.

I always wondered why the death of my teacher, Ray Ferguson, seemed to be ignored by the American Guild of Organists. I always thought there was a story behind that.

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A Long Island Teenager Studies Species Survival and Saves Herself in the Process – NYTimes.com

Inspiring.

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The Mississippi Delta Must Be Restored – NYTimes.com

Obama administration has commission a zillion dollar study on how to do this. This article indicates the solution is already known, just needs to be done.

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Banks Taketh, but Don’t Giveth – NYTimes.com

Catch 22 alive and well in the 21st century. Gallows humor.

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Keith Jarrett in a Solo Concert at Carnegie Hall – NYTimes.com

Jarrett is a hero of mine.

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http://newhumanist.org.uk/

New site my brother recently pointed me to.  “Ideas for Godless People”

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A quick post before I jump in the car and drive an hour to accompany a high school violist in a Solo and Ensemble Festival.

Here I am sixty years old and still attending these things.  All the festivals of my high school youth blend into each other for me. I can remember playing a piece by Vivaldi on the trumpet in a district Solo and Ensemble festival in high school. The piece I am accompanying today is also by Vivaldi. I think it’s a better piece than the one I played years ago.

Anyway I surprised my band director (who accompanied me) and got a “one” (the highest rating). The judge scared me when he stood up and told me that I played Vivaldi in a manner that was authentic or something like that.

I took it to State and my band director (whom I adored) seemed pleased when I got a disgraceful “Three” on it.

I seem to remember that was the festival where I met a pregoth girl who fascinated me and answered my comment that I wrote poetry with a ever so high school blase, “Doesn’t everyone?”

The school bus for the ride home was waiting for me when they finally found me chatting up this creature. Again my band director seemed a bit annoyed and amused at the same time.

Last night Eileen and I managed to go the concert we thought was the night before. It was pretty good. I admire the group Ethel. You can hear selections played by them at this link, although their line up of actual players seems pretty flexible.

They began and ended with pieces from the list that appears when you click on the above image at this link. Their first album had this cover and seems to have been called “Light.” However the tracks at the link do not correspond to the ones on Amazon (link).

They began the program with “Arrival” which is called “Nepomuk’s dances: arrival” at the Amazon link. It is an admirable piece and made an excellent starter piece.

They did an encore with the piece called “Lighthouse.”

Both are credited to “Ethel” as composer on Amazon.

I believe that they do a lot of improvising and these pieces may have evolved in initial group improvising of the original players.

However “Arrival” seems very tightly organized and composed to my ears. “Lighthouse” was much looser which led me to suspect it was an actual little Jazz composition they chose to cover.

In between they did a variety of stuff include a tune by Terry Riley (“Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector”)

and one by John Luther Adams (“Wind in High Places”).

The latter was pretty interesting in that John Luther Adams only used open strings for a three movement piece. He made an effective use of harmonics. The players put ear buds in one ear for this piece. I imagine it would be so they could listen carefully to themselves and distinguish their harmonics from the rest of the band. Very cool and evocative piece.

They had a guest artist, a Pueblo composer and performer named Robert Mirabel. He made some pretty new agey but attractive sounds on an array of flutes and rhythm instruments. He was very animated and goofy at times. A good addition because he obviously was having such a good time and admired the rest of the Band’s playing.

Well I have to get dressed and drive at this point and can regale you no longer.

I found myself continuing to feel drained and bit depressed yesterday.

Despite this I improvised well at ballet class. Then I had a good meeting with my boss at church. After a quick lunch at home, I went back and played Mozart piano trios with my colleagues at church. This is a moment of refreshment and renewal for all three of us, I think.

After they left, I posted the hymns for Sunday on the hymn board. I inherited this task from the gentle old men who used to see to it but have died. One of my first Sundays at Grace they were posted incorrectly. The choir went ballistic and wanted me to change them. I refused saying that I had stuff to do. This happened several times until one of the older members of the choir told me he had the message (presumably that I didn’t want to post the hymns).

Since he didn’t ask, I didn’t inform him that I had no problem posting them. I just didn’t want to do it at the last minute and rob precious prep time from Sunday morning.

Now I do it routinely after chatting with the boss about the upcoming Sunday and adjusting to any changes she has made to my suggested hymns.

After posting the hymns, I rehearsed Sunday’s music at the organ. I have scheduled a very easy anthem that is most effective if I played the organ accompaniment well. So I have added it to my daily practice.

Then on my way to grocery shop, I had the frustrating experience of stopping at my Mom’s pain doctor’s office where I continued to get blocked from talking to him about Mom’s meds.

The receptionist informed me that he would only respond to a fax from Mom’s internist.

So I sat in the parking lot and called the internist’s office on the cell. Sheesh. We’ll see if 1) the internist’s office follows through on this fax & 2) if the Reverend Doctor Her Majesty the pain in the ass Pain Doctor acquiesces in her recommendation to switch Mom to a milder narcotic.

Sometimes doctors who seem to think that life needs to be designed only for their convenience (“Here dear, step into these stirrups”) and that they have a complete corner on the brains department make me tired.

After fussing with doctors in the parking lot, I did grocery shopping. To my horror, when I went to pay, I discovered that I didn’t have the regular credit card I use to pay with. Oy! I put groceries on a secondary card and came home and tore the house apart looking for the lost card.

Gave up after a while.

I made a recipe (Raviolasagna) for our supper. The timing for the oven for this recipe neatly dovetails with the time I spend on the treadmill. And that’s how I did it.

Eileen and I were planning to go out and hear the string quartet, Ethel, last night. We walked over to the college after supper to discover that we had the wrong date for the concert.

The actual concert is this evening.

But we had a nice walk in the misty evening together.

Whew.

Another day in the life.

Still.

Hard to complain that much. Got up this morning and made improvised puff pastries (puff pastry spread with preserves and topped with fresh fruit). Played Chopin Mazurkas waiting for Eileen to get up so we could have breakfast together.

Ahhhhhh.

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UbuWeb

Discovered this site this morning. Archives of “Avant Guard all the time” (this is the description on the Poetry Foundation page where I found the link.

Listened a bit of Satie being performed live (link to MP3)and then part of a 1969 lecture by John Cage this morning (link to MP3). 2012 is Cage’s centenary.

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Arizona Candidate’s English Under Challenge – NYTimes.com

I find the discussion of official language very interesting. Countries that border other countries often have a blurring of dominant language at the border.

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Warning – The Next Sound You Hear Will Not Be Your Engine – NYTimes.com

Marvelous. The 2013 souped up BMW M5, the sound you hear when you listen to the engine accelerating is a digital recording.

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How Pimps Use the Web to Sell Girls – NYTimes.com

Disturbing.

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In Spain, a Judge on Trial – NYTimes.com

This judge sounds like an interesting and heroic person.

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Nonesuch to Release Krzysztof Penderecki, Jonny Greenwood Collaboration March 13; Pre-Order Now | Nonesuch Records

Upcoming recording.

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“There’s nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words.”

William Carlos Williams, “Author’s Introduction” The Wedge 1944

I’m developing a passion for the work of William Carlos Williams.

It turns out that it was a good idea to read his masterwork book length poem, Paterson, first. Then all of his collected poems in roughly chronological order. He gradually develops the idea of Paterson over the years and sketches it and comments on it throughout his life. I’ll probably have to return to it after I read all of his poems and maybe some of his prose.

Right now I am returning to the notes in the first volume of his collection poems. I have read this volume already but failed to notice there were notes on the poems in the back. I am finding the end notes helpful in the second volume. They often contain comments by WCW made in passing and in writing on his work.

“When a man makes a poem, makes it, mind you, he takes words as he finds them interrelated about him and composes them—without distortion which would mar their exact significances—into an intense expression of his perceptions and ardors that they may constitute a revelation in the speech that he uses. It isn’t what he says that counts as a work of art, it’s what he makes, with such intensity of perception that it lives with an intrinsic movement of its own to verify its authenticity.”

William Carlos Williams, “Author’s Introduction” The Wedge 1944

WCW’s thoughts on poems and poets made me think a bit about my own work (not just my poems but my music). Seeing music (like poetry) as a machine fits very well with my own understanding of it. I love to take it apart. When I make it, I not only breath into it my being I also try to understand it’s working parts.

I read this poem of his this morning which sent me running to my (online) dictionary:

A Sort Of A Song

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.

—through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.

Saxifrage is apparently “a low growing plant” that grow in “poor soils with white, yellow or red flowers.  Literally Saxi=stone, fragi=breaking.

I really like WCW.

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A Poet’s View From His New Hampshire Window by Donald Hall: The New Yorker

I was reading this article sitting in the waiting room with my 85 year old mother this week. In it, Hall describes what it’s like to sit in his house now and be old. He watches nature that he was watched all his life: birds, bears, what have you. He also ruminates on old age, thinking about the old people in his life including his own mother.

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In the same issue is a poem/song by Leonard Cohen.

Poem: Leonard Cohen: “Going Home” : The New Yorker

MP3 of the song: Leonard Cohen’s “Going Home” : The New Yorker

It’s from his new album which won’t be released until Jan 31:

Good old Leonard Cohen. “He’s a sportsman and a shepherd, he’s a lazy bastard living in a suit.”

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If Pajamas Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Wear Pajamas – Lowering the Bar

For some reason daughter Sarah thought of me and linked this in on Facebook.

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Recent links around the State of the Union speech.

President Obama’s 2012 State of the Union Address — Full Transcript – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com

Mitch Daniels’s Republican Response to the State of the Union – NYTimes.com

The State of the Union in 2012 – NYTimes.com

This is the NYT editorial response.

Review & Outlook: The State of His Policies – WSJ.com

This is the WSJ response.

Obama Sets Sights on Romney in State of the Union – NYTimes.com

A little analysis.

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