It’s getting colder here in Western Michigan.  Since the Chamber Choir was not singing at service yesterday, I was able to arrive later. So Eileen and I walked both to and from church together yesterday. We usually only get to walk home together, so that was a bit of a treat.

However, the walk home was much colder than the walk over.  The temps were lower and the wind was blowing harder.  Winter in Michigan.

Another person joined the choir yesterday. This is the third person in three weeks. Of course the first of the three didn’t show up. But the other two men (they are all men) seem to very connected to music.  The guy who joined yesterday actually has a degree in music composition even though he is teaching theater at the local college.

If I wasn’t so numb these days I would feel encouraged.

However my mood doesn’t seem to extend to my musical self. I continue to play the piano and think and read about music.

Yesterday after rehearsal one of the choristers pointed out that I surprised her with my energy and enthusiasm in rehearsal.

I told her that “Music was my life and this is my song.” Then I asked her if she had ever heard of Bachman Turner Overdrive.  She shook her head no, but several other choir members chimed in that they had.  I pointed out that I was paraphrasing one of their songs. And that this group’s songs had paid many of my bills when I was a bar musician.

This morning is the first day of break from my ballet classes.  I must admit it is a relief not to have the daily commitment.  I was working seven days a week there for quite a while. Probably part of my burnout.

However I do have to go to the dentist today and give him $1700 as half payment on my upcoming dental work in 2011.  I have worked it out with him that I can pay half this year and half next year. That way I can use Eileen’s flex plan over two different years to cover this cost.

In the afternoon I have a committee meeting at church.  So it’s not quite like a day off today, but I’m not complaining.

I spent some time with my father’s sermons from the sixties yesterday.  I deliberately salvaged these because I know he was going through a maturing period from the sixties to the seventies.  He begins as a young naive conservative preacher in Eastern Tennessee and ends up a much more sophisticated mature pastor of a large (for his denomination) congregation in Flint Michigan.

After waking up to the state of the country at that time he pretty much lived and preached from the liberal point of view on the issues of the day such as police brutality, racism and sexism.

I know all this stuff is very out of fashion these days. But I’m still very proud of my Dad’s life and work.

I lived through this time of change with him. I remember that he peppered his weekly sermons with references to the times and personal anecdotes. These do interest me. So it’s nice to have the sermon notes to look over once in a while.

And I found this handwritten undated note in the middle of these sermons from the sixties.

There is nothing on the back and there wasn’t a second sheet.  My Dad’s impression of people he met on his travels always made for interesting stories that he either used in his sermons or told us.  I hope you can read it.

You have your heritage. I have mine.  I was going through the box of stuff that got wet on the porch and found this old mimeographed program from Christmas 1960. I would have just turned nine that year.

This must have been a special music event at my Dad’s church. I recognize names in this program.  Louis Reppetoe read from the second chapter of Luke. Her son, Ray, was about my age.  He was killed in Vietnam. I also recognize the name and have a face for the man who did the prayer: Jim Luttrell.

Choir members listed include my Mom. Mary Snowden lived near where the new “parsonage” was being built… more on this below… I was friends with the Snowden children whose names escape me, but I can see their faces.  Maxine Humphreys is still alive. She called when my Dad died. She was and probably still is a local radio announcer in Greeneville, Tennessee.

Learline Waddell was the mother of my best friend, Reggie. Ralph was his Dad. Blaine Waddell (who apparently wasn’t in the choir but was one of the Three Wise Men along with Ralph W. and Jim Smith) must have been Ralph’s brother. Blaine’s son, Jerry, was my other buddy at this church. Reggie was the smart one of the three of us and grew up to be a dentist.  According to a quick google search he lives in Knoxville, Tenn now. No pictures online unfortunately. Heh.

Jim Smith was a legend of my childhood.  I can see him. A big man with surprisingly skinny legs. Tobacco farmer, I remember him driving his son, Randy, and me in his jeep around a Tennessee mountain on a muddy trail in the woods yelling and honking his horn. Louise Parman was regular weekly church organist. Her husband, Clark, was the town barber.  His shop was not far from the church.  Apparently someone named Cecil Raby who I do not remember helped out with accompanying this evening.

This is the back of the program. Yesterday I searched in vain for an MP3 of this song. I did however find this:

The song is on this vinyl record.  Amazon lists the cost of one new as $114.98 and one used at $49.99. Who knew? Thars gold in them thar thrift shops. I’m sure I’ve seen this in a thrift shop in the last few years. I would just like to hear this song.

My Dad undoubtedly had a strong hand in this Christmas program. It’s likely he organized and conducted the whole thing. The program itself was his work. Like his father he was a mimeograph guy.  He even had a handy dandy little contraption which would shine the light up behind the blue mimeograph sheet. The picture is him around 1954 some years before the program. I would have been three in 1954.

In another box I found Dad’s Christmas sermon from 1960,  the same year as the “Christmas in Song” concert.

Dad left behind hundreds, thousands of sermon outlines. A few years before he died, with his permission, I went through them and salvaged ones that I thought I might want to look at again. They are full of interesting stories and references to contemporary events. At least I find them interesting.

Notice the stories on this page.  “I remember in my own home…” tells the family story of my Uncle Dave running through the hall yelling about Dad’s birth.  Further down on the page tells the story of my Dad discovering that people in Tijuana were sometimes named Jesus. Note the Freudian slip of the “m” in “the(m)Mexians.” And the attribution of Jesus as a name from the “strong Roman Catholic influence.”   This was a time in my life when my Dad like most in his denomination viewed Catholics with suspicion.  In three years he would vote against JFK because he was worried about the “strong Roman Catholic influence.” Happily in 8 or 9 years he would bloom into a full fledged dang liberal after spending a few days living on the streets of Chicago. But that’s a family story for another time. Heh.

This picture dates from 1966 when Dad was working in Flint Michigan. But back to Greeneville.

In 1961, the church built a house for Dad and his family to live in.  I remember this house well.  Of course it was time for another “special” service.

The newspaper clipping and this program were also in the damp box.  “Parsonage” is Churchagod for the house the preacher lived in.  It appears that the congregation gathered in the church and had a service. Then drove out to the house for a reception. I have no memory of this, of course.

But I do remember these people:

The copyright date is 1966 on this piece of music. Copyright held by Bill Gaither.  Gaither and Doug Oldham were Churchagod legends from my childhood. I met each man and each man disillusioned me from working in church music in the Churchagod (“Church of God” “movement” headquarters still in Anderson Indiana the city where I was born while my parents were attending the church college which is still there).

You can see I awoke in a perverse mood.  I’ll close with the scripture that good old Doug notated on my Dad’s personal copy of the music (Lucky Dad, Hell, lucky me.)

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Romans 8:28 in the King James that no doubt Doug would have referred to at that time.

So the Electrical company came and installed temporary heat tape on my porch roof yesterday.

I did my Mom’s and Eileen’s and my bills.

Went Xmas shopping. Treadmilled.

My doctor’s office called and said that my cholesterol is up, my glucose is up and my PSA count is creeping up.

My doctor has recommended me to a urologist. Great. Blah blah blah.

Eileen and  I watched the Swedish movie based on Steig Larsson’s book, The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. This is the first of the three books Larsson wrote about the same characters. Eileen and I had both read this one. I have read all three and think they’re decent mystery/whatever novels.

Movies can’t quite get books right. This probably because we readers can have so many varieties of experience of the same book whereas cinema is more of a common experience. In other words, each reader imagines the way the characters look, move and speak. In a movie, viewers all see the same actor moving and speaking.

Having said that, I enjoyed the movie adaptation of Larrson’s book.  It didn’t rub your nose in the gory parts of the plot. I did wonder how easy it would be to follow if you didn’t know the plot like Eileen and I did. But we did, we enjoyed it.

I was thinking of Peter Ackroyd yesterday.

I recently finished his novel, English Music. Loved it.

Returned to reading his London: A Biography.

Realized that I have also read 400 or the 1100 or so pages (He writes long books) of his biography of Dickens. Pulled that out for possible resumption of reading. Looked over his long list of works and realized that many of the titles interest me. Ordered Hawksmoor from Paperbackswap.

Ackroyd’s wiki bio describes this book this way:

Hawksmoor, winner of both the Whitbread Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize, was inspired by Iain Sinclair‘s poem ‘Lud Heat’ (1975), which speculated on a mystical power from the positioning of the six churches Nicholas Hawksmoor built. The novel gives Hawksmoor a Satanical motive for the siting of his buildings, and creates a modern namesake, a policeman investigating a series of murders. [link to article]

Sounds interesting to me.

I’m still struggling with burnout or melancholia or whatever it is I’m experiencing.

I remain motivated but discouraged.

Weird. Mozart and Bach help. Brahms and Haydn, too.  I treadmilled to recordings of Haydn piano sonatas yesterday after spending time with them on the piano.

There’s a mess on my front porch. Water is no longer standing around in pools since I have sopped it up. I’m afraid some of my father’s sermons got wet. Bah.

One of the workers yesterday said he thinks our house was one of those built from a Sears house kit floated over from Chicago on a barge. I searched in vain online for one that looks like ours. Still cool idea.

The same worker asked me what music I had playing in the house. Mozart piano concertos. He liked them. I do too.

Went to my doctor yesterday
She said I seem to be O.K.
She said
“Jupe, you better look around
How long you think that you can
Run that body down?
How many nights you think that you can
Do what you been doin’
Who you foolin?”

So my blood pressure seemed to be okay at the doctor yesterday. The doctor even said that my heart sounded good.  Unfortunately I have gained 10 pounds.  Not surprising since I have been under stress and suffering from some minor burnout.  But I think I can lose these pounds before my next appointment in four months.  They drew blood and I will get updates regarding that once that is processed.

The rest of the day was sort of a blur of activity. I went directly from the doctor to my last beginning ballet class.  Immediately after that to a meeting with my boss.  Came home for a brief respite, then back for piano trio rehearsal.

The trio is coming along nicely. We have evolved a way to discuss musical interp without me totally dominating the conversation. Admittedly I do often (not always) spark the conversation with some questions. Yesterday we played through a Mozart piano trio we haven’t worked that much on. That was fun. Then we rehearsed the Gershwin we will be performing in a week.  I brought copies of the original piano prelude (No. 2 in C # minor – link to page of free recordings). We discussed the original and its implications for the interesting arrangement we are learning. I also brought along Chopin’s E minor prelude from which Gershwin practically quotes.

I enjoy this kind of thing. Afterwards in the brief hiatus I had I played through several Mozart piano sonatas. I was thinking about our discussion of how to realize ornamentation in Mozart. This is not an idle or moot question. In the trios the piano and the first violin often are given similar lines with similar ornaments.  This doesn’t necessarily mean to me that we have to do them the same way. I just like doing them intentionally.

Dawn and Amy seemed surprised when I told them that the whole idea of playing in “ensemble” is probably more of a 20th century concept. I come to this conclusion by hearing early recordings of groups of excellent musicians (string players) who don’t necessarily match their interpretations as they perform together. Very interesting.

I admit also that I tend to prefer ensemble especially in choral situations. But I also like thinking about it and not leaving any musical idea off the table.

At any rate it was obvious that Amy the violinist was very interested in understanding grace notes as on the beat appoggiaturas. I have noticed that many string players do not play this way in Mozart or even Bach. It doesn’t seem to detract from my enjoyment of their performances. However, I tend to play ornaments on the beat and begin at least my Baroque trills on the upper note.

I can the eyes of my few readers drooping over this kind of chat.  Heh, sorry.

I also played a bit of a piano transcription of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

I think I am coming into a better appreciation of Gershwin. The Rhapsody in Blue especially has always struck me as attractive but not all that coherent in its musical ideas.  It always seems to be going somewhere but the melodies don’t necessarily seem to be the goal. Anyway, a close examination of the prelude we are learning reveals some interesting subtle motivic ideas that coherently utilize a sort of popular music voice in an clear self-consciously compositional way.  This sort of discovery makes me want to reconsider works by Gershwin I have almost dismissed. By the way, this definitely does not include “Porgy and Bess” which I like quite a bit.

After another brief rest, I went back to church for the Carol sing for the people who come for free food and the congregation. This was kind of weird. I will talk to my boss about ways to do this sort of thing without exacerbating a sense of division between the people who have come for food and the other people. It is difficult to avoid a sense of condescension in this situation. It has to be considered a bit more than we did for last night.

Nevertheless the people I didn’t recognize seemed in a pretty good humor and did sing and possibly even enjoyed themselves. At one point, the Spanish translator requested “Felice Navidad.” Unfortunately I didn’t have the music. He led it a cappella and I sort of played along. Next time I will definitely bring that one.

Afterwards Eileen and I took our rich butts to a new restaurant in town called the City Vu Bistro.

I had a martini which was quite good. Eileen even broke down and had a new fangled “martini” which contained white chocolate liqueur. The waitress seemed at first by my request for a Beefeater Martini. I think she thought that the “martini” aspect was bringing the shaker to the table and then shaking it and pouring it into a traditional martini glass. This is how she served Eileen’s after dinner drink. It was so charming maybe next time I’ll have her do mine that way.

We came home and watched a couple of taped Daily Shows. I fell asleep in front of the TV. Went to bed and dreamed the usual strange dreams.  In one of them a man I know was laying in bed with the child version of himself.  The child was obviously upset and the adult was not doing a good job of calming him down. Instead he was talking to the child about what I had said about the KKK and bombs. I quietly asked the adult to come with me into the other room so I could discuss with him a calmer approach.  Then I woke.

A woman who started reading my blog this year mentioned how vulnerable it makes me, that I bare myself in a way she would be uncomfortable (If I understood her correctly).

Since she said that I have thought more than once about vulnerability.

If by vulnerability one means exposing oneself without defenses, it strikes me that this is an essential part of doing music and probably any artistic endeavor such as writing.

I do know that when I improvise I am attracted to spontaneity.

I have listened to teachers tell me to prepare my improvisations. There is a bit of wisdom in this.

The teachers who said this were organists and they were talking about improvising in church work.  Specifically improvising interludes and harmonizations in hymns. Here it makes sense to me to occasionally prepare an improv. After all I even use printed composed interludes and harmonizations, why not prepare my own stuff.

But I also know that at least one excellent organist completely worked out his improvisations to the point that he was presenting them in public concerts as improvisations years after they had been published note for note.

This seems extreme. Certainly not very vulnerable.

I associate vulnerability with spontaneity and risk taking.

This is how I often approach improvisation. My work this semester with ballet classes has involved this exact approach.  I use the class as an opportunity to try to create spontaneous music that not only reflects what I think the teacher needs for her ballet exercises or “combinations,” but also has an element of meaning that reflects my impression of human body movement.

I think dancing is wonderful. And that it contains the range of human emotion. So even exercises have expression. I often attempt to capture this emotional expression in simple disciplined melodies.

This works best when I lose my defenses (i.e. make my self vulnerable) and pursue a beautiful musical thought. I like doing this.

This seems to contradict some people’s notion of masculinity or something.

I have noticed that men sometimes hide themselves for one reason or another. Sort of a macho thing, I guess.

Not being forthcoming, not seeking expression, inability to express a felt emotion, reluctance to share information; all of these are sort of a stereotype of masculine “guy” stuff.

I have never been good at “guy” stuff. It’s just not me.  I’m emotional to the point it routinely embarrasses me.  I have to work at hiding myself.

My inclination for whatever reason is to “wear my heart on my sleeve.” At this stage of my life, I rarely give in to this inclination with people other than my nuclear family.

Yesterday I was overcome with emotion when the advanced ballet class expressed such approbation of my work as musical accompanist with their class. I realize that young college students are exuberant and even idealistic. Their actions are the actions of people taking shape as persons. This energy is one that attracts me. I find people who have given  up on life or unconvincingly act as though they know the secret of life pretty boring.  These actions are certainly not vulnerable, that’s for sure.

So I was taken off guard when during a period where all of the students do their individual stretching and relaxing, I quietly ended my improvisation and one dancer asked me to keep going. This was a big compliment to me. Though I make myself vulnerable with my music, I often sort of forget people are listening. In fact it surprises me when they do.

Another dancer came up after class and told me that she was so inspired by my piano playing that she planned to practice piano over the break between semesters. Again high praise.

Maybe I’m just feeling sensitive about “guy” stuff because I had to connect with several men yesterday around the home ownership issues.  We are having leaks in our home (this, after spending over 10 K or so to put on a new roof and siding).  I have been trying to track down the cause of these leaks and get them fixed. Usually Eileen does this. But this time I grabbed the reins and made the phone calls and arranged to meet the workers.

I should say that the roofer, the siding man and the electrical company man I talked to yesterday were all pretty relaxed and not macho idiots or anything.  It’s just that dealing with them made me aware of my own inability to do the guy dance.  I’m sort of glad about this. I like who I am.

FWIW I contracted with the electrical guys to install heat tape that would allow snow and ice to melt off the roof in a more efficient manner.  They will do a temp solution this winter and follow up with a more permanent solution in the spring. Whippy skippy.

All of the men were very helpful yesterday.

I keep reading short stories by Dylan Thomas. I am enjoying these quite a bit.

I also finished English Music by Peter Ackroyd. This book got me thinking about my own relationship to American music and culture. Ackroyd’s book is a wonderful tour de force about his take on “Englishness.”  He uses a fantastical device of a character who lives at the beginning of the 20th century in England.  Timothy Harcombe somehow helps his father heal people. He also slips in and out of dreams in which the greatness of English arts and literature takes concrete form. Harcombe not only interacts with great musicians, poets, painters in these chapters but also experiences their worlds. This includes entering a dream where he is a boy chorister who is studying with an elderly William Byrd or another chapter which is all in verse and is in the style of William Blake but mentions many other English poets.

Anyway, I admire Ackroyd’s sense of culture and place (He has also written a biography of London which I have done some reading in and admire).

This has made me ponder my own relationship to my love of American arts.

The music, poetry and art of people who have identified themselves with this place is extremely important to me.  The blues,  jazz, gospel, sorrow songs (spirituals), poetry (from Walt Whitman to James Dickey to Sharon Olds), architecture (Frank Lloyd Wright), Mark Rothko, so called primitive American art, American folk music of all kind really. This all mixes in and is a part of me both as a person and as a (maker) creator.

My sense of place is difficult to pin down.  I have lived in the South and the Midwest. I definitely have a sense of place about my childhood in East Tennessee. Subsequent visits as a young man were both enthralling and disappointing. I lived in Flint Michigan for a while and experienced a slight taste of the city life there. I have loved the beaches of Michigan and now live not too far from one. I love the place of Michigan, the seasons, the local fruits and vegetables.

But being the son of an itinerant preacher, I, like my father before me, moved from place to place and never had the experience of living in the same area for too long. I know people who have lived here in Holland all their lives. I wonder how they experience this place as a result. I know that I am very impressed with trees and beaches. What would it be like to know the same trees, beaches and other landmarks all your life? I imagine it would be extremely different. Maybe it could create a sense of “rootedness.” And maybe “stuckness” as well.

Well I’m letting myself ramble a bit this morning because I am marking time before visiting the doctor. This is my four month check up, I guess.  I am “fasting” so they can draw blood.  I allowed myself coffee this morning because the woman who drew my blood last time said it would be okay.

Later this evening I will be playing for a Christmas Carol sing-along for the people who come to my church for free food from the Feeding America program.  In between I will have ballet class, possibly meet with my boss and have a piano trio rehearsal. Life is good. Even when you’re burned out.

Don’t have much time for a post this morning. I spent most of the past hour responding to an email from the church secretary.

She sent me an upcoming wedding program as a publisher file attachment. Sheesh. It took me a while but I found a site that would convert it to a pdf. (link to French site which converts them online) I abhor this proprietary nonsense (the fact that it is practically impossible to open a Microsoft publisher file with any program but Microsoft publisher.) But maybe I’m just in a bad mood.

Speaking of which, I had an insight yesterday that what I am probably suffering from is burnout.  Not only my schedule but the fact that I am having to continue to make sure that people are paying me the money they owe me. I am still waiting for money from my church. I put in for reimbursement for purchase of organ music. I have an education fund that will cover this. I have to spend this fund each year because it does not carry over from year to year. Also I did a funeral a week  ago and still have note been paid.

I only mention this stuff because it’s sort of like a low buzz in the background along with the fact that we are experiencing leaks in the house.  I have contacted the roofers (once again) and they are promising to come today to look at it. Before Eileen came to bed last night night she found two more leaks, this time in the living room onto her loom. Another Sheesh!

The doctor’s office called and left a mysterious message that patient 10050 (I kid you not) has an appointment tomorrow morning at 7:40 AM. It’s probably me. I don’t have anything for myself, Eileen or my Mom on the calender. My doctor’s administrative staff is notoriously inefficient anyway. I will have to call and find out whose appointment it is and make arrangements for myself to go late to Ballet class tomorrow or to have Mom taken by Eileen.

My copy of this arrived in the mail yesterday.  When I sat down to read it I discovered that the first story is also in the other collection I recently requested free from Paperbackswap.com.

It turns out that the New Directions collection Eight Stories by Dylan Thomas contains only four unique stories. The other four are from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.

It remains to be seen whether the stories in Young Dog form any kind of narrative. I did notice that the story I have read that is common to both of these books, “The Peaches,” uses the name of Dylan for the narrator.

Anyway, I mostly love Thomas’s poetry and have decided to put him on my “no stone unturned” list and read everything I can lay my hands on by him.

Yesterday seemed to be a good day to play preludes and fugues from Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier.

Much of Bach’s music seems to have been written with private use in mind. His written instructions around some of his keyboard collection make it plain that they written primarily for the edification of the player.

Book I’s dedication includes this phrase:

“For the use and profit of the musical youth desirous of learning as well as for the pastime of those already skilled in this study….”

Yesterday it felt like I was in a conversation with Bach and his ideas on musical beauty as I returned over and over through out the day through several of his preludes and fugues.

I can remember when the mother of a friend of mine who was also a piano teacher first mentioned this work to me as a kid. She smiled and said that I would have many hours of pleasure from it.  Man, was she right!

I’m up and running on my net book today.  The cords that I ordered came in the mail yesterday.  I am expecting my net book to eventually crash due to its age before too long. But in the meantime, I am keeping my eye out for a sale to purchase a replacement and keep on using this one.

I found the music score for the Gershwin piano preludes online.  Gregory Stone significantly changed the second one when he did the arrangement my piano trio is going to perform in a week. He changed the key from C# minor to G minor, added new parts including a radically original part for the violin in the middle section.

I read in a biography of Gershwin a confirmation that the piano figure that begins this prelude is an homage to Chopin’s E minor prelude for piano, both share a moving middle part in the accompaniment.

Yesterday I walked through the snow storm to ballet class only to discover that I was not needed for the day. The teacher was very apologetic and planned to run the students through some exercises so I could play a bit. I asked her not to do this just on my account. After some dithering we agreed that I would bill the college “something” for my time. I told her (honestly) that I didn’t care that she hadn’t remembered to warn me on Friday that she wouldn’t need me on Monday.

It was a beautiful walk in the snow.

I billed for a half hour.

I am looking forward to another beautiful walk in the snow this morning in about an hour.

I do think that snow is beautiful and I love walking in it.

I can say this after getting my cars in and out of the driveway successfully yesterday despite the deep snow.

I was thankful that both cars instantly started. I can remember owning vehicles that were not so cooperative. Heh.

Even though I was in my usual Sunday afternoon slump yesterday, I rallied and made apple pie. The house smelled great!

Church continues to drain me.  And there’s not that much to drain.

I try to stay cheerful and constructive.

Two of the three people I invited to play percussion showed up. They did a splendid job and I re-arranged the anthem for the day (Keep your lamps) to utilize their skills. I did this by adding an interlude and suggesting some stops for them.  I thought it worked out pretty good.

I continue to attempt to get my singers to hear the harmony of the music to help them sing the pitches and sing them in tune. This approach seems to make less sense to people with the most self confidence.  I had particular difficulty yesterday communicating with a couple of singers who seemed convinced I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about.  I try to remain calm and even cheerful in the face of my failure to communicate.  This takes energy.

For the second week in a row,  one of my choir members walked into the post service rehearsal late with a another new member. I appreciate the fact that recruiting like this takes some schmoozing.  I deliberately delay the post service rehearsal to give some social time. This allows the choir a breather and I walk through the coffee hour trying to be present and available for comments from the congregation.  But the middle of the rehearsal is a difficult time to quickly orient a new person.  I have enough challenge encouraging the regulars to arrive on time and to not leave early. I am trying for flexibility but it is hard on my professional self image to watch people treat my work (rehearsals especially) so cavalierly.  Ah well. Poor me, eh?

The early morning NPR radio show today was so insipid that I switched to listening to Dylan Thomas read his poetry on my MP3 player instead as I lay in bed and gathered the energy to get up. I continue to enjoy listening to his booming voice and his poetry.

I remember I knew a teacher in high school who said that poetry had more news in it than the daily newspaper.  This remark continues to be true for me even though I do check the daily news sites regularly.

Hmmmm.

I seem a bit grumpy this morning.  It’s a typical odd sort of hangover. I usually come home and sort of crash.

Yesterday I baked and read Dylan Thomas short stories and started Little, Big by John Crowley.  It was actually a pleasant afternoon and evening. I even did the treadmill thing.

But the flood of feelings of failure return in the morning.

I see a pattern.  This too will pass. Michigan is beautiful right now under a fresh layer of snow. Walking back and forth to church yesterday was especially beautiful as it continued to snow.  I do like the snow.

Two of the three checks I have been waiting for came in the mail yesterday but my depression or whatever you want to call it has not lifted.  I think the demeaning stance of wondering when and if one is going to be paid for one’s work contributed to my mood but probably was not the source of it.

I managed to install a Twitter button on my web site yesterday.

You should see it at the top right hand of the screen next to the “Site” and “Comments” button which come with this template. I began doing a web site from scratch years ago and then switched to the Word Press Template so readers could comment and we could have the possibility of a online conversation.  Since the template locked me out a couple of years ago and I was only able to restore access with some panicky help from daughter Elizabeth I have lost confidence in my ability to manipulate the template.  Putting a Twitter button on or a Google Analytics counter makes me worry I’m going to screw something up so badly I can’t get it back.

Nevertheless once in a while I do try things like putting buttons in. Yesterday it worked. Hurray!

I decided to call the professor I know (not a music prof) who attends my church and invite him to play the congas today at church.  I am not feeling at all motivated about anything so I had to force myself to call him.  We are doing an anthem called “Keep Your Lamps” which is a Spiritual arranged with written conga parts.

I don’t like the written part but the idea of congas is a good one.  The prof said yes so I called a couple of young people from church who are percussionists and invited them to come as well.  I didn’t speak to any of them directly. One was still sleeping in,  the other’s mom has instructed me the best way to contact her son is through the her cell so I left a message for these kids in both cases.  (As I was writing this entry, the mom messaged me that he will be there… that means I have two percussion players for sure….. )

I then trundled over to church and moved the congas to the rehearsal room after fooling around with “tuning” them.

I put “tuning” in quotes because I think that tuning a conga is a bit of a misnomer or specialized use when applied to congas.  One does try to stretch the head to a pitch. But I think the tension is more related to the optimum response of the drum than the relationship of the pitch or note that the drum is vibrating at to the key of a piece.

I learned to tune and play timpani in college. Timpani are tuned to pitches and are expected to play certain notes in different keys.  They have a quick tune pedal which enables the player to switch quietly switch pitches even in the middle of a piece.  I think that is different. Conga players might tune to a pitch for a recording. But there is no way that a conga player switches the pitches from one key to another as they play.  At least that’s my impression.

My copy of Driven by Lemons by Joshua Cotter arrived yesterday along with a copy of Skyscrapers of the Midwest. I have finished re-reading the latter and think that Cotter is pretty good.

Last night (this morning?), I was listening to a Lapham’s Quarterly podcast in which Michale Dirda recommended the writer John Crowley’s book Little Big.

I got up this morning and poked around in my library and discovered I have a copy of this. It’s bound with two other novels of his and I always thought they were a trilogy.  I think I read one of the other two at some point. It’s called Beasts.

The third is Engine Summer.

My book is not as cool looking as any of these individual books. It’s an old Quality Paperback edition.

Anyway I’m glad to own this one and am thinking of giving Little Big a try.

This morning I am performing a piece by Pamela Decker based on “O Come O Come Emmanuel” for the organ prelude.

We are not singing this hymn today but I think that the melody is familiar enough that playing a little piece based on it will still be appropriate.  I like the fact that it was written in this century.

The postlude was written in the last century but it still feels like what I call “fresh music” to me. It is Fugato from Hommage to Persichetti by Janet M. Correll.

I don’t recognize the composer but Persichetti was an important composer and teacher from the 20th century. I found the setting in a collection I purchased recently of composers I don’t know very well.

This book arrived in the mail yesterday.

I ordered two books of Dylan Thomas’s prose, Eight Stories and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog from Paperbackswap.  http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php is a web site on which one lists books that one is willing to mail to people thereby earning points. Points can be cashed in by requesting other people’s books. The only money involved is S & H. The website is very good about providing an option which will sell you postage. A pre-addressed pdf mailing label is free. I have mailed and requested several books.

I read the first of the Eight Stories last night and was sort of disappointed. It seemed to be a bit self consciously Welsh quaint. On the other hand I recently read and listened to Under Milkwood by Thomas which is a play for voices and loved the prose.

I just found the above picture of Thomas’s book on Oprah.com.  It was in an article called “Five Books To Read When You Need a Mood Boost” by Marjorie Garber.  The other four are Charlotte’s Web, Persuasion by Jane Austen, The Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare, and Flush by Virgina Woolf. Good to know.

Chatting with Jeremy Daum, my beloved quasi son in law, this morning. He recommended a short story which I will soon read, “The Babysitter” by Robert Coover [link]. Never head of Coover but he definitely looks interesting.

Jeremy is currently working in China. It still fascinates me to chat online with people on the other side of the world.

Speaking of found pictures and websites, I think this is interesting.

I found it in a search for Robert Coover pics. I quite like it.

Recently I put as a status on Facebook that I was going to go play Beethoven and Prokofiev for fun. Someone responded how they admired that I played Prokofiev for fun. Unfortunately I got sidetracked that day by Tchaikovsky after Beethoven and never got to Prokofiev. In the last two days I have been playing him however.  He definitely fits my mood.

My trio had a phenomenal rehearsal yesterday. They are a shining light in my musical life. I am pretty much working in isolation these days. I know no other church musicians with whom I am in regular contact or conversation. Same of course goes for composers, organists, pianists, and guitarists.

But the trio is definitely a collegiate experience.  Yesterday we worked on an arrangement of a Gershwin piano prelude.  Gregory Stone took the original Gershwin piano work (link to recording) and adapted it very nicely for our instrumentation.  Stone’s arrangement  (which I purchased for fifty cents in a library sale recently) gives the opening  theme to the cello in the first section and to the violin in the return of this section. Stone has added his own touches (I think… I haven’t seen the score to the original yet but am planning to try to get hold of one). There are some interesting piano licks and violin licks that seem to be his idea.

In the rehearsal of both this and the Mozart trio we are learning (link to MP3 of  “Musicians from Marlboro” Festival players performance of the Mozart), first we played, then talked about the music, then rehearsed sections some more, talked some more about the music, played some more. Very gratifying to hear the music taking shape alongside our conversations.

I’m still fighting my garden variety depression.  Poor me.  Still no checks in the mail of the money people owe me. Having disturbing dreams in which I murder my (deceased) father whose personality seemed to be somehow divided into sections. Murder is a form of grief I guess. I wrote a poem years ago about murdering my own doppelganger. I don’t know if I could put my hands on this old poem. It’s probably somewhere in one of my not yet discarded files from the past.  Fun stuff.

Today’s links:

I thought this report was cool: How Many Stars? Three Times as Many as We Thought, Report Says – NYTimes.com

I have been messing a bit more with podcasts since I have a new (better, cheaper) MP3 player.  I emailed Lapham’s Quarterly when it seemed they only had podcasts through I-tunes (I despise the proprietary approach of companies like Apple and Creative, the maker of my old expensive crappyM MP3 player, that do not provide for ease of access and sharing). They sent me this link: Lapham’s Quarterly which has the MP3s of their podcasts. Cool. It is accessible from their index link if you click on “Audio and Video.” Silly me.

Another good online source of interesting articles is the Utne Reader.  Here’s a link to their Dec music sampler of complete free MP3s from Independent Labels.  You can stream the entire list by clicking on the first one and/or download any MP3 that strikes your fancy.

Finally,  each month U of Chicago gives away a free ebook.  Link to this month’s selection, the first volume of Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell.

I was listening to this CD yesterday and became inspired to play through a Beethoven Sonata that is on it.  The Sonata is No. 3 in C major (Opus 2/3).  Today I put the recording back on and started noticing some interesting things. He takes the slow movement veeeerrrrryyyy slow. This is the mark of a romantic interpreter. Romantic interpretation is often more fun to play than listen to unless you think the performer has totally nailed the meaning.  I like Lang Lang quite a bit. Mostly I became enamored of his playing after watching his Proms performances online.

This is part of one of the stunning performances he gives. I do enjoy his duet work with the young Mark Wu.

Anyway, I was listening to his recording of the Scherzo and thought that he was reinterpreting the three note pick up as a triplet.  After listening a bit more closely I realized that he was not. He was playing it as written but with a strong emphasis on the first note that made it sound a bit like a triplet if one (this one, that is) was not paying close attention.

I am sort of in doldrums this morning.

Playing for the ballet class is an odd and subtle reinforcing of my understanding and experience of music. Yesterday I improvised the entire class and came up with some lovely melodies (I thought they were lovely).  This is living in the moment and I find it gratifying.

I wonder if my doldrums have anything to do with the fact that I have not been paid for three services (the Grand Haven Pit Orchestra work, the separately contracted and funded work for the Grand Haven Choral and Drama people, and a funeral).  In addition I am negotiating with a bride for a gig in a week or so. She has asked me to play not only her wedding but her reception.  Also my Mom’s nursing home has asked me to play for the December birthday party. Presumably I will have to do a bunch of Christmas music as well as my usual fare of light classical and Lawrence Welk pop music.

I also have been thinking about my harpsichord jack refurbishing job which is sitting unfinished in my dining room.

Yesterday I finally managed to find my copy of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite transcribed for piano. I have been looking for it for a week or so. It’s not all that easy but it would be nice to have under my fingers for the nursing home gig.

I certainly have the blahs today.  I will close with some links:

A music blog from Alex Ross’s Guardian piece:

http://properdiscord.com/

A light little piece about theories of consciousness in humans…. no, really, it’s not a deep piece

http://www.slate.com/id/2275645/pagenum/all

A review of what looks like a rilly depressing graphic novel, Special Exits by Joyce Farmer.

The story of the declining health and presumably death of her parents. Nice.

Link

An interview with pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard.

He studied with Messiaen’s wife. I don’t agree with some of his ideas about the performer being over emphasized these days. Nevertheless it’s a good read.

Link

A review of the book, The Lost Art of Reading by David Ulin. I share what I take to be the view of the reviewer Christopher Beha. Namely that there is a bit of inconsistency in the hysterical insistence among many these days that the Internet and technology is eroding literacy.  I think that literacy has never had that great a stronghold. Especially if you define it as I do as someone interested in books, poetry, music and ideas. This has always been a relative small percentage of even the educated.  Also much technology relies strongly on the written word…. I know images are important but still basically the Internet is code. You know, code in words.

Link

Some links from the article above:

Book Review – ‘Changing My Mind – Occasional Essays,’ by Zadie Smith – Review – NYTimes.com

Book Review – ‘How Fiction Works,’ by James Wood – Review – NYTimes.com

The lost art of reading – Los Angeles Times

Finally a portrait of Assange the Wikileaker that precedes his recent deluge.

WikiLeaks and Julian Paul Assange : The New Yorker

Enough.

Today is the 55th anniversary of Rosa Parks refusing to move on a bus.

Yesterday Congress failed to extend unemployment benefits to long term unemployed.  Mad politicians continue to tell cameras that rich people need low taxes.  Happy Holidays!

I’m working from the desktop today.  My power cord to my netbook seems to have finally bit the dust. Earlier in the day I stopped at a local computer shop (Computers and more) that used to be a good place for used computers. The whole shop had been refurbished to look more like the back aisles of Walmart, carpet on the floor,  many video games displayed.

The salesman courteously examined my cord and found a replacement. $60.00.  O yes, he said to my disbelieving smile, we sell 5 or 6 of these a day. I mentioned that I could probably get one online for much less and that with a hundred more dollars I could buy a new netbook which comes with one.  No they didn’t have any used ones. And no, they didn’t have any netbooks in the shop.  I thanked him and left.

Later I ordered two new ones online. Total cost including S & H: $37.96. Sheesh.

I have totally changed my mind about Skyscrapers of the Midwest.  I finished it yesterday and immediately began re-reading it.

Sure the main characters look  a lot like Fritz the Cat,

but Cotter is darkly funny and densely plotted.

Early in the story, the main characters (two brothers) visit their gramma. The visit goes from cheerful to totally weird and finally  the two boys check on their gramma in the kitchen and find that she is gone. Later in the story it seems she is dead.  The thing growing out of her back joins the odd parallel stories that strip away a layer of reality to reveal larger than life robots, locusts that carry migraine headaches for humans and severe righteous punishing half metallic cat-angels.

And then there are the skull people that seem to be representative of people in this universe.

The series of comic books carry adverts that point to the plot of the story.  The stories devolve into fantasies of young boys and even re-evolve into a Marvel type comic treatment of an incident in the plot at one point.

I am charmed. Recommended.

Good article on continuing corruption in our corporations and government:

Still the Best Congress Money Can Buy – NYTimes.com

Retired Justice Stevens reveals his reasoning behind changing his mind about capital punishment

On the Death Sentence by John Paul Stevens | The New York Review of Books

A more calm assessment of the recent trial and conviction of a terrorist.

The Verdict on Ghailani—By Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine)

Finished reading this book yesterday.  It is a book written by a co-worker of my daughter, Elizabeth. It is a bit of an uneven read. The author decides to go undercover in jobs that are stereotypically worked by immigrants and migrants. He begins in the lettuce fields of Arizona which is one of the two well written sections of the book.

He speaks Spanish fluently which is a great help in getting past his obvious non-immigrant status as a white guy.  His portraits of his coworkers and his description of his interaction are engaging. His descriptions of his own difficulties in learning the skill of lettuce “cutting” as it is called is vivid.

The other section that engaged me was his time in Alabama working in a chicken packing plant. He manages to write not only about the work but about people in the area both repelling (racist politicians) and charming (co-workers and his landlady).

The book slows down a bit when he returns to New York and attempts to get some kind of similar work. It lacks cohesion as he obviously settles back into a more familiar life and tries to get work that will finish off his book and research.

However, his descriptions of the work sites and activities he experiences are the strongest section of the book, including his last jobs in New York. Here he spends some time working for some insane bosses who sell branches and flowers to New Yorkers.

I found his description of their inexplicable behavior not only believable but sadly recognizable.  They scream at him and give him inexplicable criticisms and directions. I guess my experience as a bar musician and a church musician confirms the portrait of people in charge who are a mess.

I felt the weakest section was about the last job which was working as a delivery person for a Mexican style restaurant.  Thompson’s expertise as a union activist and research into lettuce cutting and chicken packing is obvious and helpful. Equally obvious to me is that he skims the surface a bit around the fascinating life of the delivery person in New York.  Just how it hits me.

Thompson’s book is a  solid argument for the good that unions can do. Unions get very bad press these days and have for decades. But there is no denying how they could help with the abuses that Thompson witnesses and experiences first hand.

I enjoyed the book.  I didn’t really learn about injustice. Here in Holland I personally knew a farm worker whose hand was chopped off by a machine. He was a musician I knew who spoke only Spanish and obviously wasn’t trained properly to run the machine he was assigned to work. There was not a wisp of reporting around this in the local press. They did report when a couple of workers were killed in an accident at local business. But locals seemed to be more sympathetic to the business owners than the families of the dead. Could it have been because they had Hispanic backgrounds?

I also witnessed coyotes who herded blueberry workers to Mass at the church I worked. It was obvious who the boss was.

I did learn about the on the ground aspects of lettuce “cutting” and chicken packing.

Elizabeth accidentally left another Thompson title behind when she returned to New York.

Not convinced I will read it after reading “Working in the Shadows.” I admire the work this man and my daughter do in union organizing. Not sure I need to read about about it. We’ll see.

This book was sitting on my wife’s desk at the library one day. It is a graphic novel and looked kind of interesting so I interlibrary loaned a copy. My first reaction seems to hold true: this book is strongly influenced by my hero R. Crumb. Almost to the point that I’m not that engaged since I’m not experiencing stuff for the first time.

The only interesting part so far is the appearance of robots and space suits. I will probably keep trying it, though.

I

I have been reading in Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. This is subtitled a “Play for voices.” I am enjoying it immensely. I am finding Thomas an antidote to the banality of church. He strikes just the right note with his lovely images that sometimes refer obtusely to biblical passages.

Here’s a quote from a poem I have been thinking about. It’s the last bit.

Now I am a man no more no more
And a black reward for a roaring life,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of strangers),
Tidy and cursed  in my dove cooed room
I lies down thin and hear the good bells jaw—
For, oh, my soul found a sunday wife
In the coal black sky and she bore angels!
Harpies around me out of her womb!
Chastity prays for me, piety sings,
Innocence sweetens my last black breath,
Modesty hides my thighs in her wings,
And all the deadly virtues plague my death!

from “Lament” by Dylan Thomas

and see religion from a unique honest perspective:

I could see the lights in the windows in all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness. Then I fell asleep.
from “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”  by Dylan Thomas

I love this from “Under Milk Wood”:

Beynon, in butcher’s bloodied apron, spring heels down Coronation Street, a finger not his own, in his mouth.

Yesterday, I played my little heart out for Advent I.  The Bach prelude went pretty well.

This piece (Trio super Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland BWV 660) is rather tricky as it is a trio with imitative entrances on the opening melody of Savior of the Nations in two unusually low accompanying voices and a beautiful ornamented solo voice. I managed to pull off this my first public performance of this great work.  There were several formal organ type hymns in this service. I was satisfied with my execution on these.

The anthem was an adaptation of the famous “Zion hears the watchmen calling” from Cantata 140 by Bach.

It was dropped a third into the key of the hymn. The organ kept the bass and obbligato going while the choir came in with the chorale melody intermittently. This was a very exposed organ part. Usually if one is doing two independent parts like this it makes sense to do them both with your hands instead of doing one with the pedal and one with the manual. Unfortunately, my organ is so limited that there was no set of pipes that would encompass the bass played on the manual. So the only way to do it was with pedal.

The choir dependably brought itself in, as I found playing the accompaniment took all my concentration and wasn’t able to do much conducting even though I had a hand free. This came off pretty well. I put the obbligato in the flute 8′ which is one of the beautiful stops on the organ. It is gentle. I hope the whole thing came off kind of gentle but beautiful.

The postlude was another Bach setting of “Nun Komm” (BWV 661).This is a setting for full organ in which the melody enters in a bombastic bass pedal part. I made some very silly (and new) mistakes in the exposed beginning. Ah well. Most of it went fine. Again it was the first time I had played this piece of repertoire in public.

Saturday night found me working carefully over these organ parts.

One does wonder about putting so much effort into stuff like this. I guess it is good for me to challenge myself. I am still feeling fatigued from the weeks from hell when I was juggling three part time gigs.  When I am tired, my tolerance for silly religious stuff seems to be lower. And of course the impending Christmas commercial deluge doesn’t help.

Next week I am seriously considering playing the congas on the choral anthem for the day, “Keep your lamps.”

I tried it yesterday with the choir. It would be my first time playing and conducting from the congas. That appeals to me. Heh.

I recently purchased the complete Cadmeon recordings of Dylan Thomas reading. It is mostly his own work but also there are live readings he did of other poets and the charming remarks he prepared for these readings.

The Cadmeon label was formed by Barbara Holdridge and Marianne Rooney in 1953 specifically to record Thomas. I purchased a vinyl recording of him reading on their label when I was a teenager. I still have this vinyl.

Since my own mp3 player died and my netbook is rather touchy in the power cord department, I have temporarily borrowed my wife’s mp3 player (and ordered one of my own). I have put some podcasts and recorded books on it as well as two of the discs from the Cadmeon collection.

I listen to recordings at night when I wake up to help lull me back to sleep. Sometimes they do the opposite.

This morning after listening to all of one of the discs of the Cadmeon recordings of Thomas and some of the second, I began to muse upon how I seem to bundle Dylan Thomas with two other literary passions of my life: James Joyce

and Anthony Burgess.

All three men were writers I read as a young man and still read. As a teen I began reading Thomas and Joyce at about the same time. I think Burgess came a bit later.

Interesting to note that all three are not American: Thomas was Welsh; Joyce, Irish and Burgess a colonial Brit.

Joyce was a life long challenge to crack. I continued reading him and trying to understand his work. I have read Portrait of an Artist several times and Ulysses at least twice through. Finnegans Wake I have never finished but have read in extensively over and over. It’s that kind of work.

I can draw a line from Joyce to Thomas in Thomas’s title of his “fictional autobiography,” Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog.” So Thomas apes Joyce who apes innumerable visual self portraits titles.

I was drawn to Joyce’s prose and Thomas’s poetry at first.

Later I would be charmed when Burgess started writing the Enderby novels. Enderby was a Falstaffian creation which had intentional elements of Dylan Thomas in him.

I can’t remember when I began reading Burgess or why. I do know that in the seventies I had read his Malayan trilogy as well as several other of his novels. After that I followed him and tried to read his new books as they came out.

Presently, at this time in my life, I have a tendency to swallow the works of creators whole. I have read through the piano sonatas of Haydn and Beethoven at the piano. I have also played once or twice through Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier. I am on the fourth of the multiple volumes of Domenico Scarlatti’s 555 Essercizi (Literally “exercise” but more commonly referred to as Sonatas).

I can also satisfy myself that I have systematically read and re-read most if not all of Burgess, Trollope, Proust and others.

Recently I realized I had not read all of Dylan Thomas’s work and began chipping away at it.

This encyclopedic approach to exposing myself directly to excellent writing and composing feels like doing so quickly before my time is up.

I attempt to trace the origins of my literary passion and fail. I do know I had an English teacher named Mrs. Stormzand in High School who both inspired and repelled me. She introduced me to the New Yorker magazine which I still read. I also knew that in the summer break she read a book a day or so.  She managed not to ruin Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood which we read in class and she boasted of having read in its original serialization in the “New Yorker.”

But I don’t think she was the source of my passion.

It was around this time that I remember meeting a pre-goth like girl at a State Solo and Ensemble Festival. Either I boasted that I wrote poetry or asked her if she did because I recall her blase answer: “Doesn’t everybody?”

Well hardly anybody I knew at the time was interested in words and music.

I do know that Dave Barber my friend in my teens was extremely literary and artistic and had pronounced opinions which he expressed charmingly and in no uncertain terms. His ideas fascinated me. But his passions differed from mine.

So whence comes my love of words and music? Something to think about as I age.

I trace my love of beauty to a childhood in which certain adults pointed out to me the beauty of my surroundings in East Tennessee.

My parents were occasionally attuned to this sort of thing and would help me see the beauty in nature. But neither was particularly literary. In fact as a young man I remember disagreeing with my father’s approach to the great ideas and works. He was comfortable and sought out interpretive secondary commentaries on them. I preferred (and still prefer) to throw myself at the actual works themselves.

In the case of Sarte’s On Being and Nothingness I simply carted the book around with me and read and re-read incomprehensibly the first few pages.

With other writers (like Joyce and Thomas) I had a bit more luck.

At any rate it is a joy to me at this time in my life to read and study the music and literature that I love whatever the origin of this anachronistic and eccentric behavior.

I skipped posting yesterday… Got up late and started poking around preparing for the day.

Since I worked all day Wednesday cooking, I had a bit more leisurely time on Thursday. Eileen and I accidentally unplugged our telephone land line and wondered for most of the day why it wasn’t working.

I managed to have all the food on the table around noon: baked turkey breast for the carnivores, ananadama bread rolls, wild rice with butternut squash and blackened pecans, caramelized corn with fresh mint, whipped mashed potatoes, savory cornbread stuffing, two kinds of gravy (one with meat, one without), mama stamberg’s cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.

My Mom didn’t stay too long. I think she was fatigued. But a good time was had by all.

I spent most of the rest of the day chatting with fam, primarily daughter Elizabeth. She brought me a book written by a coworker:

She also told me how she taught this guy to put up directed facebook ads for his book. Apparently it’s quite easy and one can cleverly advertise to specific audiences that might be more interested in your topic.

In this case, she recommended tapping into the facebook admirers of Nickeled and Dimed, which is a book similar in concept.

She described Thompson’s glee when he had over 26 clicks (people who saw the ad on their facebook page and clicked on it) in the first day.

I’m on page 19.

I did manage to politely sneak off for an  hour of organ practice.

My son in California called me on my cell phone (remember the land line wasn’t working) while I was on the bench.  We had a turkey day greeting.

I  put in some serious work on the Bach for Sunday.

While I was gone Elizabeth trounced Eileen in Scrabble. Then we sat around and chatted drank wine and vaguely watched “The Big Lebowski” on cable. Eileen figured out why the land line wasn’t working.

Yesterday the ballet class instructor mentioned that she would be giving an open rehearsal of a dance piece,  choreographed by a fellow instructor.  The choreographer is Steve Iannacone.  He was a member of a famous dance troupe founded by Alwin Nicolai.

There is a celebration of the centennial of Nicolai’s birth in New York this month. Steve has been invited to present an award and also present a dance piece. He asked Alicia Diaz (one of the ballet teachers I am working for) and her husband, Matthew Thornton to come along and dance an adaptation of a piece Steve had previously done for 17 or so dancers.

The piece is called “Garden of Earthly Delights.”

I rushed through my tasks yesterday and managed to get to this.

At first I thought they were going to dance to live music. The rehearsal preempted the beginning  of a modern dance class. The congas were apparently for that. Dang.

Disappointingly the Iannacone piece was danced to recorded music. I suppose this is inevitable. I have seen more dance to recordings than live music in performances.

The piece was quite engaging. The music began with what sounded like an Islamic call to prayer. First one voice, then another.

Alicia and Matthew were hunched over and began twitching as the music changed to a sort of new age jazzy bassy guitar thing.

The dancers continue to awake and transform in pretty cool abstract plant looking ways. They move toward and away from each other. Entwining, then disengaging.  At the end of the piece they are completely engaged in each other’s body in what looks like a new creature.  I quite enjoyed this.

Today I’m planning to do as much cooking as I can bring myself to do, so that I can enjoy being with Eileen, Elizabeth and Mom on Thursday and not be stuck in the kitchen.

I’m looking at preparing the Mama Stamberg Cranberry sauce,  the stuffing, and the pies. Also thinking of adding a dish that combines apples, sweet potatoes and squash, since I have some of these in my fridge.

I did decide yesterday to bite the bullet and perform the two difficult Bach organ pieces this Sunday.

The main reason this is a choice is that I don’t want to spend too much time away from fam practicing on Thursday and Friday.

I received email from my colleague and friend Jordan VanHemert asking when we could get together and do some chatting and practicing. I am afraid I have neglected figuring out when he will play at my church while he is on break from school. I will look at my schedule and email him today.

He wants to do this lovely piece for sax and piano by a composer named Decruck. He and I worked on it a bit last summer. I will have to work my tail off to do the piano part. But would love to do this, probably in January if he is still around.

My netbook seems to be dieing. Right now I have the fraying power cord taped to the computer so that it doesn’t shut off accidentally.

I am considering that when the choral/theater department sends me the money they owe me I might purchase another Acer netbook like the one I have with the money. I noticed that Miejers ( forchrisake) has them for $279.

When I purchased the one I am using, Eileen and I had to drive to Grand Rapids to get it. Heh.

Working on a Thanksgiving Menu

Possible Thanksgiving 2010 at the Jenkins house
(with a few links to recipes)

small Turkey breast (for carnivores)
Wild Rice with Butternut Squash & Blackened Pecans
Vegetarian Stuffing
Green Beans
Mashed Potatoes
Mama Stamberg’s Cranberry Sauce
Anadama Bread (link to a recipe like mine, but I leave out the nutmeg)
Pear Custard Pie &
Pumpkin Pie

Eileen and I will discuss this after she gets up (and probably after my ballet class).

I am feeling a bit more rested today.  Of course, my blood pressure is up this morning. Sheesh. It stayed low all the way through my stressful schedule. I don’t know what this means.  I need to get back to treadmilling. That seems to help.

I have to decide today if  I am going to play two meaty Advent organ pieces by Bach this Sunday.  (Links to James Kibbie playing them: BWV 660 BWV 661 … I will play both of them slower than he does.) I want to learn them this Advent for sure. The  choir will be singing a little easy (for them) arrangement of “Wachet Auf” or “Wake Awake” by Bach. This Sunday would be the good Sunday to perform these two. I will probably have to go to the organ bench and convince myself today.

I relaxed last night and listened to the wind and rain and read English Music by Peter Ackroyd.

I am enjoying this quite a bit. He fictionalizes dream versions of many English creators including William Byrd the musician and Hogarth the artist.

In the Hogarth dream, the main character and Hogarth literally walk into this engraving of “Gin Alley”:

Earlier in the book, he has the great William Byrd utter these wonderful words:

“[H]uman musique is the concordance of diverse elements in one compound by which the spiritual nature is joined with the body. What other power can solder and glue that spiritual strength, which is endued with an intellect, to a mortal and earthly frame? Only that musicke which every man that descends into himself finds in himself.”

from English Music by Peter Ackroyd

Today is St. Cecilia’s Day.

Yesterday was the historical date of Henry Purcell’s death. The juxtaposition of these two dates was pointed out in the novel I am reading called English Music by Peter Ackroyd.

Today is also the date that JFK was shot and is my mother’s 84th birthday.

Last night in the middle of the night  my netbook failed.  Couldn’t get it to manually restart. This morning I got up and removed the battery and then replaced it and it came back. This is not a good a sign.

I don’t keep much on it that I will need when I have to replace it.  There are a few passwords in my Chrome installation that I might miss. Usually a password can be restored. It will be a pain in the butt to start over with a different laptop because I will have to install the software I need and the security stuff. Also this netbook is set up to automatically log on a number of wireless access points that have rather elaborate sign ins. That will be a pain.

I am considering purchasing a larger laptop.

Mostly because I think I can probably get one used a bit cheaper than a new netbook.  This netbook was my first laptop and I do adore having the portability. The size is not that significant to me. Weight would be a factor. Ease of access to wireless would presumably be a working feature of any laptop I could purchase.

Well I survived the marathon of the last two weeks. Today all I have is an 8:30 ballet class and then later in the day to take food to my lovely wife. I have invited my Mom to do this with me since today is her birthday and this is the only way the three of us can have dinner together.

I did church and rehearsals and a funeral in a bit of a daze yesterday. Everything came off fine. It was helpful that I had scheduled a lovely little Telemann violin sonata as prelude and postlude.

After the funeral, I asked Eileen to take me to the pub where I proceeded to have three martinis.

Today I want to plan Turkey day meal and probably go grocery shopping. I’m hoping life will settle down a bit now that the musical is over.