Many thanks to daughter Sarah for looking up my web site on the Internet Archive “Wayback Machine” before she left for New  York. It looks like I did start “blogging” in 2002.  But I called my posts “Rants.” Which indeed they still are. This picture is one I posted that year when I put up a lousy recording of my song “Naked Boy.”

I have tendency to utilize my old written journals from time to time for one reason or another. Likewise my old website posts. Reading through them I see that it was in 2002 that I purchased my digital recorder and began experimenting with it.

I called my website: Logorrhea

I even put this definition up of the word: Logorrhea: “pathologically incoherent, repetitious speech.”

I’ll resist quoting chunks of my old web site for now. It’s linked above for the curious.

I think I now have Google Analytics successfully installed on this web site. When Elizabeth Jenkins helped me re-install after a crash, I attempted to set up my new site with this very cool tool. But I did it wrong. Chatting with Jeremy Daum recently I was reminded that I hadn’t managed to get it installed. But I think it’s correct now.

This will not only keep track of traffic on the site but also shows me what countries I am getting hits from. Very cool.

I was listening to NPR the other day and the announcer mentioned that it had a quiz on its site to determine how much you know about the middle class in America. I was surprised to learn that the middle class income is 25K to 80K.

Even adjusting this for double income levels, Eileen and I are easily in the middle class. And most people I know are probably either in the upper numbers of the middle class or more likely in the upper class economically. [link to a good synopsis …. scroll down for the chart from the 2005/6 Census]

Finally a link to an excellent NPR article on Retired Supreme Court Justice Stevens.  In it, he sounds mostly like a voice of sanity and civility.

One of the things that makes this a nice place to work is the custom of shaking hands before you go on the bench. It’s a funny thing that that very minor ceremony starts everybody off in a collegial manner, and it stays right there.

I’m glad to read that a person of his learning and imminence expresses opinions that make more sense to me than many I hear screamed on TV and on Web newsites. Like the idea that money is not in reality speech (this is in regards to badly needed campaign finance reform).

As for the court’s recent ruling allowing corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on candidate elections, Stevens thinks it was dead wrong — and, indeed, still doesn’t think that money is the same thing as speech. “Can you hear it talk? Can you read it? [Money is] simply not speech,” he says. “And I have to confess that my own views are that there is an interest in trying to have any debate conducted according to fair rules that treat both sides with an adequate opportunity to express their view. We certainly wouldn’t, in our arguments in this court, give one side a little more time because they could pay higher fees to hire their lawyers, or something like that.” from the NPR link above

I managed to write a bulletin Music Note for church yesterday. I was still exhausted from the weekend marathon and had several little things I had to do yesterday. After getting all my tasks done, I went over to the church to choose organ music for the weekend.

As usual I had looked up organ settings of hymn tunes we will be singing Sunday in my personal index. I was settled on a Wilbur Held setting of KEDRON for the prelude and an Emma Lou Diemer setting of LAUDA ANIMA (Praise my soul) for the postlude.

The Held setting was an okay little piece whose charm relied pretty much on the charm of the tune. The Diemer setting didn’t seem that interesting to me, but as usual it was well-crafted.

A while back, Diemer came on my web site and left a confusing snide little comment on a post because I didn’t rave about her music.  She didn’t seem to have read the post carefully in which I actually complemented her work (“interesting” “clever”) but pointed out that many  church musicians sort of look down on her. (link to old post so you can read for yourself if you so desire)

Since then, whenever I contemplate scheduling a setting by her, I remember this little distasteful exchange.

It came to mind yesterday when I was looking for something to prepare for this Sunday. At the same time, as I age, I am less inclined to schedule music I don’t feel enthusiastic about.

So I changed my mind and ended up deciding to do a prelude by Paul Hindemith (Organ sonata 3, mov 1)

and a postlude by the interesting 17th century composer, J.J. Froberger (Canzon III from his Livre de 1649).

These will both require more prep but it will be worth it to me to be spending my time with music that satisfies me with its beauty.

On another topic, I subscribe to the actual magazine, The New Yorker. It’s snobby and pretentious and a bit luddite, but I enjoy the cartoons and often find an article to read.

The New Yorker website is ridiculous. Since I am a snail mail paying subscriber, I get full access to the site with my subscription. The digital editions are sort of a pdf which simulates flipping pages. There are no cross links from the index. (I just double checked this).

There is a note about their evolving tech in the Oct 4 issue. It mentions they have had a website for 9 years. 9 years??!!? Good grief. Seems like it would be better by now. I find their web site pretty counter intuitive to use. I couldn’t easily find the index for the Oct 4 issue since, of course, it’s not the current issue. They admit in the note in the Oct 4 issue, itself, that tech is a secondary issue for them (writing is supposedly primary… no mention of the cartoons). I have been reading the magazine since I was a kid. I even submitted poetry to them for consideration a couple of times. So I do admire the mag. But I find their approach to tech unnecessarily clunky.

Having said that there were several good reads in the Oct 4 Issue.

Alex Ross (whom I admire greatly and wrote the excellent The Rest is Noise) has an article on John Cage. (link to the abstract, unfortunately it’s not all online. Thanks again, New Yorker website). In it, Ross mentions several books on Cage and passes on anecdotes that fill in the portrait of this interesting musician. Example:

Zen attitudes notwithstanding, Cage had a conservative, controlling side. It is a mistake to think of him as the guru of Anything Goes. He sometimes lost patience with performers who took his chance and conceptual pieces as invitations to do whatever they pleased. Even his most earnest devotees sometimes disappointed him. Carolyn Brown recounts how puzzled she was when, after she had laboriously followed Cage’s instructions for one work, he reprimanded her for executing it ‘improperly.’ If the idea is to free oneself from conscious will, Brown wondered, how can the composer issue decrees of right and wrong? Alex Ross, “Searching for Silence: John Cage’s art of noise” New Yorker Oct 4, 2010

How indeed. This is a tough problem that extends beyond the Zen corridors of Cageville. It’s something I think about quite a bit these days. Composers seem more and more to me to be part of a process but not the whole of it. I think of composer’s intentions, but I also think of the meaning for me as a performer, not to mention the limits of the instrument and the performance arena.

Another good article in this issue was “The Scholar: She was brilliant. Was she also a fraud?” by Jeffrey Toobin. (link to abstract, also not available free online). This is a fascinating portrait of Rachel Hall. She seems to have been a brilliant student who also defrauded the government of mucho student loan bucks. On the side, she claimed to be the victim of years of sexual abuse. The article is fascinating and disturbing. Here’s a link to various articles about her recent conviction via Google news.

Finally, Sam Lipsyte who wrote the fun read, The Ask, has a short story in the Oct issue. This one is actually entire online. (link) I haven’t finished it yet, but so far I am enjoying it. It’s called “The Dungeon Master.”

That’s it for today, dear reader. I am started to feel a bit more rested and relaxed. Daughter Sarah gets on a plane and flies to New York today. It has been a delight having her around (as usual). I managed to spend a bit of time with daughter Eliz and her partner Jeremy. But I wish it could have a bit longer.

We are planning breakfast with my Mom this morning and then deliver Sarah to the airport in Grand Rapids. I have  give a lesson at 3 but the rest of the day is free. Ahhhhhh.

I’m pretty exhausted this morning. I had a full day yesterday and then rehearsal in the evening.  Daughter Sarah is visiting.  I always enjoy having her around. Since I’m so tired, I’m stealing Facebook photos from her for today’s blog instead of writing as much as usual.

Elizabeth’s partner in life, my brilliant quasi-son-in-law the lawyer, Jeremy Daum.

I heard a Michigan politician on the radio this weekend saying that an upcoming election was a “war” and that there was no room for civility in the discussion.

Ay yi yi. This makes me crazy. People who stop treating each other with respect and dignity are not behaving well.

Besides reductive metaphors of public discourse to the awful reality of war, we also hear public policies and everything else reduced to the numbers (as they say on NPR…. ). I am sure there is more to life and government than economics. But this no longer seems to be the way we think and talk about it.

“[It] … is striking … how far we have lost the capacity even to conceive of public policy beyond a narrowly construed economism.  We have forgotten how to think politically.” Tony Judt [emphasis added], “The World We Have Lost” in his collection, Reappraisals

However, Judt does continues this way:

“In an unpolitical age, there is much to be said for politicians thinking and talking economically: This is, after all, how most people today conceive of their own life chances and interests, and any project of public policy that ignored this truth would not get very far… Democracies in which there are no significant political choices to be made, [SJ note: He very much includes the USA in this group] where economic policy is all that really matters—and where economic policy is now largely determined by nonpolitical actors (central banks, international agencies, or transnational corporations)—must either cease to be functioning democracies or accommodate once again the politics of frustration, of populist resentment.”

I think this is part of what we are witnessing right now in the USA: politics of frustration and resentment. Judt’s essays warn that too many of us either do not know the history of where this leads or think that history in general is no longer important.

I drove home last night from Ann Arbor after my niece’s wedding. This morning I am sipping coffee and writing in my off line journal. I had a very good time at this wedding. Family events always present opportunities for me to ponder. I do that best in my journal.

I am stealing pics off Facebook. Not always clear who took what.

Here’s a short excerpt from my journal entry this morning:

There were dozens of jack o lanterns, uncut pumpkins and gourds strategically placed all over their property. I watched Jeremy put the the last two pumpkins on large poles erected on either side of the gate to their yard. The pumpkins themselves were a lovely blend of soft yellowish brown. He sat them on plates of a similar hue which were mounted on the poles which were themselves a blending color. It was a very beautiful and satisfying combination and a typical small detail.

To the right of the the gate extends a fence. On the posts someone (presumably Jeremy) had put smaller carved pumpkins. The faces on these little jack o lanterns were charming and friendly. One looked very successfully like a cartoon cat smiling. These all were turned away from the road (unless there were faces on both sides, I didn’t check) so that they seemed to be placed to greet visitors as they left.

This wedding was definitely the expression of the two individuals.

Emily had her horse students around as servers and gofers. The property is so country feeling, very much Emily the artisan who does all kinds of very cool crafts like weaving and making wool from sheep. In fact she has plans to raise sheep which Eileen pointed out makes it sound like she’s not moving away soon.

Jeremy’s touch was everywhere. Each sign was in his distinctive graphic novel hand. There were two stuffed chairs under a tree (one of which I recognized as from my family) with a wooden sign over it marked “Respite.” There lights strung on trees. There were hanging cut glass pieces with lit candles in them. It was a lot like being present in one of Jeremy’s comic books.

So a fine time was had by all. The food was good. My pesto worked.  One woman was particularly hilarious about it when she tasted it and remarked that she didn’t like it, but she was sure it was good if you liked that sort of thing. Heh.

Onward to church today. Life is good.

We are all safely gathered to celebrate my niece’s wedding tomorrow. I didn’t realize how close she is living to Ann Arbor. I came  in to town around 6 and unloaded  my stuff (food, piano) and tried to contact my brother and my nephew, neither of whom picked up on their cell.

Daughter Sarah had flown in earlier to Detroit Metro. My brother and nephew had picked her up. I knew she would probably be at my niece’s house so I drove over there.

I figured that the wedding party was in some restaurant somewhere having a rehearsal dinner. I was mildly horrified to find that I was crashing a lawn rehearsal dinner in order to connect with daughter Sarah.

After a few hugs and introductions, Sarah and I politely refused offers to help eat the generous amounts of food and drove back to the hotel. Since Sarah lives in the U.K. it is always a treat to see her.

Eileen arrived an hour or so later and the three of us walked to a nearby bar and had drinks and food.

Even later Elizabeth and Jeremy arrived and after briefly settling in their room they joined us in our suite for a nice chat.

This morning I padded my way down to the front desk to get coffee and ask for some shampoo. I was freaked to see someone I vaguely recognize cross the lobby and say hi to me in a friendly way.

I figured out later he was a very very conservative doctor I knew who attending the Catholic church I used to work at in Holland. Small world.

It looks like all systems are go for the wedding today. I have two coolers full of pasta. I should add that this is commercial pasta that I boiled up yesterday.  I’m afraid some of the fam thought I was making home made pasta for 120. Hah.

I had a sit com morning, “I Love Lucy” style, as I discovered that my colander was way too small for my first batch of pasta. Hot thin pasta spilled over and instantly stopped up the kitchen drain. Before I was done I had many bowls of drained cooling pasta sitting all over the room with bits of pasta all over me and most surfaces.

Fortunately, I did manage to get the drain unclogged so that I could continue making pasta. I filled about seven plastic bags with cooked pasta before I decided not to make up all that I had purchased. I brought the extra uncooked pasta with the idea that they could cook it up quickly if they ran out.

Today I plan to mix in the thawed pesto with the cooked pasta and put into several large foil containers. I have brought my many bowls and serving utensils purchased at thrift stores. The idea is to drop it all off to the people in charge. I need nothing to be returned. They can either keep bowls and utensils or drop them back off to a thrift store somewhere.

Right now I’m sipping coffee and using my netbook in the dark while Eileen continues to rest. Thank goodness for wifi.

At least I don’t have to do the dance class this morning. A visiting dance troupe is giving a workshop during class. This frees me up to prepare the pasta and continue cleaning the serving dishes and utensils before jumping in the car and driving to Detroit Metro Airport to pick up lovely daughter Sarah.

So I’m sipping coffee and preparing myself to start cleaning the kitchen.

Received my used copy of Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century by Tony Judt yesterday.

As is often the case, this thinker came to my attention via his obit (link).

I interlibrary-loaned several of his books and became quite impressed with his grasp of history.

He has helped me understand quite a bit what is going on in the politics of the world and the USA. So I have purchased a couple of his books.

I read several of the essays  in Appraisals in the library copy. Yesterday I started reading the introductory essay, “The World We Have Lost.” Here’s a sampling of passages I made note of in it:

“Until the last decades of the twentieth century, most people in world had limited access to information; but within any one state or nation or community they were all likely to know many of the same things, thanks to national education, state-controlled radio and television, and a common print culture. Today, the opposite applies. Most people in the world, outside of sub-Sarharan Africa have access to a near infinity of data. But in the absence of any common culture beyond a small elite, and not always even there, the particular information and ideas that people select or encounter are determined by a multiplicity of tastes, affinities, and interests. As the years pass, each one of us has less in common with the fast-multiplying worlds of our contemporaries, not to speak of the world of our forebears.

Speaking of the fact that the USA essentially avoided the direct terrible consequences of war in the twentieth century, Judt writes: “[T]he United States today is the only advanced country that still glorifies and exalts the military, a sentiment farmiliar in Europe before 1945 but quite unknown today. America’s politicians and statesmen surround themselves with the symbols and trappings of armed prowess; its commentators mock and scorn countries that hesitate to engage themselves in armed conflict. It is this differential recollection of war and its impact, rather than any structural difference between  the U.S. and otherwise comparable countries which accounts for their contrasting responses to international affairs today…

For Washington, war remains an option—in this case [Iraq] the first option. For the rest of the developed world it has become a last resort.”

Anyway, I find this guys thinking and analysis very cogent, informative and helpful.

Gotta skate.

Somehow I got off balance yesterday. I knew I was out of synch when I spent a great deal of time panicking and searching for the list of my hours I am keeping until Hope gives me a time card for my ballet class piano work. I think I am missing my solitude. The list was right where I had put it, of course.

I think that vulnerability is a basic component for good communication. I deliberately make myself vulnerable in my improvising, my composing and even blogging.

But the way I handle myself in person with people is much different.

I notice that yesterday several people I came in contact were themselves having a bit of an off day.

I think it might be a bit inappropriate to share the specifics. But I bring them up because in each case I found myself mustering positive psychic energy and attempting to be quietly supportive and calm as I listened to (and worked alongside) people who were dealing with life.

Driving home after rehearsal last night, I found myself drained by these attempts to be honest and supportive to people I care about.  It’s odd that mustering positive energy can leave one so exhausted.

Thank goodness for Leonard Cohen (another thank you to my brother Mark for giving me his most recent CD/DVD, “Songs from the Road.”). I listened to this song going to and from rehearsal last night. This recording made in Madrid doesn’t do justice to the sound.

But I do love the way Javier Mas improvises in and out of this beautiful melody.

Here are the words to this lovely poem/song:

I asked my father,
I said, “Father change my name.”
The one I’m using now it’s covered up
with fear and filth and cowardice and shame.
Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me,
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me.

He said, “I locked you in this body,
I meant it as a kind of trial.
You can use it for a weapon,
or to make some woman smile.”

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me.

“Then let me start again,” I cried,
“please let me start again,
I want a face that’s fair this time,
I want a spirit that is calm.”

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me.

“I never never turned aside,” he said,
“I never walked away.
It was you who built the temple,
it was you who covered up my face.”

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me.

And may the spirit of this song,
may it rise up pure and free.
May it be a shield for you,
a shield against the enemy.

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me.

Yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me
yes and lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover, lover come back to me.

I thought maybe I misunderstood the Maslow concept of self-actualization, but after a little reading I think maybe not. I think I was first introduced to it by an engineer type person who sang in one of my choirs. He pointed out that engineers tend to be self-actualizers and that was the type of person who would motivate themselves to volunteer and be in a choir and spend time learning music and improving themselves.

A little reading and thinking led me to see that Maslow is simply articulating a basic wisdom, that first one must have one’s more basic needs addressed before one can pursue others.  Sounds like common sense to me.

Spent a good deal of time yesterday going from thrift shop to thrift shop buying bowls and serving utensils for my niece’s wedding on Saturday.

She is using all thrift shop stuff to serve her guests on.

I also purchased pasta and some of those large foil serving trays. My plan is to have the pesto all ready to drop off and have her friends serve it room temp. Then all the stuff can either be discarded, kept or sent back to thrift shops with the rest of the stuff she has. But none of it needs to be returned to me.

A few links from yesterday:

Humanizing New York City Ballet Dancers – NYTimes.com

This article describes how ballet dancers are emulating symphonic players and trying to connect more directly with their audiences via pre-concert chats and more humanized public relations. Very interesting to me. I like that concert etiquette is breaking down a bit, so that the artificiality of the ivory tower and inaccessible approach to great music is eroded. I think that the etiquette puts off Americans a bit and distances them from stuff they might like. On the other hand, I am attracted to the stiff traditional world of ballet class etiquette.

One of the dance teachers addressed this directly recently with the students, pointing out the etiquette between the sexes (essentially sexist… boy dancers always go last and help carry out the dance equipment). This etiquette she said is something that is important in dance,  but does not extend to her daily life in which she is more egalitarian.

DOES MINIMALISM MATTER? | More Intelligent Life

This article fascinated me because it discusses minimalism in art and doesn’t mention the concept in music. At the same time it concludes with a quote from Chopin: “After one has played a vast quantity of notes…it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”

An Arizona Act of Kindness, Leaving Water for Immigrants, or an Offense? – NYTimes.com

Finally, this little disheartening article about people who oppose leaving water in the desert for illegal immigrants.  I find the whole argument against illegal immigrants very disturbing. It reminds me so much of blaming those who are deprived for their deprivation. Not to mention empowering the mad concept of the “state” as a defining aspect of reality. Borders between countries seem to me to be imaginary lines thought up by humans at their worst. You step over a line and now you are in jail or worse.

The philosophical basis for nations and states is eroding as we discover we are all trapped in the same little fishbowl called earth. The incredible riches and privileges we have living in the United States and other “developed” countries are not only provided at the expense of other people in the world (what we have they do not, our pollution has poisoned the earth’s atmosphere for everyone). It also seems to have created a weird sense of entitlement that people who live in the USA should have infrastructure like roads and education without being taxed for it. Not to mentioning the hardening of hearts that says that poverty and ignorance are the fault of those who suffer from them.

Eileen and I watched the movie, “Wish You Were Here” last weekend.

We watched it on Saturday and then again on Sunday with the subtitles turned on because between my deafness and the quick slurring of the UK accent I missed a bunch of words in the first viewing.

I find myself less and less interested in new cinema. But this movie drew me in with its unpredictability and gentle character development.

I guess I also liked the fact that the main character is disapproved of by her entire family because she has a “slutty mouth.”

Her behavior is outrageous but somehow presented as logical, even intelligent in this movie.

Her father is so worried about her he takes her to a pyschologist.

She quickly discovers he has no sense of humor. The scene with him is one in which I find myself more in sympathy with her and  suspected that when he tries to coax her to say swear words (the more extreme of which she refuses to say) she is on to something when she says he just wants to hear her say it and is really a dirty old bugger.

Anyway, it’s probably not a great movie, but it is a good one and better than most I have seen lately. It was made in 1987, written and directed by David Leland. I think it was his first film. I looked at others he has made on Netflix but couldn’t decide they were worth seeing. This one is.

Peter Ackroyd is a writer I keep being interested in. I started reading his Biography of London and found it fascinating but didn’t finish it (yet). Recently I have picked up his novel English Music and started reading in it.

My copy looks nothing like the one above but I couldn’t find a pic of it online. The title is synoptic. The plot is almost incidental. A young savant who along with his father gives psychic and healing shows in London just after WWI. In the evening the father reads to the son. All of the authors are English.”Music” in the title is not only the music of English composers to which the novel will eventually allude according to the jacket blurbs, it’s also the use of the word “music” to mean sort of the poetry or attractiveness of a subject. The “good part,” in other words.

In the lengthy second chapter, the main character has fallen asleep. His dream combines the two books his father is reading to him on alternate evenings at the time.

Pilgrim’s Progress and

Alice in Wonderland.

He wonderfully mixes them up and the bookjacket promises he will do this with other books as well in alternating chapters.

In his acknowledgement at the beginning, Ackroyd intriguingly writes

The scholarly reader will soon realize that I have appropriated passages from Thomas Browne, Thomas Malory, William Hogarth, Thomas Morley, Lewis Carrol, Samuel Johnson, Daniel Defoe and many other English writers; the alert reader will understand why I have done so.

While I don’t pretend to be a scholarly reader, I do like to think of myself as alert. So this is a bit of a gauntlet he throws down and I willingly pick up as I read the book.

The dream sequence is full of wit and meaning. I wonder if that’s what he meant.

I ran across this whimsical fact while doing some reading in Martin Gardner’s Annotated Alice.

According to Gardiner, the dodo in the story is “Lewis Carroll himself. When Carroll stammered he pronounced his name, ‘Do-Do-Dodgson,’ and it is amusing to note that when his biography entered the Encyclopedia Britannica it was inserted just before the entry of the Dodo.”

Last Friday, Micheal D. Shear posted an article on the NYT blog, The Caucus,  about Jon Stewart’s devastating bit in which he played clips from the present and far past of Republicans using the same words and phrases to describe their approach to governing if elected. (link to blog post and comments)

It was a funny bit. Eileen and I watched the show and found it entertaining. All politicians claim to have fresher better ideas than their opponents.

As I often do with online articles and blogs I scrolled through the comments on the article.  I’m interested in reading online comments even when they are extreme and cryptic.

Usually most comments on any news blog agree with or violently disagree with what they have read. This is partly, I think, because of the phenomenon I read about a few years ago. Readers (and viewers and listeners) tend to not realize their own bias or they also tend to not perceive a bias when it is one they agree with. What they are reading (watching, listening to) just seems sensible to them.

If, on the other hand, they disagree with what they are perceiving, they are quicker to “see” bias whether it is there or not.

I like reading comments (and letters to the editor). It interests me most when I am convinced that the writer is a real person writing from a real point of view (as opposed to a manufactured persona to put forth some kind of “framing” or someone writing and committing the common errors of bad logic or even just plain dissembling).

One commenter  on the NYT blog  linked above,  judithod of Minnesota, pointed out that one could do the Jon Stewart bit with Democrats as well.  This caused me to think a bit. Very likely she is correct about this.

Another commenter (who obviously did not agree with the blog or appreciate Jon Stewart’s humor), Steve W from Ford Washington, began his comment this way:

Oh! How clever of you to run a snarky piece on a comedian rather than even a peep about the explosive tesimony of the former Head of section for the voter rights section of the Department of Justice who today in sworn testimony, testified about deliberate subversion of justice at the AG’s shop and subsequent cover up that goes to the top in the Department of Justice and possibly the White House.

What in the world was this guy talking about? Who was he talking about?

In my spare time (hah!) between then and now, I poked around until I had a better understanding.

When I start  trying to find out if information is true on the web, I look very hard at the web sites themselves.

I found a fairly balanced article on the Christian Science Monitor web site: New Black Party Intimidation Case: Bombshell for Obama?

I also looked through some obviously inflammatory biased writing just to try and understand what the commenter was trying to say.

One of them linked me into the Southern Poverty Law Institute: Feds investigate dropping of Panther Case

I have been a long admiring of this organization, so I give them a lot of credibility.

In my research I ran across a lot of articles from Fox news which seemed to contradict what I understood about the situation. Then I found this: Fox whopper: DOJ said Voting Rights Act wasn’t violated in New Black Panthers case | Media Matters for America

I recently heard Jimmy Carter (okay, okay, it was on Jon Stewart’s show) say that Fox news basically does nothing but distort information. This report reminded me of his comment.

Anyway, it looked to me like the Steve W of Ford Washington was incorrect to suggest a bias was showing in the NYT choice to run an article on Stewart’s goofy comic bit in the face of serious, serious charges against the Obama administration’s investigation of civil rights violations.

It turns out that Christopher Coates, the man who testified and was mentioned by Steve W, was himself the possible victim of what is described (framed?) by angry white people as “reverse discrimination.” If you scroll down in the Media Matters link you find Christopher Coates  did a complete turn around from being an ACLU supporter to a “member of the Bush team” at DOJ after he had been passed over for a promotion for a black colleague.

Sheesh.

Also, this morning I clicked on the Steve W commenter link on the NYT and found that he is a prolific angry guy in the links and comments on the NYT.

I blog about this not so much about the content but to point out that if one wants to find out a bit more information about something, the web is only helpful if you are careful and smart about what you are reading.

This of course includes the NYT.

2 good things about my experience at the James Jordan workshop yesterday.

1. Due to my new status as an official staff person (and a bit of prompting to the secretary at the dance dept) I was able to log on to the Hope college wifi network legally and have internet for the lecture

2.  James Jordan’s approach, though innovative, is directly connected to teachers I have admired and tried to learn from in the past: Helen Kemp and Frauke Haasemann, to name a couple. Also referred to Inner Game of Tennis by Gallway, a book that has had a huge impact on my life.

Insights that came to me as Jordan talked

1. Even if I can’t afford Alexander Technique lessons, I  could afford yoga. Jordan’s use of yoga to help his conducting students reminded me of my own superficial romance with yoga when I began my serious piano study (age 20?).

2. Jordan’s discussion of breathing and body alignment completely rhymed with the ballet instructors I have been working with.

3. Body mapping is significant.

At the end of the session, he showed us a portion of the video he is releasing with his new updated conducting text (I own and use the old one). He said one of the reasons conductors have poor arm movement is they visualize or map their arms incorrectly.

He explained to us that the arm as four bones:

The three one usually visualizes: the radius, the ulna and the humerus.
The fourth bone that moves when the arm moves is the clavicle.

He then said that his students say they believe and understand even before they do. (intimating that we were in agreement but hadn’t changed our body mapping).

Then he showed us a pizar animation of himself conducting as a skeleton. The results were startling. The clavicle is as much in play as any bone and moves freely.

He said by showing his conducting students and us this video it would change how we moved almost instantly.

4. Interesting continued reinforcement of my own growing conviction it is the meaning of music, the emotion, where one needs to spend most of one’s time as a performer. Jordan discussed lovely ideas of attending to the details of inspiration (breathing) and leaving conscious expression aside or in the hands of the composer. This means that “expression is  not contrived but inspired.”

This quote comes from a colleague of his who teaches acting and whom he uses in his own teaching, Nova Thomas.

Inhalation = inspiration

Exhalation=expression

We can attend to the preparation, the inhalation. That is where we put our intention. When execute or exhale in the case of breathing, the expression takes care of itself.

Interesting stuff.

Finally here are few quotes I jotted down:

Everything you do has to be done from a caring loving mind set. On your best days that’s what you do.

Teaching is about being real in front of people. get them to take off the mask. If you’re not present you can’t teach

You give of yourself to another when you breath….

When you embrace someone you love the breath goes out of your body. (SJ note. i.e. you automatically exhale with this gesture, which is telling)

“Redemption is only a breath away” Nova Thomas

put the meaning in the breath…. breathe into your idea

You must work out of your own silence, not knowing but trusting.

if you want to breath you have to be quiet
you can’t have stuff going on in your head

(SJ note: Interestingly Jordan said that journaling and meditating help this process. I have been journaling and meditating for a good number of years but had not thought that this helps me find my quiet center when I am able lose my self consciousness in performance, something I am not alway able to do, of course)

I continue to feel that playing in a room where ballet is being taught is a good thing for me.  It is so refreshing that music is actually important to the teachers and students. It’s important to me of course. And I tend to exist in the world of sound, especially my improvisations. But I don’t focus on the listener. Usually this is a good thing because oftentimes people are not listening that closely. But self-conscious improvising or performing is never the best kind, anyway. Better to lose yourself in the magic and ideas. Then something happens. I’m not used to having others in that kind of space with me and I quite like it.

Today I am attending a short workshop at Hope college, “Approaches and Techniques to Improve Choral Ensembles.”

The presenter, James Jordan, is a clinician and author. I have read several of his books and also admire his fellow choral pedagogist, Frauke Haasemann.

I especially like his book, The Musician’s Soul.

Here’s a quote to give you an idea of why I found this book meaningful.

One’s center is the internal focus of one’s being. It is the place where the experiences of one’s entire life reside, but are not compacted down. Those life events both happy and sad are the place from which truthful music grows and is nurtured… Center is the place by which you stay both connected to the ground and the earth, and to the world around you. To be alive, you must always be aware of your center…

How does one access center? One accesses center by being in a state of total awareness.

Okay it’s a bit cosmic but it’s that kind of book. It’s full of wonderful quotes from all kinds of thinkers and creative people historical and alive. Also exercises that I worked through when I read the book (around 2000?).

I discovered Jordan through studying Haasemann who died in 1991.

Her philosophy and ideas jump started my post grad work as a conductor. This little book above is one I consult constantly when I am thinking about vocalese.

I then picked up on Jordan when I purchased and began using the above book (which came with a video I still own).

Then I started reading Jordan.

My copy is not this fancy looking. It looks more like this:

Anyway it’s been a long time since I’ve been in a room with musicians that are interested in choral conducting. I’m tired today and would just as soon skip it, but I can’t let myself.

I am having mixed feelings about Hope College. Since arriving here in 1987, I have been pretty much below the radar of the people at this school. The faces of the teachers have changed. In some cases they are more tolerant and open. But in others it’s a classic system situation where a sick system seeks members that will perpetuate it’s little sick dance.

Very odd.

I am weirdly much more at home in the dance department than I ever could be in this music department. It’s a moot thought because I think I am sort of type cast as that elderly weird guy who doesn’t seem to make much sense and is kind of a third rate musician. So be it.

Who ever said I was coherent? or a first rate musician? Hey I’m glad to be who I am.

Having said that, the introvert in me dreads rubbing shoulders with some of these people. The last time I went to an American Guild of Organist meeting at this college, I was actually sort of snubbed. Like I say, weird.

But the more common sense me knows that there is a high chance that not only will this be a meaningful workshop, but the people I see will probably be gracious and friendly.

The wind is blowing in Western Michigan. Literally. I love the sound. I have to leave the house in 55 minutes to walk to my daily ballet class accompaniment. I  now have an official Hope College I.D.

I have mixed feelings about working for such a prejudiced and Christian fundamentalist organization. But I guess one does what one has to.

Speaking of fundamentalism, waiting for Eileen to arrive home from work last night, I sipped my gin and read “Holy Warrior” a 1996 review by Tony Judt of His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time by Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi.

I just checked and couldn’t find a complete free online version of this article. Which is too bad because it helped me understand the reactionary retreat of the Catholic church from the “open windows” of John 23rd.

Judt does an evenhanded historian review of the book. Basically he says its a puff piece and holds up several surprisingly trite phrases it uses to support its overblown and unsubstantiated subtitle. But in the course of the essay he makes it clear why Karol Wojtla (JPII)  rejected so many issues out of hand while pursuing a “modern papacy” in style but not substance.

He even finds precedent in the reigns of earlier popes. The one he thinks is the most similiar is Innocent III who became pope in 1198.

“Energetic and authoritarian, Innocent set about centralizing power in the medieval church. He proclaimed himself the Viar of Christ (the title was not used before then), preached and organized an unsuccessful Fourth Crusade against the Infidel in 1204 and a brutal and utterly effective crusade against the Albigensian heretics of southwest France. At the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, in the year before his death, he defined the modern doctrine of the Eucharist and the subordination of the bishops and other congregations to papal authority…

“With Innocent III the medieval papacy attained the zenith of its secular influence and theological authority. Yet the same man, but the very extent of his claims and rulings, was also the last of the great medieval popes and contributed to setting in motion those forces—secular and spiritual—that would lead to the downfall of the universal Church.”

So Ratzinger’s (JPII successor, Pope Benedit XVI) intentional gleaning of the faithful to the true believers and reactionary stances on a number of moral issues can be seen as the logical next step from JPII. Lacking JPII’s charisma but carrying out a similar anti-modernity and Catholic fundamentalist agenda.

Playing piano for a ballet class means making up little melodies that are clear and symmetrically shaped at least in terms of phrase length.

It’s fascinating to me when I sort “find” melodies (that’s sometimes how improvising feels) that have a charm despite their simplicity.

Or maybe the simplicity is part of what works.

The materials I use for a dance class melody tend to be very limited. Usually I don’t go outside of the eight notes of the scale, which is really only seven notes because the top note is the bottom note repeated up an octave.

When I first began playing for ballet classes, I worried about being able to stay steady enough. This is something I think about as a musician because I have discovered that I, like most musicians, can vary my steadiness unknowingly if I’m not paying attention.

I’ve been known to practice simple little hymns that I play at church with a metronome to solidify my confidence that I play steady enough.

But I soon figured out that dancers don’t need music for the beat, as much as they need a melody to hang their movements on.

Melody is like graceful physical movement.  A good melody is itself a physically graceful movement.

So when I stumble on a melodic idea that is particularly graceful and, dare I say, beautiful, it is a moment of effectiveness and beauty in sound and moving human bodies.

This beauty is at the core of what both ballet teachers I am working with are trying to take the dancers to.

Another interesting thing I observe about this kind of improvising is the effective use of silence in the melody.

If I improvise a four measure phrase in which the fourth measure is silent or holds the note, this creates the interesting phenomenon that the melody moves from my hands to the bodies of the moving people (the dancers).  It’s like their movement completes the musical thought in the silence, often a sense of “upness” or preparation to continue.

It’s very cool.

Then there’s the fact that ballet teachers prefer “live” accompaniment.

This is very near and dear to my own heart. While I do enjoy recorded music I do not mistake it for the live experience. I think that since so many (if not most) people in America experience music more from recordings than live performances it has diminished the whole idea of music in our lives.

It alters the big idea of what music is for humans. If (as I become increasingly convinced) one of the essentials of being a human is “making meaning” in general,  making music is fundamental to human possibilities and contributes not only to the quality of our lives but is at the center of who we are as living, breathing consciousnesses.

Recorded music is to live music as cinema is to theater. All four concepts are interesting expressions of art, just radically different in themselves. Recorded music and cinema unfortunately contribute to the malaise of passivity that is endemic in U.S. society. It is a tendency in humans that needs to be resisted as a general approach to being alive.

When I teach music to people, dance itself is a road to making music. Physical movement helps musicians understand what they are doing as a gesture of sound.

Yesterday, the teacher talked to the dancers about what is happening in their faces as they dance. She insisted that the passivity and coolness that one sees in a concentrating classical ballet dancer detracts from and actually harms the dance itself.

She asked a dancer to do a few of the moves they had been rehearsing. She stopped him and said, :Look at yourself in the mirror, that is not you!” He immediately animated his face in good natured response to her. “That’s you!”  she immediately pointed out.

She told the dancers they needed to be looking at someone or something in their imagination. They needed to exhibit the same spark in their eyes that we have when we talk to each other.

Their dancing will benefit from it. Their entire body says more when the face is authentically there.

For me, this animation, is what live music and dance is all about.

I worked my little ass off the last couple of days. I arranged my Holy holy for instruments. I developed an arrangement for both it and the closing hymn this Sunday (“I’m so glad”) in which I wrote a marimba part and 6 other parts. A trio of advanced parts and a trio of easy parts. Also wrote out bass and drums and a vocal score for guitarists. This turned into a big effort.

Yesterday afternoon I had the  brilliant idea of writing a cakewalk variation on “I’m so glad.” I even composed a reasonable decent “Scott Joplin” piano part for it.

Good thing I wrote decent piano parts because my pianist (Jen Wolfe who has a masters in performance) really helped me get through the evening last night. She nailed her part in a similar manner to the way she played for me at my Aug LemonJellos gig.

I also wrote a simple piano part for  the Holy holy and a simple piano duet for “I’m so glad.” Unfortunately these players did not show. That is, one showed but was surprised his Mom had volunteered his abilities and decided not to play.

I loaded a lot of my equipment into the car and took it over to church last night. My electric piano seems to have developed a hum making it unusable. I discovered this of course right before the rehearsal. I dragged down the other piano from the choir room for my two pianists who didn’t play anyway. Standard church work procedure.

I did have twelve of the fifteen people whom I was expecting show up and seem to have a good time.  Of that twelve, I’m expecting eight to come this Sunday and play. Also a couple of people who couldn’t make it last night are planning to come.

I am exhausted this morning, both physically and emotionally.

Usually the day after this sort of thing I have some real emotional backwash of wondering why I put my heart and soul into what I do and if it’s really worth it. This quickly passes. But I have to get through it.

I can see that one of my strengths is that I can develop good materials for musicians. One of my weaknesses is I can’t seem to attract many volunteers to music in church.  Part of this is probably just that I’m an old fart and what I do (live music) doesn’t really hold a lot of interest these days for as many people as it used to. But also I think that people are less interested in the delayed gratification of a commitment to the time it takes to do stuff in an excellent manner.

Anyway, I do have a core group of committed people at church. It is these people that I try to help have a worthwhile musical experience as they volunteer their time and effort to enhance the music of their community.

And of course I enjoy arranging and performing music.

I can see that keeping up with the blog is going to be challenging in the face of my new schedule. I have to leave the house in 30 minutes to make my Monday dance class.

Yesterday went well but I am pretty tired this morning. I was very happy with the way I performed the Shostakovich on piano. Practicing does help immensely. I also think that the organ arrangement of a Shostakovich piano prelude I did as the postlude is a worthy transcription. If it weren’t for stupid copyrights I would put it in a finale file and put it on on my web site for others to use.

I was disappointed that after I sent a parish wide letter and made an announcement I had not one new choir person at rehearsal after church. I spent Saturday carefully devising a list of choral anthems which help someone new to choirs ease in to choral singing.

This is pretty typical of my work at Grace. I keep devising strategies, following through on them only to watch the community pretty much ignore them. I am grateful that I have a small loyal group of singers who did come. These people seem patient if not amused with my attempts to improve the situation.

Made pesto in the afternoon with lovely wife’s assistance. Then helped her clear area (move air conditioner) to bring the outside plants in. Then had a little gin and read the paper. Fell asleep in front of the TV. Hmmmm.

I did fuss about with twitter a bit yesterday adding more “liberals.” I noticed that in my attempt to understand people and positions I don’t agree with I had loaded up my list with reactionaries only.

After class today I have to buckle down and work on musical arrangements for tomorrow night. I am hoping I can come up with some flexible parts of a wide range of musical abilities. This will be challenging. But I do enjoy that sort of thing.

I recently purchased the complete Caedmon collection of Dylan Thomas reading.  The record company seems to have formed at the time the two people whose brainchild it was (Barbara Holdridge and Marianne Roney) were inspired to begin recording Dylan Thomas.

I like to think that one of the reasons I like Dylan Thomas so much is that I purchased a record (not the one above) of him reading when I was young.  This collection includes that record. I still own the vinyl but I am very happy to get this collection and hear Thomas read tons of stuff.

The collection consists of eleven CDs. I ripped them all last night and used my MP3 player to listen to several during the night.

Under the influence of this I dreamed I was sitting and listening to a poet read his work on the streets of New York City. In the dream I was so moved by his words that I wept.

Before retiring last night I finished reading The Hollow-Eyed Angel by Van de Wettering. I have read many of these mysteries and also some of this writer’s non-fiction. These are mysteries with a Zen twist. Three Dutch detectives (they were originally written in Dutch) , a commissaris  and two adjutants, seem to view their work through the prism of Zen thinking.

How does that work you might ask? Very well, actually. When I read mysteries I sometimes recall Gertrude Stein’s fondness for them.

The mystery plot is usually a foil for a succinct ritual that unfolds a bit differently in each case. Still its pacing and context provide a mind numbing sort of comfort that is not far from a good movie or TV show.

Van de Wettering has drawn me in for years.  Here’s a story from the one I finished last night:

Central Park, Hurrell said, was known for its begging squirrels. Squirrels had learned to sit up for peanuts, and some had even mastered the art of shaking hands.

And Central Park was also known for its rats. Rats looked like squirrels; their lack of plumed tails was not noticeable when they faced little old ladies. Rats liked peanuts, too, he said. Rats had learned to join squirrels when little old ladies handed out peanuts.

Rats didn’t shake hands, though. Rats bit.

So many little old ladies had been bitten by rats that another admonition was to be added to the park’s notice board:

DON’T SHAKE HANDS WITH RATS

Nice, eh?

Today is my first choir rehearsal. After I developed a plan yesterday, Eileen helped me photocopy (legally) and assemble several anthems in preparation for this.

My next pressing deadline is Tuesday evening. That is the first meeting of what I have dubbed the Grace Electric Light Orchestra. This is simply an ill-disguised ploy to try and get people who play instruments to come out and learn some music to use at service.

My task will be to have music ready for a wide array of skills. I am planning to arrange my new Holy and the closing hymn for the following Sunday. I guess I will be working on that tomorrow and probably Tuesday.

Today’s post church task will be to make my last batch of pesto for Emily’s wedding.  I bought basil at the farmers market yesterday and it awaits me in the fridge.

My leisure time is drying up a bit so it’s getting harder to find time to sit down and blog. I shorten the time by not putting as many pictures up. I know this makes it a bit less interesting to many readers. But it takes about half the time then.

Yesterday after class, I came home and printed out tax withholding papers and other stuff for my new job at Hope (the dance class accompaniment thing).  Then dropped them off. I have more leg work to do on this on Monday. Did bills (Eileen’s and mine and my Mom’s).  Tried to get my Mom to get out of her apartment to no avail. Her back is hurting her.

Spent the rest of the day trying to choose anthems for the choir to rehearse at our first post-Service rehearsal tomorrow.  I do better at that when I have more time to reflect.  I did come up with a few more. I want to spend most of today making sure that I am ready for that particular rehearsal. In addition I have to do some serious preparing for the Grace Jam Session next Tuesday. I want to have my Holy holy arranged for various instruments and also the closing hymn the following Sunday: “I’m so glad Jesus lifted me.” This means arranging and then printing out parts.

I am looking forward to tomorrow’s prelude and postlude. They are both by Dimitri Shostakovich.

The prelude will be his D major prelude and fugue from Opus 87 for piano. It’s a lovely little thing and I have been working on it for about two weeks. The postlude is also from this same opus. I took the prelude in Eb major and adapted it for organ. I chose it because I think it sits pretty nicely on organ with a little shifting around of octaves and omission of doublings of some of the notes.

I had a nice chat with a dance student yesterday. She introduced herself to me as someone who goes to my church and recognized me from the dance floor yesterday. It fascinated me to learn that she disagrees with the theology of our little church but manages to overlook it because it’s the “only Episcopal church around.” Our conversation ended abruptly before I could gently inquire what she disagreed with.

I suspect we are not “conservative” enough for her. I use quotes because I am coming to think that what is called “conservative” these days is quite radical and reactionary. I could be  wrong about the young college student but I don’t think I am about movements like the Tea Party and the shouting pundits who seem to want to return to a time of lesser government and reduced taxes.  I see the denial of the role of government and its funding entirely as a radical notion that contradicts the basic idea of a republic democracy.

Tony Judt points out that all nations and governments can only really do one or two things at all approaching competently. Most of what they do they will fuck up. So democratic societies have to choose what they feel the government should do.

I think public welfare is important and also education. Judt talks about the “culture” of the society and its attitudes toward what it expects from government. He was an expert on contemporary Europe and provides some fascinating examples that contrast with the US.

Also it’s not a “conservative” idea to be libertarian right up to the point where someone else’s behavior offends you (without harming you, of course).  Whether that’s burning a flag or a book or having an abortion, I think it’s not only not conservative to build one’s personal values into a political stance for everyone, I think it’s pretty inconsistent if you say you want less government in your life as you put more government in other people’s life you despise.

Of course there are moral values in governing, but in a democracy they have to be bigger than what John Scarzi calls the Leviticans (He uses the term to identify brain dead Christians who get stuck on the rules in the Bible, particularly those in the Old Testament books like Leviticus.)

But so many people don’t seem think very clearly these days when they talk in public. Of course it provides fodder for John Stewart’s and John Scalzi’s wit. But I’m sure both of them would gladly see less stupidity in the public discussion.

I watched Rush Limbaugh’s brother, David, talk on C Span briefly last night.

I find myself listening more and more to the reactionary crazies trying to figure out what it is they are saying these days.  David Limbaugh seemed to think that Ronald Reagan was a saint and that all Democrats are sinners. He (and supportive callers) “framed” their ideas in metaphors of being at “war” with the opposition.

I watch this in amazement because it so reduces complexity to nonsense. But nonsense seems to be the soup du jour of this country right now.  I believe that Obama is a pretty lousy president. But I think it’s an impossible job and I prefer conservatives like him and Clinton to radicals like Reagan and George W. Bush. Obama and Clinton are actually conservatives. Clinton’s whole notion of “triangulation” is based on co-opting agendas from people who are right of center. Obama appointed some of the same financial advisors who made the mess to fix the mess (e.g. Rubin) He is very conservative in how he tries to govern, that is he changing less than people say he is and conserving or keeping the status quo in areas I would like to see changed (Guantanamo and transparency of government).

But I guess right now I would definitely vote for him as the lesser of two evils unless the Republicans were to nominate someone who had more obvious sense.  I think that Obama is acting pretty coherently. I try to think critically of how people lead and speak in public. His rhetoric is an improvement on the past few presidents. But the rest of the rhetoric from both the right and the left right now is full of nutty stuff. What does it mean?

America could really be changing direction from heading toward a democracy to heading for something else. Hard to tell.

Why do people blog? What is the internets for? Why do I blog? I have been thinking about these ideas since starting the delightful book my brother and his wife gave me for my birthday.

This is a fun book. It’s a clever collection of online journal entries (okay, blogs) of a witty and wise and opinionated writer. I’m on page 89 of 368.

Scalzi has been blogging since near the beginning. In fact reading him has made me wonder when I started my own website. I know that when I did so, the noun and verb, “blog,” was not in my usage vocab.

Unfortunately, my original web site was three crashes and many computers ago. It’s possible that sitting around my house on a hard drive I have references to when I began doing an online website.  I know somewhere out there in cyber land everything is still floating around preserved.

I’m still trying to figure out when exactly I started doing an online journal.

In the meantime, since Scalzi is articulate and smart about what he is up to on his web site,  Whatever (link), I have been thinking about my own expectations of the internet and online writing.

I can remember my original motivation was to reach out to other people online to share conversation. Conversation in its most idealized sense: Talking about ideas. Ideas that include things that interest me like music, literature, and other things.

I guess I thought the internet would be a vehicle for sharing my own work as a musician.

I began to realize that the whole idea of distributing ideas and culture was shifting under the feet of those plunging online.  I know that my online usage predates my 1987 move to Holland. At that time, I was primarily interested in BBSes (online bulletin board systems) and online library catalogs. At this writing, I’m not sure when I started my first website, but I am trying to figure this out. It was probably around the time Scalzi started blogging (1998), but I’m wonder if it was a bit before or after.

Anyway, now I think of the internet as sort of a magical place where if you can imagine something, odds are there are other people online thinking and writing about it. Literally, imagining ANYTHING (note my rare use of caps since longtime web users see caps as SHOUTING).

I think my imagination was jump-started by the early Napster. The idea that one could thumb through other people’s audio files and share them was an explosion of possibility in my brain cells.

Unfortunately I fear the Napster story of going from “Celestial Jukebox” to “Just Another Commercial Moneymaking Venture” might foreshadow a dire future for the interwebs. As soon as the idea that Freedom of Information becomes preposterous in the eyes of people controlling access, the internet will lose much of its potential and interest for me.

But in the meantime, I love it. I love being able to search and find information and conversation and articles and music and books that interest me. I have described the internet as like a party where you are able to find fascinating educated interest people chatting next to complete idiots and the whole range in between, but it’s really much more than that. It’s all the libraries, recordings, and artwork available. It’s a museum, a concert hall, a bookstore,  an “anything you can thinking of” store. It’s only limited by the imagination of human beings which if nothing else is the strong point of humans. They (we) make “meaning” in its most fundamental sense. And the internet can be full of “meaning.”

And I have to add here so my daughter Elizabeth doesn’t prompt me, of course it has turned into a vast venue of Porn (capital P) which is not to be sneezed at by any means.

So blogging for me has turned into sharing my ideas, insights and also linking in other ideas and resources I run across.

I think that for a writer (like John Scalzi) it is an even better venue than a musician. If your trade is words, well then that’s what the internet is primarily about (IMNSHO).  But if your trade is sound (like mine is) one immediately falls into a secondary consideration of how to effectively allow people to hear your sounds. This means recording.

Learning about recordings (as I have been for the last ten or so years) has opened up a can of worms for me. Lo and behold (like writing and music) recording is a completely intact self contained high art. Damn!

Fortunately it’s not as expensive as it was several decades ago. Unfortunately it still takes tons of expertise and time.

So I’m still working out how to share my sounds well. I am basically a composer/musician not a recordist. It’s easy to throw up copies of my sheet music. But that feels like it limits my audience to a shrinking number of literate musicians.

The recordings you find on my web site reflect my own poor lack of expertise in this area. They also reflect the fact that I am not devoting my life to recording and learning how to get better and better at it. I have devoted my life to music making, itself. A slightly different idea for me which includes daily practice and thinking about music; and much composing and improvising and performing.

So get a copy of Scarzi book and read it. He’s great! Go on his website and read his current entries. Good stuff. Thank you, Mark and Leigh!