I have been thinking a lot about my personality and my family recently. I think as a young person thrust into the midst of an upbringing in a Church of God parsonage (that’s what we called them), that somehow I withdrew myself into my own world made up of music, poetry and books.

This was facilitated by having big (to me) empty buildings available to me to sit and play a piano in an empty room. Come to think of it, “Empty rooms” is the name of the song I wrote to deal with my relationships to the men in my family. I haven’t been writing these “bad Paul Simon songs” as I call them, for a while. I have come to the conclusion they were therapeutic for me and that was why I persisted in writing them. Maybe my adolescence is truly over. Probably not.

Anyway so many things in my life are therapeutic these days: cooking, music, being with fam.

The building I remember the most is the one in Flint on West Court Street. I spent hours in the chapel plunking away at the piano. Also I organized an ensemble that met in the balcony of the chapel which I christened “Christian Youth Ensemble.”  I talked some young musicians into playing through music that seemed to have been laying around. I remember wondering what an “Agnus Dei” by Bizet could possibly mean.

These memories were stirred yesterday when my brother and I emailed links to the current West Court Street Church of God Nativity Scene web site stuff. Both of us participated in this public ritual as young people.

Also I have been thinking a great deal about recently deceased father. I have difficulty understanding his personality and connecting it to my own.  This is probably because we have been on separate wave lengths for a long time. And of course now I am working on my internalized father and find him not seeming incredibly important to me at this point in my life.  But I’m still working on it.

In the meantime, last night Eileen and I watched Julie and Julia.

A dear and respected friend had suggested that it was possible to begin to see the real Julia Child instead of Meryl Streep after a while. You know the basic willing suspension of disbelief.

Unfortunately this did not happen for me. Instead the differences between Streep’s performance and my memory stood out annoyingly to me. Streep had Child’s voice down. But I could see Streepisms creeping through in her performance.

Plus the Julia Child in my head was always shrewd and possessed a steel trap of a mind which is not the way the movie interprets her and possibly is not even the way she actually was.

After the movie I pulled up several Youtube videos of Julia Child and confirmed the mannerisms I missed in Streep’s performance. Streep ended up doing a physical mimic of her which looked a bit like a caricature to me.

I have resisted visual approaches to history before. I find movie plots based on so called true stuff annoying. I find historical personages reinterpreted even more annoying.

Maybe I am basically a person of the book and the word. Figures.

In the last blog, I mentioned Firesign Theatre. I have strong visual images of their record, “I think we’re all bozos on this bus.” After several google image searches, I realized that the pictures I was searching for (the bozo bus, the future park) were firmly lodged in my brain but probably no where else.

Wow.  For some reason my online buds Cheryl and George made very nice comments to the last two posts. Cool. To Cheryl: Thank you so much for your kind words. I wish you lived a bit closer. We definitely would have to get together and shoot the shit in person.  Though I like online stuff, I find nothing is like face to face.  To George: I do miss checking your blog. But this sort of thing can be time consuming and people come and go in the strangest ways. If you write it, I will come. And I don’t get the need for you to behave yourself. But maybe that’s because I don’t behave myself that well online. Heh.

I have been considering what to do with my electronic connections such as internet, phone and cable.

I have just about come to the conclusion I should get cable back for my lovely wife. The other night she was watching her beloved NCIS on our desktop as she treadmilled. The damn thing kept stopping. She patiently explained that if she paused it, sometimes (SOMETIMES) it would load for a few minutes. Oy. I told her we should definitely think about putting cable in the bundle we eventually get.

I’m disappointed that the tech isn’t better for stupid tv and movies. Almost every time I stream, I have stutters and  glitches. This includes Youtube, by the way. It’s probably my aging equipment plus my dsl connection.

I have been talking with my very connected daughter Elizabeth regarding this stuff. She said I would be very disappointed with a wireless only connection to the internet with Verizon. That’s what she has been using. She has two connections, one at work and one for home. This wireless connection is sort of new for her, I think. She finds herself going over the limit of the combined allowance of these two connections (10 G, 5 G each).

She mentioned that since I say I live in the cloud, that wouldn’t be enough.

This has caused me to think about the way I use the internet some more.  Last week I installed a bandwidth meter on all three of the computers Eileen and I use. On my netbook (which I am using to write this entry) so far I have only used 810.32 Megabytes.  I think this is about 6 days usage. This means that I am only approaching 1 Kilobyte Gigabyte with one week’s worth of usage on one of my machines. Since a Kilobyte is 1024 Megabytes, a Megabyte is 1024 Kilobytes,  it doesn’t look(s) like I’m going to average (around or maybe a bit) more than 5 Gigabytes per month. (Thank you to Elizabeth for correcting me!)

But on the other hand, Elizabeth points out that streaming is a problem.

I figured out that I mostly read the internet. I use it as a great big old reference library instantly fact checking stuff or finding out exactly what a word or reference means. Also the usual text stuff: email, blog, news, books, articles. And then there’s purchasing. Ahem.

I also stream audio much more than video. But having said that, I’m embedding this video:

I mentioned to my boss recently that I feel a bit like Lurch since I play my harpsichord so much.

She thanked me and said that now she was going to think of that when I played in church. Sweet. (That word has a nice resonance since rewatching the opening to the Addams fam tv show

:

[in Lurch’s voice:] Neat…… sweet….. petite….. )

This was brought home yesterday when I was rehearsing harpsichord at church and glanced up and saw a good size bat swooping around. Cool.

I am thinking the Lurch self image is about right for me in Holland Michigan. Hardly a day goes by that someone is rude to me or stares (unconsciously) at me. I don’t think it’s just the hair and beard. I think I am like other people in their lives. Also that they are a bit frightened of me. Not everyone mind you and not even a majority of people I run into. Just enough to be amusing.

Or maybe they do see me more like this:

Another good self image for Jupe.

Anyway. Harpischord. I have had an exhausting week but have still managed to find a lot of time for music on the harpsichord. Yesterday I broke something else on my aging instrument. The plectrum on one of the jacks snapped off.

Oops. When I stole a jack from one of the extremely high notes, I noticed that it was about the fourth one I had stolen from that range. I have stolen them from the outer notes to the point that my range on my instrument is considerably diminished on both ends. This is not too much of a problem because much of the literature was written and played on small instruments with not so much range.

When I chatted with the Zuckerman guy this week on the phone, I pointed out what an important influence building a harpsichord had been on my life. He said that it wasn’t unusual that it was a life changing event for people who did it. For me, this is true in a sort of gradual way.

When I and my cohorts (I was living in a basement with another high school student and all of friends would drop in and assist us in putting together the harpsichord kit) put my harpsichord together,

I wasn’t much a musician really. I played trumpet, guitar and piano but had no real facility at anything but pop music and Churchagod music. (Churchagod being my fam of origin’s denomination of choice).

Since then, I have actually studied harpsichord and acquired some facility at the repertoire. Enough facility that it is extremely fun to rehearsing and perform it.

In the handbook of the original kit, it suggested that builders should not only play their instrument but purchase Dover editions of Bach and the Fitzwilliam Virginal book. This I dutifully did at the time.

Since then I have used these books extensively, even purchasing a second copy of the Bach due to wear.

Now I keep a one copy of the Bach Dover (suites, inventions, Goldberg) at church and one at home.

Yesterday when I was chatting with the janitor at work, talking to him about my love and history with the harpsichord, I realized that I had just spent the previous hour practicing music from the Fitzwillian Virginal book and that volume one lay spread open on my creaky aging harpsichord.

I find this very satisfying.

I also have recently had a rewakened connection to the music of Couperin and the English Virginalists (in the Fitzwillian Viriginal book).

I remember when I quit college the first time. I told the counselor I was going to compose and possibly study harpsichord. Who would have thunk that I would have actually done those things in my life? But there you have it.

Consolation for living in the future (“Living in the future is a lot like having bees live in your head”… possibly inaccurate recollection of a quote from Fireside Theater).

Hey! I found a pic of my type of harpsichord online:

I actually just got off the phone with Zuckerman. I ordered a set of strings. He had some copies of the old hand book for the harpsichord above and sold me one.

The one in the picture is a refurbished one they recently sold for 1650.00! Very cool. The guy told me I should upgrade my jacks. They would sell me a kit.

I have been thinking quite a bit about fatherhood lately.

Some of this is pondering the mystery of my father who died this year. I say mystery because for me my dad always held himself back a bit and didn’t reveal himself largely to me.

I also have  been pondering James Joyce’s Ulysses. This book partly works with the idea of fatherhood. Stephen is looking for a father, since his own father has failed him in some manner. The first part of the book is the remnants  of Stephen’s failed life of the mind. Then we meet Bloom. Bloom is the leading character who shows a calm, accepting, very domesticated and low class beauty in his thoughts and actions. Although he is as flawed as any human, he does end up a bit of the father figure to Stephen in the book. The book is about many other things, but I do think that both Bloom and Stephen hold forth the idea that we become our own father or that we find that father that we seek in ourselves more than anywhere else. It is not lost on me that Joyce’s character and I share a name.

When I think of my own father, I realize how different I am from him. Even though recently old friends of my Mom remarked how much I look like him. I wonder if my last moment of intimacy with him was when he broke down weeping in my arms years ago over my divorce.  I do mark that scene as the end of my adolescence or the beginning of the end or something. I have long thought we internalize our parents.

As a parent, I saw my children internalize who they experienced me to be. Later as they approached maturity I was often bemused that I could no longer get into the conversation they were having with their internalized father. Since I have understood my life as one that stands a bit a part from my family of origin. That is, that my values are different. My father and mother spent a lot of their lives as believers and ministers of the Christian church. Even though I do church music, my relationship with the church is completely different from theirs.

Plus I have found greater value in the world of music, poetry, the arts and literature. It confuses me that this is so. Not sure exactly how I got here. I do think the idealism transmitted to me from my parents from the Christ of the New Testament has a great deal to do with my own values. Also I received the mantle of outsider from both sides of my family

(my father’s father I think of as a self made intellectual in an anti-intellectual environment of the Church of God, my mother’s father was a castigated illegitimate child …. his mother was not married to the man who fathered him, her husband kept him at arm’s length). And I am comfortable with this stance. Actually I am more than comfortable with it. I value the outsider point of view. Once again Kiberd has a quote:

“… Bloom himself is valued by Joyce to the extent that he  can recognize the ‘stranger’ within himself. He is more Christlike than any of his fellow citizens, being constantly willing to put himself in the other fellow’s position. Joyce was following Paul of Tarsus in the attempt to imagine a world without foreigners, a world made possible once men and women accept the foreigner within the self and the necessarily fictive nature of all nationalisms.” p. 310 in Ulysses and Us by Declan Kiberd

This passage identifies one of the things I embrace in being an outsider, accepting the “foreigner within the self.” And most of all “constantly willing” to put myself in the other fellow’s position.

These are basic human wisdoms.

Trying to finish up Declan Giberd’s Ulysses and Us, I came upon the following:

“As late as the 1980s, many older readers were still unready to meet the challenge, routinely denying that Molly could have been masturbating. When the Irish actress, Fionnula Flanagan, performed the soliloquy in this way, scholars in Minnesota walked out in protest, angrily handing back memberships of the James Joyce Foundation like war veterans handing back their bravery medals. The very idea of this lonely woman pleasuring herself was too much for them. These scholars had been educated in an upbeat American tradition which saw Molly as saying ‘yes’ to love and to life, in the spirit of Stephen’s definition of literature as the affirmation of mankind. But Joyce, more somberly, had been asking: does she? Her ‘yes’ might also be sad, since it is the strategy of a lonely monologist, who hopes that somebody might be there listening. Like the self posted letters, it is the device of a woman left with nobody to talk to but herself. ” p. 263

Although I certainly have some people to talk to, I like the idea that blogging might be the “strategy of a lonely monologist who hopes that somebody might be there listening.” Very nice.

Molly is largely based on Joyce’s wife, Nora, above. If you’ve never checked out Ulysses, it is the voice of Molly that closes the book in a chapter of wonderful streaming words. Recommended.

I find so much false in my day to day life. Intellectual and emotional dishonesty abounds. Not to mention the walking wounded. Good grief.

I need to get on the dang treadmill and blog more later I guess. Eileen and I have watched Hanif Kureishi’s film, “My Beautiful Launderette,” twice this week.

This man’s work fascinates me. I have the screenplay in a collection of his and am thinking about this movie quite  a bit. For now let it suffice that I think he has something important to say about racism and living in a time of mixed cultures. More later.

So. I’m looking seriously at Verizon. AT&T was so creepy to me that I would prefer not to give them my measly business bundling up my phones and internet.

Verizon has drawbacks as well. First of all, they are also annoyingly two companies: Verizon (cell phones and wireless internet) & Verizon Communication (land lines). That’s right, two completely different companies. They offer no bundles of any kind however tThey can bill on the same bill, however. Great.

The main drawback that is troubling me right now is that Verizon’s MIFI(tm) wireless modem thingy service is limited to 5 gigabytes a month. After that it’s a nickel a megabyte. I’m thinking I use the internet more than that. I hope not.

I found a little free monitoring software that I have installed on my netbook and desktop. (Link to site of Tautology Bandwidth Meter)  So far in the last hour or so, I have used 3.37 megabytes. I will need to let this software monitor me for a while before I can get a sense of how much bandwidth I actually use.

The sales man said to me, what do you use your internet connection for. I began listing off the usual suspects. Basically I live in the cloud.

I have started keeping notes on books on my Diigo site.

This (if you don’t recognize it) is an online bookmarking service (free of course). I used to keep archived articles on the NYT site. Then they dropped the service and passed it onto to some site. Diigo is like my third or fourth leap from one service to another. Supposedly they have kept all my old NYT archived articles. I kind of hope so.

This morning while treadmilling I downloaded a book to my Kindle for my PC thingo. It was a free slow cooker cook book. It’s pretty cool. Click on the book if you want to see it at Amazon:

I’m pretty impressed that this author gives away one of her books. The rest she charges for. Seems like a pretty good marketing strategy. I’m considering actually purchasing one of her books after reading a bit in this one. On kindle, naturally. Heh.

So I played a funeral today. I used the harpsichord and played some Francois and Louis Couperin, natch. Also played Mozart on the piano and Bach on the organ. As I was tuning up, I broke a string on the harpsichord. A low F. This limits what music I can perform on it. Fortunately the little piece I am planning for tomorrow’s prelude doesn’t use this note. I know I have some harpsichord strings around here somewhere. I keep thinking I’m going to call Zuckerman and ask if they have stockpiled old parts for my klunker.

I just google imaged and couldn’t find anything that looks much like my old instrument. This doesn’t bode well.

It’s a bit like this one. But with wood veneer finish. And a straight side not a curved one.Also the legs are different.  This one probably lifts right off the base. Mine has three legs screwed right into it. I guess mine’s totally different.

I guess I’ll close this blog with a bit of quote:

The book Ulysses by James Joyce “remains open to the idea of ‘entelechy’: that there are always new forms knowledge destined to emerge, but which despite that inevitability, will take us utterly by surprise. Declan Kiberd, “Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece

For some reason this struck me. I like the idea that new forms of understanding (and even music) continue to inevitably emerge and surprise me.

It has been a weird week for me. I think my recital had a lot of impact on me. I think I am drawing nearer to the things I love, like music and cooking. I spent a lot of this week at the harpsichord. I am loving the Couperins (Louis and Francois). I have scheduled Francois for this Sunday. Prelude on harpsichord and postlude on organ.

Right now it’s evening on Friday. I have bread and chicken in the oven.

I made apple torte and apple cake this morning before Eileen got up. I spent an hour at the harpsichord this afternoon. I have a funeral tomorrow morning and I spent a good hour transcribing a song from a youtube video (River in Judea). I would have bought the dang thing if I could have downloaded it or bought it from a local music store. But noooooooh.

Eileen and I drove up to Verizon and had a heart to heart with a sales person. We are considering dropping our land line. AT&T has totally jerked me around so I’m not in the mood to bundle with them. Verizon has reasonable prices. I think I can get 2 cell phone lines for 80.00 a month with 250 text messages for each month & internet access (via their 3G network) for 60.00 a month. This means I could drop T-Mobile (100.00), AT&T (26.00), TDS Metrocom (70.00). We would have to buy new phones but I think we can get by for 50.00 for the two of us. Anyway, we’re pondering it.

I read Obama’s Nobel speech. (link to the text) He continues to impress despite his obvious realpolitik. I think his speeches are really quite good. This one is worth listening to or reading.

My daughter Elizabeth is coming to visit around Xmas. I am missing my kids. But life goes on.

Eileen and I ran secret Xmas errands for my Mom today.

I tried to teach Pandora radio to only play early French Baroque music this morning. To no avail. I entered Louis Couperin. The music genome project which underlies this web site analyzed the music. It found that it was something like uptempo, played on harpsichord, and some other stylistic comments. I heard a Pandora panel discuss how they do this. They use their musical brains to try to objectively analyze the music. Then the play list can reflect the actual sounds of the music and sometimes come up with other music like the entered musician or song.

Unfortunately, I don’t think they factored in French Baroque which is what I was trying to listen to. They kept suggesting other harpsichord composers. But not French ones. I kept clicking on the  I don’t like this song tab in hopes that I could convince the station to play French Baroque. It didn’t work. I also found out something else. Eventually, they quit stopping on the songs you don’t like. I mean you have to listen to it all the way through instead of skipping to the next  one. At this point, I closed the frame and preferred the early morning silence. Good grief.

Now I can hear the rain pouring down on the icy ground and pavement. Nice sound, but I hope it doesn’t create bad driving conditions.

I find myself ebbing from post-recital lethargy to a more typical low grade melancholy. French baroque music seems to help this. Also a large dose of Schubert piano sonatas. I mean of course playing these things myself mostly. It’s a bit early to start banging away on music with Eileen still sleeping upstairs although she has told me it doesn’t bother her if I play the piano in the morning.

I have been going over our finances and it continues to look a bit shaky. Yesterday I figured out our medical costs for 2009 so far so that we can have a working total to create a flex plan at Eileen’s work. Out of pocket we spent around 2800.00 on medical costs last year. It promises to be much more next year. Oy.

I’m afraid my Xmas gift giving will have to reflect this to some extent. Damn. I wanted to compose something for people this Xmas. The composing is relatively easy to do. But recording is another animal altogether. I continue to be unhappy with my recordings. But not unhappy enough to sink time and money into making better recordings. I’d rather practice and perform. Selfish git that I am.

Maybe I can bake stuff for people for Xmas.

I donated 10 lb sterling to Pawel Siwczak’s web site yesterday via Paypal. I did this since I have downloaded all free MP3s he offers on his web site.  http://www.pawelsiwczak.com/

I also called my Senators (Stabenow & Levin) to urge them to vote against the Nelson/Hatch amendment to the health care plan prohibiting federal monies for abortion coverage.

I keep stopping and listening to the rain. Definitely better than Pandora this morning.

I was pretty lethargic yesterday. My recital turned out to be sort of a major project, so I needed  a bit of a rest.

I spent most of the day reading and playing piano. Tough life, eh?

Found myself playing Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and both Louis and Francois Couperin.

I did a bit of actual rehearsing on the Mendelssohn piano trio I am learning.

It was the sort of day, I found myself dozing off while reading.

Besides reading Declan Kibard on Joyce, Ulysses by Joyce and The Recording Angel by Eisenberg, I bookmarked the following articles online:

Wife of Chinese Dissident, Liu Xiaobo, losing hope for his release by Tania Branigan for Guardian UK. (link to article)

Liu Xiaobo was taken away on 8 December last year, a day before the publication of Charter 08, a plea for democratic reforms that he co-authored. He was formally arrested in June on suspicion of inciting the subversion of state power.

The wife (Liu Xia) looks very sad to me in the photo. What a bunch of crap. Tomorrow is the anniversary of Liu Xiaobo being taken away.

Transparency International has done a study of corruption in governments in the world. (link to site). New Zealand is the number one least corrupt, Somalia the most at number 180. China is number 79 from New Zealand, the U.S. is 19 just below the U.K.

How Obama Came to Plan for “Surge” in Afghanistan by by Peter Baker (link to NYT article) is an interesting study in that boring topic, policy making and governing. I am okay with political back and forth, but what drives me nuts is the rancor and ideologies that are driving our political rhetoric. It seems to have so little to do with the job of governing. Obama is obviously trying to govern. Good luck to him.

Eisenberg (The Recording Angel guy) discusses the private use of music in our lives. He points out how some people listen to certain musics in their homes on certain days: Messiah on Xmas, Klemperer’s recording of Beethoven’s 6th on Shabbat, Mothers of Invention of Mother’s day.

He describes at length Thomas Mann’s use of character’s listening to music on a phonograph in The Magic Mountain. I have read this book and vaguely remember this.

But his most startling example comes from Aldous Huxley:

Aldous Huxley, who had as good an ear as anyone for the resonances of technology, also cast the phonograph as an instrument of death and the hope of afterlife. In Point Counterpoint the world-weary cynic Spandrell, who is ‘not a man – either a demon or a dead angel,’ plays Beethoven’s ‘Holy thanks-song of a convalescent’ from the A minor Quartet – music which he finds the only proof of God, the soul, heaven – and kills himself. ‘Long notes, a chord repeated, protracted, bright and pure, hanging, floating, effortlessly soaring on and on. And then suddenly there was no more music; only the scratching of the needle on the revolving disc.” from Chapter Four Ceremonies of a Solitary in The Recording Angel by
Evan Eisenberg

Bleak little image there. But fitting, I think. Music like life itself is transient and gains meaning from its transience.

I’m still processing my recital yesterday, of course. I did several things differently. For one thing I rehearsed practically right up to the recital. Of the eight pieces on the program,  I played five in public for the first time. All (except the harpsichord piece) were challenging.  And an added challenge was performing on my busiest day of the week after a morning of church music.

I think I was happiest with my rendition of the Arvo Part. During the Mendelssohn prelude, I had ciphers and almost stopped playing. Fortunately, I banged away at some of the low pedal notes where I suspected the cipher to be originating and they went away. It made for some interesting Mendelssohn, however. Heh.

I was most disappointed with my Bolcom. This was one of the pieces I rehearsed on Sunday. I didn’t lose control of it, but there were some funny moments (as one of my colleagues used to say, I took a dump on that one… heh). One listener remarked it was her favorite of the program. It is a cool piece and it was mostly there. I just like it quite a bit and wanted to render it a bit more faithfully.

The Mendelssohn fugue went pretty well. For some reason the fugues had me a bit worried yesterday. I rehearsed them both right up until the recital. It seemed to help in their cases. Also the Messiaen went surprisingly well.

It’s been a while since I’ve asked this much of myself in a recital/concert situation. It was a good experience. Next time I am probably going to be in the company of the violinist and cellist I have been working with. Now it’s time to start rehearsing my piano trios (Mendelssohn and Mozart) a bit more seriously.

The number (35-40) of people who chose to come out on a busy Dec afternoon surprised me. Pastor Jen and I were observing it was an interesting mix of people who were attending an organ recital and people who supporting someone who was supporting lesbian/gay/bi-sexual/transgendered people.  I had several people indicate they couldn’t make it because of the annual Vespers Xmas  concert at the local gay hating college. Every year they give multiple performances of Xmas music. The conductor is a parishioner as well as other music faculty there. I counted one faculty member at my recital yesterday. Plus one retired faculty member. There could have been more. I didn’t recognize everyone.

At least two people came because they follow my music at the local coffee shop. They like my song, “Moneyland.” Interestingly, one of them insists they heard someone sing it on Prairie Home Companion. I have quit denying this is possible. It’s totally news to me. heh.

I was pleased to publicly show my support using my music in the face of such local hate and intolerance. There was an ad in the paper and also a little blurb about the recital. Both of which specifically mentioned lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people. This was probably my biggest accomplishment yesterday.

On another note, I keep pondering a couple articles from the Dart Center for Journalism and Violence Web Site.

Marguerite Moritz’s article, “Four Lessons on School Shootings,” has some interesting observations on how journalists should cover traumatic events.

I like this comment:

“The written text is about sequential argumentation. Visuals are about emotion and are associative, non-sequential and perceived as highly authentic… “

The four recommendations are:

1. Don’t offer a single cause for a complex event

2. Images have more power than almost anything you write

3. Don’t make heroes out of villains

4.Listen to your readers and viewers

All comments worthy of pondering.

Another article, “Caught in the Crossfire,” by Sheila Coronel, prompted me to observe the attention a recent weird Philippines incident is receiving in the Western press. The story is that a local family which controls an area in the Philippines methodically killed 57 people on their way to file (just to FILE) papers to run for office.  They already had used a back hoe to dig their graves when they stopped their cars at a check point. Wow.

Since then I have read several articles in the NYT which seem to miss what is going on.

Philippine Mayor Is Charged in 57 Slayings – NYTimes.com

Interestingly, it looks like the government is misusing martial law to handle the situation. Good grief.

Dozens Arrested in Philippines Under Martial Law – NYTimes.com

I should remark how wonderfully the music went at church yesterday.

I had a number of parishioners assisting on instruments: violin, viola, cello, alto sax, bass and guitar. Bill Bier, the alto sax player, is an amazing musician. His addition was substantial. We had applause at the end of communion music. Ahem. We are a far bit away from the quiet and introspection I have decided this group needs during its communion. But it was cool, nonetheless.  I used the viola as a fiddle for the Canticle we are doing during Advent. And harpsichord, violin and cello to accompany “And the Glory” by Handel for the choral anthem. A number of extra singers showed up to sing the Handel.  We had a satisfyingly wide gambit of musical styles yesterday. All played well and as far as I could tell high congregational participation. This is what we’re shooting for.

I’m waiting for Eileen’s shower to finish so that I may shower after treadmilling.  One of the joys of having an old house is the plumbing which dictates that one can only shower upstairs if there is no water running any where else in the house. This includes the washing machine which I have just shut off…..

I am notorious for starting books but not for finishing them. Last night I started a very entertaining and interesting read:

The Recording Angel: Music, Records and Culture from Aristotle to Zappa, Second Edition by Evan Eisenberg is lots of fun, even if it can’t help being dated.

The first chapter is called “Clarence” and is about an eccentric who has been collecting records for years in NYC. His house has no heat. He smells bad. His collection is unbelievable. His anecdotes about various famous people he has known and received autographs and interesting stuff from is mind boggling.

The second chapter (which is the one that really caught my attention) is called “Music becomes a thing.” He not only charmingly rants about how music goes from being something you do (okay that’s my phrase) to something you can have and collect, he lists off five needs humans satisfy by collecting cultural objects:

1. The need to make beauty and pleasure permanent.

2. The need to comprehend beauty.

3. The need to distinguish oneself as a consumer.

4. The need to belong.

5. The need to impress others, or onself.

This guy is my kind of thinker. He ranges wide, humorously and with lots of knowledge. Here’s a link to his current website which is not as impressive as this book: link to Evan Eisenberg’s web site

I spent a good deal of time yesterday writing the program for the four people who will attend my recital Sunday. Actually I’m planning on publishing 25 to 30 copies which is incredibly optimistic I think.

Here’s a link to my current draft (which will change as I update it).

I experimented around with ways of practicing yesterday. I have been doing a lot of slow practice for weeks, but realize that I need to practice up to tempo as well. This is especially true of the new pieces I am planning to perform.

Anyway, the day before the recital it all becomes a bit more moot, although the words of my dead teacher keep ringing in my ears: “sometimes you have to practice something right up until the performance.”

I know that I am attempting quite a bit tomorrow afternoon. Fifty minutes of recital material is quite a bit for someone like me who usually practices two hours a day. The majority of the program is in good shape, but I continue to learn about myself as a performer and practicer.

Also I am aging. This year I had some pain in my left hand presumably arthritic. It has affected me. But “toujour gai, archy, toujour gai, there’s some life in the old gal yet.”

Blogging from my desktop this morning. The “Mainframe” as I think of it.

I have a ton of things to do this morning (like write the program for Sunday’s recital, due bills & put sheets on the bed for weekend guest… Barb Phillips), but I still wanted to blab a bit.

Eileen just came back in from trying to get the doors open on her car.

She asked if she could take the other car because she’s in hurry. Oh sure. Heh.

So I also have to make sure the doors on the car are going to open before I leave to do errands.

This morning while treadmilling I read two old articles by Janis Ian on the merits of giving away your music free (re-read in the case of the first article).

Here are some Janis Ian links:

her web site: www.janisian.com

her free music page janisian.com/mp3_downloads

and her two articles:

“The Internet Debacle” Originally written for Performing Songwriter Magazine, May 2002* Shortly after this article was turned in, Michael Greene resigned as president of NARAS. * Please note that this was written well before the advent of iTunes.

Her followup article from May 2003 in pdf form:

FALLOUT – a follow up to The Internet Debacle.pdf

I realize that her 2002 article was probably about the time when I myself was beginning to believe that music should be free. (And ideas and other stuff). Pace Dave the artist and Cheryl the writer, old buds with whom I recently disagreed about this stuff.

Interesting how Janis Ian has continued to pop up on my horizon throughout my life.

I bought her first album and liked some of the album cuts. After that I occasionally would buy one of her albums. I liked it when she brought her “At Seventeen” album. Then a while back I noticed her marriage announcement in the New York Times with glee. I kind of approve of same sex marriages (see this Sunday’s Organ recital dedicated to all the local lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, & transgendered pipples). Then a few years ago, I went and saw her live in Ann Arbor just for kicks.

Somewhere in there I’m pretty sure I read her 2002 article.

I think my relationship to making money with music is pretty weird. I am a musician and have made money doing music. But not that much. I have a house that Eileen and I are just about done paying for. I remember when the church I was working for fronted me a couple of thou for the downpayment thinking that I never thought I would be able to afford a house. I came to this conclusion in the seventies when I read that Grace Slick was turned down for a mortgage loan for a bank. If working Rock & rollers couldn’t get a loan, church musicians just didn’t make enough to do so.

But here we are.

And I have come to think of money as a necessary evil with an emphasis on the evil.

At the same time I have realized that I don’t have a large draw with my music. Not enough commercial potential for church music publications or pop music recordings. No prob. I also don’t have the temperament to drive a career in these areas. I’m mostly just an old nerd who likes to play and write music and is happy if left alone to come out once in a while and play for people who are interested.

This Sunday will be a current barometer of just how many that is. Stay tuned to this space for observations and results. Heh.

In the meantime, go to http://www.janisian.com/ , download some music and then donate to Pearl Foundation. I’m going to.

Also I have been inspired by this guy:

He is a harpsichordist and organist who also gives his music away on his site:

http://www.pawelsiwczak.com/

I especially like the  piece L’amphibie mouvement de Passacaille by Couperin.

Now to get some work done.

James Brown and Janis Ian got me through treadmilling this morning. Odd combination I guess. But they fit me. I have followed Ian since we were both 16 (we’re the same age). I went and saw her live a few years ago in Ann Arbor. She seemed like a middle aged little old lady. I enjoyed it. And it did strike me that I was a middle aged old man. All is well.

Anyway, here are some of my new news sites:

click here for link

click here for link

click here for link

The List from Columbia:

Center for Independent Media has variety of similarly designed sites across the nation:
www.coloradoindependent.com
http://iowaindependent.com
www.michiganmessenger.com
www.Minnesotaindependent.com
www.Newmexicoindependent.com
www.Washingtonindependent.com

Background on Center for Independent Media:
http://newjournalist.org

Other more or less newspaper-style sites:
www.blackpower.com
www.chitowndailynews.org
www.Citizenjoe.org
www.dailyyonder.com
www.ePluribusmedia.org
www.fivethirtyeight.com
www.flypmedia.com
www.lisc-chicago.org/home.aspx
http://metrolatinousa.com/index.cfm
www.minnpost.com
www.Newhavenindependent.org
www.newsofthenorth.net
www.NewWest.net
www.Patch.com
www.planphilly.com
www.stlbeacon.org
www.Villagesoup.com
www.thevineyardvoice.com
www.voiceofsandiego.org

link to Columbia J School

Spoke briefly online with Jeremy my quasi-son-in-law last night. He is traveling in China due to his job at U.S. Asia Law Institute at NYU. He was trying to contact my daughter Elizabeth who is working in D.C. this week. I phoned my daughter’s cell phone for him. I still have an old person’s thrill at talking simultaneously to someone in China and DC from my little room in Holland Michigan. When Jeremy stopped chatting with me he said he was off to see the terracotta army.

He didn’t say where he was in China but I think these figures are in Shaanxi.

Jeremy does like China. I fully expect him and Elizabeth to move back there eventually.

Watched Obama’s speech on C Span 3 on my netbook last night. Though I have difficulty supporting any war I can see that Obama is making sane noises in a rancorous partisan political environment left to him by the previous administration. It is possible we are watching a statesman lead the U.S. for the first time in ages.

I liked the way he ended last night:

“We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might, and with the commitment to forge an America that is safer, a world that is more secure, and a future that represents not the deepest of fears but the highest of hopes.” link to text of speech

And this:

“…we must make it clear to every man, woman and child around the world who lives under the dark cloud of tyranny that America will speak out on behalf of their human rights, and tend to the light of freedom, and justice, and opportunity, and respect for the dignity of all peoples. That is who we are. That is the moral source of America’s authority.”

If any nation can claim moral authority, this is the way to go. I know. I know. It’s good rhetoric but where’s the beef?  I think that good clear thinking and words are an important part of the beef.  Silly me.

On another note, I have been poking around looking for more sources for news and info online.

Recently, Nicholas Lemmens had this to say about being informed in the U.S.:

“.. a daily report from a reputable news organization is to citizenship what the proper diet is to health: a long-term, life-enriching practice for individuals, and, in the aggregate, an important element of a better-functioning society.” link to article on Chronicle.com

He goes on to say that Journalism schools themselves can pick up the ball dropped by former sources of news that are having difficulty funding themselves on the web. I am looking into this and plan to put up some links later.

Right now I have to go practice before the silly Wednesday Eucharist uses the room next to the organ.

I woke early after a long sad dream. I got up and wrote it down. Then made coffee. I don’t really have any insights in mind for today’s blog entry. That’s usually what spurs these things. The dream left me in that odd state of I guess dreaminess.

I listened to the beginning of The Magic Flute yesterday watching the full score as I treadmilled. I continue to be attracted to this opera quite a bit. Even the weird Masonic ritual bits with the priests of Isis and Osiris which are a bit pompous.  The Queen of the Night puts me in mind of Milton’s Satan. Both characters are kind of “bad guys” who get good parts in the story.

I read where Mozart himself besides conducting the opera from the pit delighted in playing the glockenspiel at wrong times in the production. This sounds very playful to me. Mozart would be dead within months. The opera was produced in the last year of his life along with the Requiem. Once again movies have distorted reality.

Mozart was probably not poisoned. He had cordial relations with Salieri. His father was a strong influence in his life, but there probably was no mysterious stranger. But the music is wonderful and the movie grasps that.

My organ recital is coming along. Of course I wish it was a bit better prepared but I have been doing the work of rehearsing and studying the music. In the course of researching Louie Couperin’s unmeasured prelude “Prélude à l’imitation de M Froberger,” I found out that Froberger was a much more interesting composer that I had previously thought. Apparently he is credited with being the first composer to group dances into suites for harpsichord. Good old IMSLP has his complete works online (link) which I downloaded and examined. Interesting stuff. Can’t remember my harpsichord/organ teacher Ray Ferguson ever mentioning Froberger. I do know that he was the favorite of the chair of the ND music department when I was attending grad school there. This was not that much of a recommendation because the chair referred to him as a sort of cerebral composers.  Also the chair dread expositions of fugues, saying something about wishing they could be omitted because they were so exposed and prone to mistakes. Nice. Helpful comments.

Anyway, the music doesn’t seem remote or esoteric at all. I will probably add Froberger to my list of harpsichord composers. The piece by Louis Couperin is one of his longest. I think that will be okay Sunday because it is my only harpsichord piece on the program. I find that people find harpsichord more listenable than organ generally. My poor old Zuckerman keeps on klunking along so I keep performing on it.

It sounded pretty good on Buxtehude this past Sunday. Planning to do a Handel suite movement this coming Sunday for the prelude. The postlude will be fun as I have invited a sax player in the cong to improv with me on a tune from the service.

I recall that when doing recitals it’s sometimes a good idea to schedule a movement or two at the Sunday service before the recital. I have chosen not to do that. Rather I am doing music a bit lighter and easier but still different from the recital.

I am beginning to think of the recital as an extended postlude or movie credit moment. By that I mean I’m not expecting many people to pay attention (attend). Hey. It’s an organ recital for fuck’s sake. I know it will be interesting but the stereotype works against me.

As Bill Murray’s character in Meatballs says “It just doesn’t matter… it just doesn’t matter.”

Haven’t been blogging as much lately. I think blogging fulfills a bit of my own need for conversation and thinking. The visit last week of my two friends Dave and Paul seemed to quiet me down. A bit of normal melancholy ensued, but also I have been focused on my upcoming recital, church work and The Magic Flute.

My recital has nothing to do with The Magic Flute.  Reading Brigid Brophy’s “Mozart the Dramatist” helped me realize that I don’t know Mozart’s operas very well. I have studied them a bit (especially The Marriage of Figaro). But Brophy’s insistence on them as little cosmos created by Mozart that rival Shakespeare caught my imagination.

And I feel in love with Northwestern U’s production online:

I like the vibrant liveliness of this production. It seems to have captured a bit of a Baron Munchenhausen feel that  well serves this music, both historically and philosophically. I like the excellent performances and I like the flaws that peek through. Very cool.

Church went well musically yesterday.  The Buxtehude choral piece (a kind of crappy adaptation by Hal Hopson) was well served by harpsichord and cello accompaniment. I managed to have the choir do some musical interp and it came off well, I think. After church a man approached me with a distinctly American accent saying he was a Brit who was associated as a priest with a cathedral in the U.K. He had a tie with little Episcopalian symbols all over it.

He was very complimentary of both his own huge parish in the U.K. and the music he had heard at our little church in Holland Michigan.

I played the harpsichord prelude and organ postlude pretty well. Although I noticed a bit of quietening down during the multimovement prelude, it didn’t seem as though many noticed the postlude which was much more difficult and had a distinctly Buxtehude/Gabrielli feeling. But I was satisfied.

We opened to the staid very Anglican feeling “Lo He Comes.” I added a descant by a buddy of mine from an anthem setting he has done of this piece. We began using our Advent Canticle which is a fiddle tune setting of Advent words like Psalm 24 (Lift up your heads) & later verses use the words of O Come O come.

Fortunately, the viola player brought her viola so we had a bit of a fiddle sound as well.

Then the Baptismal hymn was a version of Kum By Yah. When my boss asked that this be used, I realized that she didn’t have the traditional goofy boomer association with this piece.

The words are different in the Episcopalian resource: “Come By Here, My Lord.” She heard it as a very Advent appeal and repeatedly used the phrase in her sermon so it tied together very well. I decided to do it a bit Reggae and taught the bass player a little lick. Afterwards a choir member confessed it put her in mind of the Beatles tune “Oh Blah Dee.”

Communion was “Steal Away” and “Humbly we adore thee.” I find this a nice combination: African American Spiritual to chant tune. We did the spiritual with light to no accompaniment and I added the viola to the chant.

After lunch I went back and played through next Sunday’s organ recital. It went pretty well. I told my wife I would be satisfied if I played as well next week at the recital.

Sunday pretty much dismembers my brain. I run on energy and adrenaline. Then afterward I have the introvert thought storm. I didn’t sleep well last night. Weird dreams and waking periodically.

Eileen mentioned she was thinking of treadmilling this morning, so I am blogging instead of jumping on the treadmill to keep it free for her. I will get to it later no doubt.

It has been a busy week. Hence no blog until today. Mozart is blasting from the computer and I am getting ready to cook. But first a little blog.

I had friends visiting Monday and Tuesday: Dave Barber and Paul Wizynajtys. I have known David since Junior High School (that’s middle school for you younger folk). Now we are both middle aged men and have renewed our acquaintance. He and Paul have been a couple for about as long as Eileen and I and we have kept and lost contact with them over the years. Thankfully we are back in contact and they graciously came to visit. It is such an unusual pleasure for me to have conversation with someone besides my wife in which I can enter into with such ease. Friendship is truly a gift worth gushing about. And rare in my life.

Anyway, their visit was a total gas and all we did was sit around and gab and eat.

On another note, I think I may have found a new writer to follow: Brigid Brophy.

I was placidly reading her “Mozart the Dramatist” and began realizing how much I enjoyed her prose and ideas.

Sample:

“Once we let ourselves disesteem artistic intelligence, we are moving toward a disesteem of art….”

&

“The greatest (the most emotionally effective art) is that which achieves the most rigorously–indeed, ruthlessly–logical and intelligent working out of a germ which the conscious intellect and will can neither create nor justify. The purpose of art, like the purpose of life, is nonexistent (or at least does not declare itself): artist and biologist must respectively accept art and life as activities which are–and have no further justification. Art, in this respect, is aping life. It is setting up to be another instinctual, self-justifying, self-existent activity, an extra life, an organic growth on life.”

Both from “Mozart the Dramatist: the value of his operas to him, to his age and to us”

So this morning I poked around trying to find out more about Brigid Brophy. First of all, she’s dead. Damn. But secondly she wrote a ton of books. I was delighted to find this in one of the excerpts from a novel on Google books:

“History is in the shit tense You have left it behind you. Fiction is piss: a stream of past events but not behind you, because they never really happened.”

from Brigid Brophy’s “In transit: a [sic]heroi-cycle novel”

Brophy was this outrageous brilliant writer and I am very glad to have found her. But now on to cooking!

I’ve been getting into Declan Kiberd’s incredible book, “Ulysses and Us: the art of every life in Joyce’s Masterpiece.” Trying to finish it before it’s due to return to the library.

Kiberd is worth reading in and of himself. I am, of course, a bit of a Joyce fan. But I still find Kiberd wandering into areas that are helpful to me.

One example:

“… the only justification for going back to earlier art is to reactivate potentials in the past which might answer present or future needs.” Declan Kiberd

Kiberd is talking of Leopold Bloom’s realization here. But it struck a chord with me because I keep wondering why I love historical music so much. What does it give me that contemporary creations omit?

It’s funny to speak of it this way, because most of my life I have been in environments that question not historical art and music but whether there is anything left to say by contemporary creations.

This point of view has driven me into the arms of constantly embracing music by breathing composers as well as looking at art and literature of people who are alive or who have lived recently.

I say that contemporary creations help me understand myself and my life in a way that historical stuff doesn’t. And then I find myself spending hours and hours in the company of Mendelssohn, Bach and others. Hours that revive and refresh me and edify me.

Like Shakespeare great historical music helps me understand my little time on earth. It draws me into the deeply beautiful so that I can spend some of my time living in a space that is profound and awe inspiring. This reminds me of my own insignificance and the mind boggling nature of existence.

Well.

Enough of that.

Here are some other recent links and quotes:

The Art of the Paragraph by Jon Morrow (link)

I have this bookmarked to read. It looks interesting.

“Detroit was still viable enough for the Republican Party to hold its convention here in 1980, when it nominated Ronald Reagan. And it was not the riots, but the devastating recession of the early ’80s that really knocked the city senseless. “That’s when the place really cracked,” said Mr. Shaiken, “and that was about aggressive globalization and the lack of an industrial policy, not the riots.” Bob Herbert, “An American Catastrophe” NYT link

I actually lived in Detroit during the 80s. It was a terrible time in my life as far earning a living and finding a decent place for my family and me to live. I also attended (and graduated from) Wayne State University located in the midst of the down chaos. Also worked at First Pres which is on Woodward.

I always said that Detroit taught me the city was a terrible place to not be rich. Now after spending some time in Chicago, New York, London, Barcelona (to name a few cities I have visited and now admire), I realize that the city can also be a hopeful interesting place. Maybe I’m rich now, eh?

“She’s alive inside, and that radiates energy, and people who are not psychologically alive inside are fascinated by that.” Judith Doctor, a 69 spiritualist about Sarah Palin. Quoted in Maureen Dowd’s “Visceral has its value” (NYT link)

Palin. What can I say? Dowd asserts that Obama should be more concerned about how he is perceived (how he “seems”). Palin beats him here.  I disagree with Dowd’s premise. But I fundamentally think that what “is” matters more than what “seems.” That puts me way out of step with most of what I read in current conversation. That’s okey doke with me, of course.

“how sublime chant can sound to the listener’s ear when the performers follow the contours of the language, flow through the lines and generally possess what Ms. Hellauer calls a “unity of intent.”   Cloe Veltman, “In Chant, Listening and Singing become One” (NYT link)

This is a really goofy article. With some pretty repelling observations. At least to me. But I am hoping I can remember that handy dandy phrase: “unity of intent.” Good for helping a group of people understand themselves as a choir.

Well that’s all I feel like quotebagging.

Today is my Mom’s 83rd birthday. Eileen and I will take her to lunch after church. Besides my church duties, I want to get back in the afternoon and see if I can actually play through my recital on a Sunday afternoon. This is more of a problem now that Sunday morning is a bit of marathon.

This morning is the first Sunday in three weeks that I haven’t rushed over to tune the harpischord (and subsequently do other things) before the early service. I actually should have done this today because I am planning  use the harpsichord in the rehearsal after church. But I didn’t. I exercised, took a shower and wrote this blog.

Man, oh man! My trio rehearsed for the first time yesterday and it was a gas. Chamber music is such fun. My cohorts are very fine musicians and seemed to enjoy themselves as much as me.

We went through a couple of Mozart trio movements and then the entire first movement of Mendelssohn’s D minor trio (link to an online streaming recording, I hope!). We took it a tad slower than this recording. But Dawn the cellist recognized the piece and felt that our tempo was actually pretty good for a final choice.

I was walking on air the rest of the day.

After rehearsal I met with my boss, always something I look forward to. I’m so glad I work for this person.

After I got home I received a call from my Mom.

Two of her old friends (George Jordan and Hilda Neff) were sitting in her room and would like to see me. I knew they were coming, but not when. I drove over and hugged them and chatted them up a bit.

They looked great. Hilda even said she reads this blog. Heh. Hi Hilda!

They took Mom for a bite to eat and I said good by and came home and made supper for Eileen and me.

Life is good.