Today my vacation is officially over. But not much has actually changed. I got up, exercised, did some reading. When I checked my email at breakfast with Eileen I saw that my boss had canceled this morning’s Zoom staff meeting. We have a new copier being installed and that seemed to be absorbing all the energy.

When I found out that they had planned to install a new copier the day before the Triduum, I pointed out that it wasn’t the first time. Several years back, I had been trying to do some last minute Holy Week preparation that needed me to make copies and discovered the copier was in the process of  being updated. When the staff asked if we should delay this installation this year, I said, no, because I won’t have a need to use the copier this week.

I may have mentioned that I wouldn’t have a choir to worry about, but not that I am planning to improvise all the organ music for the next four days.

So I wasn’t surprised that the copier threw a bit of a wrench in my boss’s plans for today., No harm done in my case.

I settled back in to my usual routine, did some more reading and practicing and listening.

I have been reading the biography of Miles Davis by John Szwed. It is filling out my understanding of Davis’s work. It lays nicely by the bio of James Brown by James McBride I have almost finished.

This morning I decided to give in and start a new non-fiction  book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson.

it is brilliant. Wilkerson is a good place for me to continue my learning about the history of American Slavery and its impact on today. Wilkerson’s expertise, clear prose and obvious planning are a delight even if her subject is our current tragedy.

I have been playing a good deal of Bach and Bartok on the piano. Day  before yesterday I played through all of the two part inventions of Bach and about a third of the Goldberg Variations. When I was a student at Ohio Wesleyan I was obsessed with the work of these two. Since then I have learned a ton of their music. But here I am decades later still in love with the same music. Still working on perfecting my memorization of the F major two part invention.

Bartok’s Mikrokosmos have provided a life long frame work for my continued learning about piano and composition. I played a good deal of these composers during my last coffee house period.

Also I have been looking deeper into Mendelsohn’s Italian Symphony. It is one of several pieces I listen to during the spring of each year. I recently bought the one volume Dover orchestral score of it and a few other of Mendelsohn’s works. I still love listening and watching scores. This is something I have done all my life with pleasure.

So, the Triduum starts tomorrow evening. Today I have a 6:30 online appointment with the two singers who are singing an abridged version of the Exultet from their homes. This is exactly how we did it last year.

I will be in church tomorrow evening. I think I will probably be the only one there besides Eileen. I think my boss is planning to stream Maundy Thursday from home. At any rate, choosing to improvise my way through these high holy days turns out to be a good idea this year. I wouldn’t normally do that, but there was no other way for me to truly take time off if I was preparing pieces for this period. I don’t think it will make much difference to the people praying. At least I hope not.

Today is two weeks from my second vaccination shot. That makes me fully vaccinated today.

In the course of my life, I have done very little memorizing of music. My degrees are such that often this was the one difference between a performance degree and the one I obtained.  I have been thinking about this for a while. No time like the present to remedy this situation.

Ultimately, I think it would be fun to memorize some organ stuff, but I thought I would start smaller. I’m thinking if I succeed, I will learn about memorizing using short pieces. At this point I want to memorize stuff that I like and would appreciate having in my memory.

That’s why I chose a two part invention to begin. As I started working on it, I immediately noticed an increase in my personal confidence in my musical skills (such as they are). Some of this may come from the fact that I (like many artists) am my own severest critic.

I think often of how well I perform. Since I usually perform publically once a week, this means a continual evaluation of how well things went and why.

I am reading So What: The Life of Miles Davis by John Szwed. In it, he has referred a couple of times to giants of Jazz like Davis and others confronting the limit of their own abilities. Including, in the case of Davis, re-recording stuff when he made mistakes.

This makes sense, of course. But in the age of recording, it’s difficult not to slip into the idea that the only one who makes mistakes is oneself. If I had some students, I’m sure I would remind them that mistakes are part of performing. But that little voice in my head wonders why I make mistakes.

I think a lack of perspective contributes to this as well. I hope this little time of rest and relaxation will restore some of my perspective. I think it might be working.

But my recent insight has been about how I memorize. Many years ago, I played a memorized jury in an attempt to be accepted into Ohio Wesleyan University. It went very well as I remember. But it may have been the last time I seriously memorized anything, especially classical music.

I was reading what some other pianists have found about memorizing online. One of them  pointed out that muscle memory is not the goal. The more one can understand about the piece one is memorizing the better. This means slow practice from memory helps clarify the actual memory in the mind as opposed to the memory in the muscles.

I almost have the F major invention memorized. But now I can tell which parts are mostly in my mind and which are in the muscles. This is clear especially in slow practice.

At this point, I can usually remember all of the Invention but often with a stumble or two. Yesterday practicing slowly, I played it completely correct twice in a row with no stumbles or memory lapses. This morning, I attempted to play it slowly and discovered more holes in this memory. When i sped up, the piece came out fine but it was definitely muscle recall, not mental.

I guess the goal would be that I could sit down and write the whole dam piece from memory. I’ll add that to my regimen.

Of course, I am aware that memory issues are something most of us have to confront if we live long enough. Another reason to flex this particular muscle.

My next piece is going to be this Mazurka in C# minor by Chopin – Op. 6 #2. I love this piece. Plus, I have deliberately chosen something completely different in texture and ideas from a two part polyphonic piece.

I’m taking time away from my vacation activities to do a quick post. Vacationing or working does seem to be a bit of a head trip I do to myself. It is working to think of myself on vacation. I am getting a lot of reading, practicing, and studying done.

It was a week ago today that Rhonda and I live streamed an AGO Workshop. Here’s a link to our handout, if you’re curious.

I am doing a lot of thinking about Jazz these days. Herbie Hancock’s Harvard Norton lectures on YouTube continue to give food for thought. I have been listening to a lot of  Hancock’s recordings. I am coming to think that he is one of those rare people with whom I share an aesthetic.

Hancock’s first Norton Lecture was about Miles Davis. I am back reading So What: The Life of Miles Davis by John Szwed and Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original by Robin D. G. Kelly. I temporarily left off reading them a while back and am enjoying working on them both at the same time. At this point, the bio of Miles Davis is discussing some of his work with Monk. It’s fun to read these two bios side by side. Apparently their relationship was a bit contentious.

Greek is going well. I have the F major invention of Bach just about memorized. I’m also studying Levine’s  book on Jazz Theory. It’s a companion volume to a book on jazz piano technique that I have worked in quite a bit.

Apparently I needed this  vacation. One indicator is that on my first day of vacation every adult in the house asked me how it was going. Hmm.

It’s going well.

I’m getting closer to getting a bit of time away from work. Yesterday I put in a few hours editing the handout for tomorrow evening’s presentation Rhonda and I are doing. It continues to surprise me how much stuff is available online. Stuff like sheet music. Plus I checked out the interlibrary loan possibilities for some of the music we are recommending tomorrow evening. It is interesting when you add in the university and college libraries in the 430 libraries connected through MelCat (Michigan Electric Catalogue?).

I know there are over 430 of these libraries because I figured it out yesterday working on my handout.

I went over to church and grabbed a bunch of music to remind me of some stuff I still want to put in the handout. In the unlikely event I can build up some energy I will work on this handout today a bit. Otherwise, Monday will find me in the unusual position of preparing a very last minute handout on the day of a presentation.

Today for church, Dawn, my cellist, and I performed four movements from Vaughan Williams’ Six Studies in English Folksongs. I find these pieces lovely and inspiring. I like that Vaughan Williams used folk songs. I continue to think about writing more little pieces based on either English or American folk songs. Also I may not have given up on the beautiful melodies in the Southern Harmony practice.

In fact, on Wednesday Amy, my violinist, and I are planning to record two melodies found in the Southern Harmony: Wondrous Love and Sinner’s Friend. I will play banjo on them and I think they will sound pretty cool. My boss will use recordings to replace me while I’m on vacation.

Eileen and I are going to move our weekly Tuesday Date Drive to Thursday this week. That way I should be entirely done with all tasks by then.

I have to go over the music for the next two Sundays plus the Triduum and make sure the online docs are ready. That will probably be a Tuesday project.

On Friday evening while I was ordering pizza, my friend Jordan dropped off a copy of the book Heart to Heart by RYK. I read a few poems in it this morning. So far I like it quite a bit. The pic at the beginning of this post comes from this little book. There seem to be pictures across from every poem in the book. Thank you, Jordan!

Speaking of pleasant surprises, another book came in the mail this week. It is part of a subscription Elizabeth and Jeremy gave me this past Christmas.

BookPeople, this huge Texas bookstore, sells subscriptions they call Trust Fall.

This entails receiving four books a year they choose and recommend. The first one, Infinite Country by Patricia Engel has already grabbed my attention. Thank you, Elizabeth and Jeremy!

Although, I haven’t had a terrible Covid year, I do think I am a bit burned out right now. Fortunately, my boss and I worked out that I can take the last two Sundays of March off. She came back from her vacation with the insight that although the demands on our time to do our work remotely is probably much less than the time we previously took to do the work, the unusual situation in which we find ourselves increases the work pressure in ways that are a bit counter intuitive. Nevertheless, these pressures are real.

I have not had a Sunday off for over  a year. I can attest to the pressures of this kind of weird work and responsibility.

Yesterday morning, I opened my music software on my computer.  I made a pdf file of what I had so far of an arrangement of a tune called Sinner’s Friend from the Southern Harmony hymnal to email my violinist. Then I attempted to open the arrangement of “What Wondrous Love Is This” I had spent over an hour compositing in the software the night before. INVALID FILE TYPE was the message that came back to me.

It turned out that I had lost my only copy of this original composition. I had done a harmonic version previously for the piano. Over this harmony, I had written a very involved filigree for the violin to play. It wasn’t something I could easily recreate. Back to the drawing board.

I was already pushing the speed at which I had been composing. I was shooting for having something to show my violinist today so she would have ample time to prepare it. So yesterday, I dragged myself over to church and worked on this arrangement for another hour or so. By the end of that time, I realized that I wasn’t going to have this composition done in time. Oh well.

I decided instead to use banjo on the Sunday I have asked my violinist to play. My boss is meeting us next Wednesday to record the music portions of the two Sundays I will be on vacation. Today, Amy, my violinist, and I worked out a prelude based on What Wondrous Love, both of us playing directly from the hymnal. It sounds pretty cool with banjo and violin. As does my treatment of Sinner’s Friend.

I have to pick out organ music for Palm Sunday which is the second Sunday i have off. That should be easy.

In addition to this, I am doing a presentation with my friend Rhonda next Monday evening for our local AGO chapter. We will stream it on Grace’s Facebook page live. It’s called something like “10 ways to revitalize your church organ repertoire.” We met recently and worked on it. I have to rewrite the hand out and put in links. I have decided that Saturday is the last day I can do this. I may work on it a bit tomorrow.

I’m not doing too much prep of my playing part in this presentation. Rhonda and I agreed that giving people a taste of pieces we recommend would be sufficient. I figure I will only decide to demonstrate pieces that are easily ready for prime time.

I have been working on memorize Bach’s Invention in F major. I have been thinking about the fact that I haven’t done very  much memorizing of music. It occurred to me that there was no time like the present to do so. Beginning with an invention is a good place to start. I have it over half memorized now. I want to develop my memorization chops a bit (quickly before senility kicks in and I can’t remember shit anyway).

I don’t think I have ever memorized an organ piece. That is the goal. But first some Inventions or other stuff.

This reminds me of a dead friend, Dave Sieffert. For some reason I remember him saying that he was going to memorize all of Bach’s Two Part Inventions. He said it would easily be within his reach at that point in his life. I don’t know if he did it but it is an inspiration to me.

5 Questions to Patricia Caicedo (soprano, musicologist)

On Monday evening, I accidentally cut the pointer finger of my left hand while trying to slice myself some bread. The cut was not bad enough to go to the ER but I haven’t played keyboard since Monday in order to let it heal. I will decide today whether I will cancel piano trio rehearsal tomorrow or not. I’m planning to play a little piano after lunch and decide. I am expecting it to be healed enough to play Sunday’s streamed church service.

This morning I stumbled across Herbie Hancock’s 2014 Norton Lectures on YouTube.

Hancock was not only the first Jazz musician to give these lectures, he was also the first African American.

Some great Miles Davis quotes from the first lecture.

The history of Jazz in four words: Louie Armstrong Charlie Parker – Miles Davis

Leave out the butter notes – Miles Davis

I always like to listen to what I can leave out. – Miles Davis

As far I can tell, these lectures have not  been published in written form, but are available on YouTube.

I finished reading Ignazio Silone’s Bread and Wine today.

I read the revised version he did in 1963. I began reading it during the previous presidential administration as a sort of antidote. It’s a strong story simply told. It is anti-Stalinist and anti-Facist.

The main character, Pietro Spina is a revolutionary Communist hiding from the state (Mussolini) disguised as a parish priest in a rural part of Italy. Most of the novel takes place in this little village.

The symbolic aspects of the novel are done in broad strokes. Bread, wine symbolize the solidarity of all humans but also are used in connection with strong Christian overtones (one of the heroines name is Cristina, get it?)

Mickey Mouse makes an odd appearance when two of the characters spot him on a marquee and instantly stop to go in.

In his introduction, Silone describes watching a woman read his book while on a train ride. It was as a result of thinking about what she was reading that he decided to do a revision. I think it’s kind of cool to visualize him surreptitiously observing what page and what line she was one and doing some cringing.

I have  been making headway with  my Greek. Today I ordered copies of the Loeb edition of the Iliad in Greek and English. I am rereading the Iliad in English and it keeps popping up in my studies. It would be helpful to have this handy.

If I can’t play music, I can still read and listen to it.

I made some serous progress on my Greek this week. I am reading Milton Parry’s The Making of Homeric Verse. I just hit a section where it would really help me to understand Homeric meter. I found an amazing video which clearly teaches this kind of complicated subject.

In addition, I had been scanning the beginning of the Odyssey in Greek (scanning means working out exactly how the meter is working). I began dropping lines into a web site which automatically scans the Greek along about Book 2. I realized that I hadn’t done so at the beginning. I got four lines into and my web site couldn’t figure it out.

But after listening to Tom Ford’s clear video on scanning, I think I figured that line out.

All this is to say, that Jupe who already has tons of obscure skills (French Harpsichord chops, Church hymn playing, understanding of Liturgy) is adding another skill with his pursuit of Greek. What the hell. I am enjoying it.

James McBride’s Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown came in the mail recently. I was excited to find that McBride wrote this book pretty recently. It was published in 2016. Brown (whom I do admire) died in 2006.

This book is not just about Brown’s music, but about America now. I have already started reading it.

I finished Denis Johnson’s Fiscador. It’s quite a book. It’s Johnson’s second book. In the intro he says he owes a lot to Victor Turner, Bruno Bettelheim, James Campbell, Oliver Sachs and others. Published in 1985, I guess some think it’s a bit of dystopic novel. I found the title in a review of a Margaret Atwood book by Lorrie Moore. I’m seriously considering a second read on this one.

George Saunders

Ezra Klein recently interviewed George Saunders. Saunders is another writer I admire. Klein seems to have gotten a NYT article and a podcast out of the interview. Here’s a link to the transcript of the interview. Saunders recommends a bunch of books at the end including The Hundred Dresses.

The illustrator, Slobodkin, is the dude who did Caps For Sale. I have requested this book via inter library loan along with some books of poetry Saunders recommends. It’s a good interview. Saunders is a gentle, wise man. The link is below.

I can feel the fact that I haven’t had a Sunday off for about a year. Tomorrow I am playing a piece by Ned Rorem and a Kyrie by Zoltán Kodály.

I do like Rorem.

Zoltán Kodály

The  Kodály is part of a companion organ piece (Organoeida ad missam lectam, 1944) to his Missa brevis for choir and Organ (1942, orchestrated 1948). I believe we did the orchestral version of the Mass when I was in undergrad at Wayne State U.

Gerald Near

The following week I am doing two lovely pieces by Gerald Near. The week after that I have scheduled Dawn to come a play several movements of Vaughan Williams’ Six Studies in English Folk Songs.

Speaking of folk songs, I don’t think I have written here about finding a connection between my collection of the tunes to the Child Ballads and some settings in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Both the Child Ballads and the Fitzwilliam Virginal book are interests of mine that stretch way back to before any college, probably pre-1970. This coming together of two of my interests is satisfying and intriguing.

He Was a ‘Bad Boy’ Harpsichordist, and the Best of His Age

How Viet Thanh Nguyen Turns Fiction Into Criticism | The New Yorker

Ezra Klein interviews George Saunders, transcript

Here’s the link I promised above.

I decided to pull my organ bench closer to the music rack and keys yesterday. I am experimenting because between my worsening eyesight and having to wear a mask which often fogs up, I sometimes have difficulty seeing the music clearly. This worked okay today even though I accidently played today’s hymn with my driving glasses instead of my reading glasses.

I have been thinking a lot about the accuracy of my playing in these  streams. I differentiate between a mistake which sort of comes out of nowhere and screwing up a passage I have been working on. It is the latter that I find troubling since it seems to relate directly to my practice techniques.

Today I played the prelude pretty accurately. The mistakes in the postlude were of the inadvertent type and did not detract too much the performance.

I finished James McBride’s Deacon King Kong recently.

I quite liked it. It wasn’t what I was originally expecting after reading the NYT book review of it, but no matter. It is the story of a neighborhood in New York. The people are clearly and vividly drawn to my taste.  The story revolves around a housing project where many of the characters live, a church which dominates many of their lives, and the history of the area. This history includes a mural in the back of the church which was loosely based on a Giotto painting of Jesus.

The reader does not learn this until late in the book when McBride does not resist someone confusing Giotto with Gelato since he was Italian.

There is a mystery of sorts in the book. But what I enjoyed most was the characters in the book including the character Sportcoat who spends a lot of time in dialog with his recently deceased wife and drinks a good deal of the homemade hooch, King Kong. McBride is apparently a musician as well as a writer. I have ordered some more titles by McBride.

I have asked my boss for some time off. She emailed me early this morning to encourage me to schedule some. She and several of the other staff members have been taking time off. The way I have been feeling my own burn out is that I am strongly disinterested in all things Christian. I shouldn’t say all things. But, the main thing that keeps me interested at work is working with Jen and making music. The church stuff hasn’t been that critical to doing my job. I just can feel my own dwindling interest.

On the other hand, I have been doing a lot of reading and thinking and learning. As I have mentioned before, I am enjoying Rutger Bergman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History. This is probably one of those books I will buy and give away. I have already ordered an audio CD of it being read for my daughter in England, Sarah. She is feeling housebound these days. I’m hoping that Bergman’s hopefulness might help her a bit.

I want to finish it before giving it away. It is amazing how many stories and ideas in my brain are wrong due to public misperception. Bregman carefully documents his debunking of experiments and news stories that present human nature as apathetic, selfish, and prone to “just follow orders.” He talks about William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (Golding’s story is not how a marooned group of boys actually ended up behaving in real life),

Adolf Eichmann (actually a bit of a monster),

Stanley Milgram’s experiment in which people were fooled into thinking they were shocking and hurting people (misreported and misunderstood),

and Kitty Genovese’s death in a New York neighborhood where 37 onlookers did nothing as she was murdered (She actually in the arms of someone who rushed out to help her).

These are just a few of the stories that contribute to our false notion idea that civilization is a thin veneer on our terrible innate propensities.

But Bregman is no Pollyanna. Himself, a historian, he is quick to criticizes his own ideas and point of view in order to get at what is really the truth. I am learning a lot from it. Here’s Bregman and Andrew Yang going at it. I didn’t know Yang was a proponent of Universal Basic Income.

I continue to spend a lot of time listening and playing to Mendelssohn. I’m also developing a very strong admiration and attraction for the music of Thelonious Monk.

What Mars sounds like, and the rover’s welcome party – CNN

I listened to this video the last two mornings. Bregman is great! I mentioned his book, Humankind: A Hopeful History yesterday.

Lots of good stuff in this video. Highly recommended.

It’s been awhile. Oddly, I seem to have a bit less leisure time than before. Or maybe I’m just filling up my time with reading, practicing, making bread, and other stuff.

So I finished several books including Meecham’s The Soul of America. 

Today I started Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Gregman. It’s translated from the Dutch. If Meecham’s style could be called “popular history,” Gregman’s style is light and breezy. However, I like what he has to say. Basically the book is an argument that given the opportunity most humans do the decent thing.

This plays into my own prejudices. Gregman backs up his ideas with a lot of facts and citations of research. He makes it clear that he is not contending that people are fundamentally “good.” People are more complex than that, of course.

In the opening pages, he draws on the experience of Tom Postmes, professor of social psychology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He asks his students this question.

Imagine an airplane makes an emergency landing and breaks into three parts. As the cabin fills with smoke, everybody inside realizes: We’ve got to get out of here. What happens?

On Planet A, the passengers turn to their neighbors to ask if they’re okay. Those needing assistance are helped out of the plane first. People are wiling to give their lives, even for perfect strangers.

On Planet B, everyone’s left to fend for themselves. Panic breaks out. There’s lots of pushing and shoving. Children, the elderly, and people with disabilities get trampled underfoot.

Now the question: Which planet do we live on?

‘I would estimate about 97 of people think we live on planet B,’ Says Professor Postmes. ‘The truth is, in almost every case, we live on planet A.’

In addition to continuing to work on my Greek skills, I have been re-reading the Iliad in English (Fagles translation). At the same time I am revisiting Chistopher Logue’s magnum opus, War Music: An Account of Homer’s Iliad

I have several volumes of this work and read in them. War Music is the final edition of what Logue had done when he died. I was delighted to run across a lovely paperback edition of  it last time I was in Daunt’s Bookshop in London.

Daunt’s is an amazing shop. They keep their books by country which is a surprisingly good way to browse them.

Logue is dead and didn’t finish his project of reimagining Homer for the 20th century. But I quite like what he does and it’s fun to read it side by side with Fagles’s translation.

So there’s a lot happening in my head these days.

I have been spending a lot of time with Mendelssohn, both on the piano and listening to his symphonic music.

In addition, I ran across a beautiful album that was recorded a few years ago but released this year. Here’s a taste.

I love that recording. These men are geniuses as far as I am concerned. Surprisingly I learned about the release from a podcast I rarely access: NPR’s All Songs Considered…. Friday release edition.

This morning I got up and listened to an interesting documentary on Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koenigswarter. She understood Thelonious Monk’s music sooner than many including some of the musicians he played with. I love Monk’s work and this documentary is worth watching because it fills in some details about him. Here’s a link to the whole thing on YouTube.

It’s a very snow day in Holland Michigan. Eileen and I walked to church as usual this morning. I have some organ music picked out that would benefit from rehearsal this afternoon. But I’m snug in my house. It’s cold and beautiful outside and it’s a perfect day to do some reading and practicing in my home.

That’s what I’m going to do.

A few random links before I go:

Hear the Sound of a Seashell Horn Found in an Ancient French Cave

The Next Cyberattack Is Already Under Way | The New Yorker

Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution | The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute

I dreamed last night of my dead father-in-law. My dreams continue to be very important to me. In the dream he was disconsolate. He had behaved a bit badly (consistent with some of his behavior when he was alive). I embraced him with compassion and told him I loved him (something I never did).

I recently straightened my little area in the living room. I put away many books and kept only those books out that I plan to  read regularly. Eileen took a picture.

If it looks cluttered, it’s no where near as bad as it was when I began organizing. I guess I aspire to “cluttered.”

I am blogging on Friday morning because I have fallen in love with some new music. It’s an album released recently. I ran across it on my music app, Primophonic.

I am a fan of both the composer, Shaw, and the singer, Upshaw. Narrow Sea was commissioned by the performers in 2017. Shaw took texts from Sacred Harp pieces and reset them.

It seems to be on YouTube.

Here are the first few cuts.

I recommend all of the piece.

I just ordered a copy of The Sacred Harp. I have several shape note books but not the original. I am very intrigued to see the original pieces. I didn’t know “I am a poor wayfaring stranger” came from this tradition. I have known that song since I was young. I learned it from sheet music.

This is my new book I have purchased to give to people. I haven’t quite finished reading my copy yet, but I have found it amazing.

Amazing to learn that we have a significant number of people in our country to who have fallen in the cracks of moneyless poverty. In the video, Edin says that the $2.00 a day figure was used by the World Bank because using zero was statistically unhelpful.

That’s right, using World standards, in 2011, there were “1.5 million households with roughly 3 million children who were surviving on cash incomes of no more that $2 per person, per day for any given month. that’s about one out of every twenty-five families with children in America. ”

I found this book in Automating Equality by Eubanks.

If you’re not up for the book, the embedded video covers much of the same territory as the book.

In the video, Edin says that she met someone who was so used to be hungry that they described that it “feels like you want to be dead, because it’s peaceful being dead.” (This is around 1 hour and 28 minutes in the video).

Also, Edin mentions that one study she looked at said that getting hired at Walmart was harder than getting into Harvard.

And then there’s this happy video.

I learned about Belew from this episode of Deep Background Podcast.

Her historical background of the White Power movement intrigues me. I have interlibrary loaned her book,

She is thinking about now as well as history. You might know the insidious little book The Turner Diaries.

Timothy McVeigh read this. In the novel, there are details about idiots over throwing the United States. This includes a description (and instructions apparently) about blowing up a federal building and also congregating in the Nation’s Capital Building.

Here’s a recent article about this, although I learned what I’m mentioning from Belew’s video.

‘The Turner Diaries’ a blueprint for Capitol attack

I’ve got more links but I think it’s time for a martini.

I have been listening to more of Lorrie Moore on YouTube as well as reading essays from her collection, See What Can Be Done.

First, I was a bit ashamed when someone asked her about blogging or being on Twitter. She replied, “I don’t have that much to say.”

Ahem. Yikes. Me neither, but it doesn’t seem to stop me.

When asked why reading was important, she replied (something close to this) “Reading is important because we need to get language that isn’t commercially mediated and increasingly we don’t have it. ”

This reminded me of some of my musical quandaries. I consider about music from my youth and wonder why it seemed to go from exciting to me at that time to the way I respond to much popular music that is being written now (meh).

Could it be that as popular music or subgenres continue to generate material that it becomes more and more about making commodity and less about fun and what people like?

Not that rock and folk rock and whatever style was ever non-commercial. I just think that we need music that isn’t commodified and increasingly I don’t find much in new music either popular or any other style.

But, of course, that’s me.

And continuing with Moore’s ideas paraphrased by yours truly:

We need reading to help us get close to another’s imagination and to spend time in this distilled space. Reading expands horizons, emotional knowledge, and knowledge of the world.

When you think of it, maybe the problem of people believing stuff that is crazy and untrue might have something to do with people’s uncharged imagination and lack of time in the space of thinking and reading.

I recently finished Gregory Orr’s little book of poetry, How Beautiful the Beloved. It consists of one page poems and many of them charmed me.

Here are a couple.

______________
Loss and loss and more
Loss–that’s what
The sea teaches.

The need to stay
Nimble
Against the suck
Of receding waves,
The sand
Disappearing
Under our feet.
Here, where sea
Meets shore:
The best of dancing floors.
_______________

Has the moon been up there
All these nights
And I never noticed?

A whole week with my nose
To the ground, to the grind.

And the beloved faithfully
Returning each evening
As the moon.

Where have I been?
Who has abandoned whom?

__________________________

How MAGA Extremism Ends – The Atlantic

The author of this short article, Juliette Kayyem, is my new hero. I recommend her appearance on the latest Amicus podcast.

Yesterday was Lorrie Moore’s birthday according to Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac. He quoted her as saying the following and it made me laugh.

When she was once asked in an interview why she writes so often about characters who make lots of jokes, she said: “I feel that when you look out into the world, the world is funny. And people are funny. And that people always try to make each other laugh. I’ve never been to a dinner party where nobody said anything funny. If you’re going to ignore that [as a fiction writer], what are you doing?”

“What are you doing?” indeed.

My boss and i were goofing off yesterday. She was trying to broadcast organ music via her phone on a blue tooth speaker. I was the “talent” as they say and kept playing organ while she experimented. This apparently failed. She’s still working on something for tomorrow’s funeral.

In the course of the afternoon, I mentioned to her that there were two different hymns from which she could choose for this Sunday’s stream paraliturgy. She couldn’t decide. She said she would think about it. Consequently, I haven’t done this Sunday’s submission of hymns and music note. I did pick out organ music. If I haven’t heard from her tomorrow I will simple pick a hymn and write a hymn note.

Keillor inspired me to search for Lorrie Moore on YouTube. Bingo. In the above video, she not only talks charmingly and intelligently, she reads her essay about her marriage ceremony, “One hot summer, or a Brief History of Time,” in its entirety.

It was first published in the book she is plugging on this video.

I requested the library copy of the book and picked it up today.

On Tuesday, I read an essay by Zadie Smith called “The Bathroom”  in her collection, Feel Free. It is about her family and her understanding of family. I was struck by her description of how her family fitted into England’s class system.

“The spare room, the extra toilet—these represented, for my parents, a very British form of achievement. Raised in poverty, they were now officially what the census takers call ‘lower middle class.’ … When you were lower middle-class, in the eighties, you went to Europe occasionally—though only on flights that left at 3 a.m., and on planes in which you freely chose the smoking section—and you drove a Mini Metro, and you bought fresh orange juice. You went to state school of course and had never seen a ski lift but you took the Guardian (footnote here: If you were on the left) and, if there was a good front-page scandal, the Mirror, and you had those nice stripy Habitat blinds in the kitchen and china plates hanging on the walls and you absolutely understood that doormats with jokes on them were in bad taste. You told people you ‘never watched ITV,’ although this was actually a lie: you watched ITV all the time. And each summer you packed the car and motored down the M4 to Devon or Cornwall, stopping along the route to take tea—thanks to the National Trust—in the various country mansions of penniless aristocrats. At least that’s how it was for us.”

Class systems always confuse me until my nose gets rubbed into them. This happened to me on one trip in the UK when the car of the train we were on lost power. We were shepherded into the first class car. A bald man in an expensive suit holding a conservative book glared at me and my family for the entire time we were there.

I assume that was class stuff.

I read that passage to my wife since we have a daughter who is firmly ensconced in England.  (Hi Sarah!)

But more startlingly in Smith’s essay was her observation that “every family home is an emotionally violent place, full of suppressed rage… no one gets out of a family unit whole or with everything they want.” Here she quotes Jerry Seinfeld: “There’s no such thing as fun for all the family.”

Smith writes “Somebody’s going to have to give up something: it’s only a question of how much and to whom.

Something to ponder.

She reprints a photograph her father took of himself, his first wife, and Smith’s step sister. It is stark and looks highly composed. The mom sits like a painting staring at the TV. The father and daughter are whispering to each other. Smith titled it “The Family is a Violent Event.”

Zadie Smith’s brother, Ben, is a rap artist. Without talking to her about it, he independently chose this picture as the cover for his rap album.

Something else to ponder is what Lorrie Moore said in another interview I listened to on YouTube:

“You can’t carve solitude out of loneliness. You have to people your life and go from there.”

Denial Is the Heartbeat of America – The Atlantic

The incomparable Ibram X. Kendi.

“White terror is as American as the Stars and Stripes. But when this is denied, it is no wonder that the events at the Capitol are read as shocking and un-American.”

NYTimes: Public Radio Group Criticizes New York Times Over ‘Caliphate’ Correction

Good grief.

Superspreader Down: How Trump’s Exile from Social Media Alters the Future of Politics, Security, and Public Health

Little update by one of the coauthors of LikeWars. Thanks to Jeremy for tweeting this article.

I keep thinking I should quit blogging. I’m not getting to it as much as I used to for one reason or another. However, I still see some value in continuing to sporadically update for the handful of people who check it.

Mark recently put up a video of himself reading from Auden’s Christmas Oratorio: “For the time being.” It reminded me of Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being.

First, Mark read the ending of the long poem which is the third section of “The Flight into Egypt.” It ends with some lines that have been pressed into service as a hymn in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982. (Hymn 463, 464 according to my notes in Auden)

Mark is claiming a Creative Commons Attribution License for his reading of it. The software that comes with the hymnal (Ritesong) however does not have it as one that can be reproduced with permission. Not sure what all that means, just that I won’t put the hymns here.

Ozeki’s book is one that I have recently recommended as an audiobook to my daughter, Sarah. Also I gave the audiobook to my boss, Jen, for Xmas. It is a marvelous book. I seemed to remember reading an ebook version of it, but instead I found my hardback copy under “O” in my library. I have to invade my guests living quarters to access books like this.

Regarding writing an online blog, Ozeki has these marvelous comments, but :

Writing of her grandmother Jiko’s stories, the narrator says “Apart from me, who else would care? I mean, if I thought the world would want to know about old Jiko, I’d post her stories on a blog but actually I stopped doing that a while ago. It made me sad when I caught myself pretending that everybody out there in cyberspace cared about what I thought, when really nobody gives a shit.”

The character named Ruth in the book is reading this dairy aloud to her husband, Oliver. There is a footnote here where Oliver says “I never think anyone gives a hit… Is that sad? I don’t think so.” Ruth continues

“And when I multiplied that sad feeling by all the millions of people in their lonely little rooms, furiously writing and posting to their lonely little pages, that nobody has time to read because they’re all so busy writing and posting, it kind of broke my heart.”

Here there is another footnote (I love footnotes), “Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding” – Milan Kundera, Book of Laughter and Forgetting, 1989.

So welcome to my own “lonely little pages,” dear reader.

Another odd juxtaposition of ideas happened to me recently. I have been reading Alex Ross’s book, Wagnerism, and listening to him talk about it online.

I have had ambivalence about Wagner all my adult life. But, Ross’s book is mostly about Wagner’s influence on others. One of these people is Thomas Mann. Mann has been an enormously important influence on me and a source of many insights. I decided to pull down his “Death in Venice” and read it.

After several pages of reading Helen Lowe-Porter’s beautiful translation, I came on a sentence that left in German that the main character quoted. I asked the interwebs what the sentence was. It translated it and identified it as from Homer’s Oddysey. It did not say exactly which line it was, but apparently Mann will go on to quote more of Homer in this little story. Cool.

Well, children, I am bringing another of my lonely little pages to an end. Although I have had a bit of weird sadness lately, my life continues to be uncommonly good. I can only pray for my country at this time. The prayers of an atheist. What good are they?

Here it is, January 3 and I haven’t blogged since way back in December. I’m afraid I am filling up my time with reading, practicing, and other stuff like cooking. The picture above is one Elizabeth drew of me. She was thinking of giving it to me when she informed me that she and Jeremy had bought me a the Trust Fall Quarterly Subscription from Book People Book Store (Texas’s largest independent book store).

Over the next twelve months they will send me four books by new authors they recommend. Cool.

Jeremy and Alex made snow men a while back. The one on the left is Alex’s. I think it’s a snow woman.

Here’s a pic of them a bit later.

Christmas morning there was a huge package under the Christmas tree. I figured it was something for Alex. Nope. It was a reading desk that Jeremy picked out for me.

I quite like it. I can working on my Greek on it or just use it to read. This morning I plopped my huge copy of Don Quixote on it. It works great.

I was entirely spoiled this Christmas. I made a Wish List on Amazon and Eileen availed herself of it. I got tons of books. My brother and sister in law gave me two books I have had my eye on: Harold Bloom’s The Bright Book of Life

and Kevin Young’s African American Poetry.

Both men are heroes of mine.

I listened all the way through Bach’s Christmas Oratorio recently. It is wonderful music. Of course, I love the cantatas and it’s really six cantatas to be done from Christmas to Epiphany.

I received Alex Ross’s new book on Wagner from Eileen for Christmas. After having finished his previous book which I was reading (Listen to This), I plunged into it. I am trying to read more of a book than a few pages a day. I’m on page 84 of Ross (I just checked).

I finished several books I was reading previously and am now starting some of these Christmas books. I am also working on Dante and Don Quixote and others I have on the stack. All this reading is one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging. In fact I am itching to get back to my reading this afternoon.

I ordered the Dover edition of the score of the Christmas Oratorio and several vocal scores of some Wagner operas. Buying these used is very economic. I followed the Christmas Oratorio in a vocal score as I exercised. The score is in English unlike the recording I was listening to but I could still see how the music was working. I know it’s sort of cheating but I find it so much easier to learn about this kind of music in a vocal score. This is one that just has the voice parts and a reduced piano rendition of the orchestra parts.

I also ordered a box of used music from Craig Cramer.

I have been going back and forth between Bach and Buxtehude at work, reading and enjoying playing their music on the Pasi.

I am spoiled and lucky.

I have a new hero: Heather Cox Richardson. There was an article about her in the NYT. She writes a newsletter that is informed by her own background as an historian. She took the title from a book called “Letters from an American Farmer.”

I am enjoying them. Here’s a link to her Substack page where you can read some of them and sign up for her email.

Jeremy’s Mom gave Alex this cool toy. She can draw a picture on the Plexiglas and then light it up. I love it.

I recently discovered Mozart Y Mambo.

I subscribed to Primephonic.

It’s actually a pretty good app. There is info about albums, composers, and performers provided, plus sometimes you can download the booklet that comes with the CD. I especially like  that.

That’s how I found Mozart y Mambo.

It’s a clever album. It seems to have a progression from unadulterated Mozart and Mambo in the first two cuts and then the Horn takes a cadenza that ends up being influenced by Mambo. From there on out, it’s mix and match, Mozart y Mambo.  I couldn’t figure out how to embed a YouTube playlist but the whole album is there plus on Spotify.

Not sure if this play list will work for you but there it is for the heck of it.

I have been rereading James Joyce for sheer comfort reading.

My current interest in Homer and Shakespeare connects to Joyce.

I dipped into Ulysses’s 9th chapter sometimes referred to as the Scylla and Charybdis chapter and enjoyed the discussion the characters have about Shakespeare.

I’ve also been reading in Stuart Gilbert’s book.

I’ve had this book since I was kid but have never read the whole thing straight through. Armed with  my new understandings of Homer and Shakespeare, all of this stuff seems more interesting and easier than ever.

However, I was discouraged when presumably referring to reading it in Greek,  Gilbert writes: “… the Odyssey is quite easy reading; a smattering of Greek (seconded by a good dictionary and W. W. Merry’s notes) suffices.”

I am totally self-taught in what little Greek I know. Learning has not been “quite easy.” I can only guess that he is writing when most educated people had Greek and Latin in their education and simply had to brush up on the basics and learn Homeric idioms (which admittedly are not insurmountable at all if you have the basic Greek).

Obama shares his favorite songs of 2020

It’s the time of year for lists. I have bookmarked some music lists to check out later.

NYTimes: The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2020

NYTimes: Swapping Songs With Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov

Alex made three pictures lately that I really like. I like the kite picture of course. I do like kites. I even wrote a song from the point of view of a kite many years ago. It’s goofy but it’s proof of a lifelong admiration. I like the tree in the picture a lot as well.

These two pictures are very clever. They are assembly instructions with parts and then assembled. The one above is a cat.

I just asked her what this was and she said it was “dogs in building process.” How cool is that?

I listened to this podcast this morning while exercising. I like that it talked about the word “media” and asked listeners to think about it in it’s singular form.

The OED defines medium as “Something which is intermediate between two degrees, amounts, qualities, or classes; a middle state.”

It gives this obvious etymology   “classical Latin medium middle, centre, midst, intermediate course, intermediary…”

There are many obsolete meanings cited. I love the quotes.

For the obsolete usage as “average” it gives this:

1729   J. Swift Modest Proposal 7   I have reckoned upon a Medium, that a Child just born will weigh 12 pounds.

For the obsolete meaning of “a middle course, a compromise”

1719   D. Defoe Life Robinson Crusoe 38   When I let him know my Reason, he own’d it to be just, and offer’d me this Medium, that he [etc.].

The definition that fits the discussion is

My sister-in-law responded to my post yesterday (Hi Leigh!). So I thought I would do two days in a row just to show off.

In an effort to support the local Readers World Bookshop, I purchased Chris Ware’s Rusty Brown.

I do love it. I’m about halfway through.

If I can get my tablet to work, everyday I listen to The Writer’s Almanac. I use it to sit quietly for five minutes before i take my blood pressure. Unusually yesterday I loved the poem, Forms of Love by Kim Addonizio

So it’s Sunday afternoon and I’m exhausted. Church went fine today. Streaming church is a bit of a weird experience for me. There are just a few people in the room. We now have a large screen which shows what we are streaming. This is helpful. The whole thing starts to feel even more surreal than usual.

Ir’a interesting to have Jeremy, Elizabeth, and Alex here during the holidays. Jeremy and Elizabeth are, I think, basically atheists. But when you have a kid  it’s a bit different. Even though Jeremy’s background is Jewish, he seems find with having us do a few Christmas things like put up a tree. Alex is of course enthralled. Yesterday, she, Elizabeth and I went to get a tree. Specifically Alex was along to help pick it out. We haven’t decorated it yet, but Alex is looking forward to that.

Today the fourth day of Hanukkah begins at sundown. Jeremy, Elizabeth, and Alex are doing Hanukkah things each evening. Elizabeth made latkes the first night, Jeremy, last night.

They did get a dreidel for Alex and have been playing that game each night. And of course Alex gets a present each evening.

Right now that family unit is off gallivanting in the Subaru. Eileen and I pulled the tree upstairs. It’s now ready to be trimmed.

I sure have mixed feelings at this time of year. Usually i get burnt out pretty quickly on religion. That’s kind of happening, but mostly I would just like to sit and read. That’s what I’m going to do now.

Dear Diary,

Well, it’s been a while. I have been a busy bee lately. I finished the three movements of my Covid Christmas 2020 Suite, rehearsed them and then recorded them for my brother, Mark.

I just attempted to upload the video of one of the pieces directly to my web page. That didn’t work. Now, I’m working on putting it on YouTube. If that works, I will link it here sometime.

Last Saturday, Eileen sent me flowers. On Monday, she told me she thought I was drinking too much lately. After some discussion, we agreed I should cut back to one martini and one glass of wine in an evening. So that’s what I’ve been doing the last few evenings. So far, this seems to work out fine. When the woman you love tells you you’re drinking too much (or whatever), it behooves one to pay attention.

Plus it gave me something to talk to my therapist about.

So I had to upload this video to my YouTube channel and then embed it. Here are links to pdfs of the music scores:

Greensleeves Violin pdf
Greensleeves Cello pdf
Greensleeves Piano pdf

Whew! That took longer than I was hoping it would to put here. Since I haven’t been posting, I’m not sure anyone’s really checking here very often. Google Docs says I’m getting hits but I’m not exactly sure what that means.

In order to upload the other two movements to YouTube, I have to first download them from my Google Drive. I’m doing that now. In the  meantime, I’ll blather on for a bit.

I have had a full week of prepping for upcoming liturgies. Monday I set aside as a day to do my own working plan for a streaming version of Lessons and Carols and Christmas Eve for my church. I managed to do that.

Tuesday is Date Drive Day for Eileen and me. This means we make a picnic lunch then jump in the car and drive to the park and sit where we can see the lake. Then read, have lunch, and play Boggle in the car. it sounds goofy but it gives us some relaxed time completely alone.

Recently, Elizabeth was joking with me. “Remember?” she said, “Remember when we lived with you for a year?” (meaning our current situation) I replied, “Remember when you lived with me for three years and we took turns having nervous break downs?”

My therapist got a kick out of that one.

On Wednesday I met virtually with my boss, Rev Jen, and we sketched out what I and the piano trio will need to do for Lessons and Carols (on Advent IV) and Christmas Eve. Yesterday, I showed the plan to Amy and Dawn (my string players). They approved. It’s helpful to have this all thought through and finished when we are so constrained with safety precautions for the Covid 19 pandemic.

This morning I returned to some of my long range reading projects and read another Canto from Dante’s Paradisio (in three translations). I’ve been doing a lot of reading in and about Homer, but failing to get to Dante. I’m about half way through Paradisio after having finished Inferno and Purgatorio.

So I’m uploading while I’m writing today’s entry. This one finished.

The Snow piano pdf
The Snow – Violin pdf
The Snow – Cello pdf

and finally this one:

God rest keyboard pdf
God Rest violin  pdf
God rest cello pdf

I think that’s enough for today. I hope to not be away from my blog so long next time.