This is unusual. It’s Monday afternoon and I have my exercising and practicing for the day done. Rhonda met me at church and listened to the two pieces I am planning to play at the Wednesday recital. She was very helpful. After she left I incorporate most her idea into my playing. I am lucky to have someone like her around to help me.
Yesterday left me reeling. My throat hurt all day. The introvert in me has trouble with social events such as last night’s dinner with Martin Pasi, Rev Jen, and parishioners. This morning I got up and my throat had stopped hurting but I am still suffering from cold symptoms like cough and chest congestion.
But I felt even better today after exercising and practicing. Cool. Maybe I will be able to enlarge my “energy pie” with better choices.
I have contracted Eileen’s cold. It has kept her down for much of the past week or so. I have a sore throat which is my only symptom so far besides fuzzy thinking and feeling a bit off.
I finished reading Shakespeare’s Henry the Eighth this morning. It’s a good read and is the source of the famous quote, “Naked to my enemies,” the title of a book about Cardinal Wolsey.
It’s amusing that Thomas Cranmer the author of much of the first Book of Common Prayer has a big role in the story.
Yesterday my organ practice went exceptionally well. I am feeling more and more confident about the terrifying prospect of performing on a venue with three other professional recitalists.
I have been thinking about how much effort I keep putting into my job. I think it might an inevitable personality trait that I make full time work out of stuff that interests me.
Friday I met with a new parishioner who plays trumpet. I admit I was skeptical but he won me over with his passion for doing music. I have given him some pieces to work on and we will meet again soon, possibly next Friday.
Today I have two church things I am dreading a bit. After church, the silly stewardship skit is meeting for a rehearsal. I have been practicing my Billy Joel “Piano Man,” parody (“I’ll sing you a hymn, I’m the piano man….”). I got up in the middle of the night last night and gargled Listerine and salt water because my throat hurt so badly. Earlier in the day I sang through the song and managed to make a tune with my croaky voice. Fortunately the performance isn’t until next Sunday.
Also, Eileen and I are attending a soiree with the organ builder and select parishioners and Rev Jen and her partner, Beth, tonight. I am very sorry about this. The only people I am comfortable with are Eileen, Jen, Martin, and probably his wife. The parishioners are a mixed bag. They are probably more typical Episcopalians. I’m not sure what that means except that I feel distant from their concerns about money and education. But what the hell. There’s no way I could turn down attending despite the fact that it is on a Sunday evening when what I really need to do is practice organ and rest.
But church plans for today should go fine. Today and next Sunday I have tried to be easy on myself and schedule things that do not require a great deal of preparation.
I am finding myself doing more and more work at the keyboard and having less time to play through things I love. Fortunately, I do like the two pieces I have scheduled for Wednesday’s recital. My own piece is shaping up not too badly. It’s longer than the Hampton, “The Primitives.”
Rhonda has agreed to listen to me play the two pieces tomorrow.
Craig comes up on Tuesday for lunch and some time at the organ then back to South Bend. I had email from Huw that he can’t access the Grace Church Google Calendar. He said he has some techie people from Hope scheduled to help him on Monday. I sent him (and the others) a link so they could see who is scheduled to have time on the Pasi. Unsurprisingly, Huw’s email was unclear why he was trying to access the calendar. And after telling me he couldn’t he then ended his email with “In the meanwhile…. ?” I have no idea what that means.
I finished Olio by Tyhimba Jess. This is an amazing work of art. Also, it fascinates me that none of the characters of the poem were made up, but actually lived. Jess constructs his beautiful and terrifying poem on their lives. I’m especially interested in his main character, Julius Monro Trotter. That he lived, I do not doubt. But when Jess puts in the concluding Timeline section that the Trotter interviews of people who knew Scott Joplin were discovered in 2012, it makes me wonder how much of the poem Jess invented and how much he based on these interviews. I would love to read them.
I want to read more by this author. I just ordered a used copy of his Leadbelly. I’m already a life-long fan of Leadbelly. I cant’ wait to read Jess’s take on him.
I finished Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard. I enjoyed it. It’s not in the same league as Jess’s Olio, but few works are.
In desperation I started reading Golden House by Salmon Rushdie recently. I’m on chapter 12. I needed something to pull me away from the insular life of living in Western Michigan. Rushdie also helps me when thinking about our current American life where hate has emerged as winner both in our president and his largely white constituency. (Tahnisi Coates is good for this too).
I recommend listening to Rushdie’s entire interview on the The New York Public Library podcast. Here is a link. It’s worth listening to hear Rushdie recite “The Walrus and The Carpenter” from memory at the end of it.
I continue chipping away at the other books I am reading. Yesterday Rhonda was kind enough to stop by for tea and piano duets. We read through the “Five Easy Piano Pieces” by Stravinsky. Calvin Hampton was inspired by these to write his “Five Dances for Organ,” one of which I am performing next Wednesday evening at the dedication recital.
We also read through a charmingly well done transcription of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.” I like this piece quite a lot.
From the new New Yorker:
I ripped out a poem (as I sometimes do) from the Oct 16th New Yorker.
The author also reads it at the link above. I listened to it this morning. I am surprised that I seem to like more of the poems that the New Yorker publishes than I used to. Must be getting more soft-headed.
There was an advert for this Pulitzer Prize winning book in the recent issue as well. I just interlibrary loaned it.
Finally I ripped out the picture below from this issue. I think it’s an amazing shot. Here’s a link to where I found it and info about the exhibition it comes from.
I slept badly Monday night after the skit rehearsal. But yesterday went well, despite my fatigue. I walked to the Evergreen Senior Center and treadmilled. I keep seeing old men who remind me of my father. The liver spots. The intelligent glances. The humor. The frailty. I, of course, avoid mirrors at that point.
I’m feeling pretty good this morning as well. According to my daily weighing, I have lost close to fifteen pounds since I began occasionally skipping martinis and wine (and more importantly snacks) in the evening.
I do find poetry and music (and other arts) an extreme solace and consolation. I feel lucky, grateful, and privileged on an almost daily basis.
I’m not sure how many of my readers might be interested in poetry.
But this morning I have just about finished Tyehimba Jess’s Olio. I also read a wonderful poem by Derek Walcott called “Forest of Europe.”
It begins with metaphors of trees and leaves being like orchestras and notes. Then in the middle it makes this comment about poetry:
The tourist archipelagoes of my South
are prisons too, corruptible, and though
there is no harder prison than writing verse,
what’s poetry, if it is worth its salt,
but a phrase men can pass from hand to mouth?
I also spent time this morning reading in Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard.
She edits The Best American Poetry 2017 which I am also working my way through.
In addition I am reading Wallace Stevens and Harold Bloom’s book about him.
42nd Street psycho blues
No I don’t go to parties anymore
When they ask for entertainment
I don’t feel like a guest
I feel like a whore.
Janice Ian, 42nd street psycho blues
About a half hour before the rehearsal of the fund raising skit written for this year, I sat down with the script and music to make sure I would be able to do my part. To my astonishment I discovered that the writer had expanded my role this year. I reluctantly agreed last year to play piano for this event. This year I made the mistake of not looking closely at the new script when it was first presented months ago. I looked over the music and told my boss it didn’t present problems. Of course, I was only thinking of accompanying.
Imagine my dismay to find that the writer had written an entire satirical number for me to sing and play based on Billy Joel’s “The Piano Man.”
I quickly ran through it.
The subsequent rehearsal was an unpleasant experience for me. It is a group of parishioners with whom I am not comfortable. When I mentioned to the group that I had not realized I had a singing role, one of them caustically asked me if I could sing. The speaker was a singer who had joined and quit my choir (along with her husband who had done the same). Neither of them ever told me why.
I’m not sure how I responded to her comment about whether I could sing or not except to say something about singing in bars and in local coffee shops.
The cast sat in the opposite side of the choir room from the piano gathered around a table. Most of them had their backs to me. When I sang the parody there was much merriment among them. It felt distinctly like being laughed at. Not a pleasant sensation.
There is one choir member in the cast. She is the “director.” Upon learning that I had been taken by surprise, she asked me if I was going to do it. I told her at this late date I didn’t think I had a choice.
So a week from tomorrow, I will be in the uncomfortable position of playing with three other very very fine organists and feel out of place. A few days later I will be in the uncomfortable position of singing a Billy Joel song satire based on myself in front of the gathered Grace community and feel equally out of place.
My boss is out of town or I would go over and bitch in person to her. I don’t think I can write an email about this that won’t upset her. Fuck it.
Next time I will examine more carefully any request like this made to me.
“Mendelssohn Sunday” left me more exhausted than I was hoping it would. I was missing three people. I had four people who had skipped Wednesday’s rehearsal. It was challenging to get them to sing the little anthem. But sing it they did and very well at that. The anthem was a high point musically for us. The addition of violin and cello made all the difference in the world. The prelude was the most difficult thing I played yesterday. It was the second movement of Mendelssohn’s C minor piano trio, Op. 66. Here’s a nice version of it.
Believe it or not, we took it a bit quicker.
The rest of the service went fine. At announcements one of my altos stood up and announced that I would be performing a composition of my own at the upcoming dedication (which they were plugging at the time). After communion the priest (not Jen, but Val) remarked on my improvisation. I didn’t quite catch what she said but it was complimentary.
I had many compliments after church, many were about my piano improvising. So you see, I am appreciated no matter how I sound here sometimes.
I had to rest up to go back and practice my recital pieces. With the recital about a week and half away, daily practice is not optional. It’s going pretty well but I will be glad when this particular project is done.
I keep thinking about Edmonia Lewis the sculptor. Her wikipedia article tells an interesting story. The above statue is called “Forever Free,” I believe. It was made in 1867. Notice the features are not African American. This seems to have been a conscious decision on Lewis’s part for which she receives criticism now.
However in “The Old Arrowmaker and His Daughter” she chose to represent the Native American father more accurately. The daughter in the piece is presented with more European features. Lewis’s mother was Mississauga Ojibwe and African-American descent. Her father African-Haitian.
She spent a lot of her life overseas after a bad experience at Oberlin college.
I’m not sure I can call it serendipity when two brilliant poets I am reading with similar concerns about life, Derek Walcott and Tyehimba Jess, both make references to Cleopatra.
I’m almost done with Olio by Jess. Like the history of slavery I am reading, The Half has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist, Jess’s sprawling epic inevitably inspires further reading. While his fictionalization of Scott Joplin and people who knew and loved him rings familiarly to me, many of the people he writes about are new to me. As is the idea that minstrel shows play an important part in the evolution of American music weirdly carrying some of the contribution of African American slaves and ex-slaves.
In the next to the last section of his long poem, Jess makes several poems based on the sculptures of Edmonia Lewis. Interspersed between them are paragraphs that tell the terrible story of her persecution finally at the hands of whites in Oberlin, Ohio. In the bibliography, he cites The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis by Henderson and Henderson. It looks like another book I may want to read.
One of the poems is about her sculpture of Cleopatra.
Jess does a good job of contrasting the brilliance and classicism of Lewis’s work with the abuse and violence she experiences at the hands of whites.
After reading Jess’s poem on Cleopatra the sculpture by Lewis I turned to the page where I am currently at in reading Derek Walcott’s poetry. The poem was “Egypt Tobago.” The poem does not mention Cleopatra by name but it is obviously about her and Anthony.
I’m happy to report that the Calvin Hampton piece I am learning for the Oct 18 recital is beginning to fall together. Yesterday seemed to be a bit of a turning point. After my trio rehearsal, Amy and Dawn hung around out of curiosity to hear my recital pieces. It helped to play for them. Amy liked the Hampton. Both of them seemed to like “Mental Floss.” Dawn remarked that the B theme was nice.
When I said I wasn’t sure how my “colleagues’ (the other organists) would react, Amy pointed out that she and Dawn were my colleagues. I instantly agreed that they are my colleagues (no quotes in my tone of voice I hope).
The Mendelssohn trio movement we are playing tomorrow for the prelude also sounded very good yesterday. Again my colleagues were very complimentary about my playing. There are two solo piano sections in the trio. Dawn said that I played the first one very musically. I pointed out that Mendelssohn put the music in there. She responded that not all players pull it out.
It was another full day for me. While Eileen was sleeping I walked over to Evergreen and treadmilled. They open at 6 AM on weekdays. Then Eileen and I had breakfast. I drove to Glen to see Dr. Birky. It was another good session. As I left I thanked him and said it was too bad I had to pay him to listen to me. But then I pointed out that Rev Jen is also a good listener and she pays me so it sort of evens out. Thankfully he laughed.
Back to Holland for an organ lesson with my new organ student, Linda Elder.
As befits her name she is not young, but in this second lesson she had obviously practiced. I’ve forgotten how much fun it is when the student practices. Rudy my piano student didn’t show for our Thursday lesson. When I called him, he was in a class and had obviously double booked. I told him to go back to his class and we would work it out in emails. Rudy seems to be working with some confusion these days. He also is elderly. The elderly (me) teaching the elderly.
After lunch I had trio. Then organ practice and a quick Mom visit. By the time I got home I had decided it was another night not to skip the martini. It was a good day.
In the last segment, they discuss memory. Although the discussion is about popular culture and Blade Runner I find it interesting that they don’t mention Proust. In my conversation with Birky yesterday I mentioned that I am a person who values an extended piece of written prose (like Proust although I didn’t mention him) living at a time when image and aural messages dominate.
I found the discussion about Blade Runner moving. The closing scene of the original movie always makes me weep. Gladstone says in passing that the actor improvised it. If that is so, I think it’s brilliant.
I had a nice chat with my boss yesterday in our weekly meeting. She let me vent a bit about the craziness around the upcoming October recital and choir attendance and “Stewardship the musical.” I told that her Eileen had told me on Tuesday that she thought I was feeling inadequate. This is probably accurate. The frustrating thing is that so many of these things are not that important to me. In fact all of them aren’t that important to me.
I will use the same language tomorrow when I have my biweekly meeting with Dr. Birky.
I am simultaneously reading Hilary Clinton’s What Happened and Tan-Nehisi Coates We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy. There’s really no comparison between the two. Clinton’s book is largely a gossipy rant about what it was like to run for President and lose. Coates is doing something much deeper with his collection of eight articles he published in “The Atlantic.”
For example, the title of the book seems to be derived from an 1895 quote from a black senator about the brief interval of reconstruction after the Civil War before Jim Crow and repression of former slaves by lynching and disenfranchising their votes.
I love these collections of links defined by partisan category. I haven’t read any of them since the Washington Post article above but think I would now read them a bit differently.
I did not skip my martini last night. It turned into another long day for jupe. My cat, Edison, has been prescribed a series of B 12 shots (I think that’s what they’re giving him). Eileen scheduled these for Tuesday afternoons at 2:30. Somehow this ended up being the fulcrum for the entire day for me as I attempted to practice organ and treadmill. First I had to submit the music for this Sunday and also my pieces and bio for the Oct 18 recital. Eileen wanted to treadmill as well so we had to find a time that would allow her to be ready to take the cat in. This meant that I was practicing organ and noticed I needed to be done by noon at least. Practice wasn’t going all that well but I persist. I was able to do what is now my daily 8 times through “The Primitives.”
I just checked and noticed I am replicating a lot of yesterday’s complaints so I will stop.
I have been reading Harold Bloom’s Till I End My Song: A Gather of Last Poems laying in bed in the morning in the dark. He has sent me scurrying into my library pulling out poets and reading people like Sir Walter Raleigh, Jonathon Swift, Alexander Pope, and others. It is surprising how consoling and meaningful this is to me right now.
I think I finished polishing up “Mental Floss” yesterday. I am considering emailing it to Nick Palmer for his comments.
I am finding church work worming its way into my days off. I’m hoping that after this silly October concert (which I admit to dreading) things will let up a bit. Choir attendance continues to be a problem. People keep skipping out. I’m hoping we can pull off the little Mendelssohn piece I have scheduled for this Sunday. The string players are ready to play along at any rate. It looks I need to schedule some easy things for Advent and Christmas which was my plan anyway since Advent IV falls on Christmas eve.
In addition to daily work on “The Primitives” and “Mental Floss,” I have been working daily on the piano part of the Mendelssohn piano trio movement scheduled for this Sunday. Again I make myself work through it four times starting with the ending section and working backwards to the beginning.
You would think with all this practice my self confidence would be up, but it’s not. I am ready to endure what is coming and the people I have to work with but I am not convinced that the October recital with its parade of organists will not be tedious in the way I wish recitals weren’t. I suggested we limit the time to ten minutes a player, but Rev Jen thought fifteen minutes was better. Huw told me yesterday he is planning to play “Prelude, Fugue and Variation” by Franck and the Postlude in D minor by Stanford. These are two pieces Rhonda thought would round out the program. Huw is a fine player (as are all of the other players) and maybe his interp will change my mind about Franck. Craig is planning Partita: “Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele” by Georg Böhm. Rhonda, Dieterich Buxtehude – Chorale Prelude on Ein feste Burg, (A Mighty Fortress) BuxWV 184, Concerto in D Minor, BWV 596 – Johann Sebastian Bach.
I am the only one playing music from the 20th and 21st century. Stanford sneaks in at 1908 but really is looking backwards. Craig and Rhonda are playing some good music and will also nail their pieces. I have to admit it feels like an AGO program to me (not a compliment from grumpy old jupe). By that I mean that it’s a program more about the organ world than general listeners. I guess that fits for a Pasi organ dedication despite Martin’s own differing aesthetic (if I’ve read him correctly and not just projected my own prejudices on him).
But maybe it’s me. I’m feeling particularly alienated these days.
My devices seem to be failing me this morning. My tablet refuses to charge. It tells me I should use the original charger for better charging. It tells me it is slow charging, but it doesn’t seem to be. I will take it to the Verizon store today to see what could be done.
So I attempted to listen to music with Spotify web player. However my browser forgot my logon. I attempted to logon with Fakebook but apparently I entered the wrong password. This is frustrating because what I wanted to do was simply do the dishes with a little company of music or radio or something.
Finally I looked on YouTube and found a very interesting Library of Congress video called “Justice for Shylock.”
I have often wondered about Shakespeare’s presentation of Shylock and how it fits in with the history of anti semitism. Plus bonus: I noticed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the judging panel. Cool. So I set up my laptop and plugged it into speakers. Of course it wasn’t long before it failed. It continue to fail intermittently.
Here’s a link to the Library of Congress recording. I plan to eventually listen to the entire thing. Very interesting to me.
Afternoon post script
Eileen pointed out that I was not using the original cord with my tablet. I found this cord and the tablet began to recharge. So that’s good. I discovered that Huw Lewis wanted to come by sometime today to finalize his selections for the Oct 18 dedication recital. I have given permission for John Deppe, a Hope College grad, to come today at 5 PM to check out the organ. Huw emailed me a bit ago that he teaches until 4 PM. I emailed him back and told him Deppe was planning on being there at 5 PM. Would that give him enough time?
No reply yet. Church seems to be getting to me.
The silly “Stewardship the Musical” sung and performed by parishioners has been meeting without me. I promised them one rehearsal and one dress rehearsal. Last week one of the cast texted me and asked me if I could be at a rehearsal last night. I texted her back that I had promised one rehearsal and one dress so it was fine with me if it would count as the one rehearsal. She said she would get back to me. of course she didn’t.
I was expecting a frantic call last night about this. When it came, instead she asked me if I could play one more rehearsal. She was confused. She seemed to think I had only said I would be at the dress. By the time we hung up I had agreed to an extra rehearsal next Monday night plus a rehearsal after church on Oct 15th AND a dress on Oct 22.
Then I received a text from a Worship Commission member asking me if we were meeting in a few minutes. I checked and the meeting was not on the calendar. It was, however, in an old email. Long story short. I ended up jumping up and driving over for a meeting.
After turning in the music for this weekend’s bulletin and my Oct 18 recital bio and pieces I went over to church this morning to get in my own daily rehearsal.
At this point I didn’t know when Huw was planning to drop by. I cut it short so Eileen and I would have enough time to eat and treadmlll before the cat had to go to the vet for a shot.
Now I am grumpy. Eileen offered to take the cat to the vet without me and I took her up on it to write this post.
At least my tablet worked so I could read while treadmilling.
Eileen and I have already been to Evergreen and exercised this morning. It’s about 10:30 AM local time. She went to a class. I treadmilled.
Friday night we had date night. We went to the Sushi place and then to a dance concert. The “Visceral Dance Company” is a group of ten dancers based out of a Chicago dance school. Their dancing is extremely energetic and precise. However, since the concert was two and half hours long (!) I was left thinking once again that the pros failed. I think it’s a tad arrogant in this day of diminished attention spans to schedule the program they scheduled. To top it off, their closing number was not the strongest one of the evening. Indeed, there were several other numbers that would have a better finish.
As always this is just one old guy’s opinion.
Yesterday I had a good rehearsal on “The Primitives” by Hampton. Under tempo it took me about five and half minutes to play. I will probably play it slower than Hampton has it marked. His metronome marking is quarter equal 120 beats per minute. I think I like it slower and would probably play it better anyway. I went through the piece eight times total yesterday. The first four I did in sections with my “big note” (regular) score. The last four were from a reduced score which I tried to use a while back before I was ready to use a smaller score. The second time I went straight through the entire piece.
After practicing I went home and loaded up my electric piano for our annual outdoor Blessing of the Animals at Grace. I do like sitting and playing outdoors. Last night was also the local (very Reformed Church) 500 years of Reformation Hymn Festival. The narrator (and probably instigator) was Robert Batasini and the organist was Peter Kurdziel. Both of these dudes are Roman Catholic. Neither is from Holland. Batastini emailed (as an afterthought?) a week or so ago asking me to invite my choir to come sing last night. I posted information on the bulletin board in the choir room. Both Rev Jen and I were unenthusiastic about this and other Reformation anniversary events in Holland since they follow the usual pattern of not being interested in having the Episcopalian input.
I would have rather been outdoors playing for the blessing of animals anyway.
Spain’s idiot reaction to this election has convinced me that Catalan should have its independence. Not that this old guy’s opinion is going to make much of a difference.
I admire the spirit but this looks like its not going to be as good as liner could be. Also it’s just for people who own Apple hardware. Still, I miss liner notes and info about recordings.
I think one thing that has bothered me all my life is grappling with intellectual dishonesty, both in other people and in myself. I have found the recent liberal reactions: to discussion about Playboy and the recently deceased Hugh Hefner oddly troubling. And I have also found the discussion about rejected Mrs. Trump’s gift of Dr. Seuss books to a library troubling.
Both discussions have points I agree with and see clearly. Playboy was part of the misogynistic structure of creating a destructive expectation of regular women about their own bodies. Why did Mrs. Trump choose to donate books to a successful well-supplied school instead of one that could use the books.
But I remember Playboy as a counter move to the prudishness of my own upbringing and the society at large. Naked women were not only okay but they were attractive to a horny adolescent such as myself. And no one mentions boys such as myself masturbating looking at the pictures. All my life I haven’t felt that masturbation was anything but normal. As an adult male I began to wonder about the people in the pictures and if it was a fair thing for them to be photographed in that way. i still don’t know the complete answer to that question.
I’ve also been pondering the idea of honesty in relationships but decided this might not be the appropriate place to share my observations. Here’s Billy Joel singing about it.
As for Dr. Seuss being racist and the Cat in the Hat being blackface, I don’t see it.
New (used) books for jupe
Several more books I ordered have arrived in the mail.
You wouldn’t think a book on Bluegrass would have much to say about the impact of enslaved people from Africa on American music. But then the banjo is actually an African instrument.
This fascinating book by Cantwell like others I have ordered was footnoted in the slavery history I am reading (see below). It takes a scholarly trip through the evolution of this music and its impact on American music.
This collection of essays has reawakened my interest in Jazz music from a more sophisticated understanding of it. I read the preface last night and was delighted to discover it is the fruit of a study group which met three times a year beginning in 1994 at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. it’s obvious that the resultant book brings new light to its subject.
Finally my own copy of The Half has Never Been Told arrived. I am so glad to get my own copy of this marvelous book. It combines careful scholarship with an ability to bring to life the brave tortured people who were enslaved in this country. Eileen told me she was glad I had a copy because the stories I keep telling her have aroused her interest but she didn’t want to use the library’s copy in my stead.
Apparently my brother put this up on Fakebook. Eileen noticed it. I didn’t. Ran across it reading my NYT APP. It put me in mind of A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki which revolves around a lunch box which washed up on the shore with a diary in it from Japan from the period just prior to the disaster.
I finished reading Amiri Baraka’s collection: S.O.S: Poems 1961-2013 this morning. i have been reading a few poems out of it most days for a while. I think I will be returning to it to seek an antidote to the mediocrity that often echoes in my ears. He is nothing if not a solid “beat poet.” His take on America rings truer every day.
My copy of Bostridge’s Schubert’s Winter Journ: Anatomy of an Obsession arrived in the mail yesterday. I read in it while resting up for last night’s rehearsal. It is a beautifully made book. Bostridge is my kind of musician: highly skilled and informed by speaking from a wider platform than the academy. He says he doesn’t have music degrees. But here he is nailing the first beautiful song from the Schubert Song Cycle he writes about. If you listen to it, you might want to google up the text since Schubert and Bostridge and Julius Drake on piano plumb the depths of the meaning of the original poem which begins “I came a stranger, I depart a stranger.”
I’ve never been a big fan of the whole classical song tradition called variously Lieder or “Art Song.” But Schubert is an exception. I tend to like all his music and spend time regularly with his piano works. I have listened to his song cycles over and over and especially am drawn to Bostridge’s interp.
Yesterday I decided to change this Sunday’s anthem from a lovely little three part Renaissance anthem by Morley to a goofy last minute anthem by Mark Schweizer. It’s based on the Faure Pavanne (god help me). The organ carries the famous melody. Schweizer has intertwined a hymn for the choir sung to “Morning Song.” It almost works.
I looked at my recent attendance patterns and that’s what helped me decide to this. I had four people signed out last night and four people signed out for Sunday. Only one person in common for these two. That means seven out of sixteen were not around for both the rehearsing last night and the performance Sunday. I have two or three newbies who are still getting used to the challenge of singing well and accurately. Last Wednesday I spent 45 minutes on Morley. Then Sunday two people indicated they were skipping last night.
One of my newbies told me after rehearsal he thought it was a good call. After deciding yesterday to change it, I then had to spend a good half hour practicing the new anthem. I decided to keep the Morley prelude and postlude although they are now in stark contrast with their Renaissance like delicacy to anything else in the fucking service, but it’s too late to change the prelude and postlude when I have so much else on the burner.
My violinist told me Sunday that she was going to miss “Mendelssohn Sunday” — Oct 8th I have a Mendelssohn anthem scheduled and had invited the trio to come and play along and also perform on the prelude postlude. Actually my violinist had texted me a few days earlier about this. I had quickly begun work on an organ prelude and fugue by Mendelssohn. Yesterday she texted me that she had changed her mind and would be available. We are rehearsing today. Unfortunately I quit practicing the piano part for the prelude which is a bit of a challenge for me and instead began working on the prelude and fugue which is also a bit of a challenge for me.
In the middle of all this I continue to work hard on my dedication organ pieces. They are improving but there is no guarantee they will be solid by Oct 18th. I’m finishing up “Mental Floss.” As soon as I think it is entirely finished I am planning to email it to one of my few compositional colleagues left, Nick Palmer. Like so many of my musician friends, Nick and I have limited aesthetic preferences in common. However, he is a very adroit composer and is able to move beyond his own parameters and understand and intelligently critique other work. I will be curious to see if he has any comments that change the composition.
This morning my reading brings me solace. The words of Dylan Thomas as I lay in the dark on my bed. Later after dishes and Greek, the words of Amiri Baraka, Tyhimba Jess, and Derek Walcott comfort and disturb me.
Progress is history’s dirty joke.
Derek Walcott, “The Schooner Flight, 9. Maria Concepcion & The Book of Dreams
Ursula K. LeGuin has wisdom and challenge that I need.
The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well. LeGuin, Tales from Earthsee
I finished Tehanu recently. It is the fourth book of LeGuin’s Earthsea series. I’m now reading Tales from Earthsea by her.
I realize that the voices in my life come to me from the poetry, the prose, and the music. Many voices in my past are distant and dim. My voice sounds here and in my music. But I do not hear you, dear reader. You only hear me.
It’s an interesting conceit, the concept of conversation through art. I find it balances the mundanity of living in Holland Michigan and indeed of living in Trump’s America.
I continue to work at preparing music to perform. In addition to Hampton’s “The Primitives” and my own unfinished “Mental Floss,” I have added Mendelssohn’s Prelude and Fugue in G major, Op. 37 to be the prelude and postlude respectively for a week from Sunday. I had scheduled my piano trio to play, but my violinist has decided to go out of town for a while, so I had to regroup.
I’m also playing two pieces by Thomas Morley from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book this Sunday. I love the music in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and return to it over and over on my damn synth harpsichord. I will play one of these on a four foot flute (up an octave) and the other possibly on the wonderful Dulzian stop or some other buy diazepam in brazil gentle combination. We are scheduled to sing an anthem by Morley this Sunday. Several people have decided to skip this evening’s rehearsal. I will see how it goes. It’s possible I will cancel this anthem and put something much easier in its place.
When October comes I will contact Chris Brodersen a harpsichord builder I have been talking to about making my old clunker playable. I fantasize about abandoning my church music career (retiring) and spending more time with the music I love the most, the harpsichord music and my own compositions.
I am trying to maintain my sanity and health as much as possible. This morning I weighed around 219. Getting below 220 was my first goal since I was up to 230. I have resumed skipping drinks in the evening and am continuing to visit the treadmill at Evergreen when I can.
So between the poetry, the prose, and the music I try to stay as sane as possible.
Bret Stephens joined the NYT columnists recently. He was an attempt to add a conservative voice and I found his first columns inane. But this is a good one.
I am enjoying Moore’s Jerusalem immensely. The current chapter I am reading is called “Rough Sleepers” and is about wandering dead people in London. This review helped me understand that.
Serendipity strikes again. Yesterday we presented a recital of improvisation at my church. This morning reading in The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist I found that where I left off was the beginning of several pages extolling the ability (and heritage) of the enslaved to improvise.
“… [I]t was the enslaved African Americans who were the true modernists, the real geniuses. The innovation that flooded through the quarters of frontier labor camps in the first forty or fifty years of the nineteenth century was driven by constant individual creativity in the quarters … music and dancing on slavery’s frontier emphasized individual improvisation, not imitation, and not unison.”
It is becoming more and more obvious to me that at the heart of the American spirit and experience are the enslaved people of our past.
This rings through the poets Tyhimba Jess and Amiri Baraka. Just now in reading Jess, he emphasizes a bit of mix of European art music and African American experience via his recreation of Sissieretta Jones, a black singer. Baraka combines a healthy distaste for what America has become with a Jazz sensibility. Both men breath fresh air into my head. They are this week’s mental floss for jupe.
I keep scouring the footnotes in Baptist’s work.
This morning I ordered a used copy of Black Legacy: America’s Hidden Heritage by William D. Piersen.
The day before I ordered The Sounds of Slavery by White and White. Both books were cited in the copious footnotes of The Half Has Never Been Told. I have also ordered my copy of this book as well.
Eileen messed around a bit with taping yesterday concert. She hasn’t shared it yet. We had about thirty people, no children. I was pleased with the recital. I interviewed the players and in each case turned over the mike for them to talk about their experiences with improvisation. In addition to the scheduled improvs I sprang one on them because I felt like the music was getting too stuffy.
Eileen jumped in her mini and drove away after the concert. She is visiting a friend in Montague over night. I dragged myself back to church for a short organ practice, then I went to the liquor store and bought some gin. Last night I did not skip the martini(s).
I finished rereading The Saddest Summer of Samuel S. by J. P. Donleavy last night. I barely remember reading this book before. I did remember accurately the incident of the therapist telling Samuel. S. that he was cured because he (Samuel S.) was driving the therapist crazy.
However I remembered it taking place in Washing Square, NYC. Instead it takes place in Vienna where the entire novel takes place. Samuel S. is in the therapist’s office. I think I may have conflated two literary memories. It’s possible they were both from Donleavy novels.
After cleaning the kitchen and doing some Greek I again sat down and read poetry. I am finding Tyehimba Jess an extremely powerful poet. Due to reading the history of slavery I am finding new resonance in his work and the work of Amiri Baraka.
This morning I read his poem about Sissieretta Jones singing Aida at Carnegie Hall in 1902. I find it satisfying that he pulls the entire African American experience into the operatic moment. I like this line especially:
What is a coon show anyway, but one poor devil putting on a mask another devil willing to pay to see?
Did you know there were hundreds of “coon” songs written and performed at minstrel shows? Jess makes a entire chapter based mostly on just their titles. The chapter takes its title from one, “All Coons Look Alike to Me: A Chant of Merry Song Melodies Guaranteed! All Titles Historically Accurate! Guaranteed!
It is a painful read. It too me several days to get through that chapter.
It’s still pretty dark outside right now at 7 AM in Holland Michigan.
Earlier I went out to throw something in the trash barrel and was struck by how dark it was.
Then in my poetry reading this morning, “darkness” resonated as well.
First in Olio by Tyehimba Jess.
from “My name is Sissieretta Jones”
But the darkened sense inside my name won’t be silenced. With its sister and shush
and gospel of ocean, I sing each night from the way I’d stand on the docks of
Providence, a straggle boned bundle of lungs and tremble lifting wave after wave
into wave after wave of Atlantic. Its applause keeled over me, calling me with its
bell of salt, its belly of sunken hulls, its blue green fathoms of tremolo. Every night,
in the dark off stage, I hear my mother’s voice in my head, her backyard hum, the sea
in her distance with the weather of storm. She’d look out and see the thrall of water
heave its back to the sky. I’d look out to the darkness and hear my true name.
“I’d look out to the darkness and hear my true name.”
This phrase hit me this morning. Just now when I was searching for the full text of this prose poem online, I discovered a portion of it on something called Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art. But in the online version, the line that struck me had left out the phrase, “to the darkness.” I’m glad that Jess added it in the book version.
Likewise in Amiri Barak, I found this:
song to me was the darkness
in which I could stand
From “Wise 4” by Amiri Baraka
I couldn’t find this poem online either.
It’s striking that both of these poems are about music and darkness.
This popped up on my Fakebook feed. I bookmarked it because I have lists of errors that I keep. I will have to see if they have all of them in the linked doc.
Eileen often watch PBS Newshour. I think its a lousy show but like being with her so I watch it too sometimes. Last night at the point where I was thinking if they were going to another insipid “Spectacular Moment” (the last one I was say of Terry Gross for fuck’s sake!), I was going to bed. Instead they interviewed an author and an editor of the New York Times Book review about their reading recommendation. I stayed up. At the end of the segment, the announcer said that one could go on their web site for further info. I did this and found it hadn’t been updated yet. This did not deter me from trying to remember at least the book linked above.
I skipped blogging yesterday. I ended up having a full day. I transcribed “Wings of Song,” a “song without words” by Mendelssohn, which had been arranged for organ. I gave the melody to the violin and the cellos. I think it will be a nice goofy postlude for organ and strings on the upcoming “Mendelssohn Sunday.” On that Sunday, the trio will play a new movement from a Mendelssohn piano trio we are learning, the choir will sing a Mendelssohn anthem (with strings playing along), and we will end with”Wings of Song.”
Kelly Bakker came and tuned my piano yesterday. I haven’t had a chance to play it since. Instead I put in an hour on the organ before my piano lesson with Rudy and then another hour after the trio rehearsal. After that I came home and walked over to Evergreen and treadmilled. Then Eileen and I went out to supper at the Curragh, the local fake Irish pub.
I am still skipping evening alcohol. This morning I was down nine pounds or so. I told Eileen when I hit ten pounds I will probably buy a bottle of gin. The food at the Currah was so-so. The ice tea was delicious. But the sliced up red peppers smacked of mold in their taste.
Eileen went grocery shopping in the morning while I was doing stuff. She bought some salmon and perch so we could have a meal or two together. She is envious, I think, of my weight loss.
Today I meet with Dr. Birky, my therapist. I have been more quiet than usual this week for some reason. But I can always blather away.
I’m still trying to come up with an additional 16 measures or so for “Mental Floss.” I think the B melody needs it since it’s only about 16 measures itself and seems a bit shorter than the A section which repeats.
I have a new prospective organ student with whom I am meeting a week from today. She is the wife of a retired Hope professor who attends Grace.
“no nation but imagination” is a line from a Derek Walcott poem I was reading this morning. I like it. For the record, the poem is “The Schooner Flight.” It seems to be a bit of a miniature Omeros developing some of the same heroic/island themes in a narrative poem about an island sailor. Warning: if you happen to click on the above link, it’s a long poem. I’m just over half way through it.
Eileen and I were invited to an evening meal in a parishioner’s home last night. The hostess was a very bright, articulate widow named Joan Smith now living on the banks of the Grand river in Grand Haven. Despite the fact that the rest of the group was made up of an elderly artsy quilt maker named Elizabeth and my boss, Rev Jen, I felt like I was holding my breath all evening, trying not to be intense or in Elizabeth’s words when i couldn’t find an adjective for Charles Bukowski, “gritty.”
I still felt like I was inside a bubble, a Caucasian Episcopalian bubble. I find the talk of Billy Collins and Louis Erdich a bit off putting but managed to keep civil. When Elizabeth called PBS Judy Rudruff by her first name in a sympathetic comment my breath was taken away.
When I mentioned Amiri Baraka and Derek Walcott, I wasn’t sure anyone in the room (besides Eileen who dislikes poetry) knew the names. Joan is a retired teacher. It felt almost like a betrayal on my part to mention these poets I so admire. I crawled back into their poems this morning. I’m not that far from finishing reading Baraka’s entire SOS: Poems 1961-2013.
I am reminded of Salmon Rushdie’s lovely ironic comment that “there’s not a better a career move than death” since I have a tendency to stumble onto writers by reading their obit. Such was the case with Walcott. Baraka is someone I have followed for years.
In the last few dark mornings before getting up my eyes have moved over poems by Dylan Thomas in an ebook, poems I know and love and still find mysterious and beautiful.
At the Monday afternoon recital, an elderly woman asked me how I felt when I was able to finally play such a wonderful instrument as the Martin Pasi. I told her that I had been trained with this kind of instrument in mind, and though I had played mostly but not all crappy instruments in my jobs, on the “inside” I heard the beauty.
Later I mused that this interior beauty was emerging a bit in the form of actual sounds waves originating in wind.
I’m feeling pretty good this morning as well. According to my daily weighing, I have lost close to fifteen pounds since I began occasionally skipping martinis and wine (and more importantly snacks) in the evening.
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