I managed to get two months of hymns chosen yesterday. I have been behind on this for a while. I’m not only choosing hymns but am specifying where the pointed psalm can be found and recommended a specific tone for use. This is much easier than the weekly regimen of preparing the psalm from scratch. Also much less likely to result in mistakes.

I also need to begin choosing anthems for the fall. This is a parallel project to the hymn choice. I’m more likely to do hymns for the entire season (up through next Spring). I will choose anthems only up until just past Christmas.

I find this flexibility is important because I’m not sure what the choir situation will be. It seems that as a director I tend to attract the self actualizing kind of person rather than the adoring dependent kind (thank goodness). This limits recruitment a bit. I have to make it public that the choir is available if people want to make this kind of commitment to something they think is rewarding. But there are always only a few people in our community who seem at all willing to do this. Since the number is small I need to stay flexible in which anthems I choose and can’t realistically predict what the choir will be like in January 2016.

Are you asleep yet?

Trials and tribulations of the anachronistic situation of doing church music, I guess.

Speaking of this, I received some encouragement laying in bed this morning listening to an old BBC book club show on Jeanette Winterson.

I was struck by the obvious strength of her mind in the exchange between her and questioners on this show. I was impressed with her notion that imagination is more important and less limiting than our experience.

I guess I live in my imagination. Winterson says that imagination is not limited to the moment of living, the time clicking on the clock, but that it frees us up into all kinds of time. She suggests that this might be thought of as “real time.”

I like that quite a bit. Predictably I spent some time this morning trying to find books by Winterson in my library. They weren’t in the “W” section but they were grouped together. I know I have more by her. They will probably surface as I  continue to organize my books.

Yesterday I put the electric piano on the porch. I’m planning on shifting some shelves to the spot where it and my useless record player were sitting in my living room. The electric piano can’t stay on the porch in the winter (due to lack of heating) but by then I think I will move it to the master bedroom. I don’t want to put it there because we are expecting company (daughters and significant others in August).

I like having it somewhere where I can play it day or night. You know, escape into the real time of the my imagination.