I have been up working on editing compositions. I now have a completed version of the Little Recessional Dance ready. I want to let it sit a bit to see if I will continue to feel like it’s ready to submit to the Greater Kansas City American Guild of Organists organ composition contest. Here’sa link to the PDF of it I put up on my music page if you’re curious.
I received permission from my boss yesterday to use my setting of the “Holy, Holy” this Sunday. It’s in a sort of faux Jazz style and I thought it would be fun to do with the musicians who will be there.
I have thought of changing a note in this piece. I think my original melody presents some problems for a congregation to sing.
If you look at the “Hosanna” above, you can see that the word is repeated. I think the melodic twist in the second Hosanna might be too much change from the first one to be as user friendly as I try to make congregational music these days.
A friend at church agreed with me about this. She may even have been the one to point it out to me. Last time we sang it, I mentioned to her I was contemplating changing the note. She had changed her mind and told me I should leave it.
Then there’s the problem of changing something on the congregation after they have learned one way.
Fuck it. I’m going to leave it.
I had fun at my piano trio rehearsal yesterday. We played through the first movement of Faure’s Opus 120 twice. We all liked it. Then we played through some of the Tchaikowsky piano trio.
At first our tempo was much too ambitious. We started over and did it slower with more success.
Haven’t read this, but it looks interesting. It does annoy me when a site does not provide an option to read an article on a single page. The way I read I often refer back to sections in an article. Searching through three or four URLs for something can be frustrating. In face, I usually skip articles that don’t allow the single page option. In this case, I thought it might be worth it to bit the bullet and click through.
Ross Douthat observes that America is no longer in the position it once was of being able to provide benefits for parts of the population without shortchanging other parts. He quotes this article which I have bookmarked to look at further:
I had a very full day yesterday. I took Mom to the doctor, attended a fine organ recital, lunched with Eileen, practiced organ, rehearsed with young jazzers, treadmilled and then had drinks and food with Eileen at one of our favorite local restaurants (Citi-Vu). In between I reworked an organ composition.
I am looking for ways to more precisely notate it.
It did look like this:
Now it’s more like this:
I actually just noticed that I sped up the tempo. I think I like it at the slower tempo and will probably change it back.
I spent a good amount of time yesterday trying to get Finale (the music software I use) to work for me. For some reason, the version of the document I was editing omitted the ability to use short cuts when adding articulations. After much fussing with it I ended up making a new doc which did have the short cuts and dumping the entire data into it. Sigh.
I finished reading Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn sitting in my Mom’s shrink’s office.
When I was visiting my brother and his wife in New Hampshire we went to see the movie, “Being Flynn,” which was based on this book.
De Niro plays the father in the story.
His presence is very strong in the movie. Earlier on the day we saw the movie, I had noticed the book in one of the bookstores my brother was taking me around to.
After seeing the movie, I thought it might be interesting to read the book.
It’s unfair to compare a good movie to an excellent book. The story that the author tells is one that seems to be embedded in his own life. It’s hard to tell how much is real and how much is invented. Even whether much is invented.
By the end of the book, I finally saw the character De Niro plays much differently. The movie, of course, took liberties with the story in the book. I have learned to forgive movies for doing that. How else can you cram a long complex story into a two hour visual experience?
But Flynn can write. Reading this book makes me want to read more of his work. His hand is sure as he uses techniques like suddenly turning the story into a movie script. He also produces some of the prose of the mythical book, The Button Man, the father is writing in the movie. One wonders if it is actually something his father wrote or that he invented. Probably the former.
He compares the book to Moby Dick.
In Moby Dick, he writes, the whale doesn’t appear until the last part of the book and then to destroy Ahab. Likewise, the son in the story (Flynn himself) doesn’t get to see The Button Man until the last part of his own book.
The book is about sorting out your own personality in relationship to your parents and your family.
It did help me to see the movie first. I’m sure it affected how I read the book. But I now much prefer the story from the book.
On discovering that the wild tale his father told him about his grandfather (his father’s father) having invented a life boat was actually true, Flynn writes
“The problem was to keep the body above the waves. The trick was to breathe only air. My grandfather’s patent was used by seven countries during both World Wars. Thousands of heads floating above the waves. I’ll be damned.”
I think this sums the book up nicely.
Flynn never really believed the stories his father told about his grandfather testing his life rafts by dropping them in the lake from a great height. But the chapter after he reads his father’s book (which he ultimately describes as dissolving into incoherence) is the one where he discovers his grandfather’s patent.
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City is full of the bullshit and wonderful stuff that you can discover about your family if you look long and hard enough.
I spent all morning yesterday staring at my computer screen and poking at the keyboard. I started out by picking hymns for this Sunday and then after blogging went back to it and picked out hymns through August. Whew! Now that’s done anyway.
It’s been a luxury this week not to have to practice primarily on the upcoming Sunday’s prelude and/or postlude. I have been picking pieces that require daily diligence and eat up a good portion of my rehearsal time. Not so, this week.
Oddly enough I recently found a Buxtehude prelude completely fingered and unlearned. I have been spending time with it the last few days. I don’t usually write every finger like I did in grad school. But it does help learn the piece very thoroughly, if slowly.
Actual scan of piece I am working on with my fingerings.
I keep thinking of my teacher, Craig Cramer, being amused when I would be frustrated at playing the right note with the wrong finger. Right notes. That’s the idea, right? So what’s the big deal, I ask myself, if I happen to use the wrong finger?
Now I think more about what’s on the page that will distract me in a performance. Often less is more with little written instructions to myself.
But since the hard part (writing in the finger numbers) is done on this particular Buxtehude I’m experimenting with learning a piece in the grad school way.
I also have been spending copious time with Bolcom’s setting of “What a friend we have in Jesus” and Hampton’s “The Primitives” from his Five Dances for Organ. This will be the second dance I have learned from that collection. The other one was called “An Exalted Ritual.”
I quite like these pieces by Hampton but am not sure how “The Primitives” would work as a piece in church. No matter.
Also learning a couple little Dupres pieces from his “Fifteen Pieces for Organ Founded on Antiphons.” I own a ton of Dupre’s music. Organists learn this stuff. I’m not sold on most of his work. But since I own it, I thought I would learn some of it.
Interestingly I haven’t been pulling out Bach who is usually my favorite.
Who knows why.
I also have actually gone over the selection the jazzers are planning to play Sunday: “Green Dolphin Street,” “There is No Greater Love,” and “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.”
Today I’m planning to arrive as soon as possible at a noon recital by a new acquaintance, Rhonda Edgington. She is playing at Pillar Church. They run noon recitals about once a month (?) in the summer. My Mom has a doctor’s appointment at 11 AM so I will be cutting it close.
Then lunch with beautiful wife and rehearse with the jazzers. Life is good.
Just finished choosing hymns for Sunday. I did this before blogging this morning so I’m writing a bit later than usual. The jazz trio (Jordan VanHemert, Nathan Walker and Drew Belanger) invited me to sit in Sunday when they play at Grace, so I guess I am playing Sunday. Anyway I don’t have to prepare the prelude and postlude other than meet with these players tomorrow afternoon.
Recently finished reading Fussell’s memoir, Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic. It’s an odd little book. It has a strong beginning and middle. But nearing the end as he works himself closer to the present it gets weak. The weakest moment is his dispassionate description of his divorce. He talks about it very matter-of-factedly then throws in a sentence saying it was as messy and hurtful as those things usually are.
My copy of his BAD or the Dumbing of America arrived in time for me to immediately begin reading it after the memoirs. It’s even weaker. Much of this is due to its novelty structure (Each chapter is a BAD something or other like BAD behavior or BAD banks). Written in 1991, it is very dated in its criticisms. Fussell is sometimes witty but this book is a disappointment. Not sure I’ll even bother to finish it.
My copy of his Class: A Guide through the American Status System also came in the mail. I received both it and BAD from my Book Exchange Web Site that I belong to and participate in (You agree to enter titles of books you are willing to mail to others. When you are called on to do so, you earn a point for each book which allows you to request other members’ listed books. I like this.)
I am very interested in America’s class system. Fussell’s book is probably dated and a bit superficial but I’m still interested despite some disappointment in his other books. I am also planning to read the book that made his name.
The Great War and Modern Memory seems to have been influential in informing the discussion of war with a reminder of its horror and madness from the point of view of the soldier, something I think America has forgotten.
In his memoirs, Fussell describes sitting in a British research library and going through thousands and thousands of personal letters and documents of soldiers from WWI, most of which had not been looked at since they died.
I think it’s worth looking at. Thinking of reading it as an ebook though.
I am a fan of Zadie Smith’s writing. This article is about the plans to tear down the library and bookstore in her hometown in England and put up housing.
Rev Al Sharpton reviews a James Brown bio. The review is kind of like listening to him talk… lots of purple prose and bias. But what the heck, I love Brown.
What should be done about the economy? Republicans claim to have the answer: slash spending and cut taxes. What they hope voters won’t notice is that that’s precisely the policy we’ve been following the past couple of years…
So why don’t voters know any of this?
Part of the answer is that far too much economic reporting is still of the he-said, she-said variety, with dueling quotes from hired guns on either side
This doesn’t prove that music lovers are crooks. Rather, it shows that actually selling things to early adopters is wise. Publishers did this—unlike the record labels, which essentially insisted that the first digital generation either steal online music or do without it entirely.
I played pretty well yesterday. My 9.5 minute piece by Sowerby went well. I managed to play 99% of the convoluted chords he wrote as written. I flubbed several exposed pedal solo notes which can happen. But I thought I brought the music to the listeners.
That is until after service when a parishioner was quite adamant that Sowerby was far too dissonant for her ears.
“Is all his stuff like that?” she asked. It’s certainly not all based on hymn tunes, I replied.
Unfortunately I am not always as tactful as I want to be when people come at me before or after service. I told the woman that Sowerby was actually a conservative composer. I knew that she would recognize Messiaen’s name and mentioned him to her. She wrinkled her nose. I told her it was all part of the Christian song, n’est pas?
She admitted that, but detests “dissonance.” I told her that many of us don’t really hear this music as dissonant. I asked her if she liked movie music. She said yes but that the movies she goes to do not use dissonant music.
By this time I had abandoned my usual attempts at deflecting comments with techniques like reflective listening and calm. I told her that John Williams used dissonance. She protested. I told her Williams steals whole hog from dissonant old Hindemith. I even cited the piece, Mathis der Maler because I think it’s where Williams found the Star Wars theme.
Dam.
Before we were done I was begging the woman to continue to tell me when she dislikes things because I do in fact find this information helpful.
I wish I could control my reactions better but sometimes I don’t and there you are.
On the positive side, my Mom agreed to come over to my house and sit in the yard with me, Eileen and friend Barb. She even stayed for supper. Very nice. By the end of the day I was pretty exhausted.
Onward. Upward.
Here’s couple of quotes from today’s reading. Byte size.
“I am a machine of ideas. I adore (in a funny way) to think.”
Anne Sexton in a letter to fellow poet, W.D. Snodgrass
Me, too! I also “adore to think.”
Attentiveness! The pinpoint is the locus
Of Excellence in lands of softened focus.
John Updike, Midpoint, Canto IV
Such a gentle way to talk about the USA: a land of softened focus.
My sense of my own mortality seemed to dog me through out yesterday. Most likely due to the high BP reading. It’s still kind of high this morning, but I resisted checking it a second time in the right arm. That’s when I had my scary high reading. I hate worrying about this.
I managed to get a good rehearsal in yesterday. Eileen practiced turning pages for me on the Sowerby. Then I worked over the score for a while. Besides the clever little Gerald Near postlude I have scheduled today, I ended up attending to the rest of the pieces I am learning as well: Dupres, Hampton, & Bolcom.
Eileen picked me up and we took Barb to lunch at Crane’s. Then off to an estate sale. Eileen bought a chair, a scrub board, an antique fork and an antique screwdriver. I bought four linen napkins.
The chair wouldn’t fit in the Mini so we came home. I went back to pick it up with the Subaru. Eileen and Barb went to drop off books to my Mom and trim her fingernails for her.
After we went to see the movie, The Avengers.
I wasn’t too taken with it. Like many movies seeking a wide appeal (to make money) it’s more of a ride than a story. There were a few humorous wisecracks very like Marvel comic books. I guess I prefer Watchmen (the book anyway). We weren’t the only ones to sit through the credits this time. It is truly amazing how many people of differing skills and talents it takes to make a movie like this.
Nice last scene after the credits, though. The Avengers eat shawarma.
Came home from the movie and grilled veggies and burgers (for the carnivores). A good time was had by all. Treadmilled. Onward.
I would be remiss to neglect to mention that my silly blood pressure seems to be on the rise again. Actually I’ve only had a high reading today. But I have not believed a couple of readings at Miejer’s which were high. The reason being that a couple of times I had a high reading before grocery shopping at the store’s machine. Then rechecked it after shopping and it was back to normal. It could be that as I am aging, it will swing more from high to low. Anyway, if it continues for a week I will call my doctor. I don’t want a new drug. But I don’t want to walk around with high blood pressure.
I am playing a big piece for the prelude tomorrow. It’s about ten pages long. Written by Leo Sowerby and based on the offertory hymn of the day, “I Bind unto Myself This Day. I’ve mentioned it here in the last few days. Sowerby is a workmanlike composer and I admire his work. He writes careful voice leading to lovely dissonant chords. This morning working slowly over the manual (keyboard) parts, I discovered wrong notes in the middle of huge chords in two different places. Yikes. Spent much time rehearsing them correctly.
Our friend, Barb, is visiting. I will sneak off later and practice. Also, I have asked Eileen to practice page turning for me today and to turn pages for me tomorrow. I have it worked out with photocopies.
I have had to scale the registration (choice of which sets of pipes to use when) down a bit from Sowerby’s suggestions. Otherwise the entire ten minute piece would sound the same, mostly loud.
Recently I read a pretty disturbing poem by Anne Sexton.
Red Roses
by Anne Sexton
Tommy is three and when he’s bad
his mother dances with him.
She puts on the record,
“Red Roses for a Blue Lady”
and throws him across the room.
Mind you,
she never laid a hand on him.
He gets red roses in different places,
the head, that time he was as sleepy as a river,
the back, that time he was a broken scarecrow,
the arm like a diamond had bitten it,
the leg, twisted like a licorice stick,
all the dance they did together,
Blue Lady and Tommy.
You fell, she said, just remember you fell.
I fell, is all he told the doctors
in the big hospital. A nice lady came
and asked him questions but because
he didn’t want to be sent away he said, I fell.
He never said anything else although he could talk fine.
He never told about the music
or how she’d sing and shout
holding him up and throwing him.
He pretends he is her ball.
He tries to fold up and bounce
but he squashes like fruit.
For he loves Blue Lady and the spots
of red roses he gives her
Yikes. Great. A horribly beautiful child-abuse poem.
The day I read the poem, I found reference to it in the intermittent biographical essays in Sexton’s collected poems.
It turns out that Sexton threw her baby daughter, Joy, the same way the Blue Lady in the poem throws Tommy. After that, her parents take one of the kids and the in-laws take the other. It is around this time Sexton attempts suicide. Joy is kept from her for three years and doesn’t recognize her when Sexton is deemed well enough to parent her again.
Sexton was quite taken with the poetry of W.D. Snodgrass.
Reading it recently, I found weird typos in one poetry site’s version. I emailed them.
I’m not as taken with Snodgrass as Sexton was. I think she’s better. I at least like her more.
As I’m reading the letters of Sexton (which are autobiographical and sent to people like Snodgrass and Robert Lowell both of whom she studied with), I am drawn back to poems as she talks about them in the letters.
When I re-read The Double Image (linked below) I now understood two things about it. One, that it was addressed to Joy, Sexton’s daughter. Two, that she was under the influence of Snodgrass’s “Hearts Needle” which is addressed to his own estranged child from a first marriage (not sure if this is autobiographical in his case or not).
The link below also has an embedded recording of Sexton reading her poem “The Double Image.” Haven’t had the courage to listen to it yet.
This link is to letters responding to a recent NYT editorial. I concur with the writer who says “If we recognize terrorism as a crime, then suspects need to be captured and tried on the basis of evidence, with due process.”
I have felt this way all through the so-called war on terror. Europeans (England, Italy, Spain) seem to have had much more luck than us by treating terrorists as criminals instead of warriors.
I have found that when I grocery shop on Friday as I plan to do today, it’s pretty crazy if I wait too long. So I’m going to try to keep the time I work on my blog short.
At the funeral yesterday I was pretty impressed with the way this group of people chose to remember Harry Hatch, the man who died.
In the morning, the family had a private prayer service and put his ashes where he asked. Later they were talking about it. His ashes are near his mother’s who died pretty recently. His sisters all agreed they could hear their mother’s voice in their heads saying, “Harry! What are you doing here?”
I heard this repeated throughout the afternoon with each person saying it in a precise imitation of Harry’s mom.
The memorial began at the VFW bar. People were sitting around. Some were nursing drinks. After a while, the VFW rep quietened down the group and did the standard VFW memorial.
If you’ve never seen it, it consists of several Veterans marching to where the flag is laying and saluting it and the shrine for the dead Veteran. Two remain, on either side of the shrine. One gives speeches, the other prays. The speeches seem to be made to order for a memorial for a veteran and are read or said from memory. I’ve seen several of these and the speeches don’t seem to vary from funeral to funeral. The prayers are a bit more free and probably left up to the chaplain.
Then, the remaining veterans who have quietly marched outside and prepared to do so, fire a 21 gun salute. Then taps is played.
It is much more moving when Taps is played live than a recording is used.
Yesterday they had a live player. When I was talking to relatives about it, they seemed surprised that anything other than live music was used. I found that charming.
Then the flag is presented to a member of the family and they are thanked for the service of deceased. In this case Harry was a Marine and probably served in Vietnam.
Then everyone was invited to walk across the street to the VFW rec hall where a meal would be served. It was announced that all drinks would be a dollar for the rest of day in honor of Harry.
Harry lived next door to these buildings and worked as a bartender for the VFW.
At the rec center, many were drinking White Zinfandel which was Harry’s drink.
There was much weeping and hugging in the middle of conversations. I am present at many funerals and I was impressed with the way this one worked.
I have been thinking about the fact that the three of the poets I have made part of my morning reading are from my parent’s generation. As is Paul Fussell whose memoirs I am reading.
Here are pics and birth years of people in my family and people whom I have been reading.
David Jenkins, my father's oldest brother
David Jenkins b 1922
Paul Fussell, whose memoir Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic I am almost finished reading.
Paul Fussell b 1924
Clyde and Dorothy Hatch, my wife's parents, sitting with my niece Kim Weinert nee Hatch
Dorothy Hatch b 1924
My Mom on the left; her mother, Thelma in the center; and big sister, Eloise on the right
Eloise Reveal b 1925
Clyde Hatch, my wife's father
Clyde Hatch b 1925
Mary Jenkins, my Mom
Mary Jenkins b 1926
Jon Jenkins, the middle son between my Dad and Uncle Dave
Jon Jenkins b 1927
Anne Sexton b 1928, whose poetry and letters I am currently reading
Adrienne Rich b 1929, whose poetry I am also currently reading
Paul Jenkins, my Dad
Paul Jenkins b 1929
John Updike b 1932, author whose books I have read over the years and whose poetry I am currently reading.
These people are listed from oldest to youngest. I think of them as roughly in the same generation. I suppose Updike is a bit too young to be included. Of this group, only my Mom and her sister, Eloise are still alive.
I am struck by the many experiences of American life represented here.
When Paul Fussell exclaims in his memoirs with disgust at the then Vice-president, Richard Nixon, I am reminded that my father later voted for Nixon for president because he was too wary of that dang Roman Catholic, Kennedy.
Both Fussell and Sexton come from very wealthy families, Fussell in California, Sexton in New England. Both of these people break out of the insularity of their background and have very helpful criticisms of their and consequently our time.
I have a funeral to attend today. Eileen’s cousin and contemporary Harry Hatch (link to obit FWIW) died a week ago Tuesday. He was roughly Eileen’s and my age. She seemed a tad shook by this death as is understandable. I was surprised that she assumed I wouldn’t go to the funeral with her. I assumed I would and am planning on it. I told her that not all husband are like the Mad Man Don Draper (whom I am coming to despise the more we watch this silly series).
Actor Jon Hamm who plays Don Draper in Mad Men... a stinker in my opinion
So I need to get some practice in this morning before we drive to Muskegon. Maybe I’ll write more about my parent’s generation later.
I broke down yesterday and decided to madly learn Leo Sowerby’s 10 page piece on the melody St. Patrick’s Breastplate for next Sunday.
I spent an hour or so yesterday on it and have already begun work at the piano this morning on it. My old teacher, Ray Ferguson, used to insist that organ playing is mostly in the hands. Certainly true of this piece. Sowerby loves to write interesting chords and careful voice leading. I would like to play this one well for Sunday. Have already asked Eileen to turn pages on it. I won’t be able to reduce this score to a page turn version due to the nature of the music.
A page turn version is a reduced score taped up so I don’t need a page turner. Usually in a piece there is at least one or two points where you can lift a hand to turn a page. If I shrink the music I can usually manage to play it and turn a page or two myself at strategic spots. Again this is something Ray F. taught me.
This will be the second Trinity Sunday in a row that Grace will sing the great (and looong) hymn “I Bind Myself Unto This Day” which is the text to the melody, St. Patrick’s Breastplate.
I’m partial to Sowerby. He was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan and worked in Chicago. I find his music charming and interesting. I like to play historically important musicians from the denomination I am working in. Sowerby was an Anglican hotshot for a while.
Yesterday felt almost like a work day. I picked out and recommended music for next Sunday. Did our bills and my Mom’s bills. This includes balancing two check books, one for us and one for her.
Of course I did have leisure time to rehearse in the afternoon. Today I’m planning on taking it as easy as possible. This still includes reading and rehearsing.
I am on chapter 10 of David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King.
The phone rang a little after 8 AM yesterday. It was my Mom. She wanted to know when Eileen and I were coming by to pick her up for our Memorial Day backyard cookout. She wanted to rest first and was making sure she had time to do so. About an hour later she called again saying she didn’t think she was going to feel well enough to make the cookout. I told her I would give her a call around 11:30 and see if she had changed her mind.
I did and she did and I stopped by to pick her up and bring her over. She chatted with Eileen in the backyard while I prepared a lunch for us of grilled veggies, BBQ chicken breasts (for the carnivores), sliced tomatoes, cucumber spears, lo-cal potato chips, and lo-cal chip dip.
Yesterday I noticed that I hadn’t clearly indicated the intended articulation. I’m also thinking about how to make the registration suggestions more helpful. I’m skeptical that it fits the expectation of a jury as a legit submission. I can hear Zappa influence in it. But I was also skeptical when I submitted my setting of Psalm 146 (pdf) for choir and organ to a similar contest and it won second prize.
I had figured that its almost jazzy anticipatory rhythm throughout would make its implied style inaccessible to most “AGO type” judges. Then speaking on the phone with one of the judges I was surprised to talk to someone who seemed to understand what I was doing with it.
This probably resulted in the over confidence I displayed when I took it to the local college choir conductor. He said he would look at it, but never mentioned it to me again. This was several years ago. Last year, I asked him again about it. He said he would look at it. Hmmm.
This morning I finished off a couple of books of poetry I have been reading: Today: 101 Ghazals by Suzanne Gardinier& Music Minus One by Jane Shore. Both were pretty good reads. Gardinier has written all of her poems in the form of the ghazal. She has adapted the Arabic poetic form to English. The poems are in couplets with each second line of a poem ending in the same word or phrase. I think the couplets are intended to be able to stand by themselves. So narrative and continuity is sometimes not what Gardinier is working towards. Wikipedia says that ghazals “deal with both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain.” Gardinier’s do that and add another layer of global awareness and anger to many of them.
Here’s one I like. You can see how she repeats the ending phrase at the end of each of couplet.
59
Is this why my hips ache in the morning
From dancing in circles all night with no one
Is this a kiss Your lips in a dream
Is this a prayer A whispering to no one
When the guard stops me by the river I show
my pass with its photograph of no one
Question Who will not meet you by the river
that doesn’t exist Answer No one
A tour of the emperor’s model city
City inhabited by no one
Hard on the heart Easy on the shoe leather
Cheek to cheek tango all night no one
Yours devoted to fabrications Writing
To a phantom who meets me by the river To no one
I have liked some of her other poetry more than these poems, but I admire her ability to sustain her voice throughout a book using only this form.
Jane Shore’s poems have been described as poetic vignettes which are accessible even to anti-poetic people. I think they are good despite this. The last poem in the book is a devastating story of her mother’s death. In it, her dying mother forbids the author to visit her during her last days. The mother also weirdly is described as going through photographs of herself and cutting out her picture. Interspersed throughout is a first person description of a mother and daughter assembling one of the Visible Women models.
Despite the online right wing claims, the Old Gray Lady did cover the silly Catholic lawsuit claiming violation of religious freedom. I agree that it looks like a partisan play. Framing makes me crazy.
Krugman elucidates the dishonesty around Paul Ryan and Romney’s pose as deficit hawks. More framing of issues in order to disguise intent. Not limited to the right by any means.
I realize that I spend my life in the company of ideas and art. I find it satisfying to be in conversation with poets, musicians, writers and visual artists. I also know that this is not enough. The reality of actual relationships to flesh and blood people is basic to living. Fortunately, I have this as well.
These ruminations occurred to me this morning after reading poetry and non-fiction.
Part of living at this time in the U.S. is the unreality of life around us.
We are surrounded with falsity. People hide themselves. They don’t let themselves be seen. They are ashamed of who they are. It takes some educated guessing and discernment to see beyond their masks and the goofy fakey stuff in our lives like movies and TV.
You’re Going to Be Told
“I mean, you’re going to be told lots of things. You get told things everyday that don’t happen. It doesn’t seem to bother people…. The world things all these things happen. They never happened.” –Donald Rumsfeld
You never had a brother. Your family:
a crackpot conspiracy theory, your mother’s
death from blood poisoning staged
on a Hollywood back lot. If you squint
at the memory, you can see the boom mike
dipping into the top of the frame,
the cardboard set wilting in the stage lights.
The man playing your father can’t
remember his lines. He says, I forgot
her purse. We’re out of leftovers, buy
yourself some burgers on the way home.
The money he gives you is just scraps
of newspaper dyed green. The brother
you never had drives the car, his face
fuzzed out like some obscene gesture.
He drives the car around the hospital
three times, and the building is only
a facade propped up by two-by-fours,
stuntmen in chaps and black Stetsons
perched on the roof. You make guns
with your hands and shoot them off,
and they sail down to the pavement
to the tune of a slide whistle. The brother
you never had giggles. He opens his
mouth and canned applause comes out.
He keeps driving around the hospital
in wider and wider circles, until you
are orbiting the earth. He looks out
the window and says, Death is the only
man-made object visible from space.
You say, None of this ever happened,
but even as you say it you can’t help
looking down into that small room
where your mother is dying in the middle
of the camera crew’s cigarette break.
from We Don’t Know We Don’t Know by Nick Lantz
After I read this poem, I ordered my own copy of this book of poetry.
The music went pretty well at church yesterday. I purchased corsages and boutineers for my choir members and put a thank you in the bulletin with their names. My boss made a fuss over them (and me) as well during the announcements. I hope they feel appreciated. I know I do.
I played the prelude and postlude pretty well. I realized that I needed another week on the C major Prelude and Fugue from WTC II in order to nail it. So I wasn’t too hard on myself when several little goofs happened.
I love Fiona Apple’s take on “Mistakes.” I have performed this piece in local coffee shops.
I have been thinking an awful lot about Brene Brown’s ideas of shame.
I realize that this is a significant thing for me, personally. I have been monitoring my own inner monologue more carefully and find that I do give myself multiple messages of shame throughout a day. It’s not so much in my art as in general little thoughts about my own foolishness.
It’s helpful to realize this, because my conscious self concept is one of acceptance of self. I don’t really want to fit in, I want to be who I am. But still the little negative messages are there I find. Now I argue with them.
It’s a step in the right direction.
I think of a performance where there are errors as a direct result of preparation. The trick is to continue to preserve the musical gesture as one has an accident of a wrong note or two. I think this happened yesterday.
The prelude was extremely exposed. My boss has me start later if she expects the crowd to mosey in and be a bit late themselves.
After church, at least one parishioner told me they enjoyed listening to the prelude.
I figure that means that I didn’t distort the music so much that a listener could not hear the voice of Bach in it. Bach notoriously holds up well in less than perfect renditions. Thank goodness for that.
I remembered to take a mental breath before starting the first hymn after the intensity of the Bach prelude and fugue. This helped immeasurably. When I performed the Debussy “Danse,” I plunged into the first hymn and fucked up more than usual. Yesterday this didn’t happen.
The choir sounded pretty good. I was glad I had scheduled the second anthem for communion. It was “O Come Thou Sweet Redeeming Fire,” a lovely modern thing by Daniel Gawthrup. If you’re curious, this choir sang it yesterday as well.
I think they are going a bit too slow myself. But they manage to do it very nicely a capella. Also the director’s phrasing is different than what I chose, but it’s quite credible.
The postlude came off pretty good. Again, I would have liked to have had spent more time preparing it, but you pays your money and you takes your chances.
********************************************************************
I saw several intelligent Memorial Day pieces separating out appreciation for people in uniform from the devastation of war.
With the United States more or less permanently at war, Americans profess unstinting admiration for those serving in uniform. Yet the gap between soldier and society is wider than at any time in our history. from linked article
This business article interview struck me as full of wisdom. Unusual for me to find that in the business section. Heh.
Example:
I’ve found the people who have tried things on their own and struggled are the ones who are least protective of their work and the most collaborative. Kyle Zimmer in above linked interview
I have recently added the Shakespeare Sonnets to my morning poetry ready. I found an excellent site and am reading them there since I have misplaced my two or three hard copies. The online notes illuminate subtleties of word meaning change and very helpful. I realize I have always misread the sonnets basic meaning. I knew they were addressed to a noble. But I didn’t understand the consistency of the argument in the first few sonnets (I’m on number 12). Always fun to open up a text in a new and better way.
Just for the heck of it, I clicked on the What’s New Music tab on Spotify for suggestions yesterday. It recommended the Swiss Woodwind Quartet’s CD which has Ligeti, Hindemith and Janaceck pieces on it. I played it and quite liked it. Go figure.
It put me in the mood for Hindemith, so I played through his second piano sonata yesterday and remembered why I like him so much.
Glen Gould does a good job with the first movement.
While I usually find Gould’s playing fun to listen to, often I think he distorts the music. In this case, he seems to preserve what I think of as Hindemith’s meaning.
I think Hindemith might be out of fashion these days. I’ve liked him for most of my adult life. Play his organ works.
Sunday Poem – I read this poem yesterday and quite liked it. Anne Sexton has captured something about how I understand my own weak faith.
Small Wire
My faith
is a great weight
hung on a small wire,
as doth the spider
hang her baby on a thin web,
as doth the vine,
twiggy and wooden,
hold up grapes
like eyeballs,
as many angels
dance on the head of a pin.
God does not need
too much wire to keep Him there,
just a thin vein,
with blood pushing back and forth in it,
and some love.
As it has been said:
Love and a cough
cannot be concealed.
Even a small cough.
Even a small love.
So if you have only a thin wire,
God does not mind.
He will enter your hands
as easily as ten cents used to
bring forth a Coke.
Charles Blow writes a moving description of Louisiana’s terrible prison for profit. Time and time again, I see us “privatizing” our public lives and am sad about it.
Eileen and I spent a few hours last night being graciously entertained by a couple relatively new to this area and their two children. It’s unusual for us to find people locally that welcome us into their homes for food and conversation. Eileen assured me that I didn’t talk too much. Mission accomplished. Nice people.
Chatted with my brother on the phone earlier in the day. We talked a bit about Brene Brown and her ideas in The Gifts of Imperfection.
Mark has begun her book several times he said. I know sometimes I start a book over because I lose interest or track of what is being said, or I have just put it down and forgotten it. This tendency is exacerbated by keeping books you’re reading on an ebook reader. The lack of physical presence of the books sometimes causes me to forget which books I am actually reading.
But at the same time I suspect from our chat that my brother and share a sort of self-help book fatigue with the way she has put together her ideas.
Though the ideas themselves are like gems stuck in the dumbing down of any book going for popular appeal these days.
The odd thing is that Brown seems hip to the limit appeal of the warm fuzzy, even to the point of being personally repelled by it. When she is describing being daunted by an upcoming presentation a friend advises her: “Here’s the thing. You are a researcher, but your best work isn’t from the head; it’s talking from the heart. You’ll be fine if you do what you do best—tell stories. Keep it real. Keep it honest.” [Brown responds] I hung up, rolled my eyes, and thought: Tell Stories. You’ve got to be kidding? Maybe I could do a little puppet show too.”
This kind of self-deprecating humor and approach goes a long way to keeping me engaged despite the formulaic and actually pretty straightforwardly self-help way she presents her material.
Personally when she talks about the importance of “loving and belonging,” I had some insights into myself when she said many people see “belonging” as no different from “fitting in.”
When in fact, she says research shows that attempting to “fit in” (i.e. “becoming who you [think you] need to be to be accepted) actually can defeat “belonging” (which she says “doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are).
I especially liked her idea of making one’s self vulnerable and allow one’s true self to be seen. This sums up a lot of what I have tried to overcome in myself. First I found that who I was often was difficult for people to deal with. This was probably for many reasons combined including my own forceful affect, my insistence on the predominance of ideas and the trading of ideas in conversation, and demanding too much of others.
After I learned to tone this down (on the outside), the trick then becomes how to let people know who you are without scaring them off, i.e. allowing your real self to be seen.
Tricky stuff. Many times when I have allowed myself to be seen this has also sometimes driven people away from me. Here I’m thinking mostly of colleagues and actual friends. Though this hurts a bit, of course. Ultimately, I am more satisfied and comfortable with that than false relationships.
Whew. A little bit of the “dear diary” stuff this morning in the blog. Having conversations with our new friends last night started my head spinning as it often does. So I didn’t sleep as well as I could have last night. Hence the rambling blog.
The new piano trio music I ordered arrived in time for our rehearsal yesterday. We began with reading the Tchaikovsky.
One of my goals was to find music that would interest us and not be too big a project to learn or even play through.
The Tchaikovsky turned out to be a bit bigger work that I was expecting. But I think the three of us found it reward to read through even at about half tempo. The violinist especially seemed taken with it.
We played through about half of the first movement before we found a place to stop. We said we would bite off that much of it to rehearse.
Then we read through the Frank Bridge Miniatures which were much more sightreadable. Unfortunately they also seemed very dated. Early 20th century English salon music.
That’s as far as got. I divided up the parts for the rest of the pieces I purchased so that we could have them. I also asked the players to check out the Bernstein when they had time.
It looks a bit harder but still I’m very interested in it myself.
I confessed to my co-players that I didn’t come naturally to romantic music. I began more interested in baroque and contemporary.
They also were surprised when I confessed that I have had only two years of real piano training.
I told them the story of working at First Pres in downtown Detroit. It was an older church with wonderful facilities that were aging. At this church there was a large room where musical performances were given. In the room, was a nine foot Steinway. I gave piano recitals on it in which I began to perform some Brahms. It was the reassurance of the Christian Ed director at this church (who herself was a trained organist) that my Brahms performance was credible that led me to explore the romantics more.
Weirdly enough this year I have been looking at Tchaikovsky a bit anyway. So I guess I’m pretty enthusiastic about learning the piano trio.
I was reading this obit as I treadmilled and listened to nostalgic rock and roll (INX, Robert Palmer, Men at Work, The Cars, The B-52s, Dee-lite). Quote:
Paul Fussell had “a gift for readable prose, a willingness to offend and, as many critics noted, a whiff of snobbery to subjects like class, clothing, the dumbing down of American culture and the literature of travel.
When I read this about Paul Fussell I decided I wanted to look at his writing.
His memoir was sitting on the shelf at the library. I’m on page 76 enjoying his irony and erudition and of course his anti-war stuff.
I like to get my information from a wide array of sources with differing points of view. These are two sites that I stumbled across recently that seem to be different voices for the same point of view, definitely anti-liberal. I have them bookmarked to check.
I think Maureen Dowd is getting more factual and reportorial. I found the Gallup morality stuff very interesting.
Gallup tested the morality of 18 issues, and birth control came out on top as the most acceptable, beating divorce, which garnered 67 percent approval, and “buying and wearing clothing made of animal fur,” which got a 60 percent thumbs-up (more from Republicans, naturally, than Democrats).
Polygamy, cloning humans and having an affair took the most morally offensive spots on the list.
“Gay or lesbian relations” tied “having a baby outside of marriage,” with 54 percent approving. That’s in the middle of the list, above a 38 percent score for abortion and below a 59 percent score for “sex between an unmarried man and woman.”
For the last couple of days I have been treadmilling to the music of the Doors. This music along with the music of Bach was enormously influential on me as a young man.
I purchased the Strange Days album strictly on the cover at Kmart.
It was my practice to buy records there. I found the Doors by being strictly attracted to the cover art.
Likewise, Leonard Cohen.
When I look back on it, my exposure to arts as a young man was largely a combination of the serendipity of discovery and the whispering in my ear of my friend Dave Barber, reluctant friend and horrified mentor.
By that I mean, that I chose him as a friend probably recognizing a fellow outsider. He didn’t really want me for a friend. But found that his mother would allow him to go places with me that otherwise he couldn’t go. This was because I was the preacher’s kid.
This is me. Ahem.
In the long run, he has turned into one of those life long friends that have endured through most of the gambit of maturing and changes that is living and life.
Anyway, back to the Doors.
The music influenced me because I took the trouble to learn to play a few Doors songs on the piano. This I did with meager technique but great enthusiasm.
Later after high school (or right at the end of it), this served me more than once as I played with rock and roll bands.
Actually owned a keyboard a lot like this in late 60s.
I am convinced now that the repetition of patterns in music like the Doors is related to the eventual stumbling on to this idea of the late 20th century minimalists.
I see the move away from the esoteric 12 tone dominance in classical music as prefigured in popular music’s preoccupation with rhythm, melody and poetry.
Speaking of poetry, I also think that Jim Morrison’s lyrics were some of the crossover lyrics that are essentially good poetry.
It’s ironic at the age of sixty to be listening to songs like “The Soft Parade” and “When the Music’s Over” and realize that the ideas in them have dogged me my whole life journey through academia and church work.
The song, “The Soft Parade,” always struck me as a sort of dark Zappa portrait of religion in America. It still does.
These words could easily have been written about the little Calvinist town I live in now:
Successful hills are here to stay
Everything must be this way
Gentle streets where people play
Welcome to the Soft Parade
from “The Soft Parade” by the Doors
The soft Tulip parade?
Yesterday these lines kept running through my head:
Cancel my subscription to the resurrection
Send my credentials to the house of detention
I got some friends inside
from “When the music’s over” by the Doors
I have often had that sentiment: “cancel my subscription to the resurrection.” I’m subscribed to the “resurrection” (i.e. the Xtian church) largely due to the happenstance of being born into a preacher’s family and then utilizing this background to gain an understanding of liturgy.
I often want it “canceled” because of my inability to sanction so much of what passes for Christianity in the modern world (or historically for that matter).
“Send my credentials to the house of detention.” I used to tell people I had sent my degrees back to the colleges that gave them to me, denying them. Instead I simultaneously realized my connection to the underdogs of life (Eugene Debs “While there is a lower class I am in it; while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”) and my debt to musics not recognized by the music pedagogy of the colleges I attended.
If you look in yesterday’s links in my blog post, you will find a link to Brene Brown’s videos. As I was cleaning house yesterday I listened to them. I found my thoughts playing over her ideas, trying to understand them and see how they connected to me.
I love her idea of “vulnerability.”
Invulnerability as tv superpower
Vulnerability has been a theme of my artistic life. Musical performances that are guarded or self conscious do not interest me. To play and do music is to “let go.” One performer told me that when he performs its like a roller coaster ride and unlike any other playing he does.
I think quite a bit about the energy in the room when music is being made, the human energy.
Also I struggle daily with understanding what is happening around me and how people treat me. My self image is on a continuum from feeling good about myself to feeling inadequate. My mood can easily swing from joy to melancholy. Brown’s thoughts are helping me refocus and clarify my understanding of this constantly changing self perceptions and moods and the idea of courage and more importantly, shame.
Several years ago, I was talking to a man I respect. He is older than me. He confessed that he was wrestling with the idea of shame as he thought about the life he had led.
I was startled. I didn’t understand. I didn’t really think about shame. But Brene Brown helps me see it as feeling inadequate or that one is not “enough” in one’s person.
That’s something I understand better.
I wrestled my shame down as a young man who married badly and had to figure out how to go on in life without anyone but himself. I told my image in the mirror that I wasn’t much, but I was all I had and that was enough. I thought of this as the end of my adolescence. I can also see it as a victory over shame.
Of course it wasn’t a permanent victory by any means only a first step in living out my life.
I listened to both of Brown’s videos. Then looked her books up. I put myself on a waiting list for The Gifts of Imperfection: Let go of who think you should be and embrace who you are.
Then unbidden my brother emailed me a copy of the ebook. Bless his heart.
I admit to reading tons of self help books over the years.
I actually seem to just read a lot period.
And I’m willing to read Brown’s book.
But I think some of this connects to my fascination and admiration of Lenny Bruce as a teen.
I know that I was naive in a lot of my reading of his work. But one thing has stuck with me. His comment that “what should be is a dirty lie.”
I remember saying this to a young Roman Catholic priest who definitely had issues. He paused and then protested, “That’s not true! That’s not true at all!”
This May is going so much better for me than last year’s May. In 2011 I over committed myself by saying yes to working the May term at the Ballet Department. They brought in three nationally known high-power teachers to each do a week of classes. It was a fascinating, challenging, rewarding experience to work with each of them, but combined with composing and preparing a piece for the Global Water Dance it left me groping for some time to rest and recuperate. Time which never seemed to materialize for the rest of the summer.
This year I am already beginning to feel much more relaxed. Spending good time practicing and reading.
Convinced myself yesterday that I’m not going to embarrass myself Sunday when I perform Bach’s “Fantasy on Komm heiliger Geist.”
Since a large chunk of the piece is simply a repeat of a beginning chunk, I worked out a reduced score page turn version of it which allows me to play the entire piece without lifting my hands.
This is necessary due to the nature of this piece. When I first heard it performed in its entirety the piece didn’t make much sense to me. Since then I have begun to hear its incessant 16th notes as a combination of the insistence of jazz rhythm with a large dose of a Brandenberg movement.
It’s funny to put so much work in a postlude since it’s kind of treated like the closing credit movie music by most parishioners. That is, they treat it as time to get the heck out of dodge as quickly as possible.
I like to compare postludes to movie credit music because my experience is that the music during the credits is usually buy diazepam next day delivery pretty good.
I have to work on my prelude (Prelude and Fugue in C major WTCII). I’m not satisfied at all with its preparation yet. Some more good thorough work should do the trick this week.
I interlibrary-loaned “We Don’t Know We Know” by Nick Lantz. I went over and picked it up yesterday. Lantz incisively uses Rumsfeld’s famous mangling of language around the awful Iraq war as a frame for some pretty good poetry and bitter observations. He connects Rumsfeld’s obfuscation with Pliny the Elder, “whose astute comments on the limits of human understanding provide a tonic corrective to intellectual pride” (As Linda Gregerson writes in her introduction to the book).
I also found some things online that I bookmarked to read and view soon:
I’m a Krugman fan. I especially like his observation that if Romney is supposed to be such a great businessman and will help our economy why when he talks about the subject does he come across “completely clueless.”
Yesterday morning before church I started wondering about the origin of an anthem we are going to sing for Pentecost.
This past season I delved into the extensive library of choral music at church to find some usable anthems. This is one that struck me as not too bad.
I quickly found the original melody online.
I found this interesting because it’s such an atypical chorale dependent upon sort of an echo effect between the soprano line and the rest of the choir.
Bach used this melody in a couple of his cantatas. The setting we are planning to sing is movement 6 from Cantata 8. The Holy Spirit words have nothing to do with the original setting.
This got me to thinking about the words. On a caprice I looked them up and lo and behold they are in the Hymnal 1982.
So in a mad dash before church I transcribed the choral parts of the anthem into Finale and put in the words from the hymnal.
Silly me.
I plan to stick the organ part under it for my own benefit for next week’s service.
I found this poem yesterday morning in my morning poetry reading.
The Angels
They are above us all the time,
the good gentlemen, Mozart and Bach,
Scarlatti and Handel and Brahms,
lavishing measures of light down upon us,
telling us, over and over, there is a realm
above this plane of silent compromise.
They are around us everywhere, the old seers,
Matisse and Vermeer, Cézanne and Piero,
greeting us echoing in subway tunnels,
springing like winter flowers from postcards,
Scotch-taped to white kitchen walls,
waiting larger than life in shadowy galleries
to whisper that edges of color
lie all about us as innocent as grass.
They are behind us, beneath us,
the abysmal books, Shakespeare and Tolstoy,
the Bible and Proust and Cervantes,
burning in memory like leaky furnace doors,
minepits of honesty from which we escaped
with dilated suspicions. Love us, dead thrones:
sing us to sleep, awaken our eyes,
comfort with terror our mortal afternoons.
by John Updike
It reflects my own connection to the arts: attempting to wake and be comforted with terror.
It does look like Chen Guangcheng will be attending NYU and rubbing shoulders in the same department with my quasi-son-in-law, Jeremy Daum. Wow. I think the man in the red bowtie that you see in shots of Chen arriving on TV is Jeremy’s boss and mentor, Jerome Cohen.
There’s a take-no-prisoners approach that does take prisoners: all of us, incarcerated in a system whose crippling partisanship is fueled in part by the hyperbolic language, bellicose tactics and Manichaean tone of candidates and their handlers.
I love the references to James Joyce in this column excoriating the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Of course it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, fish that are making many lives miserable with their bellicose insistence on a narrow understanding of their faith.
ghazal or ghasel (also spelt gazal, ghazel), a short lyric poem written in couplets using a single rhyme (aa, ba, ca, da etc.), sometimes mentioning the poet’s name in the last couplet. The ghazal is an important lyric form in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu poetry, often providing the basis for popular love songs. Its usual subject?matter is amatory, although it has been adapted for religious, political, and other uses.
I recently stumbled upon two uses of ghazals. My cellist is quite in love with Hovhaness’s piano trio we have been rehearsing. I have some of his piano music as well and have done some of his other music including choral pieces. I interlibrary loaned several of his piano pieces. Yesterday I played through the ghazals and found them quite lovely. Ordered a copy online.
Coincidentally, I have been enjoying the poetry of Suzanne Gardinier. I read two books of her poetry before deciding I needed to have my own copies. I also ordered a third to read: Today:101 Ghazals to read. She uses the poetic form of couplets and a repeated phrase ending each couplet.
Gazelle, not to be confused with Ghazal
Hovhaness replicates this musically by using a phrase over and over as accompaniment to melody. His Two Ghazals are to be treated like a bouree or minuet dance movement repeating the first Ghazal after playing the second.
I am thinking they would make lovely piano preludes at church.
Yesterday I played a wedding. In doing weddings I often brush up against people and their experience of event and music in interesting ways. Yesterday our little church was packed. Energy (and the subsequent noise) was so high that you could barely hear my Debussy and Bach piano pieces I played for the prelude.
I switched to organ and played my postlude for today’s service (“Postlude” by William Mathias) which is a cheerful little thing. The crowd noise increased so I just quit playing. Pastor Jen went to the front of the church to greet people, let them know we were about to begin and invite them to take part in the service especially in the singing.
The couple had chosen extremely predictable music for walking in and out. I began Pachelbel’s Canon in D as the noise began to resume from the high energy crowd. It subsided a bit as the parents of the couple were escorted in and then the bridesmaids and bridegrooms. The bride herself held back until I began playing the Wagner “Here comes the bride.”
Interestingly (at least to me), the congregation was not much of a singing group. I began the hymn, “Joyful, joyful,” with a pretty strong organ registration. Since the singing was tepid I cut back in volume a bit to let the group find its voice (something I routinely do). The singing improved slightly but was still in contrast to the high energy and positive vibes that were obviously in the room.
Afterwards, Pastor Jen and I were musing on the singing. I don’t think it was a conscious decision on the group’s part to not sing. As I told Jen, I just think people are out of the habit of making their own music.
It’s too bad, I guess. But we got the couple married off anyway, of course.
John Updike uses this word in his novel, A Month of Sundays. Updike sucks me in as a reader not only because he tells interesting stories but he obviously loves words.
I finished reading this novel yesterday. It’s told in the voice of an Episcopalian priest who is spending a month in the desert recuperating from bad behavior with golf, afternoon drinks and daily writing of each chapter of the book as a kind of therapy. Today we would probably send him to a sex addict rehab center.
He is both pathetic and engaging as Updike tells the story in his voice. At the end of the book he is still acting inappropriately. Hilarious little tale.
