Bach’s son, Carl Phillip Emmanuel, and his student Agricola wrote in his obit: “His [Bach’s] serious temperament drew him predominantly to hard-working, serious and profound music [arbeitsamen, ernsthaften, und tiefsinnigen]; but he could also, if it seemed necessary, particularly when playing, make himself comfortable with a light and playful manner of thinking.”

The quote is from Peter Williams’ J. S. Bach: A Life. Williams concludes: “The Obituary’s remark was to counter any reputation Bach’s serious music had amongst everyday musicians, especially those engaged in the musical confections being marketed in the 1740s and 50s. But it brings us very little nearer envisaging his own approaches to performance, above all in the mature works where the intended Affekt is by no means always obvious or exclusive. The Aria of the Goldberg Variations is a good example: if it was meant to sound, as usual today, andante, dolce, piano, affetuoso, cantabile e tenero, it seems odd that none of these words (the first five of which were all used elsewhere by Bach) appears in the score. Furthermore, if the Aria were affetuoso, so woul be its ‘prototype’, the G major sarabande in the French Suites. So used now are listeners to being transported by the Aria’s opening bars to a unique contemplative world, especially by modern pianists, that envisaging anything different, anything more ‘light and playful’ is difficult. But not impossible.” p. 297, emphasis added

After reading this, I went to the Aria myself and tried playing it a bit more playful and just a tad faster than Glen Gould (whose name seems to be in the sentence above about ‘modern pianists’). It worked. Then I began playing the other variations. When the theme is not quite so ethereal the variations make more sense to me.

However when I searched on YouTube among the many versions there, I couldn’t find anyone who played the Aria that way. In fact, they sounded strongly influenced by Gould and think they probably are.

This is odd since Williams is a well known expert.

Zadie Smith Reads “Crazy They Call Me” – The New Yorker

This article is in Zadie Smith’s latest collection of essays, Feel Free: Essays. I read it when the New Yorker published it back in March and then again in the collection of essays.

It got me thinking about Billy Holiday. I pulled up the documentary on “Strange Fruit”

I love Billie Holiday and I love the way she sings this bitter song. For some reason I thought she had written it. But it turns out it was written by a white Jewish guy named Abel Meeropol.

If you don’t know this song, here’s a video of Billie Holiday singing it.

One thing I was hoping to get from taking time off was a fresh perspective. I think I might be approaching this a bit. It’s interesting to note that I’m not missing work nor even playing the very fine Pasi organ there. I think this says something about where my own enjoyment comes from. Music is very important to my daily life. It is the water I live in. But more and more in my sixties I live there alone.

My only true colleague with whom I share some understanding is my boss, Jen Adams. This is a godsend and i know it. But though she is an astute boss, she’s not another musician. I share stuff with other local musicians, but I am feeling more and more that my own perspective is way more broad than any muscian I know. Yesterday morning I showered to the dulcet tones of John Lee Hooker. You know. The guy from the Blues Brothers

I admit that he was one of the few musicians in the Blues Brothers that I didn’t know that well, Cab Calloway is the other. I recently watched a “Making of Blues Brothers” video on YouTube and was annoyed with one thing about Jon Landis the director. He said that he had trouble with Aretha Franklin and James Brown because they couldn’t lip sync. This makes me crazy. He got around it by allowing them to perform their part live while the others lip synced. He didn’t mention John Lee Hooker.

Anyway, my musical interests have always been rather wide ranging. From John Lee Hooker to Bartok, from the Doors to Bach, from … well you get the idea.  And they have led me into many interesting pursuits of understanding.  Often I am not able to match other musicians narrow understandings of music. This doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate where we overlap (Hi Rhonda!). It’s just that no one, and I mean no one, in my musical sphere comes close to seeing music the way I do.

This has led me to think of myself as primarily a music lover. I think of it a bit like the idea of a common reader. My understanding of the common reader is they are motivated by the pleasure of what they read no matter where that leads them. Also I think of them as autodidacts (which is definitely the way I see myself).

This makes me wonder if I am a sort of a common music lover. I definitely am not academic. Nor am I primarily a pop musician, a jazz musician, a blues musician, a harpsichordist, an organist, you name it. I guess I’ve gone a bit beyond dabbling in these areas. But my wide tastes make perfect sense to me.

And part of the perspective I am developing is that I can pursue this wide approach by myself even though one of my great joys is making music with other people. So playing duets with Rhonda, playing with my piano trio, even leading a roomful of worshipers in common song is fun for me. But not doing any of this doesn’t seem to surface on my radar as something I am missing or long to do.

I’m hoping that when I return to work, I can convince myself that truly not much is required of me there. I think part of my loss of perspective was confusing my own passion for music (especially as evidenced by learning pieces on the Pasi) with work. It never felt like work to practice on the Pasi. And indeed it wasn’t.  Doing my gig well does not necessarily involve challenging myself.  My job is about showing up on Sunday and leading from the organ and preparing the choir to assist in this.

My task is to help myself understand that when I return to work I can still do a lot of the goofing off I am doing now and even did before.

You know. Perspective.

Tomorrow Jupe shares new thoughts about the Aria of the Goldberg Variations and possibly the song, “Strange Fruit.” Tune in.

Our basement is full of men removing our old furnace and installing a new one. After breakfast I walked over to Evergreen Commons and treadmilled. Then I walked home. But when I went to take a shower there was no water. Yikes. It turns out they had broken a water line. Oh well. Now I’m sitting sweaty in my living room.

I have been reading Kakutani’s The Death of Truth. I have read her reviews in the New York Times for many years. I often disagree with them. It turns out I’m finding fault with her book as well. It seems interesting but cerebral and written from inside the bubble of entitlement and education. I am learning much more from Michael Eric Dyson’s What Truth Sounds Like.

He clarified for me the intellectual relationship between Cornel West and Ta Henisi Coates. I couldn’t understand why West was so weird about Coates’s book. Dyson describes the rivalry between these two and others. Helpful but not that important to his argument about needing to combine the dualities of prophetic witness with politics.

I think racism has brought us to where we are not decontructionism which Kakutani spends an entire chapter on.

It may be the effect of taking a vacation but I am feeling more and more distant from intellectuals and music academics and closer to my own love of ideas and music. Eileen fears that I won’t return to work. I probably will but it does cross my mind that this is a trial run for retirement and I am enjoying the solitude and practicing and study without any contact with my church or very fine little organ.

What can I say?

I typed some more of my Dad’s anecdotes into a google doc. They aren’t all interesting but here’s one that gives a good flavor of the way he would tell a story in sermon.

“Did I ever tell you about my girlfriend, Lorraine? She was 11 and I was 12 years old. Her last name was Firebaugh, and her flaming red hair helped people stereotype her as a FIREBALL.

One day, I had a date with Lorraine….We went together on a picnic to TINKER-BELL swimming pool. I was just learning to swim —- I could stay up for at 4-5 strokes. Well, you probably guessed it. Lorraine and I were playing in deep water, over our heads, along the side of the pool, when suddenly Lorraine got out too far….I looked, and instead of coming toward the side of the pool, she was floundering away toward to the middle of the pool.

Tragedy! But here was my opportunity to be that ALL AMERICAN HERO… ‘Fear not, fair Lorraine. You hero, Sir Paul, is coming to the rescue.’ I swam out to her (using my five strokes I reached for her, very kindly — in a soul-saving manner. AND DON’T YOU KNOW, Fair Lorraine had turned into a tiger. She crawled up my head, and I went down for a pint of wtr. When I came up sputtering she pushed me down again…and you know, the third time? I always heard 3 strikes and you are out. I was desperate.

And then suddenly, from the bottom of th pool where I was struggling for life, i felt Lorraine let go…. and it was as if a gain hand had practically thrown her to the side of the pool… I fought my way to the surface and to the safety of the side of the pool, where I discovered that the lifeguard had seen our situation. He had recognized my bold attempts at saviorhood…and he seen my very tragic limitations….With skill and precision, he dived into the water and it was he who really rescued fair Lorraine.”

NYTimes: Blood Pressure Medicine Is Recalled

This is my medicine. Dam.

I’m struggling with laying low in Holland.

There is a recital this weekend and usually I have a few tasks involved in that like making the program and the poster for the next recital so it can be displayed. I think the program is being taken care of and I just emailed my boss asking her if she (and/or the office administrator) would like to mess with the poster. it’s really just a matter of giving my daughter, Sarah, the info and then she whips up nifty looking poster.

In the meantime, we are bracing for the furnace/AC people to come tomorrow morning and Eileen has scheduled a repairman to come and fix Mom’s chair (it quit working and is stuck in recline mode).

My BP was up this morning. It’s hard not to see as related to some of this. Plus my weight is up. Bah.

On the upside, my copy of Temperley’s two volumed work, The Music of the English Parish Church, arrived in the mail today in pristine condition. I continue to enjoy this work.

I’m nearing the end of Peter Williams’ J.S. Bach: A Life in Music. It is a luxury to dip into these and other books and not have to worry about a gig.

I’ve also been practicing more guitar. It’s weird since I quit playing guitar entirely for several years and despite this my skills seem not only to be intact but improving.

Also I have been attacking my books upstairs and now have almost all of the books in the loom room and our bedroom alphabetical by author (or in some cases subject). Eileen has promised I can move her loom away from the book shelf so that I can work more easily on the bottom shelves. She also volunteered to help move some books around.

Yesterday found me playing through “The Art of Fugue” by Bach admiring the beauty of his counterpoint and also playing some of Domenico Scarlatti’s Essercizi.

Eileen and I went to the Farmers Market this morning and bought fruit and veggies.

So life continues to be good.

more from my Dad:

*******

(margin note: On Honeymoon again; Youthful;) I think it is a shame when a person loses all ability to pretend. I hope my wife and I never get so old that we can no longer have special moments when we pretend…. Occasionally (and I grant you it is a rare occasion), but occasionally we like to go out for a special evening…kind of pretending like we are dollar-rich…like money is no problem, and we can afford anything we want to do… The ability to pretend is a child-like quality which I hope to keep alive. Our grandson came in the living room recently with his blanket over his shoulders – he didn’t know I was there – and I watched a special moment as he was a kind of superman, or a Prince…pretending…. He was in another world! I thanked God for that glimpse which reminded me that some pretension is good…” (margin note: God is Good to have made us this way!)

Two men are in our basement removing asbestos. Beforehand they came upstairs and taped shut all the registers on the main floor. Then they taped off the basement door. Eileen is upstairs working on her loom.

Yesterday we drove to Grand Rapids to see the movie, “Sorry to bother you.” I admit I was disappointed. Some of the best scenes were the ones in the trailer. The movie itself didn’t seem to me to hang together very well. I liked some of the music. Anyway, the main deal was to get my lovely wife into an air conditioned space since she is wilting in the heat. We had the air conditioning fixed in the Alero so the ride back and forth was also good for her.

I am enjoying our new (to us) Roku. My brother gave it to us and helped us get set up on it. It’s a bit embarrassing how the simple fact of making it easier to access increases likelihood that I will use something. We could access any of the things that are on the Roku via a computer browser. However, the dang remote controls seem to make a difference in how willing I am to sit down and watch TV. Thank you, Mark!

Vacation seems to be going pretty well. I’m not losing weight, but my blood pressure has subsided for several days now. The work on the house makes it a bit less relaxing. But it’s worth it to get things going so that Eileen is happier.

I typed some more of my Dad’s sermon anecdotes into a google doc this morning. Once I get enough into this doc, I will share with the fam.

Here’s today’s stories from Paul sermons:

“Some of my fondest memories are of high school years, under the tender nurture of a loving father. I recall when guests would come to the house, my father would call me to meet them. he would introduce me to them as a pal of his, and I would be included in the conversation AS A PERSON. Dad took time off from his busy schedule for us to go fishing together, out at Carvin’s Cove, where we would chuckle at fish that would bite even on gum-drops when they got hungry. Together we laughed with an old-man who whipped his fishing line out of the water and hooked himself in the seat of the pants. The old chap was hard of hearing, and didn’t know he was talking out loud as he said, ‘Dag-nab-it, next time I’ll leave my pants at home.’ Somehow, we didn’t laugh AT the old man — we laughed WITH him… I was treated as a person … by a real person  … my dad.”

*******

(Margin note: Nicholson, the name of a mentor of my Dad)) “You learn to walk with od, BY SHYING AWAY FROM SELF-EXALTATION. *One of the greatest men in prayer that I have ever known was leading a group of us in meaningful worship. Through his ‘shepherding’ we had experienced God, and several in the group praised him. ‘We love to you hear you pray’. His face was one of painful and soul-agony when he replied, ‘your compliments are a danger to me. Jesus said, to whom much is given, much will be required.

*******

“THINGS ARE OFTEN DEVASTATING TO THE HUMAN SPIRIT

This past week, Mark and I were watching a TV show about the treasures of Bolivia…. The churches there, and the wealth of gold and jewels placed in these churches by people of the past…expressions of worship….And Mark commented that this announcer was following a typical American pattern…This object was valued at so many millions of dollars…that one so many thousands….’Americans think of values in dollar and cents’ Mark said. The fact that here were things of beauty…art beyond any measurements of worth…gifts to the Lord by people who wanted Him to be FIRST in their values…THESE FACTS WERE LOST IN $ and ¢ …”

 *******

Man the news is insane. I’m hoping that Trump has shot himself in the foot with his behavior at Helsinki. I haven’t seen anyone compare it to the Neville Chamberlain debacle, but it pops into this libtard’s mind. I looked at Brietbart’s coverage. They zeroed in on comments made on MSNBC by Jill Wine-Banks comparing it to Pearl Harbor or Kristolnacht. It is typical of the right to look for extreme stuff to react to. No one was killed as a result of Trump’s idiotic behavior yesterday so these are weird comparisons. I examine right wing news coverage regularly and am amazed at how important to the coverage are the people with whom they disagree. Reading some comments on this article makes it clear that many people on the right and Trump are convinced by this kind of approach and think people they disagree with are mentally ill or worse.

Well the workers are done, have cleaned up the mess, and have been paid. Onward to installation of the furnace/AC on Thursday!

Trump caved spectacularly to Putin. Here’s what might happen next – CNNPolitics

Some clear thinking.

Chromatic fantasia and fugue BWV 903 PDF

I love the interwebs. I was reading Peter Williams this morning and he was listing off Bach works with beautiful themes. He mentioned the one linked above. I didn’t know it, but now I have played through it. Cool.

Last night I dreamed about my Dad. We were arguing about whether drinking was immoral or not. He insisted it was. Most of the dream consisted of him and me going back with silly comments “You’re wrong!” “No! You’re wrong!” Then I said “Jesus drank!” But this didn’t move him. Finally I yelled at him, “I don’t care what you think!” Then in the dream I immediately retracted this and said tearfully, “I DO care what you think!”

Instead of blogging yesterday I continued putting my books in order. I now have several shelves in alphabetical order upstairs in the loom room. While doing so I came across a stack of stuff I thought was Eileen’s, but discovered it was a mishmash of my own stuff. I began sorting through it. Some of it was my parents’ stuff.

I ran across a folder marked “Memories/Experiences.” In it were clips from my Dad’s sermons with anecdotes on them.

Here are a few:

“I remember Roy, whose anger was making a living hell for his wife and children…
His anger would seek refuge in drink, which only made matters wores…
When he arrived home, everyone was sorry to see him come until that day
when the voice of God called, “ABOUT FACE!”
And the anger seemed to go out of Roy…
A new love came into his face, and a new life-style was his possession.
The family felt it—right down to the family dog….
Where hate had been so strong, now it was love and controlled feelings…
Roy did an about-face!”

“Four times, I have crossed the Atlantic ocean … twice by ship (and I got seasick both times), and twice by airplane…
It was on my first ship crossing that I was privileged to go into the Captain’s
quarters and stand at the Captain’s wheel as if I were guiding that great ocean
liner, the HS Seven Seas, myself (I have a picture of myself at the wheel of
that ship…. not that I was doing anything but posing….but it sure looked
great in the picture)
While we were in the ship’s wheel-house or bridge, we saw the ship’s
radar, a device which provided the ship with a far seeing “eye’/At
night, or in fog and storm, this radar could keep the captain informed
so that he could avoid shore lines….so that he could avoid collision
with ice-bergs or other ships.
We marveled at this wonderful instrument which has saved so many
ships from disaster.
On my second crossing of the Atlantic by ship, one day we were caught in a
storm.. Huge 40 & 50 foot waves were tossing the ship like a toy.
My wife and I were in the dinging area of the ship when the storm hit,
and suddenly all points of reference were lost.  Tables and chairs went
skidding across the room. Fortunately the crew had seen the storm coming
and much was tied down, but everything that was not tied down was a wreck.
Up was suddenly over there, and down was over there …..For a landlubber
(with a landlubber’s stomach) it was awful.
But in the storm, with everything thrown about, and people everywhere
terribly upset…it was comforting to know that the radar was still
functioning…IT WAS ONE OF THOSE HELPFUL DEVICES that made it possible
for the captain to bring us through safely.”

“I listened to a very intimate confession in a small group one day, as a grown man
with tears streaming down his cheeks, told of his anger with a father who played
God in a miserable fashion…
He told the group that as a boy, he would be given the task of raking
leaves…..’And, I would try…Honest, I would try
I remember, I would rake the leaves into a pile, very carefully,
not missing a one of them. I would have the lawn completely clear
of leaves…but by the time Dad arrived home, a few more leaves
would fall….and I would get the dickens…..’
And th pain of having disappointed his father was still there with him as
he wept some thirty years later…..’I couldn’t please my Father’
Oscar Wilde once said, ‘Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow
older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them…'”

Gee, I wonder why I dreamed about my Dad last night.

Maybe I’ll put up a few more of these. I will definitely keep them for the fam.

I learned of Christian Marclay’s 24 hour movie/art installation In Zadie Smith’s essay,  “Killing Orson Welles at Midnight” (pdf of the essay)

If you’re interested I recommend reading Smith’s essay before looking at clips of the movie.

It’s great fun. it’s designed to play in real time so that the minutes that click off in the movie clips would represent the actual passing time. It’s a cool idea. There are tons of clips online. I’ll leave it you, dear reader, to explore them if you want.

The actual installation will be at the Tate museum in London from 14 September 2018 to 20 January 2019. When I pointed this out to Eileen just now, she said, “I’m game.” Maybe we could work it in with Lucy-Sarah-Matthew visit. Who knows?

Hey. A new movie that looks like I might enjoy it. Cool. It’s only playing in Grand Rapids locally.

So yesterday was John Clare’s birthday. I heard about it on the vestigial version of Garrison Keillor’s post sexual harassment Writers Almanac. He sounded a bit familiar. Sure enough he ended up at St. Andrew’s  asylum in North Hampton.

Then I recalled his walk on role in volume 3 of Alan Moore’s Jerusalem in the difficult chapter 8. Perusing his wikipedia entry reveals that Moore has used him in another book, his first novel, Voice of the Fire. I’ve already ordered a copy of it. Heh.

Here’s a cool cover of this book:

I think I’m going to have read everything Alan Moore has written.

The death of truth: how we gave up on facts and ended up with Trump | Books | The Guardian

Another astute looking article on the current lamentable situation in my country. I’ve bookmarked this one to read as well as the Madeline Albright article. So far I haven’t been able to bring myself to read them. But I will! I will!

Today I see my therapist for the first time in four weeks. I’m on about day 18 of my extended summer vacation. I have the rest of July and the first two Sundays of August off. I’ve not been thinking too much about my mental health type issues. However, one thing I have been allowing myself is to follow through more thoroughly on my reading and to allow it to range more widely. Why not?

I’m obviously thinking about this because I will have to report to Dr. Birky in a couple of hours.

Two things have been going on during this period. I am attempting to protect myself from the usual work stress and situations. This involved leaving town for a while. Since returning, it has involved deflecting people a bit.

The second is a gradual realization of how freed up I am during this time. This has led to the rabbit hole adventure of pursuing stuff a bit more than I might if I had to work stuff.

Ironically a lot of it, of course, is related to stuff I do at work. Yesterday I ordered my own copy of Temperley’s book in the history of English parish music. I am about seventy pages into it as of this writing. I have interlibrary loaned a ton of books he refers to including all of the Erik Routley books. I may or may not end up purchasing some of them. They are old, but I realized yesterday that I had never read Routley’s lengthy written material in his 1991 publication, The Music of Christian Hymns. Weirdly, he doesn’t bibliograph Temperley although Temperley used Routley’s books and surely Routley was aware of it.

Anyway, you can see how I am indulging my curiosity. In addition to this I continue to study Haydn and Bach by reading Ethan Haimo’s Hadyn’s Symphonic Forms: Essays on Compositional Logic and Peter Williams’ J.S. Bach: A Life in Music. Yesterday I finished a chapter in each of these books, so I am slowly making progress in them. They both send me back to the actual music, listening and playing.

When I first returned from Unadillo my piano drove me crazy. Mostly this was the bad intonation, but there are some other problems with it. After a few days, this went away. That’s good in a way. No sense being miserable. My adaptability is both a strength and weakness, I guess. I practiced guitar yesterday a bit. My guitar is not that good and the strings are shot. I would want new strings before performing in public.

But I’m  not thinking of public performing so much. Church is really my last outlet for performance. My performing opportunities dwindle and I can’t say I miss them much. I do think I will miss playing music with others soon. But so far I am content to read and study alone.

So far I have had no compositional impulse during this time off. It occurs to me it would be a good time to compose. It’s a better time to scurry down the rabbit hole.

“Running” | The New Yorker

Strong poem in the latest New Yorker. I love it that the mag has the poet record an audio for online listening.

From “Under the Knife” by Krista Franklin | Poetry Magazine

I like this one. Both this and the next poem are better read in a real copy of the mag. In this case, in the mag, the pic is on the left hand page and the words on the right hand.

Lakes Rivers Streams by Michael Dickman | Poetry Magazine

This is a long read. Over 500 lines. I counted them. But apparently not accurately since the poem consists strictly of 7 line stanzas and my final total is not divisible by 7. I mention this because in the link (and in the app) they weirdly follow the presentation of the poem in the mag which is two sets of seven on each page with a dot in between the two. However, the online presentation and the app would be much clearer with a dot after each 7 lines. I bitch because I read it on the app and was so confused I had to look at it in the mag to see its structure more clearly. The poem reminded me of Michigan a lot, but Dickman is  from the Northwest USA.

Eileen hired someone to remove the asbestos from our basement yesterday. Actually they will remove all the ducts that are wrapped in asbestos. They are scheduled to do this next week. Eileen immediately got on the phone and rescheduled the installation of our furnace/ac. Now they will begin this installation on next Thursday and finish up by the following Monday.

Today is Eileen’s 66th birthday. She seems to be having a good one. Yesterday she met with her siblings and Mom for some talk and card playing.

Eileen’s Mom is getting up in years. It’s time for her to quit living alone in the old trailer where she and Clyde lived. Apparently Eileen’s brother Dave was very clear in presenting Dorothy’s choices to her. She chose to move in with Eileen’s sister, Nancy, and sell the trailer. This is definitely good news.

The only proviso was that the other siblings would “alternate” care. It’s not clear how this all will work out, but at least they are not talking about only Nancy caring for Eileen’s Mom. Nancy has been doing the heavy lifting of caring for Dorothy. Eileen says that Nancy always planned to care for Dorothy and Clyde in their old age. But realistically she will need help. Eileen tells me that there are already a couple of nurses making daily visits to Dorothy.

All of this helped Eileen’s mood and outlook immeasurably. She scheduled her mini for maintenance next week. She and I took the Alero over to Ok Tires for an air conditioner overhaul.

In the meantime I have been spending hours with my studying and piano playing. Yesterday I spent a good amount of time with Mendelssohn and Bartok on the piano. I began the day listening the Concerto for Orchestra by Bartok a piece I love.

My piano student called yesterday. He was waiting for a piano lesson at church despite the fact that I’m pretty sure I told him they would be suspended until after I contacted him. I reminded him I was on vacation and told him I would contact him in mid August.

Vacationing is not as easy as one might assume. I also had emails from the July recitalist regarding his poster and program. I’m probably going to have to sneak back to work and print this up. It feels like a good time to stay away from work, so this is a bit of let down.

I went out and bought flowers and gifts for Eileen yesterday while she was in Whitehall. This morning I put the flowers on the pie safe so that the cat wouldn’t disturb them and set out her gifts. She seemed pleased. I think she’s mostly in a good space because of the direction her Mom’s care is heading and we are making a little progress on the house project.

GOP Candidate Normalizes Pedophilia Because It’s in The Bible

I avoid going tit for tat finding weird behavior on the right to match the weird behavior my right wing family and friends point to on the left. However, this report seems substantiated and extreme. Yikes. Hopefully he won’t be elected.

Not only are my Auden books in conversation with each other (see yesterday’s blog), my Basquiat/Kevin Young-art/poetry books refer back and forth between each other. I have been trying to connect Kevin Young’s two books of poetry based loosely on the art of Basquiat to the big book of paintings I purchased. Yesterday I was able to find the painting Young was thinking of in his poem. Today a different poem proved impossible to trace to paintings both in my book and on the interwebs.

Yesterday my reading of Temperley’s The Music of English Parish Churches sent me scurrying around to books in my own library, interlibrary loaning books from the public library network, and looking up articles online. This is a kind of conversation.

This kind of bouncing around from source to source is something I do regularly come to think of it. When I’m not on vacation, I often will pull out the music I am reading about and play through it if possible or listen to it if it’s not available to me in a keyboard arrangement.

It seems like vacation is a good time to dig a little deeper into this kind of learning. I have the time and resources. Cool.

I’m laying low, not practicing organ at church, not contacting people.

 West Gallery Music Association – Home Page

I found this organization poking around looking for Temperley references and sources.

“The West Gallery Music Association is an informal group of singers, instrumentalists and scholars. We share an interest in the sacred music, psalmody and hymnody, and the secular music and dance of the men and women who performed from the west galleries of parish churches, in chapels, and around the towns and villages of England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.”

The duct people came this morning. We thought we were ready for them. But they took one look at our asbestos in the basement and said they wouldn’t touch our ducts so long as the asbestos is there. This is frustrating and disappointing especially for Eileen. After a few calls, she is thinking of trying to hire someone to remove our asbestos. Then they or another contractor will remove all of our old ducts in the basement and we will replace them with new ones. The asbestos removal will probably be expensive. But what the heck. It’s not safe for it to be in our home anyway.

Eileen is online right now trying to find someone to hire to get rid of our asbestos. This will set us back until that is taken care of.

Mortimer J. Adler’s notion that books are in conversation with each other has influenced my life of reading.

I received a pristine copy of John Fuller’s W. H. Auden: A Commentary  (Princeton, 1998) in the mail while I was in Chelsea (Unadilla?).

Princeton 1998

This morning I ecamined it, his earlier commentary (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970) which I already had, and two versions of Auden’s collected poems (Vintage, 1991; Random House, 1976). Mark gave me a copy of the Randon House 1976 version which he had replaced in his own collection since the binding was in bad shape.

Random House, 1976

Vintage, 1991

I spent some time sorting through these four books this morning. As you can see from the dates above,  Fuller’s commentary that arrived in the mail is the last book published of these four. Next comes my paperback edition of Auden’s collected poems. It and the hardback Mark gave me are both edited by the same man, Edward Mendelssohn.

Fuller and Mendelssohn, the two men who put these books these books together, knew each other. These four books are definitely in conversation, Fuller having rewritten and expanded his 1970 commentary. In his Editor’s Preface to the Collected Poems, 1991 edition, Mendelssohn says that it is the third of Auden’s major collected works. He describes multiple other volumes of selections of his work.

Mendelssohn puts the poems in chronological order in both volumes, but the later volume has more poems of course since Auden continued to produce work. Mendelssohn was also Auden’s executor as well as his editor (Fuller adds critic and bibliographer to this list).

I am reading my way through the 1991 edition, but Fuller’s commentary tempts me to reread what I have read because of his extensive notes and demonstrated understanding of the poems.

It has taken having all four in my possession to allow me to sort out this information.

California’s ‘foreclosure capital’ to give away $500 a month to residents in experimental welfare program

The idea is that Artificial Intelligence will eventually take over all jobs. What happens then? A guaranteed annual income would help change the social contract.

A man harasses a woman for wearing a Puerto Rico shirt, saying it’s ‘un-American’ – CNN

Ay yi yi. Puerto Ricans are Americans. You know that, right?

U.S. effort to weaken an international breast-feeding resolution has a long history – The Washington Post

At last something Trump and Obama agree on.

I’m up early at Mark’s house. Today Eileen and I return to Holland. After we get back we have to madly start preparing for house improvements to happen this week. We get our ducts cleaned starting tomorrow. On Thursday they are scheduled to install our new furnace/ac. So today after we get back, we have to make sure everything is ready for the duct people, clearing the way to all the registers in the house. Then before Thursday I have some serious straightening to do in the basement, clearing out my old tool room which is the room where the furnace will go. This promises to be an active week!

Yesterday Mark drove me to Ann Arbor. He had some errands to run and graciously included a stop at Dawntreader bookstore and Encore Records. In between, the old men (Mark and I) rested at a lovely Korean restaurant. Encore records keeps boxes of used music on its floor. I always find stuff to purchase. Yesterday I found a bunch of piano duets, cello and violin solos, and a very cool old copy of a special issue of the journal Black Sacred Music: A Journal of Theomusicology. Articles in it by Micheal Eric Dyson, Cornel West, and Andrew Greeley. Topics covered include the sacred music of Duke Ellington, Rap Culture, and the Catholic imagination of Bruce Springsteen and Madonna’s challenge to her church. The last two by Greeley.

This morning after working on Greek, I combed the bibliography of a fancy book of Mark’s called Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia by Fiona Ritchie and Douglas Orr.

This led me down the rabbit hole of the interwebs and before I was done I ran across and bookmarked a bunch of interesting stuff.

including:

Hughes, Langston, I Wonder as I wander

Maccoll, Ewan and Peggy Seeger, Travelers’ Songs from England and Scotland Amazon link CDrom version on Peggy Seeger web site

I Wonder as I Wander: The Life of John Jacob Niles by Ron Pen, Rick Kogan

Ron Pen seems like an interesting dude. I requested his friendship on Facebook.

Ritchie, Jeanie, Folksongs of Appalachia Amazon link

I also ran across a very interesting issue of the journal,  American Music

This is not available online, but it’s tempting to purchase. $14 for the e version.

Mark, Eileen,and I jumped in the car yesterday and Mark drove us to the John K. King Bookstore in downtown Detroit.

Ostensibly, it was for Eileen’s upcoming birthday we made the trip. While Mark and I had frequented this shop many times, Eileen had never been there before. We lured her with the possibility of finding some obscure weaving books  and a birthday gift of cash from Mark and Leigh. But she goodnaturedly came along mostly just to see what the famous store was like.

There is no air conditioning in this building which apparently was historically a glove factory. Mark chose a relatively cool day for us to visit and it turned out to be pleasant in the shop.

I was very happy to find that my interest areas were well represented on the first floor. So I explored the music, art, and poetry sections and didn’t have to go up on any of the other floors.

What follows are my purchases.

1.  Sonata Forms Revised Edition by Charles Rosen.

I know this looks like another dry tome of music stuff, but Rosen was a pianist with a great style and a steel trap mind.  In his Preface to the Revised Edition he writes “Sonatas are like chimpanzees.”

He gets there from a quote from Stephen Jay Gould:

“… there are no essences, there is no such thing as ‘the chimpanzee.’ You can’t bring a few into a laboratory, make some measurements, calculate an average, and find out, thereby, what chimpness is. there are no shortcuts. individuality does more than matter; it is of the essence. You must learn to recognize individual chimps and follow them for years, recording their peculiarities, their differences, and their interactions …. When you understand why nature’s complexity can only be unraveled this way, why individuality matters so crucially, then you are in a position to understand what the sciences of history are all about.” ( from a review article “Animals Are Us” in New York Review of Books 29 June 1987

I was planning to purchase this book soon since it informs Ethan Haimo’s book on Haydn I am reading.

2. I accidentally purchased a two volume Greek interlinear edition of Plato’s Republic. I had looked at both it and a two volume edition of Homer’s Odyssey. They were close to the check out register so I didn’t add them to my stack thinking I would grab Homer just before checking out. I grabbed the wrong two, but I’m still glad to get them.

3. My eye was caught by the title of Irving Burgie’s Day-O!! The Autobiography of Irving Burgie. My copy looks like this:

There was a conventional paperback edition sitting next to it, but I was more charmed by this edition.

4. I was very excited to find a copy of Kevin Young’s first version of To Repel Ghosts. I am almost through his remix version of this book.

5. I had a copy of a collection of Basquiat in my hands minutes after we arrived. When we visited the Detroit Institute of Arts, I realized that I would like to have a copy of a collection of his works. I usually just look them up online, but it’s more fun to look at them in a book, better still in person.

6. The Church Music of William Billings by J. Murray Barbour

I perform music of Billings from time to time with my choir. This looked like a good reference book to own.

7. Mark found an excellent reference for my Greek study.

8. It was fun looking at all the books in the music section or as many as I could manage. I couldn’t resist this book made of the proceedings of the International Haydn Conference in 1975. There are transcriptions of panels that consist of people like Charles Rosen, Donald Grout, Eva Badura-Skoda, and many others as well as papers presented. Very cool.

Eileen didn’t find too much but seemed to enjoy the visit. We had lunch at the famous Traffic Jam and then drove home.

Another good day of vacation for Jupe!

Vacation is going well. My nephew, Ben; niece, Emily; and her husband spent a few days with us. Ben’s husband, Tony, only lasted from Tuesday night to midday Wednesday, his one day off from work. Understandably he went back to have some time for himself before returning to work. I wish I had known he was going so quickly, since he is a guitarist and I was hoping to do some playing with him. That was part of my motivation for stringing and tuning Leigh’s guitar (the other part, being that she asked me to).

I have been unable to resist some piano playing in the living room despite the fact that there are people in the room, chatting and working a puzzle. I feel a bit funny about playing music around my family (except, of course, Eileen). I think this might stem from some complicated stuff, but mostly I think of how nerve-wracking living with me as a boy was for my Mom and Dad. My memory (distorted no doubt) is they were constantly asking me to take a break from the piano playing. Admittedly it was probably annoying goofing off playing, not the painstaking rehearsal I am capable of now.

Anyway, it has seemed okay if I do some playing on piano and guitar with people around. My niece, Emily, even thanked me after I played a bunch of Irish tunes on guitar while she and others prepared one of our meals.

Leigh had the piano tuned bearing in mind that I was going to be around to play. I keep telling people how splendid the instrument is and how a good tuning reminded me of its quality.

I continue to think about how I learned about the connection between Appalachian and English folk music.

Mark is very interested in Scottish music as well as Irish music. In addition to collecting videos of recordings being made now, he owns a copy of  Wbyfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia by Fiona Richie and Doug Orr.

I was looking at the bibliography in this volume this morning and ran across a citation that rang a bell in my memory.

I think this four volume work is the one I pulled off the shelves of the Flint Library years ago. I have interlibrary loaned a copy of the first volume. Bertrand Harris Bronson has an entry in the Groves Dictionary of Music as does James Francis Child and Cecil Sharp. Bronson seems interested in emphasizing the tunes of the ballads. His book above demonstrates his interest in compiling variants of tunes and ballads. it is this variation that sticks out in my mind.

In preparing a version of “The Great Silkie” around this time, I remember looking at different versions and distilling a shorter succinct one to perform.

I’m sitting on Mark and Leigh’s porch with  my laptop and books. This morning is much cooler. So far the bugs have let me enjoy it.

Ives FOURTH OF JULY by ScoresOnDemand – issuu

For some reason, online scores of Charles Ives work are scarce. I speculate that since so much scholarship and score preparation around his opus occurred years after his death, that they are still under copyright. I like to listen to Ives around this time of year. I listened to the piece above on Wednesday, the fourth.

2018 Caine Prize Shortlist Announced — Caine Prize

I listened to a podcast of a BBC interview with Makena Onjerika who won this prize. (BBC Radio 3 – Free Thinking, What do you call a stranger? – The Caine Prize – NHS ideals.) There are links to works by all five above at the first link above. I plan to at least read Onjerika’s.

NYTimes: When It Comes to Politics, Be Afraid. But Not Too Afraid.

This is a recent book by Nussbaum. I’ll probably check both of them out. The first book above is not going to be published until Nov, the second is out now.

NYTimes: How Will We Know What a Supreme Court Nominee Really Thinks?

Linda Greenhouse always  helps me think about what’s happening with SCOTUS.

‘Tablets IV’ by DUNYA MIKHAIL

This is a poem from the new June/July issue of the Poetry mag that hit me this morning.

It consists of 24 short numbered sections. Here a few.

7

The map of Iraq looks like a mitten,
and so does the map of Michigan —
a match I made by chance.

8

If you can’t save people,
at least don’t hate them.

9

Her bubbling annoys me —
can’t understand a word she says.
So what if I toss her from the aquarium?
So what if I spill her new world
with this nasty immigrant fish!

10

The city’s innumerable lights
turning on and off remind us
we are born to arrive,
as we are born to leave.

Mark showed me this video yesterday. Actually he showed me the whole episode. This song was a bit startling to hear. Recently I talked to my daughter about the song, “The Great Silkie.”

Sarah brought the movie, “The Song of the Sea,” with her. It’s based on the Selkie legend.

When I was a young man living in Flint, Michigan, I have a physical memory of taking the Child Ballads off the shelf at the public library there. I can see the book in my mind’s eye. It is a large tome with gray covers.

This is the way I remember it looking on the page.

In it, I remember finding this ballad, numerous versions of it. I was so charmed by it that I did my own version. I remember recently running across the manuscript of it. When I get home I will look and see if I can find it.

I just ordered a print on demand version of the Child Ballads for 10 bucks on Abebooks. I’m not sure it’s the same book of course but for ten bucks I am interested in seeing what it is.

Dover prints a multi volume version of one of Child’s buy cheap valium thailand books. I’ll probably look into that after seeing what I get in the mail.

Today is Leigh’s birthday. I changed the strings on her guitar as per her request yesterday. I have been continually tuning it to see if it can be kept up to pitch. It usually takes a guitar a bit of time to settle down with new strings. Leigh’s guitar was missing the three lower strings which relieved stress on the neck (which is not a good thing), but that shouldn’t affect how well it holds tune.

Mark got me on a bit of an Irish kick yesterday and I pulled down some tunes off of IMSLP. I found a good collection.

They are fun to play on guitar even though my guitar chops are still pretty rusty.

I searched on YouTube for some of these. I found people playing pieces with some of these titles, however none of them were exactly what is notated above. Some were even completely different. I guess that makes sense.

Francis J. Child Ballads

 The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry (Roud 197; Child 113)

These are a couple of links I bookmarked while poking around.

On the eighth day of my vacation I wake up realizing that I had two dreams last night about worship commission meetings at my job. The dreams bore no resemblance to reality but they still were about church stuff.

Yesterday was a day of rest for the most part for me. In the afternoon I accompanied Mark on a grocery run. My feet were tired and my right ankle was swollen. The walking around probably was both good and bad for me: good because I need the exercise and bad because my feet are in bad shape.

I spent time with my old prof’s book on Haydn yesterday (Haydn’s Symphonic Forms: Essays in Compositional Logic). That was fun.

I also played through an excellent piano transcription of the G Major Brandenburg Concerto (No. 3) by T. A. Johnson. I asked Leigh where she ran across it and she figured she probably bought it used someplace.

So one week of my six week hiatus is over. My BP seems to be settling down. I am enjoying goofing off and having access to the internet and Leigh’s wonderful piano. And of course it’s fun chatting with Mark, Leigh, and Eileen. Eileen brought a loom with her and has been weaving.

This seems to be working, but I’m going to need more time to turn into a human again.

I wondered how walking around the Star Wars costume exhibit would affect my body. I think I have mostly healed from the stretched Achilles tendon I suffered a while back. But, probably due to this injury and lapsing on exercise, my gait is still not what it was. The arthritic like aching I experience in my hips seems to be appearing more often. Also, I have had problems with both of my feet all my life.

So the upside is that wandering around the exhibit, I got some badly needed exercise and survived. The downside is the usual aches and pains of an old guy after some semi strenuous movement.

We went to a neat little restaurant afterward called La Fiera.

It was much too hot to sit outside. The inside is small and couldn’t seat our entire 8 person party in one place. But we ordered drinks and stood around until some tables came free. Eileen and I sat with my nephew Ben and his husband Tony. Mark and Leigh sat with Emily and the birthday boy Jeremy. The museum and restaurant visit were a birthday gift to Jeremy from Mark and Leigh. He seemed to have a ball walking around the exhibit. Not only were lots of famous costumes on display, there was an emphasis on design with many, many examples of very cool sketches by the creators of the costumes.

Eileen and Emily seemed quite taken with the fabrics and design of the costumes.

After the meal, we drove home and had a few more drinks and watched the Netflix special, Nanette. This was the second time Eileen and I watched this. It’s the international debut of a witty Australian comedian named Hannah Gadsby.

It was even better the second time. She is acerbic and cerebral and as some of the critics have said does the magic trick of critiquing comedy by teaching how it works and at the same time demonstrating it. I recommend her highly. I’m also very curious to see where she goes after this since one of the themes of her hour is destructive nature of much comedy and how she is quitting it.

In the language of the English Jenkinses, she’s brilliant.

On another note, during the drive Mark talked to me about Shakespeare use of the concept of plague to tie together Romeo and Juliet. It’s a very clever observation and this morning I found a doctoral dissertation which talks a lot about it. Here’s a link to the PDF if you’re curious.

Basically the idea is that when Mercutio dies, he says the phrase, “A plague upon both your houses,” three times. Consequently, the deaths of Romeo and Juliet are expedited by Brother John’s delay in a household quarantined for the plague. Mark was much more eloquent and thorough in his explication, but you get the idea.

On a final note, I was disappointed to learn that the DIA doesn’t own any Basquiat. Sheesh.

It’s the last day of June and I’m sitting on my brother’s porch in Chelsea. It’s not exactly cool even though it’s morning. I will have to go in soon due to the heat.

I played some Beethoven and Joplin on Leigh’s wonderful piano. Did I mention she had it tuned? It sounds great! Then I pulled up what Leigh calls their guilty pleasure stack and played through a bunch of pop music and other stuff. I find that the notation in popular music has vastly improved since I used it as a kid to learn about chords and songs.

It’s not so much hot as muggy this morning.

We are planning to go to the Detroit Institute of Arts this afternoon for the  Star Wars and Power of Costume show. Mark and Leigh are giving the visit as a birthday gift to their son-in-law Jeremy Bastian. Afterwards they are treating him to a meal at the restaurant of his choice. Eileen and I are tagging along. I think the rest of the local branch of the fam will probably be there as well.

NYTimes: This Is the World Mitch McConnell Gave Us

Interesting article by a biographer of Mcconnell. We are fucked.

What the New Supreme Court Will Decide | The New Republic

Good over view on the fall term. We are fucked.

Yesterday, Eileen and I moved from our hotel to Casa Jenkins in Chelsea. My BP is beginning to drop a bit.

We had a very nice chat with Mark and Leigh after we arrived. They are consummate hosts (and both have been known to read this blog! Hi Mark and Leigh!)

Seriously I am grateful that they let Eileen and me crash over here. it is good to get out of town and just have a lot of time to laze around. Their home is large enough to accommodate two couples with plenty of space for not constantly can i buy valium getting in each other’s hair.

We ended up following them to Chelsea for a nice meal together, then Mark and Leigh went off to the movies and Eileen and I returned home.

Tomorrow we have a Detroit trip planned. This morning I got up and have been sitting on their porch sipping coffee and reading and studying. It’s still cool out right now though it promises to start heating up as the day proceeds.

I played Leigh’s piano a bit yesterday. She had it tuned. It’s even more wonderful than I remembered. Cool.

Vacation is going fine, although my BP has been up for a few days. The good thing about this is that I experience no discomfort, the bad, that I will have to report it to my doctor if it persists for long (a week). Ah well. I AM sixty-six years old and the body is not particularly regenerating. I checked and our motel doesn’t have a treadmill so I don’t have to feel guilty about not exercising.

These are dark days in the USA. The current majority on the Supreme Court is handing the racist right wing victory after victory. The Texan ruling promoting gerrymandering as okay and yesterday the upholding of the racist Muslim ban on entry into the country. These are morally wrong steps. The only slight consolation is that SCOTUS has made terrible rulings before (Dred Scott and many others) that have been undone.

In his book, What Truth Sounds Like, Eric Dyson describes and meeting between Robert Kennedy and several Black non-politician type leaders like James Baldwin, Harry Belefonte, specifically

• David Baldwin, James Baldwin’s brother
• Harry Belafonte, singer and activist
• Edwin C. Berry, director of the Chicago Urban League
• Kenneth Clark, psychologist, activist, and founder of Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited
• Lorraine Hansberry, playwright best known for A Raisin in the Sun (1959)
• Lena Horne, musician, actor and activist
• Clarence Benjamin Jones, advisor to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and civil rights lawyer
• June Shagaloff, a white NAACP official (attending in an “unofficial capacity”)
• Jerome Smith, Freedom Rider associated with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
• Rip Torn, a young white actot

The meeting began on a false note with Belafonte chatting up Kennedy with whom he was personally acquainted already. Belafonte was concerned that the group’s comments would give Kennedy and his brother’s administration ammunition with which to dispute Martin Luther King, Jr. However, Jerome Smith quickly identified the need to talk truth to power and said “I don’t know what I’m doing here, listening to all t his cocktail-party patter.” Previously he had said to Kennedy, “You don’t have no idea what trouble is…” Kennedy ignored him, but the rest of the group acknowledged Smith’s authority and correctness since he was the most experienced protester present.

Kennedy quieted down and listened, though inwardly seething, as the entire group began to chime in with anger and insist that things must change quickly in the USA.

Dyson uses Kennedy’s listening as a model for what whites need to do right now. Kennedy eventually processed this meeting into more clarity for himself about race and acted on it. I am hoping that by reading books like Stamped from the Beginning and Dyson’s book I am not only listening but learning.

Also in The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, Masha Gessen unsurprisingly quotes Orwell’s 1984:

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word “doublethink” involved the use of doublethink” (emphasis added by me)

I think this describes some of what is happening right now in America and it has been rattling around in my head as I watch our feeble moral fiber completely disintegrate.

Dyson is even clearer:

“Trump’s total lack of knowledge, and the enshrinement of ignorance as the basis of power and authority is the personification of white supremacy and white arrogance…. the real unifying force in our national cultural and political life, beyond skirmishes over ideology and party, is white identity masked as universal, neutral, and therefore quintessentially American.”

We accept the vilification of immigrants because, Dyson writes, they are “them’, However, [writing of Trump] when it comes to insulting folk, spoiling his office in narcissistic displays, acting vengefully—this is the heart of whiteness, and the force of whiteness against blackness and other colors.” I found that the next few sentences strike home. “It [the heart of whiteness] has always been a rather juvenile affair: drinking at a white water fountain was not simply a marker of rigid, though unscientific, anthropology, it was the symbolic height of adolescent bravura and competition—mine is better than yours.”

This describes Trump and his appeal.

“The point of politics was [is] to defend white interests. Politicians did [do] not have to name white interests because they were [are] considered American interest.”