It’s been another tough week. My wife’s dad died on Wednesday evening. She is handling it fine I think. This means another trip for my daughters to come and do the other granpa funeral. My son has wisely opted to send condolences but skip the expensive trip. My in-laws got the weird idea that I should officiate at my father-in-laws funeral. This is very puzzling. I declined. I told my wife if she wanted me to do it of course I would. 

Today is my last choir Sunday. My boss called last night. She’s been away for the last few days so we needed to touch base briefly before tomorrow. I have mixed feelings about this morning. I have asked a parishioner with good conducting skills to conduct today’s Pentecost anthem. I did this so that I could play the organ part which of course has lots of Holy Spirit fast notes in it (It’s by Carson Cooman and is not that great but it does the trick for Pentecost and is an SAB anthem). This has entailed quite a bit of prep this week despite illness and other stuff like moving my Mom’s belongings from one room to another at the place she is living. 

Yesterday I practiced morning and evening. I am looking forward to just playing the organ today. I feel like I have pretty much failed as a choir director this year. It probably was an impossible year between the typical difficulties of getting people to show up at rehearsal and dealing with the stuff in my private life like my Dad dieing and my Mom having difficulties coping. 

I do enjoy church work. But I don’t necessarily relate strongly to the church stuff personally. And it’s hard to deal with the usual church pathologies when my own private life is so full of the pathology of caring for my parents. This week one of the people who takes care of the altar told me she was glad I was the musician for the church. People do say stuff like this to me quite often and it does help me to hear it. I like working with the community more than I like working with some of the people in the choir. I am also realizing that I myself am not all that mentally healthy at this point. 

Anyway, the music is what keeps me going. That and my lovely wife and adult children. Speaking of, I am hoping my daughters will allow me to pick them up at the airport in Chicago this week. That would be fun. My wife’s family has always sort of kept her and consequently me and my kids at arms length. I have tried to repair this over the years but it has always failed. So this event will be an interesting one. My daughter Sarah said that this family is a bit of mystery to her and if she failed to be at her granpa’s funeral she would feel even less connected to them. I requested that if any parts of the mystery evaporate as a consequence of the event that she share with me. Heh. I know I’m pretty mystified at my wife’s parents’ behavior over the years. 

Well I have to get ready to go play.

[I like this poem by Duffy. I heard her read it recently on BBC. She is the new English Poet Laurete and although I found the struggles and scandal surrounding this competition distasteful I am glad I got to hear her read this poem.  

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer –
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

(from Mean Time [Anvil, 1994])

It took me a while to figure out I was sick yesterday. On Wednesday night my body ached.  I thought that maybe I had used a bunch of muscles on Wednesday that I hadn’t realized I had. My body aches were very bad Wednesday night. Then Thursday morning I got up and exercised then took a shower. It was then I realized that my body was hurting in a flu/cold way not a sore muscle way. Sheesh.

I think it’s weird it took me so long to figure out I was sick. I am oddly determined these days to do some stuff like practice, compose and reorganize my house in a major way. I think this determination might contribute to me ignoring signals from my own body until it becomes obvious.

Anyway, this meant that I missed my choir’s last rehearsal last night. I am aware my sick body was avoiding an onerous task (dealing once again with my silly choir). I am pretty sure that I will not continue doing church work in quite the same way next fall. I have been talking to my boss about it. We meet on Monday just before she takes off for a vacation. I have been talking to her about trying to open a conversation with the choristers, musicians and interested parishioners this summer somehow. Maybe I’ll schedule a public discussion for interested people with her and I moderating and call it “The Future of the Music Program at Grace.” Or maybe not. Who knows. I am pretty much fed up with church and people who do not want to attend rehearsals with any sort of consistency. It may be as simple as deciding that if choristers miss the rehearsal before a Sunday, they cannot sing that Sunday. And fearlessly canceling a Sunday anthem on thursday evening when it doesn’t sound good. This year there was at least one Sunday when I thought I should have canceled the anthem for the day. Again with the determined silly Steve just pushing ahead despite obstacles.

I talked to my friend Jonathon this week and he is interested in helping me work on recordings this summer. That is good.

Also I was looking on my web site server, Bluhost, and discovered they have free web building interfaces that look pretty good to me. I would like to build a URL that makes my music available in recordings and sheet music. I actually had this before WordPress weirdly locked me out of my previous web site. 

But life is good.

Whew! Jet lag is a real thing I guess. I am still trying to get back into a cycle of sleeping and eating. 

My head has been buzzing ever since my vacation. 

During vacation, I read a play by Shakespeare (As you like it) and a novel by Somerset Maugham (The Razor’s Edge). I would like to say that I loafed around and did this reading. But in fact I did it on the plane rides. 

I wonder if it’s usual  return from restorative vacation with your head buzzing with new stuff to do. I am planning to majorly re-organize my house: put booksheles upstairs, change my present ridiculously crowded library into a Steve workroom with computer and keyboard. I also have some good ideas about where to take my job next fall. Tomorrow evening is the last rehearsal of the season and I want to do some chalk talk temperature taking and ferretting out new solutions to the problems of having a very small choir whose weekly rehearsal barely resembles its Sunday morning appearances. heh.

I spent a good hour yesterday rehearsing the Sortie from Messiaen’s “Pentecost Mass” for organ. I badly want to perform it Sunday. I am thinking of writing a little bulletin note about it explaining the fact that it far from dreary…. that Messiaen intended it to be an ecstatic utterance (good phrase that) of the wind of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (“Le vent de l’Esprit”).

I also practiced my Greek during vacation. Came home and pulled out my texts and starting working on this again. I know it’s ironic, but due to recently being exposed to some brain science via John Medina’s “Brain Rules” and NPR, I have been encouraged to put my aging brain back in the language gear. These sources say that not only can an old brain learn a language, it’s actually good for it. Cool.

I bought a ton of books in England this time. We ended up bring home an extra suitcase full of them and a few other choice items. 

Eileen bought a Roald Dahl Cookbook at the Roald Dahl Museum in the village where Sarah and Matthew live. This morning I made “Olivana” which Dahl describes as a “gorgeous, smooth, soft syrupy paste.” It’s simple, really. One just adds a drop or two of olive oil to mashed bananas. Mmmm good.

Both today and yesterday I got up and did my mile on the treadmill. This morning I listened to the first three movements of Vauhan Williams’ “Sea Symphony.” For some reason I have had  a jones for Vaughan Williams recently. I liked to think this was intensified by wandering the sea shores in Cornwall. In this symphony Vaughan Williams sets adaptations of Whitman’s poems: “Song of the Exposition,” “Song for all Seas, all Ships,” “On the Beach at Night Alone,” “After the Sea-ship“, and “Passage to India.”

I also have been glancing at the score online (pdf). 

This made great music to walk to. I also recommend the poems. Of course I like poetry.

I have been thinking quite a bit about my general attitude toward my work. I have about concluded that I am still basically the kid I was about music: a misfit/outsider who is attracted to music and poetry and struggling with his own need to appear more complex and talented than he is. I think I haved down the last part quite a bit. Oddly enough I think if I did do the “look at me and how much I know” thing I used to do as a kid that I would have better “success” with stuff like getting my music heard and successfully leading choirs. Heh.

 Speaking of getting my music heard, another buzzing idea is that I am hoping to completely redesign my web site this summer. I am thinking of trying to build another URL from scratch using a fake “Dreamweaver” type software (hopefully shareware or cheap). On that site I will try to make my own music and poetry accessible to listeners and readers. I am planning to continue blogging on this WordPress site because I like the idea that random readers can leave comments. (This is despite some readers complaining they can’t get my comments section to work. Heh. Hi Cheryl!)

I continue to ponder the conundrum of being a composer whose music has such a narrow appeal to audiences. It does occur to me that my music is not that attractive to others.  On the other hand, I believe in my work and understand that an important part of composing is airing out the pieces to breathing listeners. I am beginning to agree with Cory Doctorow who says that his problem is not people stealing his work but his own obscurity. Doctorow is a helluva lot less obscure than yours truly. 

Anyway. My Mom just called and I have to get in the car and take her to Meijer’s because her ride didn’t work out.  

One last thing about my “narrow” appeal to listeners. I think at best a small number of people like the music that I like and write. I do think I have a small audience. But living in such a provincial part of a country that focuses on the culture of celebrity to the expense of many of the kinds of musics and poetry and books I like underscores the fact that I am fishing in a small pond which is vastly understocked with people who can appreciate my work. Hence my interest in the Internet. In addition to building a web site around my work, I would then start doing some fishing for listeners on other music sharing web sites.

This is just part of the buzzing brain of jupe today. No time to add pics. Sorry. More later.

(N.B. the following blog entry has been corrected to reflect the fact that the author was confused about the musical, “The Pirates of Penzance,” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean,” the recent movie starring Johnny Depp) 

I was basically incommunicado all the while I was in Cornwall.

Even though the woman we were renting the cottage from mentioned wifi, it was such a hassle to get on that mostly I just tried to down load the NY Times to read.  I am guessing that foot deep stone walls do not help wifi reception. But it is kind of cool that they had wifi in such a rustic setting. 

We had to position our laptops just right in one window so that it would receive the weak wifi setting from the landlords.

While we were in Cornwall, we visited Penzance which was not far from our cottage. It took me a while to realize this was the Penzance of “Pirates of Penzance.”

The Johnny Depp movie on Pirates hasn’t really interested me all that much. The locals keep reference to the musical to a minimum in their advertising. I think I noticed it once or twice in the names of pubs or shops. That is of course when I realized the connection.

We played pool at a pub in Penzance our first night. Actually I just watched and Sarah, Matthew and Eileen took turns playing. 

The next day we drove to St. Ives. On the way we stopped at some ruins.

This area is full of large meadows with scruffy huge grass and interesting wild flowers.

I think they are mostly “moors” which as far as I can determine means that they have peat scattered about in the heather and such. Although everything looks desolate, this land has had humans on it for thousands of years. This means ruins can date back at a bewildering number of possible points in time. Our first ruins looked to me to probably have last been used during the the 18th or 17th centure. 

I have been reading in Wilkie Collins’ “Rambles Beyond Railways or notes in Cornwall taken afoot.” This is one of the many books I have in my mobipocket reader on my netbook.

He mentions witnessing copper mines in Cornwall. 

All about us monstrous wheels were turning slowly; machinery was clanking and groaning in the hoarsest discords; invisible waters were pouring onward with a rushing sound; high above our heads, on skeleton platforms, iron chains clattered fast and fiercely over iron pulleys, and huge steam pumps puffed and gasped, and slowly raised and depressed their heavy black beams of wood. Far beneath the embankment on which we stood, men, women, and children were breaking and washing ore in a perfect marsh of copper-coloured mud and copper-coloured water. We had penetrated to the very centre of the noise, the bustle, and the population on the surface of a great mine.

I couldn’t help but wonder if our ruins were the remains of something along that line.

From there to St. Ives. I should mention the roads. The road back to our cottage started out narrow and became more and more narrow as we proceeded. The brush on either side formed a pretty solid embankment. Matthew made an entire video of the ride which he threatens to put up on YouTube. I hope that he does. Sarah’s love of driving came out in these whirlwind twisting little roads. 

Meeting another vehicle entails a bit of silent negotiation as to whom can pull to the side in the frequent small areas provided. 

Even the main roads throughout Cornwall are sometimes small and charming. 

At St. Ives we mostly shopped. I liked the looks of this little bakery and pulled out the camera and took some pics.

It occurs to me that this kind of blogging might be more fun after we get back. So more later, I guess.

Sunday morning, Eileen and I made our way to the local Anglican church. I went along to spend some time with my lovely wife and also maybe check out the organ for possible practicing. I emailed the organist a week or so ago and had not received any response. 

It was good for me to attend an English parish Eucharist, I think. My previous impression was that the churches in England are either dieing or in the throes of charismatic renewal. This church seems to be more of an English equivalent of my parish back home. The hymn books had only words but no music. I assumed this was a cost cutting measure. Not only was there the traditonal choir and organ accompaniment, there was also a piano, 3 violins, clarinet, flute and trumpet. And the congregation sang heartily even chiming in on the Gloria and Sanctus despite the obvious choral nature of the settings. 

People from the local charity mission (called the Tea Warehouse) were the featured guests and arrived late. One of them stood and gave an interesting thank you and information talk about their work. His was an interesting story of post traumatic syndrome (although he did not refer to it by that name). He had served in Northern Ireland and came home very unhappy and disturbed by what he had witnessed and done there.  He began drinking heavily and ended up estranged from his wife and children and on the streets. The Tea Warehouse and the church was part of his rehabilitation. 

He arrived just in time to rescue the congregation from the preacher’s imprecation that we turn to each other and (without mentioning names) speak about something in our lives that had required us to overcome our own feelings of anger and hurt. The relief was palpable. Or maybe that was my own subjective response.

There were also many children present. 

I did manage to connect with the organist afterwards (after he played a hoary old Boelmann postlude). He was more than happy to allow me to practice there.

Which is what I did yesterday morning.

After practicing on Monday, Sarah drove Eileen and me to Straford von Avon. Matthew remained home to get some work done and possibly pop in to London to witness his hero Brian May show up at the long running Queen musical, “We Will Rock You.”

Stratford von Avon was of course touristy but fun. We stopped just out of the city to visit Ann Hathaway’s home. This turned out to be a good strategy because it was not as glitzy as Shakespeare’s birthplace in town.  Anne Hathaway was William’s wife. The building and garden were delightful. Interestingly, the place had been owned and staffed by a descendent of Anne until near the end of the 19th century or so. Mary Baker was the last one and seemed to be quite a character. 

The docent was quite entertaining and regaled us with humor, history  and interesting if dubious etymologies. For an example of slightly suspect etymology, he mentioned the term “upper crust” when showing us how the bread ovens worked. He told us the term came from the fact that the bread was cooked right on hot stones. The burnt bottom was given to servants and children while the “upper crust” was reserved for the master of the house. 

When I checked on this on my newly purchased, “Dictionary of Idioms and Their Origins” by Linda and Roger Havell, I discovered that these authors say that this phrase was coined by a Canadian judge, Thomas Haliburton, in the 19th century. Hmmm. Who knows? But the 18th century is a ways from the 17th century which was the time of the building we were in. 

The birthplace was the most jarring. Before we were granted entrance we had to watch an awful video that showered us with quotes of Shakespeare in the mouths of movie actors mostly while clips and photographs went by in a dramatic wide screen Disney display. After this stopped, the doors automatically opened and we had to suffer several more of these. There seemed to be no way to skip the presentations and go right to the buildling. Sarah remarked that it was weird to expect everyone to have to view this stuff before they could go to the building especially considering that people coming would include scholars and people primarily interested in Shakespeare in a literary way.

The final shrine was what was left of the building where Shakespeare spent his last years and died. The actual wing of the building is no longer there. Again a witty docent informed us that we were looking at where the building was not through the window of the remaining wing. Later he mentioned that they plant a “knot garden” which seems to be a garden of hedges and flowers in the shapes of ropes tied in knots. Get it? not the building, the knot garden?

Anyway, it has been an adult ambition of mine to visit the birthplace of Shakespeare before I die and that has now happened. He and Bach have been huge influences on my life and I always wanted to at least come to Stratford-von-Avon and see what it was like. 

This is one of two places I want to visit. The other is Leipzig and see where Bach spent much of his adult life. Maybe another trip, eh?

We had a nice train ride into London yesterday from Great Missenden. We headed for Tate Great Britain where Sarah used to work. We stopped briefly at a student art supplies shop so Matthew and Sarah could purchase materials for a project they are working on for Eileen’s library garden. Then into the gallery.

We were hoping to see a show that Sarah had prepared the captions and explanations for but it had been changed. We did see some examples of the work she did there. This was a large caption board. 

The current show just finishing up was on Van Dyke. More interesting to me was the collection display connecting Turner to Rothko.

There were some fascinating watercolors by Turner that plainly showed the reason Rothko remarked (from the placards) that “this man Turner, he learned a lot from me.” Heh.

But you can see his point however jocularly and arrogantly made:

At the Tate Britian shop I picked up a new title I wasn’t aware of by John Berger.

Eileen and I also purchased fancy Tate umbrellas as the day looked like imminent rain.

From Tate Britain we went to Charing Cross via a quick sandwich from the shops around Tralfagar Square which we ate on the steps there. 

I was hoping to find some grundgy used book shops on Charing Cross. I should have known better. Even though the bookshops we went to were a bit dowdy, there were obviously not that obscure.

I did spend some time in the basement at Any Amount of Books (pictured above) looking at their cheap books (everything on these shelves is a pound). I found a New Testament Greek Grammar which I perversely purchased.

Since reading John Medina and listening to other commentators on brain science I have been thinking about the possibily of reattacking Greek. The brain science says that not only do older brains (like mine) have the capacity to learn language, it can actually be good for them causing new synaptic connections in the head. Cool beans. I haven’t lost the idea of reading homer in the original. But first there’s the dang alphabet to reacquaint myself with. Hence the cheap grammar.

I also picked up a book on Music in Mind and Culture for four pounds at Henry Pourds Books.

Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture by William L. Benzon seems to be a 21st examination of how brain science works with music. Very cool. 

On Cecil Court we found many more bookstores. One shop called Travis & Emory specialized in music books.  I was in pig heaven even though we needed to move on rather quickly. Ironically I purchased several bound music scores which seemed to be from a library collection from the “Free Library of Philadelphia.” So I will be taking bound scores of organ music by Anton Heiller, Anthony Newman and Ernst Pepping home to the states where they came from.

We had dinner at a lovely vegetarian restaurant. Then on to the theater, as they say. 

I’m still processing “Waiting for Godot” which was the play we saw.

Interestingly, Patrick Stewart who played Di-di (Vladmir) was not as strong as Ian McKellan as Go-go (Estragon). I do think this might be due to the fact that he had the more difficult role. The whole play is online here. 

As when I saw “Krapps Last Tape” on the west end of London, I found certain passages deeply moving and poignant. I think Stewart’s problem is the problem of the play which is that it is comic but also philisophic. His role especially. But he gave this speech very well:

 

VLADIMIR:

Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot? That Pozzo passed, with his carrier, and that he spoke to us? Probably. But in all that what truth will there be?
(Estragon, having struggled with his boots in vain, is dozing off again. Vladimir looks at him.) He’ll know nothing. He’ll tell me about the blows he received and I’ll give him a carrot. (Pause.) Astride of a grave and a difficult birth. Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps. We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. (He listens.) But habit is a great deadener. (He looks again at Estragon.) At me too someone is looking, of me too someone is saying, He is sleeping, he knows nothing, let him sleep on. (Pause.) I can’t go on! (Pause.) What have I said?

He goes feverishly to and fro, halts finally at extreme left, broods.

A good time was had by all, I believe.

 It is telling that one of the standard subjects of Chinese poetry was visiting a remote monastery: they were good places to visit, but would the poet really want to live there? If he did, who would see his poetry? link

Interesting question which reminds me of the way I live in Holland Michigan.  I grapple with the notion that music needs listeners. I have written many pieces that remain essentially unheard. This drives me to seek venues like the street and the coffee shop in addition to playing in church.  The public performance completes my act of loving music. But it is only a small part of the time I spend with what I love.

I like many of the poems in this review. It interested me that the reviewer (and presumably the editor/translator of the book) talked about Ezra Pound’s take on Chinese poetry. Although he wasn’t my first exposure to Chinese poetry, his “translations” were formative on my understanding of it and remain in my memory as examples of poems I like. 

Here’s a poem I like from this review:

Everyone who glimpses Cold Mountain

starts complaining about insane winds,

 

about a look human eyes can’t endure

and a shape nothing but tattered robes.

 

They can’t fathom these words of mine.

Theirs I won’t even mention. I just tell

 

all those busy people bustling around:

Come face Cold Mountain for a change.

So I am standing in line, my netbook and shoes are in the gray tray to go through the security assembly line thing and my cell phone goes off. It’s my Mom’s lawyer. He says he has some new information from social secuirty. I ask if he could call me back in ten minutes because he has caught me at the airport in security. I did phone him on Monday tell him I was leaving the country on Wednesday. Anyway he said he would. But instead in ten minutes his secretary calls me and tells me he has forgotten his cell phone, left the office and could I please call him in the morning. I point out that I am leaving the country as I had previously let them know on Monday. Of course the secretary had no idea what was going on. I gave her my brother’s phone number in Garden City.

I only bring this up because it was a bit like being followed by the stress of my life right to the airport. Fun stuff.

Later Eileen and I are placidly sitting and who walks by but my organ teacher from my grad school, Craig Cramer.

He’s on his way to Frankfurt for concerts and an organ tour. He hugs us and sits down for a very pleasant chat.  Go figure.

So anyway, we are in Great Missendin, UK and I seemed to have missed Wednesday night.

Hmmm. Got on the plane 9 PM Newark time arrived in the UK 9AM local time. I did sleep some on the plane. Eileen is exhausted but I think she managed to get some sleep as well. We lucked out and got upgraded to some pretty nice steats so I think that made the 7 hour flight a bit more pleasant. On the British Air interactive entertainment computer thingo I listened to the BBC live recording of Vaughan Williams 8th symphony one and a half times. Just enough to make me realize I am in the mood for V. Williams right now. Makes sense being in Merry Old UK and all. I managed to get some sleep as well.

After having made sure my netbook would have lots of power I barely turned it on during the flight. Instead I got engrossed in Somerset Maughan’s The Razor’s Edge.  

I didn’t take time to blog this morning. I’m getting ready to leave for England tomorrow. I have been dealing with feelings of being overwhelmed and sort of numb. Classic need a vacation stuff, no doubt. Instead of blogging this morning, I prepared the bulletin information for the two Sundays I will be gone. 

Despite the feelings of mental suffocation and depression, I have continued to do things that I know are good for my soul… like read and practice.

Today I spent over an hour and a half with my friend, Jordan, reading through some pretty cool sax stuff. I really like the way he plays sax.  It was both pleasure and challenge. We will return to this after I get back. He has chosen some very challenging pieces for us to work on this summer like “Prelude, Cadence et Finale” by A. Desenclos (whom I have never head of before today) and “Concertino da Camera” by Ibert. 

I also spent a quick moment on the Messiaen piece I am working on. I grabbed some time right after an emergency dentist visit. The dentist’s office is right by my church. Last night a filling fell out of my front tooth and my dentist was kind enough to find time for me today to fix it. He told me it actually needs a crown and then didn’t charge me for his work. What a guy.

Ran across this article in the Atlantic today (it was mentioned by David Brooks in his NYT’s column): “What makes us happy” by Joshua Wolfe Shenk. I can’t say it any better than the blurb on the site:

Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant

There is also a video of Vaillant talking on the page. Interesting food for thought.

Explain to me why the New York Times reader takes forever to load when Manybooks.net can download the entire War and Peace in under 20 seconds to my computer. This is why newspapers and music distributors are dieing, they are unable to effectively transform themselves in a radically changing environment. 

Well that’s off my chest. 

Ran across the above site. If you click on the pic, it will take you to a 20 minute video that teaches about the futile chain of production and waste in our world. I watched about half of it and thought it was cool.

Mondays continue to be the day that the backwash of silly stuff like my own lack of abilities and others’ behaviors runs through my head. This is not pleasant. 

My wife could not muster attending church yesterday. I told her later it was a good day to miss because the many of the people in the choir were anxious and grumpy and oblivious.

Anxiety seems to turn down people’s ability to pay attention. I also had several people who have missed many rehearsals come in and ask obvious questions that I have answered over and over. I also have people who will ignore the fact that I am the director and trying to do stuff that requires a bit of completion before I can address their concerns. But this is all the usual stuff. What’s different is that I have lost patience in the midst of my own burn out and stress. Hopefully it wasn’t the controlling factor yesterday. But I know it was showing. 

I came out of the stressful pregame and didn’t play the prelude piece, “Rhosymedre”  by V. Williams, as well as I can and have on other occassions. But the rest of my playing was pretty good. I do like playing hymns. I think its a matter of something I can do but am not totally drawn to.  The anthem (Tree of Life by V. Williams) went pretty well. My pregame rehearsal helped it I am sure. But I am not happy with the blend of the choir. People skip rehearsals and then sing loud on sunday morning. It could be worse because they don’t sound as bad as your usual church choir. But there is no sense of over all choral sound to my ear. 

The postlude was the musical highlight of the day for me. It was the first time I had performed “Bryn Calafaria” by V. Williams and it is a lovely piece really. Of course it was a bit hard to hear because I refuse to completely over register it on my small little organ. But it was still nice.

I came home and made a Mother’s day meal for my wife and Mom. I cleverly used a bunch of food we had to take from Mom’s old apartment. This is good because she had a lot of easily prepared stuff like frozen corn, frozen chicken cordon bleu (for her and Eileen), and weird microwave brownies. I also made rice and had my own veggie fast food: a pouch of red bean curry. The best food was the potato salad I had made earlier in the morning before going to church.

My Mom’s ride to church didn’t show so she called me and I took her to the Presbyterian church.

I asked her to say hi to God for me because I didn’t think he was talking to me much these days. Today I have to run my Mom to the doctor and attend a Worship Commission meetingat church. I am thinking of driving to Grand Rapids and buying an electric adaptor for our England vacation. 

I am sincerely hoping I can stay plugged in to the Internet while we are there.

One person this week responded to my comment that he could find the lectionary online that he was not addicted to the internet. I cheerfully replied that I was. I found this extremely ironic because the man is a retired professor. I guess he has opted not to utilize the enormous online resources.

Ever since purchasing my silly little treadmill I have gotten up early and walked for 30 minutes not including a 5 minute warm up and a 5 minute warm down. No heart attack so far.

I did manage to practice the difficult Messiaen piece I am planning for Pentecost yesterday.

Also have another meeting with my friend Jordan tomorrow. Nice to have a bit of sanity planned. 

Of course I get on the plane Wednesday to get the heck out of Dodge. I’m still a bit too numb to look forward to it yet, but I know it will be good.

I am planning to do some ascerbic reading on my vacation. Pondering reading some Irvine Welsh or Martin Amis. Who knows?

I have liked this story for ages…

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” 

I heard this with the punch as “What the fuck is water?”

I think DFW precedes the following quote with the story…. 

“It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness — awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: ‘This is water, this is water.’ It is unimaginably hard to . . . stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out.”

David Foster Wallace

Mother’s day seems so manufactured to me these days. Call it my own jaded take on things. Of course I like to see people express direct affection and appreciation for each other. So screw it. 

My burn out continues. Eileen and I watched “Charlie Wilsons War” last night and it felt like a rewrite of history to me. Maybe this movie is based on true events, but the underlying arrogance that the Afghans were waiting for the Americans to come and rescue them around denies the basic fact we are still dealing with in Afghanistan. That is that the basis of this kind of conflict seems rooted in people who are defending their right to live. It was my impression prior to the movie that the USSR stepped in and was routed by unusually tough fighters, many of whom now are loyally Talibans pointing American weapons at American soldiers. But what do I know? Probably Tom Hands, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman have it right and I’m just a bitter burned out old guy in Michigan.

I had a good visit with my friend, Jordan V. yesterday.  We ate, chatted and played music together. 

I can feel the Sunday silliness looming on my immediate horizon.

I have to resist the temptation to give in to the obvious fact that most people who hear my music do not respect or even hear or notice it. The cavalier fashion in which my work is treated by the people I serve can sometimes make it hard not to be discouraged when you are as burned out as I am. I keep clinging to the notion that I do music to do it and that it is a gift to those who choose to listen. 

This morning I am going to perform three pieces by Vaughan Williams. His two organ chorale preludes on Bryn Califaria and Rhosymedre as well as a lovely apparently out of print anthem called “The Tree of LIfe.”  I have never performed the organ piece on Bryn Califaria or the choral piece before. I wish I could feel more relaxed and less anxious about church this morning. I guess it’s just the burn out. 

Eileen and I met the piano guy at the Boersma cottage yesterday. I and several family members and friends have purchased a piano to donate to the cottage. We also had wheels put on that make the piano more serviceable to the situation.

Jason is a man in a wheelchair who has been there since the cottage opened in 2007 seemed very moved by the donation. The shabaz was concerned about how loud the piano seemed. The piano guy pointed out that even though it might annoy the workers, the brightness of the piano probably serves the resident elders who are often a bit hard of hearing.

One new elder whose name I don’t remember was hovering about in a walker. When I asked her if she was a pianist she gave the standard disclaimer of people who have studied the piano but don’t feel competent. But she did say she would have to give the new/used piano a try before too long.

The installation of the piano took longer than I anticipated (after we got the wheels on, the piano guy went to his truck to look for some material to protect the walls from the iron on the wheels). I did manage to play several little Bach pieces. This is when the shabaz lady went a bit anxious. I pointed out to Eileen that this anxiety is typical in a situation where the food chain is full of people who generate impossible expectations on their employees. Freidman used to call these people peacemongers. Heh.

After this we had a full day of putzing around in Mom’s apartment at Appledorn, lunch with Mom at Wendy’s (her treat), a meeting with the hospice bereavement counselor, carting Mom around and Eileen working in the yard. I did manage to get over and practice organ a bit. 

I still have not heard back from the organist in Greater Missenden where I will be headquartered for my two weeks in England. I managed to convince myself yesterday that given some rehearsal time on vacation, I could learn the last movement (the Sortie) from Messiaen’s Pentecost Mass for Organ. I re-read Dame Gillian Wier’s comments on this piece. It finally sunk in that the difficult middle section emulates the call of the lark. Cool. Cool. 

This section of the piece is fun. There is the mad lark melody that floats over two other parts. These parts are in a sort of rhythmic palindrome. The first chord in the left hand begin 23 sixteenth notes long. The next chord is 22 sixteenth notes in duration. Each chord thereafter diminishes its value by one sixteenth note.

In the mean time the pedal notes are doing the reverse beginning with 5 sixteenth notes durative value then increasing in value by sixteenth note increments. The pedal is not the lowest voice in this ensemble since it registered two octaves higher than it is written. The low sounds come from the chords. 

Anyway, it’s fun to play and I think it would be cool to listen to. Especially if I can play it mostly correctly. 

Eileen received a bouquet of roses from Elizabeth the daughter. Very nice. She and I both are still very stressed out from the activities of the past few weeks (Dad died 3 weeks ago today). The visit to the bereavement counselor was very helpful. Eileen’s family is as usual not helping her at all, to say the least. A big piece of her grief for Dad is the fact unlike her own parents he accepted her. Ay yi yi. 

Mother’s day makes me a bit crazy the way it looms in the minds of so many people as a Hallmark moment. In the past I have made sure that my own Mother knows I love her on this day and pretty much left it at that. But since Dad’s death is so fresh I feel like it would be a good day to have Mom over for a cookout. Unfortunately this clashes with the Hatch expectations that all of the adult kids (and spouses) show up for the last hurrah with the Mom and Dad before they hop in a car and drive to their Grayling house for the summer. 

Eileen feels torn, needless to say. So she has come up with the compromise that she will drive up this afternoon (after work and during the tulip time madness) and spend some time with her Mom then. 

Families. You gotta love em.

I have had a tough week. And Fridays (and Mondays) are usually hard days for me because they follow times when I am repressing my introvert tendencies and working with people (a recent quote from a book my boss had our church read: “The public is a motherfucker.” Take this bread by Sara Miles)

I sat in my boss’s office yesterday and talked with her about my obsessing as evidence of my burn out and lack of balance.

Believe it or not, this helped a bit and I was less weird after that talk. Then later I was waiting for my Mom who was in Walgreens. The car windows were down. I was listening to the CD my daughter Sarah made for my Dad’s funeral buffet. I could feel the tension easing as the breeze blew through the car. 

A lot of this went away during choir rehearsal and the subsequent drinks afterwards last night.  My boss and I were in accord that now was not a time to work on the problems presented by my church’s music program (poor attendance at rehearsals, lack of new blood, ect.) I encouraged my wife to take a “mental health” absence from rehearsal.

My choir like so many choirs seems to be sort of “Dream Team” Exercise in dysfunction and it can be telling on people trying to act like grown-ups (that would be my lovely wife). 

I won’t go into details because it’s probably not appropriate in this venue, but suffice it to say that what is most depressing is how people treat each other. 

Anyway, I came home and did not obsess to lovely wife. I have found that sometimes venting is rehearsing frustration and doesn’t really help anything. I know it doesn’t help my wife the good listener. 

This morning the weight of my own mental shit is still there but is abating somewhat.

I am meeting the piano guy at Boersma in less than an hour to deliver the piano I and other fam and friends are donating. This will be fun.

Later Eileen and I meet with the Hospice Bereavement counselor. I am extremly curious to see how adept she will be with  us. My Mom hasn’t heard from these people yet so I will avail myself of this meeting to ask whether they are attempting to contact her or not…. see if I can move that along.

Mom is dealing pretty well with Dad’s death. “Surreal” was the word she used yesterday. But she does a lot of reminiscing out loud which is good I think. She also is getting her religion back which is good for her. I stay silent as she preaches to me about God’s providence (I have difficulty with God and providence but am glad that it is helping her a bit). 

My own stuff with Dad is pretty complex. I have more anger at him for how he didn’t really manage the last phase of his life than how he was a Dad to me. I find myself thinking of his personality over the years. This contains fond reminiscences as well as many times when it seems like he was misbehaving. Probably about usual for most people. I loved my Dad. I watched his personality ebb and tried to give aid and comfort to his physical presence as his mental stuff drained away. But I am aware of the distance he kept between himself and his life. In many ways, as his mental attributes went away what was left moved me much more to compassin. He became more vulnerable, of course, but also more comfortable with the physical. As his son I mourned his death and wept easily at the funeral. But I see myself as an adult child of my parents acting on my principles (duty to family, doing the right thing if I can figure out what it is) in how I relate to them more than simple love and emotion. I feel like I own my life and try not to play the blame game with anyone, especially the people who made me.  Anyway. Like I said complex.

Okay I know you’re dieing for today’s quote, so here it is: 

“The gift is property that perishes.”

This is from Lewis Hyde’s “The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World.” Hyde says this after he retells the Scottish folk tale, “The Girl and the Dead Man.” In this tale, three sisters separately set out to seek their fortune after their mother says they can have a large loaf of bread and her curse or a small one and her blessing. The first two sisters take the large loaf and end up being killed by the sister of a bewitched dead man. The last sister takes the small loaf, shares it and escapes their fate. 

Hyde is thinking about how gifts work (giving freely, passing gifts along) and then how that relates to the consumer society we live in . Very cool. Oh by the way, Bill Viola wrote one of the blurbs in the front section of the book:

He blurbs: This book “…. has shown me why we still use the word  gift to describe artistic talent, and that selflessness, not self-expression lies at the root of all creative acts.”

I guess I better blog since I skipped it yesterday and I’m late today. I usually do it in the early morning. But this morning I slept in. 

My sister-in-law Nancy contacted us Tuesday evening and asked Eileen to come up to Hackley Hospital in Muskegon on Wednesday morning for a family pow-wow about “Do Not Resuscitate” papers for their father. It wasn’t clear what kind of condition he was in (conscious?) but we dutifully climbed in the car early yesterday and drove up.

Eileen’s father’s health is declining. But he was conscious and the DNR papers were routine Hospital instructions. He was recently diagnosed with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmanary disease). He also has some evidence of asbestos fibrosis from his time in the US navy. His lung problems are stressing out his heart. So he isn’t doing great but he is not dieing.

Eileen found the whole thing physically and emotionally exhausting. She came home and crashed. I finished reading “The Broom of the System” by David Foster Wallace. Very funny. Recommended. Then walked over to church and practiced.

This morning I emailed a church in the village in England where my daughter Sarah lives. I have been debating about learning a pretty tough organ piece to play immediately after I get back from England. If I schedule it, I will need to do some serious practicing on vacation. I am thinking of scheduling it but having a back up piece that will require less prep.

I am finding life a bit stressful these days. Church is weighing me down as well as famiy stuff. Time for a vacation I guess. 

In the meantime I really like these excerpts from Milton Glasser’s talk I mentioned in the last post (

more from Ten Things I Learned I Have Learned by Milton Glasser 

HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN.

The brain is the most responsive organ of the body. Actually it is the organ that is most susceptible to change and regeneration of all the organs in the body. I have a friend named Gerald Edelman who was a great scholar of brain studies and he says that the analogy of the brain to a computer is pathetic. The brain is actually more like an overgrown garden that is constantly growing and throwing off seeds, regenerating and so on. And he believes that the brain is susceptible, in a way that we are not fully conscious of, to almost every experience of our life and every encounter we have. ..

DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY.

 

… Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable.

ON AGING.

Rule number one is that ‘it doesn’t matter.’ ‘It doesn’t matter that what you think. Follow this rule and it will add decades to your life. It does not matter if you are late or early, if you are here or there, if you said it or didn’t say it, if you are clever or if you were stupid. If you were having a bad hair day or a no hair day or if your boss looks at you cockeyed or your boyfriend or girlfriend looks at you cockeyed, if you are cockeyed. If you don’t get that promotion or prize or house or if you do – it doesn’t matter.’ Wisdom at last. Then I heard a marvellous joke that seemed related to rule number 10. A butcher was opening his market one morning and as he did a rabbit popped his head through the door. The butcher was surprised when the rabbit inquired ‘Got any cabbage?’ The butcher said ‘This is a meat market – we sell meat, not vegetables.’ The rabbit hopped off. The next day the butcher is opening the shop and sure enough the rabbit pops his head round and says ‘You got any cabbage?’ The butcher now irritated says ‘Listen you little rodent I told you yesterday we sell meat, we do not sell vegetables and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those floppy ears to the floor.’ The rabbit disappeared hastily and nothing happened for a week. Then one morning the rabbit popped his head around the corner and said ‘Got any nails?’ The butcher said ‘No.’ The rabbit said ‘Ok. Got any cabbage?’

TELL THE TRUTH.

The rabbit joke is relevant because it occurred to me that looking for a cabbage in a butcher’s shop might be like looking for ethics in the design field. .. I remember reading that during the Stalin years in Russia that everything labelled veal was actually chicken. I can’t imagine what everything labelled chicken was. We can accept certain kinds of misrepresentation, such as fudging about the amount of fat in his hamburger but once a butcher knowingly sells us spoiled meat we go elsewhere. As a designer, do we have less responsibility to our public than a butcher? Everyone interested in licensing our field might note that the reason licensing has been invented is to protect the public not designers or clients. ‘Do no harm’ is an admonition to doctors concerning their relationship to their patients, not to their fellow practitioners or the drug companies. If we were licensed, telling the truth might become more central to what we do.

 

So once again I wrote a post that I am not using.

This time it’s because I realize it’s probably not all that appropriate. It was about how yesterday went at church and some of my ideas about how to deal with the situation next year… people absent, late and the overlapping of educational programs with pregame rehearsal forcing people to choose between them. Whippy skippy. 

Brain Rule #7 is “Sleep Well, Think Well.” (from John Medina’s book, “Brain Rules,” that I keep mentioning in this blog.) Interestingly Medina quotes researchers who determine that 1 per cent of the population is comfortable rising around 5 AM and doing its best thinking before noon. They are referred to as “larks.”

(Musical side note: I also read yesterday that Messiaen uses the call of the lark in one of the movements of his Pentecost Mass for Organ. Fascinating. Fascinating. Right?)

About 2 per cent of the population are the late sleepers who think better in the evening or late afternoon. They are referred to as “owls.”

Most of the population are “hummingbirds” and are somewhere between these. 

Medina says owls have the worst of it because our society is not generally set up for them to sleep in and stay up. Also that these patterns change with age and other conditions. 

He envisions a time when we can determine which category we are most likely to be in by a blood test. Then educators and employers could group people by sleep type for more effective brain work. Cool idea.

He says that universally, people’s brains wind down around siesta time in the afternoon.

Naps are normal. He mentions that LBJ used to stop everything in the afternoon and don pjs and take a nap much to the annoyance of his staff.

But he points out that he was normal to do so. It was the staffers who were out of step with their bodies and their brains.

Yesterday I got up and went grocery shopping before Eileen woke up. I was able to do this because my Mom is no longer making a weekly trip to the grocery store for groceries. I do like getting this done early on Saturdays which tend to be a bit more crowded.

Mom called later and said she was quarantined to her room due to the fact that she was ill. I received this call on the way to take a look at a piano I am thinking of donating to Boersma Cottage, the place where my Dad spent his last few months and died. 

I have been negotiating with them and they seem interested. On Friday I spoke with them and Cindy (the head shabaz) said it was okay with “MIke” (presumably someone a bit higher in the food chain) as long as it was a new piano and looked okay. Uh ho. I told it was a used piano. She said it would probably be okay. I said I would take photos of it and they could decide if it looked nice enough. 

I am buying it from the guy who sold me my piano and also has tuned pianos in all the churches I have worked in here in Holland.  He told me it was in pristine shape and wanted 750 dollars for it. He is donating the cost of transporting it. My daughter Elizabeth and quasi-son-in-law Jeremy are donating a bunch of money toward it. I have also heard from a couple of friends of Dad and Mom who said they were interested in helping. Mom said she would put 25 dollars toward the cost of it. Heh. 

Here are a couple of shots of it.

It looks pretty good to me. But we’ll see what the shabaz and company say at Boersma. It would make stopping buy and playing so much easier. Also then others could use it there… elders or visitors or whoever.

So anyway, Mom was confined to quarters so I dropped off thank you notes and magazines for her as she requested. Her forehead was dry and cool. I don’t think she has the flu (ahem). I think she is exhausted from the last week. I kept taking her places partly because she was previously stuck in her room due to a flu quarantine (of other people in the assisted living place). Also because she has lots to do as we get ready to empty her apartment at Appledorn.

Somewhere in there, Eileen and I scrutinzed and then bought a treadmill for a hundred dollars.

I got up this morning and used it while reading the NYT online. 

Wow. Life is good.

Oh well, WordPress has defeated me once again. I was writing a long boring post on music and music editions and suddenly it asked me to relog in and of course I lost the entire post replete with linked images. 

I don’t have the heart to rewrite it now. Plus as I wrote it I knew that most of my readers might not be all that interested in an arcane discussion of my recent purchase of scores like Czerny’s edition of The Art of Fugue by Bach. 

I was interested to note that the philosopher Hegel recently popped up in two incongruous books I happen to be reading yesterday: “The Broom of the System” by Wallace and “Friday, Saturday, Sunday: Literary Meditations on Suffering, Death, and New Life” by Cunningham. Wallace uses a character’s voice to comment and ridicule Hegel. Cunningham, not surprisingly, cites Hegel’s ideas that drama is the highest form of art. 

I mentioned Medina’s Brain Rule #5 recently (“Repeat to Remember”) in which says that spaced reviews of material are more effective for retention than massed ones.

David Brooks (usually a bit conservative for me, but I have read books by him, read his columns and usually pay attention when he’s on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer) had an piece in the NYT on Genuis versus practice which seems to be along the same lines.

Anyway, in the same chapter Medina observes that 

“The more a learner focuses on the meaning of the presented information, the more elaborately the encoding is processed.”

Which is to say that focusing on meaning helps the retention process in the brain.

Reminds me of learning music. I strive for a level of understanding of any piece I perform. The more I attain this understanding the better I perform the music and the easier it is to do so. 

Anyway, for some reason I have been musing on the fact that my approach of choice to music is pretty primitive.

Despite my training, I so often find myself approaching music more like the pop musician I was at the age of 20 replete with better technique to be sure, but with a related aesthetic that would probably horrify many “musicians.”  

Thinking of learning two movements from Messiaen’s Messe de Pentecost for organ. Probably never have them ready for this Pentecost but whotthehell, archie, toujours gai!

I met with my boss yesterday and talked with her about possibly doing two bach cantata movements on two specific Sundays this summer. I presented her a list of 12 possibilities and then proceeded to recommend two.  All 12 were culled from previous careful study of indices and the music itself and have some connection to the gospel of the day.

I think the words of this movement possibly relate to the way Jesus goes away from the crowds at the beginning of the gospel to a deserted place but returns to teach and heal them at the time he chooses

2	Aria (Duetto) [Alto, tenor]
	Fagotto, Continuo
	Du musst glauben, du musst hoffen, You must believe, you must hope Du musst gottgelassen sein! You must be calm before God! Jesus weiß die rechten Stunden, Jesus knows the right time Dich mit Hilfe zu erfreun. to make you rejoice with his help, Wenn die trübe Zeit verschwunden, when the troubled times have vanished Steht sein ganzes Herz dir offen. His whole heart will be open to you.

Aug 9, 2009 Proper 14 year B 

Cantata 84 mov 3 Sop, Oboe, Violin, continuo

 This Sunday is one of the five 6th chapter of John gospel readings about Jesus as the bread of life…. you can see the connection.

3	Aria [Soprano]
	Oboe, Violino, Continuo
	Ich esse mit Freuden mein weniges Brot I eat with joy my little piece of bread Und gönne dem Nächsten von Herzen das Seine. And from my heart do not begrudge my neighbour what is his. Ein ruhig Gewissen, ein fröhlicher Geist, A quiet conscience, a cheerful spirit, Ein dankbares Herze, das lobet und preist, a thankful heart,that praises and extols, vermehret den Segen, verzuckert die Not. Make blessings greater, make troubles sweet.

We will do them in German with translations in the bulletin. Now I have to invite talented parishioners to learn and perform them. Ay, there’s the rub.

I am feeling cynical about that this morning.

Last night’s choir rehearsal was typically discouraging in attendence for May. 4 missing sopranos (that’s all of them) and 2 missing altos (leaving 2). One of the 2 tenors remarked later that we are not the choir we used to be. That’s right. Ah for the good old days when people actually showed up. Fuck it. 

Of course I try not to allow my discouragement to color the way I rehearse and we had a good rehearsal despite the fact that half the choir didn’t show. The usual stuff I guess.

I did find time to read another chapter in John Medina’s book, “Brain Rules: 12 principles for surviving and thriving at work, home and school.”

It was about principle or rule #5: “Short-term memory: Repeat to Remember.”

I was struck by this notion:

referring to the work of Hermann Ebbinghaus who scientifically tested and monitored his own ability to remember, Medina writes: He “…showed that one could increase the life span of a memory simply by repeating the informationin timed intervals. The more repetition cycles a given memory experienced, the more likely it was to persist in his mind. We now know that the space between repetitions is the critical component for transforming temporary memories into more persistent forms. Spaced learning is greatly superior to massed learning.“  [emphasis added]

This concurs with my own observations as a learner and a teacher. My current choir has a history of pulling stuff together at the last minute and doing an adequate job. This reinforces the fact that some of them feel that rehearsals are not all that critical since they have so much faith in their own ability to pull it together at the last minute. Also I continue to hear musicians in my church say they are not willing to come to weekly rehearsals. But one of the reasons I persist in attempting to get people to rehearse is my own experience of Medinas rule five, especially the “spaced learning” idea. 

I sometimes tell people what I think McCoy Tyner (top rate jazz pianist) might have said to his students: that it is better to practice 15 minutes every day than 45 minutes every other day. It is the spacing that allows the brain to learn better or at least that’s my own experience and the one I encourage other learners to consider.