I like putting ideas here, but today I’ll basically review the day Eileen and I had yesterday. We managed to get the Mini to the shop on time. The worker that Eileen spoke to thought he could probably have it fixed in time for me to be back in Holland at 1. Not sure why Eileen told him I needed to be back by 1 since my rehearsal was actually at 12:45 PM, but no matter.

We then went to check out the new Trader Joe’s.

It’s on the same street as the Mini shop (28th) 2 miles further east. I have been in a couple Trader Joe’s, one in California and the other in Ann Arbor. Our Grand Rapids store seems to still be feeling it’s way towards the quality of the other two shops I have seen. Eileen and I took our time and examined most of the shelves since we had a lot of time to kill.

We ended up buying some stuff. I think the most important thing was that Eileen found some frozen Kung Pao Chicken which is one of her favorite dishes,. She tried it last night after she got home and it turned out to be pretty good.

From there we went to the Schuler Books and Music Shop which is between Trader Joe’s and the Mini shop. When I go into a bookstore these days, I have a much better feeling about it than I have for years. Bookshops seem to be making a bit of comeback if I read the news correctly. Schuler definitely seems to be thriving. They have added used books which might have been about a sixth or a fifth of their offerings.

They continue to have little concerts and readings plus a nice cafe. In fact, the last time I was there was to meet a friend at the cafe, but that was some years ago.

Eileen found a weaving book. I purchased Alex Ross’s collected music essays, Listen to This ($6.50),

and a nice copy of Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses by Don Gifford ($7).

By noon, the shop had still not phoned us that the Mini was ready. We went over to the shop and Eileen settled down to wait for her car. I drove back to Holland.

I had a good rehearsal with my cellist and violinists. Eileen finally got home after 4 PM exhausted. Another day in the Jenkins household.

Period. Full Stop. Point. Whatever It’s Called, It’s Going Out of Style – The New York Times

Very cute. This article is made up of paragraphs which are sentences at the end of which they have omitted periods.

Today Eileen and I are going to Grand Rapids to bring in her Mini for a recall. The dealer has been vague about how long they will need the vehicle. We are due there at 9:30 AM. Our plan is to ask how quickly they can figure out how long they will need the car. Then leave them our phone number and go to see the new Trader Joe’s in Grand Rapids which is not too far from them. Then presumably we will head home and pick the car up later if it’s not ready by then.

So I’m blogging a bit earlier than usual.

I mentioned at the end of the blog post yesterday that I might write about the paradoxical fragility of papyrus verses the durability of marble. Worrying about historical legacy and canonical preservation has always seemed uninteresting to me, both personally and in the case of larger issues like great music and art. But I find the idea that ideas can be less ephemeral than objects interesting.

I recall an old science fiction story that put forth the proposition that the only way to convey information over time and ensure it’s transmission was to create a religion and ritual around it.

This sounds like it might have been a Heinlein novel, but it might have been Asimov. All else crumbles away and is forgotten.

When the people in H G Wells future (in the movie) discover the little talking rings that have somehow preserved knowledge from the dead civilizations of the past (the character’s past but our far future), I remember thinking about the idea of how one might preserve ideas.

This relates to a story in the current New Yorker which is thankfully online.

The Polish Rider – The New Yorker

First let me say that I recommend this story. I confess that I have only listened to the author read it (the audio is available at the link). Also, if I might add an aside to two important members of my sometimes readers (ATTENTION Sarah and Elizabeth), I would love to know if you two notice this post and take a look or  listen to this story.

The reason is that it deals at one level with the inter-relation of the arts. You two are artists of words and images. The unnamed narrator of this story examines in asides the relationship of words to images.

The narrator wonders whether when a writer uses words to describe visual art (as the writer does throughout this story), isn’t she/he actually co-opting the visual art (concrete… the durable piece of marble mentioned above) and asserting the superiority of literature (fragile papyrus).

these stories are really opportunities for the authors to assert the superiority of their own art, of literature, over painting. James’s or Balzac’s words can describe paintings the crazy artists can’t actually paint, or intuit canvases that were as of yet unpainted, unpaintable. And isn’t it really true of all ekphrastic literature, fiction and poetry, that even when it claims to be describing or praising a work of visual art it is in fact asserting its own superiority?

Ben Lerner, “The Polish Rider”

I think it’s a bit of a false dilemma, pitting one art against another, but it interests me because of the speeding up of vehicles of transmission of words and sounds via constantly renewing technologies.

Earlier in the story, Lerner writes:

” maybe the comparative unreality of writing is precisely its advantage, how it can be abstracted from any particular material locus. Isn’t that what Shakespeare says in Sonnet 55? Not marble nor the gilded monuments are going to endure, but these rhymes—powerful in part because they are so easy to reproduce, transmit—are indestructible. No pigeons are going to shit on them, or, rather, when the pigeons do shit on a particular copy it doesn’t matter; nobody is going to leave the only Sonnet 55 in a car.”

“These rhymes … are indestructible.” Wow. I immediately read over Sonnet 55 (Lerner appropriates this number for an address his story, one of many funny little cross references mixed in with current references adding to the self-conscious ephemerality of his ideas and his story).

Shakespeare Sonnet 55 – Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

“The Polish Rider” ends with a description of music. It’s obvious that musical descriptions fall under the rubric of being inferior to literature, but music is also present in the moment an experience not really quite able to be preserved in recordings. In the penultimate sentence of the piece, Lerner jogs the reader into musing after finishing the story, at least this reader. “The living record of memory….”

I have to quickly add that Proust uses music as a motif in his complex and beautiful work, “Remembrance of Things Past.” And yes it does evoke associations that echo his famous tea and madeleines.

Fraud Charges Against Jail Officers’ Union Chief With a Taste for Luxury – The New York Times

What a story! Good reporting about corruption.

Depoliticizing Anti-Trump Protests Plays Into Right-Wing Narrative | FAIR

Some clear comments about the obfuscation surrounding the violence of Anti-Trump demonstrators. I abhor violence, but it is intellectually dishonest not to see these actions as an extreme comment on Trumpism and instead (as noted in the article) as an attack on American free speech or something.

The Verve vs. The Rolling Stones (1997) – Songs on Trial: 10 Landmark Music Copyright Cases | Rolling Stone

Handy little list of cases that have all kinds of implications for artistic freedom and copyright. I recognized some but not all of them.

Google developing kill switch for AI – BBC News

PEOPLE GET READY

New elements on the periodic table are named – CNN.com

Even though it’s a trial period for these names and none of the new elements are found in nature, I still think this is very very cool.

Viewpoint: Don’t let misinformation, rants against socialism undermine your decency | MLive.com

I admit that instead of flaming people I disagree with on Facebooger, i sometimes simply shop around and find a clearer exposition of ideas. That’s how I came on this link. This one was in response to a rabid meme against socialists.

Yesterday was kind of a downer for me. This Saturday’s wedding has no music planned but “Married Life” from the movie, “Up.” When I asked about hymnody the curate shot me down. Fuck it. Jen’s out of town. I haven’t discussed last Saturday’s wedding with anyone but Eileen. To watch two young priests turn away from my own understanding of sung prayer in the Episcopal church is dispiriting but not surprising, i guess.

Then my Mom wimped out on her neurologist appointment. I say she wimped out, but she did actually have diarrhea. The problem I have with this is back during her mental troubles, I had to force her to go to the doctor, yelling at her and trying to get her to shower and dress in time to make an appointment. She was a bit cantankerous yesterday in addition to not feeling well. She told me she didn’t want to go to the doctor again. I sat on her bed and rescheduled her appointment for next Tuesday.

By this time I was feeling sorry for myself I guess. Eileen was off taking her friend Barb to the Physical Therapist. I stopped off at church and practiced for the fuck of it. It was a good idea. After playing a couple of large Bach pieces I kind of know I felt a bit better.

This morning I got the idea to check and see how Greek tragedy relates to Homer and discovered the Orestes trilogy by Aeschylus sitting next to my chair. In his introductory essay, “The Serpent and the Eagle,” Robert Fagles, the translator,  grabbed my imagination on several fronts.

He talks about Aeschylus consciously building on the great Homer stories. “Slices of the banquet of Homer,” is the phrase he attributes to Aeschylus. And the three extant plays in the tetralogy are about the family of Agamemnon who is an important character in the Iliad and Odyssey. The famous “wrath of Achilles” which begins the Iliad is directed at Agamemnon.

In the tetralogy, Agamemnon’s son, Orestes, and his wife, Clytaemnestra, kill Agamemnon.

But even more interesting to me, is how Fagles points out Aeschylus was consciously moving his story from “primitive ritual to civilized institution[s].”

Aeschylus manages to unravel the rituals of the dying god (Dionysus), the hero cult, and the legal trial. He links these to the plot of his story in ways that surprise me. The audience would have understood the plays as rooted in their rituals. In fact, the distinction in Greek tragedy between ritual and drama is not clear. Fagles compares it to the performance of the Passion Plays in Christian history.

This fascinates me.  When Fagles writes that Aeschylus turns ritual into art,  I resonate with the idea, being a church musician. The line between prayer/ritual and art is an unclear one for me. And I value the ambiguity. I am planning to read further in the Orestes trilogy. The fourth play, a comic one, is lost. There is an interesting movement in the three extant plays. The death of Agamemnon at the hands of his family members in the first play…  Orestes goes mad in the second one…

and the final play is about the transformation of the Furies who seek to avenge the violation of the filial code of Agamemnon’s death at the hands of son into a redemptive institution, from “curses to righteous causes,” the Eumenides.)

Tomorrow I think I might write about how ideas can outlast many a concrete human endeavor, or as Fagles puts it, the paradox of the “durability of marble and the fragility of papyrus.” This seems to me to be connected to the ephemeral nature of digital information. But I need to think on it a bit.

For some odd reason my blog had a slew of spam between now and yesterday. The WordPress sorts it out and allows me to mark it as spam. Not sure why I had so many. Usually I think it has something to do with the links, the pics, or search terms.

I’m back to treadmilling it seems. My new treadmill is pretty funky. I have to coax it into starting up. The distance function doesn’t seem to work properly. But what the heck, at least I can start back up with more exercising.

I don’t have too much to write today. I have noticed something, though. In my reading, the concept of a son murdering a father goes beyond the Oedipus story. I have noticed in my random reading at least two more references in Greek stories. In Antigone, Creon’s son Haemon (betrothed to Antigone) becomes so incensed with his father after finding Antigone dead by her own hand, that when his father calls him, “The boy answered no word, but glared at him with fierce eyes, spat in his face, and drew his cross-hilted sword. His father turned and fled, and the blow missed its mark.”

In the Iliad, Phoenix, the lifelong companion of Achilles, was urged by his mother to bed his father’s mistress and thereby cause her to lose her taste for older men (Homer says “kill the young girl’s taste for an old man”). The father then curses Phoenix when he suspects that he did so. Then

I took it in my head to lay him low
with sharp bronze! But a god checked my anger,
he warned me of what the whole realm would say,
the loose talk of the people, rough slurs of men—
they must not call me a father-killer…

Iliad, Book IX

Wow. Kind of a weird thing if you ask me.

After church yesterday, an elderly couple accosted me and complimented me on my playing, They are snow birds back from their winter abode. They told me they were glad I was there as the musician. I mention it to off set my whining here. I sometimes feel like I am performing to a void, that what I am doing is not being noticed.

Yesterday the pre-service crowd noise persisted into the first two stanzas of the opening hymn. I could hear the buzz as I lifted my hands to phrase between stanzas. Sigh. However, the participation quickly rose and remained strong for most parts of the rest of the service. I wish I could have been a bit more seductive in my accompaniment of the first hymn. Realizing that many of the people in the room were not with me, I plowed ahead.

Ah well. It’s hard not to be discouraged after a wedding like we had Saturday.

Onward. Upward.

New words notes March 2016 | Oxford English Dictionary

Quarterly update. Apparently this and the embedded links are available online to everyone. Excellent. I put this link up on Facebooger.

Unless You’re Oprah, ‘Be Yourself’ Is Terrible Advice. – The New York Times

I’m not sure exactly what I think about this. I know I’m guilty off crossing boundaries that seem to be what this writer means by being yourself. At least I used to do this more. Now I’m a bit better at keeping the old trap shut. Hey. I just said A BIT better.

No-Knead Bread Recipe – NYT Cooking

This is self described as one of the NYT’s most popular recipes. I like kneading.

In Turkey, a Syrian Child ‘Has to Work to Survive’ – The New York Times

Child labor instead of education. Nice.

The Ultimate Veggie Burger Recipe – NYT Cooking

This keeps popping up on my Facebooger feed. I finally bookmarked it. Looks complicated.

Hits to this blog are falling. Yesterday I had 23 visitors according to Google Analytics (which I’m not sure I trust to count actual visits anyway). So maybe besides a few faithful family members and friends, my audience/listeners is/are diminishing to the point that I’m basically sending words and thoughts into the void. This is not much different from any writing, then. Writing alone one throws words out as though to a reader or listener, but who knows who will ever read or hear them? No matter. I put these words here for whoever is interested, usually motivated by the idea that loved ones, friends, and acquaintances might be comforted to know that I am still alive and kicking.

When Eileen arrived home from her workshop last night, she asked me how my day went. Pretty good, I answered, up until the wedding.

Doing weddings in a contemporary context can be difficult and complex. I may be called on to give some feedback on yesterday’s wedding as it was the curate’s first wedding. He even asked me afterwards how I thought it went. I said okay and cited Marian Hatchett’s idea that it would be good to wait a couple days before evaluating it. (The story I have heard about Hatchett was more emphatic. Although Hatchett was an important liturgist and theologian in the Episcopal church, he also would serve as a supply priest in small parishes around Sewanee where he taught. Apparently he would often be infuriated by what he experienced in these parishes. He had a rule that he wouldn’t discuss Sunday’s celebrations until one or two days had passed for him to cool down.)

It’s hard for me to pinpoint just what bothered me about yesterday’s wedding. “Canon in D” was spelled “Cannon in D” in the program even after I pointed it out to my boss before it went to press. But that’s not it. The singer was problematic. She was nervous and amateurish and her protective lover/husband hovered nearby. She asked for a mike to sing and despite my warnings ended up using it. This is the first time at Grace I have worked with a singer who sang through a microphone.

I did try to work with her. Telling her projection was not volume. But this is futile with someone who is probably more comfortable with karaoke than sung congregational prayer.

This definitely was discouraging. The curate was nervous I think. He did some odd things which I can attribute to his novicehood. But one thing that sticks in my mind is the father of the bride wandering around at the offertory looking for the “wafers” (this was the way the curate described the bread). The father of the bride told me he and another man were to bring them up but he couldn’t find them. I told him the curate probably already had them (as indeed he did).

There was no congregational singing whatsoever. Only piano and violin were used as instruments (I think this was the request of the bride and groom but am not entirely sure). The energy of the group however, as is often the case, was upbeat.

People don’t go to weddings thinking they are going to pray. And prayer itself means so many different things to people. My understanding of liturgical prayer is that is above all an action of the group. Something done with the body and the voice.

The phrase “Good celebrations nourish and foster faith, poor celebrations weaken and destroy faith” kept going through my head while sipping my martini after the wedding. I was thinking that bad church is one of the reasons I’m so close to being an atheist. I also wondered where this little phrase had entered my lexicon.

Lo and behold, it’s from the Roman Catholic Bishops Committee on the Liturgy document, “The Place of Music in Eucharistic Celebration.” My liturgical understandings such as they are have evolved from the reforms in the Catholic church. Fortunately most of them obtain in the Episcopal church, at least in theory.

Evaluating prayer has always seemed a bit odd to me. How can one judge another’s heart?But coherence of prayer is another thing as is consistency with the stated theology of the denomination. But enough. Time to get ready to go do church.

And if Elected: What President Trump Could or Couldn’t Do – The New York Times

Some interesting possibilities. Frightening to say the least.

Palestinians Elect a New President (on a Reality TV Show) – The New York Times

And I thought it couldn’t get more surreal.

Another quiet morning. Yesterday Eileen spent the day at her workshop at Hope College. I had a quiet day at home. I did go to church and practice a bit. In the afternoon I roasted vegetables on the grill. I met Eileen at the Sushi restaurant for a nice meal together. A good day.

Today, I will go to the Farmers Market this morning.

Roasting vegetables yesterday was an attempt to continue to use what we end up purchasing at the market.

Today I am planning to purchase some trout and spinach, maybe some other stuff.

In the afternoon I have the wedding. This is one planned by a curate. There will be no congregational singing. The music is largely goofy. The bride will walk in to Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah instrumentally performed. And Aunt Suzy (literally, this is how she has been referred to) will be singing “Can’t Help Falling in Love with You” while the “unity candle” is being lit. In other words, it’s basically a soap opera wedding.

I didn’t coin that phrase. It was used by a person doing a wedding (a Minister of some sort?) that I played for once. He assured me it would be just like a soap opera and I would recognize everything. Nice.

I did manage to flip my treadmill and do fifteen minutes on it yesterday. I put it in the corner of the porch so it doesn’t jiggle the entire porch as much.

It feels like summer is here.

NYT Calls for Stronger Copyright Protection Without Calculating the Costs | FAIR

I’m finding the FAIR reports a good balance to a lot of other reporting. Recommended.

Media Trumpwash Clinton’s Reckless Foreign Record | FAIR

What are little things like facts when discussing Clinton’s Foreign policy record?

As Kingfishers Catch Fire – Poetry Foundation

This is today’s Writer’s Almanac poem. I like it. It’s a good balance to the idea that today is also Dr. Ruth’s birthday and the anniversary of Tienanmen Square.

King Tut’s Dagger Made of ‘Iron From the Sky,’ Researchers Say – The New York Times

The Egyptians or somebody seem to know the material was from a meteorite: “iron from the sky.” Cool beans.

Julia Child’s Berry Flan Recipe – NYT Cooking

Eileen and I love Flan. This looks excellent.

I did manage to get my treadmill delivered and into the front porch yesterday. Eileen spent the evening registering for her weaving workshop and then having supper with other registrants. I exercised on my new treadmill. It’s kind of funky but I managed to get it to work.  It causes the porch to shake quite a bit. I’m going to experiment with moving it around on the porch. There’s just not room for it in the house on the first floor otherwise.

I only managed 35 minutes instead of my usual 45. I guess I’ll have to work up to my old time. After exercising, I showered and had my first martini for a few days. Eileen has already gotten up and left for her workshop this morning.

I messaged Ana Hernandez on Facebooger this morning.

Jodi the curate emailed me that she wanted a recording of “Be Still and Know” to use with the “Growing into worship” kids group at church. Apparently she or someone else has taught them a different setting and she wanted to use the one we use in church by Hernandez. It didn’t take Hernandez long to get back to me and tell me that there isn’t a recording of the piece available yet. I reminded Jodi that all of the music in the hymnals has a “listen” button on Rite Stuff (the church software for our hymnal and prayerbook). I went over to my copy of Rite Stuff and found out (again) that I haven’t been successful in registering on this computer. Otherwise I might try to make Jodi an mp3 of this song. I have no idea how the play button manages to render it but that would be a way to do that.

I really don’t have much to blog about this morning. I managed to overcome some recent difficulties I have been having with my Greek studies this morning. I realized that it has gotten more difficult since I am almost up to where I have previously studied. At least now I am more satisfied that I have a better technique to study than I did (like being more thorough on the Grammar of each lesson).

Eileen and I meeting for supper tonight at a restaurant downtown after her workshop. She suggested this and I am glad.

Eileen said to me recently that I never take a day off.

Do practicing musicians do this? Is that what she is referring to? Probably not. However, I think I am making some small progress at winding down my yearly seasonal schedule. I have resolved to pick easier organ music for a while to learn and perform. That should help.

I decided to schedule an improv for the prelude for a week from Sunday and a little David Harris Trio on Olivet for the postlude. That should be an easy morning.

For her part, Eileen is gearing up for a weaving workshop being held at Hope College for the next few days.

She is planning on using our small computer those days, so I’m practicing using the big one this morning for this blog.

I installed our new printer yesterday and it seems to be working fine. We finally went to Best Buy and bought one. We bought an HP Envy 4520.

It has been sitting in the box waiting for me to hook it up.

We also went to a local Estate Sales shop and purchased a treadmill.

Unfortunately it wouldn’t fit into the Subaru. Also, I promised Eileen (and myself) that I wouldn’t try to lug the thing into the house by myself. The shop will deliver for a $35 fee but only to curbside. I left a message on my boss’s cell phone asking her if the church has transportation for something like this. I offered to donate to one of the ministries or pay someone to do this for me. She has not returned my call.

I also messaged an acquaintance locally I saw moving his household stuff using a Community Action House (a local charity) truck. I asked him if this was something they did. So far no response from him, either.

Today I’ll probably contact the church custodian and ask him if he has any ideas. I know he has a truck he sometimes uses but he’s no spring chicken himself. Maybe he and I could lug it on to my porch (where I plan to keep it year round).

NO LINKS TODAY, BUT A COUPLE OF QUOTES

“We care not ourselves
when nature being oppressed, commands the mind
to suffer with the body.”

Shakespeare, King Lear, II, iv

I have been reading Lear. Next Timon of Athens.

“With acquaintances, you are forever aware of their slightly unreal image of you, and to keep them content, you edit yourself to fit. ”

John MacDonald, Bright Orange for the Shroud, p. 19

I know. I know. I gave up on this writer. But not before making a note of this quote.

I stopped by the library yesterday and checked out two mysteries by John MacDonald. I had made up my mind I needed to do some lighter reading than Antigone. I made it through the first 24 pages before I realized it wasn’t for me. I was disappointed but there  you are.

Light reading is a bit harder for me  than I remember it being in the past. Were the novels of Anthony Burgess light reading for me? I remember the delight of each one not to be entirely recaptured on rereading. I have read science fiction all my life, enough to know that as a genre it’s somewhat elusive. I’m up to date with Margaret Atwood’s latest. I landed on an ebook copy of The Girl in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz.

I have read all of the original books in the series by Larsson. I read five chapters of it last night (15.9%).

This morning I got up feeling a bit fuzzy. Still skipping my evening drinks so that’s probably not what was going on. Who knows? My Greek Grammar has bogged down a bit. Does it really matter if I understand “middle verb participles”? Probably. I’ll work more on it tomorrow.

I finished reading a translation of Antigone I have been reading. I poked around in the church music books Rhonda gave me. Then a poem by Auden and one by Kenyon. I’m still feeling a bit fuzzy.

Last night, weirdly, after supper, just before Eileen began her nightly viewing of The PBS New Hour, I had a strong urge to play piano. For the last few years, I have found the PBS News Hour more and more insipid. The odd exception to this seems to be the weekend version of it which is shorter and pithier. Eileen enjoys it. I decided to drive over to the church and play piano for a while since I had the urge. This didn’t seem to bother Eileen so off I went.

Usually at that time I am attempting to stay up to 7 PM before going to bed. Thankfully the church was completely empty so I played Beethoven variations, Glass etudes and ended with some Bach. I came home relaxed and then read.

Summer is shaping up nicely.