“The difficulty of modern styles is made by the fragmentary stupidity of modern life, its lacunae of sense, loops, perversions of instinct, blankets, amputations, fulsomeness of instruction and multiplications of inanity. To avoid this, accuracy is driven to a hard road. To be plain is to be subverted since every term must be forged new, every word is tricked out of meaning, hanging with as many cheap traps as an altar.”

So writes William Carlos Williams in a prose-poem marked 11/13 (presumably 1928). As I read this passage this morning I was struck how it still resonates despite the slightly dated feel of the sentences and words.

“Fragmentary stupidity of modern life….” This definitely describes the internet and other assaults on our sensibilities.

I maintain it doesn’t have to be an assault. But that requires more thinking, context and effort than many seem interested in making.

A “lacunae of sense, loops, perversions of instinct, blankets, amputations, fulsomeness of instruction and multiplications of inanity..” also accurately describes the Interwebs.

But at the same time I insist that at this point access to online ideas is for me the same as having a vast reference library of not only ideas, prose, and sources but also musics of all kind.

It feels fragile like a bubble about to burst. Or rather it is hot and alive like a piece of cooling metal that will soon solidify into something that will be much less beautiful and wonderful.

By this I mean, that I have a foreboding that this magnificent tool of connecting humans with themselves and knowledge will soon be sort more of a Walmart experience. One can buy things that others are interested in, but eccentric interests will be left in the dust.

Christopher Logue observers in his introduction to his War Music that there are “those whom we may choose to count among the hopelessly insane: the hard core of Unprofessional Ancient Greek Readers, Homer’s lay fans.”

I have played around with Greek with the goal of reading Homer in the original. I aspire to the kind of madness Logue speculates has kept Homer alive to lay readers for centuries.

It is just this kind of madness that might get lost in the dust of an evolving Internet for consumers. But we’ll see (assuming we both live long enough, dear reader).

Finished off The Given last night. I had to download it to Eileen’s netbook which she has graciously loaned me for the duration until I replace or repair my own.

As I approached the ending, the story became more and more familiar to me. I suspect I may have read this book a while back. The beginning 2/3rds of the book was unfamiliar. But I have found that I read so much more slowly and thoroughly than I did even 20 years ago that I rediscover prose I have passed through before in startling ways.

Also I think as one ages one can actually expand one’s understanding and horizons via the experiences of paying attention to being alive.

Hey. It could happen.

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Newt Gingrich Stumps in New Hampshire : The New Yorker

About half way through this article. Gingrich fundamentally disinterests me in the same way Evangelical preachers do, I find him boring, distasteful, woefully misinformed and basically obviously operating from a sense of self interest. But mostly I ignore him as much as possible. This article starts out pretty sympathetic so it’s probably a good idea for me to read it to get a bit of balance.

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Queens Libraries Serve 59 Languages – NYTimes.com

59 languages. This is so cool to me. I love libraries.

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Broad Institute Collaboration Began With a Disastrous Lunch – NYTimes.com

Broad Institute Director Finds Power in Numbers – NYTimes.com

Interesting couple of articles. Broad (pronounced to rhyme with “code” according to one of the articles) Institute represents an encouraging collaboration between institutions (Havard and MIT). But more interesting to me is the second article which profiles a fascinating thinker: Eric Lander. I love it when people jump around in disciplines and exhibit extraordinary abilities while ignoring accreditation requirements.

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In Play-Off Between Old and New Violins, Stradivarius Lags – NYTimes.com

In blind tests, violinists could not tell expensive old violins from newer ones. The proof is always in the sound. But subjectivity obviously plays a strong role in how we understand ourselves and what we prefer.

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Reaching Back 2,000 Years to Unravel a Curse – NYTimes.com

I love this stuff.

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Angkor, Seat of the Khmer Empire, Wilted When Water Ran Low – NYTimes.com

Why do empires come and go? Water supply in this case?

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Yesterday, I had a nice back and forth conversations on Facebook regarding this article.

Do the Classics Have a Future? by Mary Beard | The New York Review of Books

I like that she mentions late Christopher Logue’s renditions of Homer since he is someone I read and admire.

Basically she reviews from an insider’s point of view the history and the arguments for and against the use of the classics to understand our civilization.

“.. cultural understanding is a collaborative, social operation.” she writes and I agree

For me, context is very helpful at this stage of my life and my thinking.

She uses the play, The Browning Version, and subsequent movies based on it as a springboard.

I have put the 1951 version at the top of my Netflix queue.

“Browning” is Robert Browning and the “version” is his version of Aeschylus’s Agamemnon.

You can click on Mary Beard’s wonderful essay if you want a synopsis of the plot of the play and movie, The Browning Version.

In the conversation on Facebook yesterday I pointed out

that an understanding of history via the classics, the bible and other sources is necessary to an understanding of the arts. How does one understand great art if one doesn’t know the stories of what is being portrayed in the pictures? How does one understand Mendelssohn’s Overture to the Midsummer Night’s dream if one doesn’t know the play? (I love the way the 18 year old M orchestrates the hee haw of the donkey…. I guess this was actually a suggestion made to him by a friend…. M himself was a classicist and read Greek and Latin…)…

The conversation verged on actually talking about ideas online. Go figure. This is tantalizing since that was my idealistic (quixotic?) idea of what the Web could do when I first learned about it.

My netbook died last night. Bah.

I will have to replace it soon. I can use Eileen’s old one in a pinch (treadmilling)…..

Planning this upcoming Sunday, I chose to have my choir sing “Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam” in English.

There is a solid version of it in the Hymnal 1982 which preserves the rhythmic treatment of the original.

I am planning to pick out a postlude and prelude based on it, probably by Bach. I play a couple already. I need to get to the console and goof around to make this decision.

I have been in a foul mood for most of the holidays despite the wonderful company of my wife and the rest of my family. Yesterday Eileen put it well when she said that I seem to be somewhere else.

A small part of this mood is a determination that quality work is its own reward.  Although I feel appreciated at work, I would be naive to ignore the basic irrelevance of my interests and work to most people who hear my music. Hence, I want to do stuff at church that is of the highest quality so that the mundane and banal are challenged (complemented?) by the presence of well executed quality stuff.

If few take notice (as it sometimes seems), then I still get to do good music. So what the heck.

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The Danger of an Attack on Piracy Online – NYTimes.com

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Four Attacks in Queens With Homemade Firebombs – NYTimes.com

You heard about the LA burnings, but did you hear about the ones in Queens?

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Gay and Afraid in Uganda – NYTimes.com

Intelligent comment.

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Nobody Understands Debt – NYTimes.com

I believe this.

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In China, the Grievances Keep Coming – NYTimes.com

Explanation of the unusual two tracks of Chinese national government and local governing.

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Homeward Goes the Dust Bowl Balladeer – NYTimes.com

Woodie Guthrie as dang liberal and communist.

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I got up this morning and read poetry, non-fiction and then played some Beethoven on the EP with the headphones (Eileen is still in bed).

There were about 50 people at church yesterday morning. No one commented on the prelude (Mov 4 – The Word from Messiaen’s Nativity). Here’s a solid performance of this piece from Youtube. He plays the slow section even slower than I did. I like it that way.

I had problems with the organ during the performance of this piece. Somehow one of my presets reverted to a wrong setting. This sometimes happens with older organs. I managed to save the performance despite playing it on some of the wrong stops. It’s difficult to know what kind of meaning this kind of music has for the people who heard it. Music is such a background phenomenon in the United States. I did have a bulletin note explaining Messiaen’s intentions in it.

But I’m very glad that I have now learned and performed several of Messiaen’s meditations on the Nativity. I think it’s pretty solid music. And very beautiful to my ears.

During the offertory a soprano sang a Ned Rorem song (“Christmas Carol”). In the middle of it her cell phone began ringing.

She continued to singing and tried to turn off the phone at the same time. Here’s a nice little Youtube of the song she was singing.

The postlude was “Allegro” From Concerto 5 in F Major by G. F. Handel, op. 4 No. 5, HWV 293.

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The truth is the best bullshit – Boing Boing

Interesting explanation of bullshit and lies from Apple, Google, & Facebook.

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Now That the Factories Are Closed, It’s Tee Time in Benton Harbor, Mich. – NYTimes.com

Totally missed this extended article about a local Michigan town. Ran across it yesterday.

Letters in response:

The Strange Second Life of a Michigan Factory Town – NYTimes.com

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Do the Classics Have a Future? by Mary Beard | The New York Review of Books

Bookmarked to read.

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After reading some William Carlos Williams, I then finished off Given by Wendell Berry.

Here’s one of the ones I marked to go back and re-read.

It takes all time to show eternity,
The longest shine of every perishing spark,
And every word and cry of every tongue
Must form the Word that calls the darkest dark

Of this world to its lasting dawn. Toward
That rising hour we bear our single hearts
Estranged as islands parted in the sea,
Our broken knowledge and our scattered arts.

As separate as fireflies or night windows,
We piece a foredream of the gathered light
Infinitely small and great to shelter all,
Silenced into song, blinded into sight.

I copied this from another blogger (too lazy to type it in if I can find it someone else has). I found some misspellings. I guess that’s the danger of doing that sort of thing.

I have been keeping track of books I read via the online (free) bookmarking service I use (http://www.diigo.com). I made this particular bookmark a permanent public URL: http://www.diigo.com/list/sbjenkins0/books-read

I note that the last two books I have finished reading use a form of the word, give, in the title (The Gift by Hyde & Given by Berry). Interesting serendipity.

I find a URL which features the book in order to put it on this list. This morning I was on this one. It’s the google book link. I noticed that 25 people had reviewed Berry’s book of poems. This was a bit startling to me, because I really have no one in my life right now that talks to me about poetry (or music for that matter).  Once in a while I feel sorry for myself about this sort of thing, but as I age I have come more and more to accept the solitary artistic life as one that has many consolations and rewards.

It’s nice to think there are 25 people out there who have actually read this book. Forgive my cynicism but many years ago (as a bookseller) I decided that owning a book has little to do with whether you actually read it or not. Most people do not read books it seems. And even the ones who have them, often do not do so.

So I like thinking that there are 25 little shards of light on google books that have read Berry’s book.

I found the book uneven. Berry is struggling with the whole pastoral thing he has made his own. We live in ugly times. He has responded with sermonizing about local economies and farming. But inevitably as a poet he must confront the ugliness in his work. He does some of this in this book. These are the poems that interest me the most. Also the ones about old age.

But he doesn’t seem as strong to me as William Carlos Williams (of course). Williams can write a poem in the 1920s that describes a scene of nature and to me it rings as clear and true as Japanese Haiku or pastoral Chinese poetry as I read it in this century.

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The Damage of 2011 – NYTimes.com

I think this editorial sums it up pretty well. I know it’s partisan but what the writers say seems to me to have happened.

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Kirk Douglas on Trumbo – NYTimes.com

Hey. Kirk Douglas wrote a letter to the NYT. Coolness.

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Cities’ Cost Cuttings Leave Residents in the Dark – NYTimes.com

Highland Park, Michigan is one of the cities.

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Keynes Was Right – NYTimes.com

Paul Krugman makes sense to me.

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Norman Lear on fighting for the food fight – latimes.com

Wow. Norman Lear is still alive and keeping the liberal flame alive.

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A couple of artists who are new to me:

jonasburgert.de

Lou Beach: Stories & Pictures

My brother and his wife gave me a book by the latter artist as an Xmas gift.

Ta-Nehisi Coates mentions in passing in an interview from this week’s On the Media that he feels that blogging is something that one can only do for so long, then one should probably quit (due to burnout?).

I find that pretty startling. I guess it’s because I am not a commercial blogger or something. Coates is being interviewed because of his adroit managing of the comments section of his Atlantic blog. My “blogging” (which actually historically preceded the term) has much more to do with my life-long habit of keeping a journal. The adjustment for me was doing a public journal and keeping it appropriate. I guess I’m still learning about that. Thank goodness it’s so easy to delete something that I find was inappropriate in retrospect.

In another section of the OTM show, Rebecca Rosen who also writes for The Atlantic described an idea of online conversation on the Internet that has not been realized.

Although this is another passing comment, I was delighted to hear someone else entertains the expectations that I have had since the inception of the Web, that is that it might provide a way for humans to converse and learn more from each other.

Rosen bemoans that this has not happened.

I found it interesting that when discussing comment sections online, neither Rosen nor Coates mentions the way back and forth conversing occurred in the BBS listservs. If you don’t recognize this, the Internet before the Web allowed one to basically trade email-like comments back and forth with a group of other interested individuals. There was much less flaming (but of course there was still that sort of thing). The comments were much easier to moderate.

I guess it’s ancient irrelevant history. So much thinking seems to ignore any contextual ideas beyond the popular notions and understandings of the moment.

I guess I’m feeling a bit glum this morning. Physically I am more rested. Negotiating my way through the tricky jungle of family relations is exhausting and my emotions are as deflated as my body was yesterday.

But toujours gai, archie, there’s some life in the old gal yet.

I’ve been up reading poetry and non-fiction.

Then I played through a bunch of Mendelssohn piano music.

I have been thinking about the idea of purchasing a video cam.

What might push me over the edge is that I am working on a difficult prelude and fugue by Bach (the D major). I’m actually reviving this one from Grad school.

While I was in undergrad, I attempted to learn and perform it on my own. The performance was particular disastrous. I was playing an awful electronic organ (it was basically a theater organ) in a converted gymnasium church where I worked in Trenton. When the quick pedal statement of the intricate fugue subject came in, I chickened out in the performance and did something I had never done before: play the entire piece on the manuals. It was a horrible experience even though I managed to make the piece sound about right.

When I went to grad school one of my goals was to learn and perform the piece well, which I did.

My overall technique on both piano and organ has been pretty much transformed in the last ten years. So my learning approach is much more thorough and meticulous than it ever was in college.

I suspect that I might be wavering a bit in my playing of the fugue subject (especially in the pedals). So monitoring my practice via taping would be a good idea, I think.

In addition, I would probably post recordings of me playing on occasion.

But we’ll see.

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My brother, Mark,  and sister-in-law, Leigh, just left for the next leg of their Xmas marathon throughout the Midwest.  The next stop is in Ohio which is where Leigh was raised.

While Mark was here, he made a very interesting comment that he views his writing as an end in itself to pursue insights (to paraphrase him). I like that a lot. It certainly fits me and my use of writing here and other places (private journals, what have you).

Putting words together to make meaning helps me think more clearly and understand my self and my ideas better.

So I persist in this endeavor which is now called blogging ( I used to think of it as having my own web site).

I recently ran across a new take on the blind men and the elephant.

Triarchy Press: the axis of praxis: Idioticon – The Missing Elephant

The above link is a synopsis/sales pitch for a book.

Basically it shares Donald Michael’s take on the story that when the parable is considered in a more contemporary context the person who is most blind in story is the person who thinks they can see the whole elephant. The author of the blog entry linked (Idiotcon… probably staff writer[s] for Triarchy Press) says it this way.

“In today’s world there is little chance that any of us will ever know more than one small piece of the elephant. And there are now so many different pieces, they change so rapidly and they are all so intimately related one to another, that even if we had the technology to put them all together we would still not be able to make sense of the whole.”

The parable of the elephant has been a defining one for me. I have experienced life as listening to many people with different parts of what seems like wisdom to me.

But I quite like this new take.

Idiotcon shares six salient insights Michael put in his book called “ignorance generators.”

I’m still working this stuff out, but here’s a quick glimpse of the first four. All of them are sketched at the link above and presumably come from the book.

1. At this point, we have both too little and too much information simultaneously. We can’t grasp the whole. There’s not enough time given the huge amount of data and input one comes up against.

2. Too many bifurcated understandings and little or no common values exist in our society and our public discussions.

3. In such an array of confusion, how does one establish contextual thinking? I think of context usually in terms of history of a subject or idea, common defined vocab and current conversations/understandings in a given area. As our technology continues to shave us and our discussions into discreet unaware echo chambers, a historical fact or an insight from another informing a discussion or exposition of ideas is a rare phenomenon, indeed.

4. Linear thinking is less and less helpful. I can remember my first experience with the idea of hyperlinks.

It was with a software program developed around the poem, “Ulysses,” by Tennyson. The poem itself was linked to definitions, exposition of themes and ideas in the poem. There were many different videos of famous readings of the poem (including Ted Kennedy’s moving use of it in eulogy to JFK).

At the time I felt like hyperlinking was a concrete expression of how the human mind works (non-linearly, if you will).

I recall that this was before the World Wide Web, but after the Internet was up and chugging away.

Linking (non-linear thinking) became very easy and natural after WWW. I  would even say necessary to me.

Drawing straight lines doesn’t work any more in terms of thoughts, ideas and communication. I think this lack of straight line thinking is pretty wonderful but it is definitely a problem to many and especially those who don’t notice how they think.

I am figuring out how to get a copy of this book. Might have to actually buy the sucker. It’s available on Amazon, of course.

I just called the local bookstore to order it (trying to buy local). They might have to sell me a used copy via a distributor but what the heck.

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The Big Lie – The Daily Beast

Newsweek writer, Michael Thomas, sounds the alarm and predicts a wild response to the inequities in American life.

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Economic Downturn Took a Detour at Capitol Hill – NYTimes.com

About half of the members of Congress are millionaires. Sooprise, sooprise.

Congress has never been a place for paupers. From plantation owners in the pre-Civil War era to industrialists in the early 1900s to ex-Wall Street financiers and Internet executives today, it has long been populated with the rich, including scions of families like the Guggenheims, Hearsts, Kennedys and Rockefellers.

But rarely has the divide appeared so wide, or the public contrast so stark, between lawmakers and those they represent.

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San Diego’s Civic Organist Survives to Welcome Another Year – NYTimes.com

A city organist. Cool.

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Stephen Glass’s Road to Redemption – NYTimes.com

A public liar works his way to redemption.

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Putin’s Children – NYTimes.com

Bill Keller, former NYT editor, parses out the recent Russian stuff using his time on the ground there and people he knows.

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Andrew Geller, Architect, Is Dead at 87 – NYTimes.com

Interesting architect.

He designed the house where Khrushchev and Nixon had their famous kitchen debate.

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Federal judge allows registered sex offenders in Michigan homeless shelters | Michigan Radio

Ever since reading Lost Memory of Skin by Russell Banks I have been more aware of the box these criminals are put in by our society. As always the people who are the most outcast interest me. They tell us so much about ourselves.

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Didn’t have time to blog yesterday. Hosting my brother and his wife. It’s nice to have fam visit. My Mom wasn’t up to a meal with the five of us at my home, so we joined her for lunch at the nursing home.

I did manage to get some practice in. I hope I can do so today as well.

In the evening Mark and Leigh consented to let Eileen and I continue on with the recent TV series we have been watching on Netflix.

As I age I find moving images less and less interesting.

But at the same time I like to spend time with other humans I love and it is a common way to do so. Eileen and I have been taking time to have movie dates. It does seem to be a good thing.

We stumbled across “Breaking Bad.”

I heard a recent radio movie critic comment that the upcoming closing episodes of the fourth seasons was as good or better than any movie he was reviewing. I checked on Netflix and found that there were 33 old episodes. Eileen and I watched a couple and got predictably drawn in.

I was interested in Mark and Leigh’s reaction to this series since they are much more movie/tv literate than Eileen and me.

They seem drawn in enough to watch a couple episodes with us. Surprisingly they found it “dark” (Leigh’s word). “Darker than Dexter.” I’ve never been drawn into Dexter since I find the premise pretty distasteful, even though I like the actor who plays him quite a bit.

Today we are doing more family xmas.

Mark’s adult kids and their significant others are coming over for the day for some food and presents. Since my meal for yesterday was canceled we have more food than we need to feed everyone. I look forward to seeing everyone and chatting.

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Eileen is at the orthodontist having her braces removed! Hurray! She has been wearing them for over two years and is ready to get her teeth back.

I continue to be pretty exhausted. My brother and his wife arrive this evening, so we’ve been re-arranging the house so there will be a bit more room than usual for guests to get around.

My daughter, Elizabeth, made a link to some places my father and his father lived on Google Maps. I think it’s a pretty cool idea.

Paul Jenkins Memoirs places

I just got around to reading Sunday’s New York Times yesterday….. Usually they do significant deaths of the year some time around Xmas and New Years. This year they turned over the mag to Ira Glass and company. They outdid themselves telling some very cool stories.

I recommend the entire thing:

Link to These American Lives Interactive

So far here are a couple I thought were especially interesting.

A First Time for Everything

Hundreds of 2011 obits have something in common. The people who died were the first African Americans to fill ordinary and extraordinary roles in our society.

The Whole Truth

A sworn deposition that tells a helluva story.

Like I say, I recommend you browse through it (assuming the web site lets you…. ). I haven’t read a dud yet.

300 Free eBooks: Download Great Classics for Free | Open Culture

Open culture has a cool list of free ebooks.

Lieberman wants Taliban blocked on Twitter – Boing Boing

We apparently become what we abhor.

Eileen and I had a nice quiet Christmas.

And all the music for Christmas at work came out fine.

I relied a lot on my own abilities this year, specifically exploiting organ accompaniments to add interesting sounds to choral anthems. I also prepared several pieces by Bach and one by Messiaen.

Yesterday found me actually sitting and choosing organ music for the following Sunday just before the Christmas Day service.

I had already decided to play the fourth “Meditation on the Birth of Our Lord,” “The Word.” by Messiaen as a prelude for next Sunday. I wanted to pair it with another piece of decent organ rep. Landed on a Handel organ concerto movement.

This morning I awoke pretty exhausted.

Yesterday after church we went and checked in with my Mom and then drove to Whitehall for the annual Hatch Xmas.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. I mentioned to Eileen that all the Hatch children at the party were “characters.”

I like it when kids aren’t afraid to interact with me. I also enjoyed handing around small glasses of the micro brewed beer I had brought with me for people to taste.

Eileen and I stayed and helped her Mom return her trailer to normal (moving chairs and stuff back into their usual place). I was glad we could do this because this usually falls on Eileen’s sister, Nancy and her husband, Walt.

This morning I got up and got right to work on preparing info for next Sunday’s bulletin. This included writing the following bulletin article:

Listener’s guide to today’s organ music and vocal solo Olivier Messiaen composed “The Word” as the fourth of nine “Meditations on the Birth of the Lord.” Last week we heard “The Shepherds” which was number two of the nine. In “The Word,” Messiaen once again paints a picture in sound. The loud pedal solo of the first section, Messiaen believed could make a listener think of “the long trumpets of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement and also certain themes for trombone in Wagner’s scores.”  Either way, Jon Gillock has written that the first half of the piece is a “vivid aural depiction of the phrases from the Psalms that Messiaen has enscribed this movement with: The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son, From his breast, before the dawn existed.” Gillock continues, “It is about the conception of the Son by the Father—from the Son’s point of view…. [seen] in an outward, fiery manner.” First, we hear a bit of a whirlwind. Then dramatic sounds from the organ pedal division mentioned before which suggest the voice of God speaking to the Son. Then a fanfare followed by a quick irregular rhythmic section. Could this section be the tenderness of the love of God begetting the Word from his own breast?After this the pedal solo returns one last time suggest God calling Christ by name. The second half of piece is much more meditative. Messiaen has said it “symbolizes the Utterance of the Word…..  [and] comes from sequences of plainsong in its phrases, Hindu ragas in its character, and ornamented chorales of Bach in its arabesques, which highly decorate the solemn melody.” Ned Rorem composed today’s vocal solo. Born in 1923, Rorem is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer and diarist. He is best known and most praised for his song settings. Today’s postlude was drawn from Handel organ concertos Op 7, HWV 306–311. Handel composed six organ concertos for organ and orchestra in London between 1740 and 1751. They were written for performance during his oratorios and contain some of his most popular and inspired movements. submitted by Steve Jenkins, Music Director

Laurie, the soprano mentioned in the article, asked if I could use the Rorem solo, “The Christmas Carol,” at one of the services around Xmas. When I offered her the Jan 1 spot, she took it. I love Rorem anyway, so it actually makes a nice piece for next Sunday.

Anyway, dear reader, I hope you are having a good holiday season. I know I am.

Up this morning reading poetry online. Here are a few I liked.

A Penitent Considers Another Coming of Mary by Gwendolyn Brooks

A Stable Lamp is Lighted by Richard Wilber

Journey of the Magi by T. S. Eliot

An Xmas Murder by Alfred Corn

Taking Down the Tree by Jane Kenyon

To the Garbage Collectors in Bloomington, Indiana, the First Pickup of the New Year by Philip Appleman

Dang. The package I mailed to my daughter, Elizabeth, in New York was just returned to my back porch.

I mistakenly sent it to her old work address. Poop. Just chatted back and forth with her on Facebook and got an address update and a quick check-in.

So Christmas is looking pretty calm and good from the church music job point of view.

I am playing three pieces by Bach and one by Messiaen in the next two days for services. I have been working hard on them and also preparing a couple of more extensive organ accompaniments to choral anthems for this evening.

I just finished working on some of the more tricky sections in the Messiaen piece I want to play next Sunday (Le Verbe). I can do this on the Electric Piano with headphones so I don’t disturb my lovely wife who is still resting.

Also threw in some Schubert this morning. I have been playing through a bunch of piano pieces by Schubert, Prokofiev, Beethoven and a piano reduction of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. I find  Tchaikovsky unnervingly tricky even though the music is familiar. It’s about time I added it to my playing repertoire, I guess.

I am reading Auden’s Age of Anxiety. It’s a long poem about four people in a bar in New York. They seem to be expressions of his personality and speak in alliterative un-rhymed verse.

I plan to then listen to Bernstein’s Symphony (no. 2) based on this poem.

Finishing up reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

I think this book is better written than Stephen King’s 11/22/63 which I recently completed reading. Have been contemplating a re-reading of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, but I can’t lay my hands on my copy of it.

I would like to re-read my copy because I tend to put notes in my reading copies.  If I can’t find it, I will eventually purchase a cheap used copy. I don’t think this particular book is one I want to read as an ebook. It has lengthy convoluted footnotes to footnotes which might make an ebook copy cumbersome.

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Chicago Democrats Obeyed Law During Redistricting, Court Says – NYTimes.com

Gerrymandering makes me crazy.

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Bradley Manning Awaits Decision on WikiLeaks Trial – NYTimes.com

Transgender issues seem to be figuring prominently in the coverage….  Also,  it looks like Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame got kicked out of the courtroom during this hearing. The future is fun.

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Washington Monument’s Damage Is Detailed – NYTimes.com

Remember when they were rappelling on the Washington Monument? This is what they found out.

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Arlington National Cemetery Markers May Have Errors – NYTimes.com

Inefficiency always fascinates me.

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Michigan City of Troy, Led by Tea Party Mayor, Rejects Federal Dollars – NYTimes.com

The Tea Party Mayor is also on record that since New York recognizes same sex marriages, she will no longer carry her New York bag and referred to the gay people as “queers.” Nice. Good old Troy Michigan. God forbid they should be the ones to get Federal dollars. The monies they rejected will not go to pay for the deficit or anything. Just to another community. Hopefully one a bit more interested in investing in itself (although there was  no initial local cost involved here and according to this article maintenance required a minimal amount of city monies).

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I haven’t been putting up many links in the last few posts, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been bookmarking articles I have read or intend to read. It just seemed that since I was indulging in such lengthy verbosity, albeit with “pictures,” it might be a bit much.

So today I am thinking more about links.

I’m reading Limits of Power for a second time. This morning I took note of a couple of articles in the footnotes I wanted to run down line and possible re-read:

The first is from October 2002: The Struggles of Democracy and Empire by Mark Danner Op-Ed – NYTimes.com

Bacevich says that Danner

“… got it exactly right. The strategy devised by the Bush administration in response to 9/11 was ‘comprehensive, prophetic [and] evangelical.’ It derived from the assumption that , ‘for evils of terror to be defeated,’ most of the Islamic world needed to ‘be made new.’ The ultimate aim of that strategy was nothing less than ‘to remake the world’ or at least what the administration referred to as the Greater Middle East.”

Bacevich, Limits of Power p. 59-60

Bacevich is retired colonel from the U.S. army and speaks with expertise. It’s interesting the week we supposedly came home from Iraq to review the whole mess. Danner’s article is written on the eve of the invasion. He (rightly I think) says that the invasion of Iraq was a basic turning point in way the United States was beginning “a new imperial season,” shunting aside the words of John Quincy Adams . “That America, despite its great power, ”goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”

The second article also comes from a Bacevich footnote:

Is Freedom Just Another Word for Many Things to Buy? – New York Times

Written in 2006, this article is a good balance not only to the present holiday season of consumption but to our American life styles in general.

Finished reading Stephen King’s 11/232/63 this week.  It only took me 15 days. Ahem. I’m pretty sure I could have whipped it off quicker but I tend to spread myself thinner than just reading one book.

This book left me a bit like his The Stand, not a bad read, not a bad plot. Probably the most fun stuff is the recreation of America in 50s and 60s. King’s ear is calibrated well to this period. At least this boomer enjoyed reading the nostalgia the main character has as he spends time in the past.

I also ran across another alt-history title and have interlibrary loaned it for fun.

In his The Alteration, Kingley Amis re-imagined a world history in which Luther became Pope and there was no Reformation. I think that sounds like a fun read especially at the droll hands of the elder Amis.

The Burning Babe. Robert Southwell. 1909-14.

I always re-read this poem around Xmas. It’s a bit of a antidote for me personally to the way so many people see the Christ as a baby. I of course am not sure if there is God…. most of the time I’m pretty sure there isn’t. But I’m always sure that Jesus grew up and doesn’t exist as a baby. Despite the Infant of Prague that festooned a Catholic school I worked at in Detroit for a few years.

I remember Raymond Brown being good about this kind of misunderstanding.

I dont’ have this laying around since I got rid of a lot of my religious books in the last century. But from my training I remember Brown as that odd thing: the sane Roman Catholic liturgist/bible dude.

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Looking for a Place to Die – NYTimes.com

A nurse talks about the difficulties the law sometimes present to those of us who die…. that would be everyone, right?

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North Korean Mourning Blends Emotion and Coercion – NYTimes.com

I like the way the press that I read has identified the weird blend of realism and ritual in the public mourning in North Korea. It rings truer than the usual way Americans see the “other.”

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Terrorism Suspects – NYTimes.com

It’s only fair to link in Senator Levin’s defense of his horrible bill in this letter to the editor. I remain unconvinced. As I said in my email to him and the other Michigan Senator, I still wonder what in the world they were thinking?

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A New Kim. A New Chance? – NYTimes.com

Nicholas Kristof provides some further history and understanding about what’s happening in N. Korea. I especially was fascinated by the loudspeakers installed in every home with no off button or volume button. Wow. George Orwell, or what?

I discovered the world wide web back in the 80s. This means I have been goofing around with this form of communication for easily  over two decades.Initially  I used dial-ups to connect to what we called “list-servers” and BBSes or bulletin-board-systems. Via these I had conversations with people who were interested in what I was interested in.

As soon as I understood it was possible I began building my own web site.  After glimpsing the initial “Celestial Jukebox” of the first incarnation of Napster, it became clear to me that the connecting with other people online was limited only by one’s imagination.

I imagined a conversation, a library, a listening room, a seminar and other things. Also a way to distribute my own ideas and creative work.

Now it hasn’t exactly turned out that way for me.

What has happened is that I use the internet much differently than many people. But I have figured out that I basically live my life much differently than many people.  The life of the mind for its own sake is not something that has ever caught fire among many people.

Jefferson imagined that if a society educated itself it could govern itself. I believe in this idea.

But I also find that the number of people interested in reading, history, the full gambit of art, music, poetry, literature and ideas in general is a small one.

Occasionally, I do manage to connect back and forth with people who are interested in interesting conversation and ideas and thinking online. This excites me. But of course this is not very usual in the day to day online world for me.

I have come to realize that people online are like people offline. They don’t read that much or very carefully. Ideas for their own sake are not that important to them. They don’t go to libraries. They aren’t all that curious about stuff.

A small number of them are. And the more people online the larger this number is as a proportion of the people out there.

So I have settled into a sort of daily routine of blogging, anyway. At this point it serves two purposes for me. First of all, it’s an outlet for my buzzing brain. I often awake with ideas rattling around in my head. Here’s where I can work them out in prose.

A few years back I began busking, that is played music on the streets of my local town. I have played some pretty cool music there, I think. People can stop and listen or walk on by. It’s their choice. Blogging is  for me a kind of busking of ideas and other stuff here on my website. If you’re interested you can stop and browse and even comment. If not, you can click away to someplace else or even unbookmark me.

The second reason I write is that my extended family is a world wide one.  Also I have known many many people in the course of my life. If any of these people want to take my temperature, see what’s going on in my head, the blog is here for that.

I know I enjoy checking blogs of others.  I don’t necessarily expect to be read. But judging by the 40 or so hits a day I get I don’t think I’m entirely ignored either. If you scroll to the bottom and see my counter, you will see that I have just passed 40 k hits since late 2009. Somebody is opening up my blog in their browser.  Many thanks to them and you, dear reader.

P.S. As I have come to realize that images have overtaken words as the medium of exchange between many many people, I have tried to adjust. I usually don’t write much over 500 words in an entry (today’s about 700 so it’s unusually verbose). I have added pictures in the spirit of what we used to call collages. I think they might help readers skim through and find anything that might interest them. And of course there are the links.

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Pharmacist Don Colcord Sustains Nucla, Colorado : The New Yorker

This is an amazing story of real people in America. Bears reading.

Found it here;

The Sidney Awards, Part I – NYTimes.com

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Will North Korea Become China’s Newest Province? – NYTimes.com

Speculation about the future of North Korea. Wonder what will happen.

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Vaclav Havel, Former Czech President, Dies at 75 – NYTimes.com

obit of an amazing man… here’s a link to a synopsis of one of his famous essays:

Havel, Power of the Powerless, 1978

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Gingrich: ‘I will arrest judges who give controversial decisions’

I have to say that Gingrich seems to be searching for the most outrageous comments he can make… Will it make more people vote for him in the primaries? Is that his purpose? Hmmmm.

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Xmas time is coming…. so many people I see seem very unhappy this time of year.

When I was growing up, there was a phrase bouncing around: “The Age of Anxiety.”

As far as a quick glance online, W. H. Auden seems to have popularized (if not originated) the phrase with his book length poem.

Bernstein’s 2nd symphony was based on this poem.

I’m listening to it right now. Very nice.

But I think we have moved way beyond the anxiety of the 20th century.

It seems to me that it is in 21st century America, it is hysteria that dominates public and private discussion, rhetoric and interaction.

So I thought I would share some little anti-hysteria maxims and info today.

First, I want to pass on a definition of maturity:

Maturity: the willingness to take responsibility for one’s own emotional being and destiny.

What I think this means around Xmas time is focusing more on your own head than other people’s heads.

This means examining our own feelings and sorting them out a bit.

At least that’s how I see it.

In order to think more clearly about one’s own stuff here are some good ideas are to emphasize.

First of all we need to identify and support strength in each other and ourselves not our pathologies.

Sounds easy, but right now hysterical pathology sets agendas in families AND in congress.

I think we need to emphasize challenge in our lives, not seeking comfort. If possible it helps to try not to run away from challenge.

Better to commit oneself to a lifetime project of being willing to be continually transformed by our experiences not running from.

This time of year people seem to be seeking weird levels of comfort with impossible expectations of themselves and others. It is the challenges in life that will help us live life more fully.

Finally it might help to emphasize self-definition (differentiation) over herding.

Right now it seems to me that often people are caught up in group think with the people they think they agree with.

It doesn’t occur to them to rely on themselves, at least not at first.

But the more we try to manage ourselves and quit willing others to change, the more we will be able to take responsibility for our own stuff. After all the only one you can really change is yourself, right?

All of this hard to do in a society that is more oriented toward safety (BE CAREFUL) than adventure.

It helps to remember that usually things are going to be okay.

Christmas hysteria seems to focus on children.

So here are three laws about children and parents.

1. Children who work through the natural problems of maturing with the least amount of emotional or physical residue are those whose parents have made them least important to their own salvation.

I take that to mean that if you’re doing ok, you’re parents probably had a healthy attitude about loving you and bringing you up.

And that if you have children, most of parenting is once again focusing on your own stuff not willing your kids to do a certain thing.

Good to remember that nobody really does any of all this good stuff more than half the time.

Secondly, unfortunately it is the rare child that raises itself above the maturity level of its parents.

Scary but this one seems pretty true. It doesn’t mean one can’t rise above the level of maturity in one’s parents. Just that it’s very hard. And rare.

Lastly, parents cannot produce change in a troubling child, no matter how caring, savvy, or intelligent they may be, until they become completely and totally fed-up with their child’s behavior.

If you’re still reading this and you know me, you have guessed by now that I am basically passing on Ed Friedman quotation and insights.

I usually find myself for one reason or another re-reading this man’s work this time of year.

Heh. Go figure.

Managed to submit all the material for the upcoming bulletins yesterday. This involved finalizing the organ and choral music for Xmas eve and organ music for Xmas day. It’s all by Bach and Messiaen.

I wrote a listener’s guide for the bulletin for the Messiaen:

Listener’s Guide to today’s organ music The music of Oliver Messiaen (the composer of today’s organ prelude) sprang from his deep Christian faith. His music was conceived as painting pictures with sound. In “The Shepherds,” he has written that the first section is presented in “the color of stained glass: blue-violet, a touch of red, gold, and silver.” Jon Gillock writes that Messiaen creates a “revolving quality” in the beginning of this piece. “During this music, the shepherds have arrived at the stable and are kneeling before the baby Jesus. It is night, the stars are shining, the earth is turning silently, there is a very gentle breeze in the air.” One can hear Messiaen painting the stars in the quiet staccato chords in the background. The louder chords could suggest a breeze. Suddenly the music changes. The shepherds are getting ready to leave. They begin warming up their flutes. Then they launch into a dance that suggests a 16th century French Noel with a bit of a Middle Eastern flair. When I play this section, I picture a shepherd playing on the side of a mountain then stopping and listening while his entire melody returns quietly to him as an echo. The postlude today is based on the Lutheran Christmas Chorale, “Vom Himmel hoch” found in our hymnal at number 80. The shape of the melody suggests Jesus descent from heaven as God’s gift of love to humanity through his birth. The hymn begins: “From heaven above to earth I come….” submitted by Steve Jenkins, Music Director

The trick is not write too much and to write simply in this kind of thing.

It’s kind of ironic, I guess, because we are expecting a very small crowd on Xmas day. We don’t usually do a Eucharist on Xmas day, but since it’s a Sunday we going to this year. I don’t count the number of people who will be listening, I guess.

Gillock’s book on Messiaen is very illuminating as I mentioned yesterday.

Here’s a Youtube recording of my Xmas day prelude:

And here’s one of the Bach Postlude for Xmas Day:

Also spent a good deal of time practicing organ and piano yesterday. Actually found time to include some Sweelinck Echo Fantasies and chorale preludes. It never fails to amaze me that I never see the local Dutch Reformed people using Sweelinck. Probably too esoteric or something.

I received an email from the chair of the ballet department offering me about 13 hours a week of work for the spring term. Will probably do that.

Today I meet with my boss to review the final bulletins for the weekend. I want to run the ballet hours past her as well.

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Wait Time | veteranjournal.com

My son, David, has written his first online article for Veteran Journal.com: “Veteran’s Wait Time Audit.”

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Don’t Tax the Rich. Tax Inequality Itself. – NYTimes.com

Enough is enough. Congress should reform our tax law to put the brakes on further inequality. Specifically, we propose an automatic extra tax on the income of the top 1 percent of earners — a tax that would limit the after-tax incomes of this club to 36 times the median household income.

Importantly, our Brandeis tax does not target excessive income per se; it only caps inequality.

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Pulp Friction: The Kindle Debate – NYTimes.com

The debate continues. Eileen and I still haven’t made up our minds. Right now we are considering purchasing two Kindle Fires or one IPad2 (for her).

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‘Beethoven in America,’ by Michael Broyles – Review – NYTimes.com

Interesting take on the idea of “Beethoven” in Americans’ minds.

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Etta James Is Terminally Ill – NYTimes.com

Another wonderful musician.

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Repressing Democracy, With American Arms – NYTimes.com

This article reminds me a bit of a Madeleine Albright story I read this morning regarding the half million Iraqi children who  died as a result of U.N. & U.S. sanctions (under Clinton).

“A 1996 UNICEF report estimated that up to half a million Iraqi children had died as a result of the sanctions. Asked to comment, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, did not even question the figure. Instead, she replied, ‘I think this a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.’

“No doubt Albright regretted her obtuse remark.”

Andrew J. Becevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism

No doubt.

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The last link makes me want to end with this poem I read this morning.

A mind that has confronted ruin for years
Is half or more a ruined mind. Nightmares
Inhabit it, and daily evidence
Of the clean country smeared for want of sense,
Of freedom slack and dull among the free,
Of faith subsumed in idiot luxury,
And beauty beggared in the marketplace
And clear-eyed wisdom bleary with dispraise.

Wendell Berry, Given: new poems 2005

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In his book, Performing Messiaen’s Organ Music: 66 Masterclasses, Jon Gillock makes some telling observations about performing music.

He emphasizes the role of the musician as an interpreter.  He quotes Alec Guinness about acting to set the stage for this interpretation.

“An actor is an interpreter of other men’s words, often a soul which wishes to reveal itself to the world but dare not, a craftsman, a bag of tricks, a vanity bag, a cool observer of mankind, a child, and at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or so, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents.” Alec Guinness, Blessings in Disguise quoted in Gillock’s book.

This description of an actor makes good sense to me when applied to musicians. A musical performance is a bit of a mystical thing to me. I often feel that musicians give sterile performances. This is especially true of academics. I say that technique while necessary by itself is entirely inadequate.

Connecting to one’s self, the music and the listener is a complicated little dance. The ego has to be simultaneously engaged enough to be confident but disengaged enough to let the sound come through, listen and be aware of the conversation happening between player and listener and other players.

I am mystified when musicians act badly through music, either ignoring the audience and/or by treating their fellow performers condescendingly. These sorts of things are subtle. But they block what seems to be a sort of magic when performer, music and listener are doing something together.

I like Gillock’s idea that interpreters/composers paint pictures in sound. He is speaking primarily of Messiaen and it is something that needs saying about him in particular. But it is true of a lot of excellent music.

He compares hearing dissonance in Messiaen and missing the painted picture to standing close to a painting by Monet and seeing only dots. He makes this comparison acute by insisting that Messiaen shares an aesthetic with French composers and  painters.

I am planning on playing “The Shepherds” by Messiaen on Christmas Day as a prelude. I will write a listener’s guide to it to be put in the bulletin. I will be drawing on Gillock’s understanding and probably quote him in it.

I continued to feel worse and worse yesterday morning as church approached. By the time I was rehearsing with instrumentalists at 9:15 my head felt distinctly like a balloon and I heard everything in a sort of distant tunnel effect.

Despite this there were some pretty musical moments, I think.  The choir came through like troopers for me, even though my leadership was to say the least a bit spacey. The service was a version of the traditional Lessons and Carols service. So it proceeded with scripture and song, either choral or congregational. The choral sections sounded good to me, but I admit to not being able to discern how refined we managed to perform due to my condition.

Highlights for me included the performance of my compositions as the prelude and postlude.  I also enjoyed the use of random handbells. We have been singing a Holy, holy based on the chant Conditor Alme Siderum.

The melody lends itself to a background of random bells with notes drawn from a pentatonic scale.

I used a different five note pattern yesterday (1,2,4,5,6 instead of the usual 1,2,3,5,6 above).  I had the bells gradually begin ringing starting with the highest notes before playing the melody to the chant in the introduction.

After they all were ringing randomly, I waited a bit and then played the melody of the chant as an intro and we were off. After the hymn I had the bells continue playing until the next part of the Eucharist.

I thought it was pretty cool.

A LITTLE POSTSCRIPT:

I often notice what seems to me to be some negative energy coming off of professional musicians who worship at my church. Anxiety is high, I think at this time of year anyway. An interesting side benefit of feeling the way I did yesterday was the way it clarified for me how unimportant this negative energy (which was present as usual) actually is to me.

I ponder the energy coming from other musicians it because music itself is so important to me and how other musicians think about music can be interesting and even instructive.

But ultimately I try to get anxious people of any ilk from coming between me and what I am trying to do with my sounds.

Believe it or not, I woke up today with little to blog about. I ascribe some of this to a cold that has my head blocked up. Read my usual morning poetry (Wendell Berry & William Carlos Williams and prose (The Uses of the Past by Muller). Then sipped coffee and poked around online.

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War by remote control – Counting the Cost – Al Jazeera English

Short piece on Drone industry.

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Vaclav Havel, Dissident Playwright Who Led Czechoslovakia, Dead at 75 – NYTimes.com

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A Message Of Solidarity From Archbishop Desmond Tutu | OccupyWallSt.org

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Reflections on Iraq as U.S. Troops Leave – NYTimes.com

Letters to the editor.

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When Japanese-Americans Were Interned in Camps – NYTimes.com

More letters to the editor. This time correcting the idea that somehow the imprisoned Japanese-Americans in WWII in California deserved it. Good grief, I hadn’t heard that one. Must have missed the original piece.

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Robert Scheer: There Goes the Republic – Robert Scheer’s Columns – Truthdig

The new Defense Authorization Law is another amazing step into the void for America.

National Defense Authorization Act sent to W.H. – Charles Hoskinson – POLITICO.com

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Last Post in Iraq: this is the death knell of the American empire | George Galloway | Comment is free | The Guardian

Always interesting to see how we look from across the pond.

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Christopher Hitchens death: In Memoriam, my courageous sibling, by Peter Hitchens | Mail Online

Moving tribute from his brother from whom he was estranged until recently.

Here’s some articles I bookmarked to read about him.

News Desk: Hitch : The New Yorker

Christopher Hitchens: ‘the consummate writer, the brilliant friend’ | Books | The Guardian

The one above is by Ian McEwan.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush: When an Atheist Dies: Religious Reflections on Christopher Hitchens’ Death

Christopher Hitchens Has Died, Doug Wilson Reflects | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Having read many essays by him and his autobiography, I think he was brilliant. I think he was wrong about Iraq, but right about a lot of other stuff including Jerry Falwell.

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Our leadership is dire, but we mustn’t despise government | Jeffrey Sachs | Comment is free | The Guardian

Interesting overview of the failure of leadership in the west.

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The Beck of Revelation by Mark Lilla | The New York Review of Books

Glen Beck, that is.

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Recently I picked up my copy of The Uses of the Past: Profiles of Former Societies by Herbert J. Muller.

Published in 1952, his observations on history are delicious and pertinent to my ear.

In his intro he says his book “is an effort to counteract the popular simplicities that have been inspired by the complexties of our age…”

Even though he is writing 60 years ago, these words ring true to me about now…. the simple and glittering attracts us as we are bombarded by more and more complexity and data….

He goes on:

His book is “an approach to history in the spirit of the great tragic poets, a spirit of reverence and of irony, and is based on the assumption that the tragic sense of life is not only the profoundest but the most pertinent for an understanding of both past and present.

In particular, it is an effort to apply a method of irony, the piety of impiety, stressing the inevitable ambiguities, incongruities and paradoxes of human history, which among other things suggest why, “in the final analysis,” there can be no final analysis.”

His first chapter begins with Hagia Sophia and Henry Adams’s point of view about it.

What’s not to like?

This is evidence to me of the value of browsing one’s own collection. My eye just happen to fall on the title. I was interested. I pulled it down and started reading.

I continue to read poetry in the quiet early morning everyday.

I have been reading Given by Wendell Berry as well as the difficult  Spring and All a volume in William Carlos William’s collected poetry.

This morning I was struck by the fact that the Wendell Berry book title is reminiscent of the book by Lewis Hyde I recently finished, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World.

After reading, I played slowly and accurately (for the most part) 1 and 1/2 times (it’s 23 pages long) through Prokofiev’s first piano sonata.

It is his opus 1. I quite like it. I practice it entirely without pedal because this is the one that his teacher put pedaling. It is also the one in which he removed all pedal marks for publication. I don’t think one should play it entirely without pedal. Actually in places I can’t sustain all notes he written and would have to use pedal to do so. I don’t even see how it’s possible not to.

Another thing I have read about Prokofiev is as a performer he was extremely dry, preferring to let the music speak for itself. I think that’s pretty interesting as an alternative to being over expressive and think about that not only when I play his music but other composers.

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Christopher Hitchens Is Dead at 62 — Obituary – NYTimes.com

A hero of mine. I knew this was coming. He had what seems to be an exemplary life and died as he lived.

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Editorial Page Editor – Andrew Rosenthal’s blog – NYTimes.com

I like the title of this blog: The Loyal Opposition.

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Politics Over Principle – NYTimes.com

The congress has passed what apparently is a travesty of bill. the Defense Appropriations Authorization. Obama is going to sign in to law. I hope the critics are wrong.

Nearly every top American official with knowledge and experience spoke out against the provisions, including the attorney general, the defense secretary, the chief of the F.B.I., the secretary of state, and the leaders of intelligence agencies. And, for weeks, the White House vowed that Mr. Obama would veto the military budget if the provisions were left in. On Wednesday, the White House reversed field, declaring that the bill had been improved enough for the president to sign it now that it had passed the Senate.

but I don’t think so.

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Defense bill goes the wrong way on handling terrorism suspects – latimes.com

Criticism of the same bill from the West Coast.

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George Whitman, Paris Bookseller and Cultural Beacon, Is Dead at 98 – NYTimes.com

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Getting Detained and Gassed – NYTimes.com

More Nicholas Kristof on the ground experiences. This time in Manama, Bahrain.

Hyde uses the phrase, “market triumphalism,” in his 2007 afterword to his 1979 tome, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. With it he is describing the current environment in the US. I think he does so accurately.

But more interesting to me was the brief historic overview he gave of funding of the arts and sciences in the U.S. He suggests that public funding dried up as a response to the fall of the Soviet Union. Before that, from the sixties on, the arts and the sciences were seen as evidence of the superiority of the American open system. After these areas have lost their propaganda use, money immediately began ebbing.

Hyde says that returning to art and science as propaganda is not necessarily desirable. In his afterword, he proposes a model based on Joseph Papp’s success with public theater endeavors. Specifically the way Papp intentionally used a small portion of his financial successes like “Chorus Line” to reinvest in theater for its own sake.

Hyde has helped create an organization, Creative Capital.

At first I couldn’t the Creative Capital web site to load this morning, so you might want to keep trying until it does.

Creative Capital was established in 1999. It gives “direct support to individual artists in film, video, literature, and the performing and visual arts.” “Creative Capital grantees agree to share a small percentage of any net profits generated by their projects with Creative Capital, which then applies those funds towards new grants.”

Another program he mentions along the same lines is for musicians. It’s called the Music Performance Fund.

It was founded in 1948 by musicians worried about losing income when they recorded their performances (i.e. less live performances because people could listen to the recordings).

I don’t see a way for musicians to apply on their website….. hmmm…. food for thought.

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Finally, A Rich American Destroys The Fiction That Rich People Create The Jobs

This writer maintains that jobs are created by the matrix of the economic environment, including people who actually purchase products.

“… jobs is a function of customers’ ability and willingness to pay for the company’s products, not the entrepreneur or the investor capital”

Interesting notion.

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Steven Van Zandt: There Is Only One Issue In America

As I quoted on Facebook when linking this: “Campaign finance doesn’t need reform. It needs elimination.”

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The Sunni Awakening Braces for an Iraq Without U.S. – NYTimes.com

We’re getting closer and closer to getting out of this country.

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Russian Journalists at Kommersant Vlast Fired After Tough Election Coverage – NYTimes.com

Ongoing struggle for openness in Russia.

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When Business Is Regulated, and Isn’t – NYTimes.com

Some letters to the editor about the damage de-regulation has caused.

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Amazon’s Jungle Logic – NYTimes.com

Excellent article about writers’ point of view on a new creepy app by Amazon that allows shoppers to browse at the local bookstore and then buy from Amazon.

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Guantánamo Forever? – NYTimes.com

A sad plea to the President to veto the National Defense Authorization Act that recent legislative bi-partisan debacle of a bill that has already passed.

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What Perry gets wrong about religion in America – Guest Voices – The Washington Post

Bishop Robinson wrote this. He is a voice of sanity in our country.

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Saudi Arabia – Woman Is Beheaded After Being Convicted of Witchcraft – NYTimes.com

crazy stuff.

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News of the World May Not Be Behind Deleted Messages, Police Say – NYTimes.com

Another example of the disastrous effects of bad reporting.

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John Dominic Crossan: The Challenge of Christmas

My brother Father Mark posted this on his church Facebook page. Haven’t read it yet, but I do like Crossan.

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Recently a businessman I know was complaining that he worked very hard and didn’t seem to be making much money.  I replied that I also worked hard and had never made much money as a musician. He said, yeah but you have more fun.

I’m finishing up The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde.

He addresses his topic at length. At the end of the book he finds that his original stance that artistic gift and market commodity are irreconcilable has softened.

I like it when an author changes his mind before you eyes in the act of writing a book.

“I still believe that a gift can be destroyed by the marketplace. But I no longer feel the poles of this dichotomy to be so strongly opposed.”

Lewis Hyde, The Gift

I have been thinking about my own gifts in music and people skills and how I have translated them into making a modest living.

Hyde suggests there are three ways artists “resolve the problem of their livelihood.”

1. Take a second job
2. patronage of one sort or another (includes grants)
3. place their works directly on the marketplace

If I consider how I have resolved this problem, it leads me to think about the nature of my art. Basically I think of myself of someone in love with making music. This includes making it up, either in improvisation or composition.

For most of my life I have held down a paying job as a church musician. Being inundated as a young person with church via my family (father was a minister, his father and his uncle were both ministers), I acquired the language and understanding of a religious community by osmosis.

As I gain a musical education, I find it helpful to know bible and liturgy, the former learned at my parent’s knee, the latter as a young bookseller/rock-n’-roller in Oscoda, Michigan in the late 70s.

Then as church music gradually chose me as a profession (sic), I thought of (rationalized?) my work as providing a room, instruments and personnel to make music with

as well as providing a livelihood to contribute to my nuclear family.

In the midst of this I never lost sight of myself as a bit of artsy type.

As a church music composer, I grappled with the market. Before this I had attempted to market my poetry. I learned that many rejections lead to occasional acceptance and that there was no money in poetry.

Church music I have written has turned out pretty much the same way. Over the years I have met publishers and “successful” church music composers. I learned that their understanding of their market was not my understanding.

I saw it (and still see it) as a way to share that Lewis Hyde gift-thing.

” … the artist who sells his own creations must develop a more subjective feel for the two economies and his own rituals for both keeping them apart and bringing them together. He must, on the one hand, be able to disengage from the work and think of it as a commodity. He must be able to reckon its value in terms of current fashions, know what the market will bear, demand fair value, and part with the work when someone pays the price.

And he must, on the other hand, be able to forget all that and turn to serve his gifts on their own terms.

Lewis Hyde, The Gift

I didn’t find many church music composers who fit this bill. The ones who did tended to be outside the church music market.

Someone who does fit this bill in larger musical world is Frank Zappa who insisted on making his art work in a commercial way.

I respect and admire this.  Recently I listened to a vinyl of his wonderful “Sad Jane,” “Pedro’s Dowry,” and “Envelopes;” side A of his recording he made with London Symphony.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is vigorous strong creative writing (gift in Hyde’s terms).

“the artist who hopes to market work that is the realization of his gifts cannot begin with the market. He must create for himself that gift-sphere in which the work is made, and only when he knows the work to be the faithful realization of his gift should he turn to see if it has currency in that other economy. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t”

So I struggled to composer for the church music market. The few pieces I managed to get published fell within the publisher’s narrow idea of their market.

I am returning to considering marketing my work again. All of these years I have not ceased to write music. As I look at my work, I realize that my gifts are not solely that of a composer. I am a composer but also a church musician who thinks that church music is an art of sorts. And I continue to hone my abilities on the organ and piano and as a choral conductor and leader of congregational song.

So I’m thinking of trying to find markets for the kind of music I write. I sort of think they might be out there.

This is a long way to making the point that the compositions I made Tuesday represent an important part of my life and work to me.  Functional music is not quite the same as music made for a market. Music cannot dominate in its role in church music, but neither can it turn away from the necessity of its own gratuitous nature if it is to be any good at all.

And I do have fun doing it.