Not too much time to blog today.

I have been getting a few emails from Robert the Alexander Technique guy. I find this very satisfying. I joined the google email list and applied to the discussion group. Not sure how active it is. But Robert mentioned they were discussing my web site. I always love to read about me. Heh.

I found a teacher who at one point was commuting to Holland to teach Alexander Technique. He no longer does this on a regular basis but does get in town from time to time. I asked him to put me on his list. This would be about all I could afford anyway.

Last night I watched a video a bud of mine recommended.

Although she doesn’t exactly agree with my wild eyed views about information wanting to be free, she did watch this video and pass it on (her views remain unchanged not surprisingly).

It’s called Rip: A Remix manifesto [link to Hulu since I can’t get the dang thing to embed]. It was released in May of last year and made by self-confessed Canadian, Brett Gaylor.

I thought the footage of Cory Doctorow

and

Lawrence Lessig looked old (I mean I think they looked YOUNG in it. But maybe that’s my misconception. Heh.) It’s long. But it was fun to see it all from the perspective of this movie maker.

Dang. I just spent the last half hour checking out Brett Gaylor and the people he tweets (many of whom I now follow like Michael Moore, Lawrence Lessig, Snoop Dog and M.C. Hammer. Heh.

I need to move on from blogging.

But first.

Duo Alban Berg seem to be a clarinet piano duo from Italy. I am listening to them play Schumann’s op. 73 right now. They are pretty wonderful. I had a 9th grader show up last night with this score in tow for her solo and ensemble solo. Sweet.

You can download these recordings yourself. Free Music! [link]

Finished reading Jeffrey Brown’s “Funny Misshapen Body” last night. Imagine my surprise as he kept talking about Western Michigan. Then working at a wooden shoe factory. Then Hope College. Then local coffee shop (JPs I think but not sure). Cool. [link to his very cool web site]

I confess to a flurry of cooking in the last two days. Yesterday, I made Eileen and me breakfast (omelets and the last of the cinnamon rolls). Then I went nuts the rest of the day: Cinnamon Bread, Meatloaf, improvised Buckwheat Veggie Loaf, Penne Chicken Gorganzola, Penne non chicken gorganzola, and tabouleh. I am totally therpeuticized now.

Got up this morning and began going through two boxes of my Dad’s papers that my brother brought me at Xmas. Wow. Some fine stuff.

I have to stop and do some dang church work (pick hymns, anthems, whatever). Bah. But toujours gai, archie, toujours gai.

Very cool. I had two responses  to my previous post about the Alexander Technique.

Yesterday seemed to be a success for me.

When I began the tricky section in the Thomson briefly it was shakey, then as I began thinking about loosening my posture and allowing ease to take over, I played the three difficult variations well.

It’s hard to say exactly what my thought process was.

When I used the word “concentrate” Robert from alexandertechnique.com below suggested that I not “concentrate” or “hold” but think negative sentences about not holding my head or or not fixing head. Robert sounds someone who knows a heckuva lot more about the Alexander Technique than I do (BTW, thank you, Robert and Sue, for your responses).

Some of this might be semantic. I understand that part of the Alexander Technique theory is to inhibit (not concentrate, not hold) rather than act (“hold”). I have a tendency to live in my head. So when I say concentrate, I’m probably doing something a bit different than it sounds. Not sure about this. I do know that I attempt to address my playing and ease of body wordlessly as I do it.  (This is sometimes called “stilling the inner monologue” a bit of lingo I picked up from “The Inner Game of  Tennis.”)

“Just play” was the motto of my grad school class of musicians.

So yesterday I’m not sure how I did what I did.

It involved a lot of letting go of control and avoiding rehearsing visually about the performance. In fact,I wondered as I wrote the blog entry yesterday if I was doing myself a bit of a disservice in verbalizing about my anxieties when I had consciously avoided doing so for the past twenty four hours.

Anyway, during the closing hymn I again began to notice that if I directed my energy differently my pedal line seemed to work better. It felt like a loosening in my posture and general demeanor. A lessening of conscious thought but all the while noticing the effect and letting the music come out.

During the postlude (in which the technical challenge were about seven long pedal runs under moving keyboard parts), I again somehow managed to let myself play well using a bit of redirecting my thinking towards how I was sitting.

I understand that I might do this better if I could isolate my mis-use and simply think of not doing whatever.  I think my misuse might be more some slight muscle tension in the back. My head, neck, shoulders and back must of necessity be loose when I play or rehearse. This is something I have thought of for years.

Indeed as I rehearse I sometimes realize that tension has built up without me noticing it. Often I can (and do) consciously release this tension. Sometimes it is better to stop, but usually I can release it.

Anyway, yesterday worked. Ironically I had a couple of mild train wrecks in new sections of the pieces. More the Thomson than the Mendelssohn.

On another topic I was reading an online excerpt from the book “On the origin of Stories:  Evolution, Cognition and Fiction” by Brian Boyd and came across a wonderful story of dolphins making bubble art/play:

“Dolphins breathe air and blow out bubbles as they exhale. They can use these bubbles almost like nets to herd fish together before closing in for the kill. Untrained Amazon River dolphins sometimes play with the necklaces of bubbles trailing from their mouths by turning to swim through them or bite them. Dolphins in several marine species have been observed in more elaborate play, releasing air from their blowholes to form underwater rings that hover and hold their form for several seconds as they expand. But like humans blowing smoke-rings, dolphines must practice to master such a quirky skill.

In a marine park on the coast of Hawaii’s Oahu in the 1990s a small pod of bottlenose dolphins turned these bubble-rings into their own art form.  Watched but not prompted or rewarded by the scientists at Sea Life Park, half of the dolphins engage in elaborate air-bubble play. They take their cue from others, practice the rings until they become stable, inspect their own performance, explore new possibilities, and intently monitor others’ efforts. Some dive through the rings as they expand. Others create vortices with their tail flukes, and release the rings into the swirling current so that they travel not upward but sideways or even downward in the water. An adult male, Kaiko’o, can emit two controlled bubble-rings, one after the other, which he then nudges together with his rostrum to form a single large ring. A young female, Tinkerbell, has developed several unique techniques, such as creating a vortex with her dorsal fin as she swims across the tank, then retracing her path and releasing into the vortex a stream of air that shoots out in a helical pattern in front of her.

Is this behavior art?

[link to pdf of this whole excerpt]

I have been thinking quite a bit about the Alexander Technique phrase, “misuse of self.” If I understand correctly, part of what the Alexander Technique teaches is to utilize your body in the ways it works best or even was designed to work.

This means holding your head, neck, back, shoulders, arms and legs in the most natural way.  This means not “mis-using” them. It seems it’s easier to stop doing badly than to somehow “will” doing right.

Interesting to me when I consider my little victories over myself over the years of my life.

When I was studying piano as a young man, I often did conscious relaxation exercises before practicing and attending lessons.

I read yoga and “The Glass Bead Game” by Hesse at this time. Yoga taught relaxation. Hesse romanticized the need for meditating.

On top of this my teacher taught me an relaxation exercise at the keyboard which I still use from time to time.

He called these the “attack-release” exercise. He taught me to strike four notes of a diminished chord with two fingers from each hand. This was the “attack.” Then I was supposed to completely relax my body. This was the “release.”

The trick was not to move on to the next note until I was entirely relaxed. Then repeat.

This process turns out to be a slo-mo version of the playing of each and every note on the piano: you must attack muscularly in order to sound the pitch but then instantly release this tension in order to create a good tone and go on to the next note without building up tension.

Of course this can be difficult.

But I do think it is the source of some of my ability to make a decent tone on the piano.

Over the years I have monitored my tension as a musician. If I detect tension I attempt to release and often am at least partially successful.

But the Alexander Technique goes beyond muscle relaxation.

It also talks about concentrating on the ends at the expense of the means.  A good example of this given by De Alcantara the author of the book I am reading on the Technique is when you want to take off your shoes but are too lazy to untie the laces. You force the shoe off. You attain the ends. But at what cost? You are ruining your shoes.

I interpret this to mean that one must not leap to the obvious part of the problem. If your arm hurts or is tense, it is a partial aspect of what you are doing with your body. Better to think about the entire body’s alignment. Are you squinching your head down into your shoulders (a common thing)?  Is your spine naturally elongated? That sort of thing.

This happened to me recently. I have been having what seems to be arthiritic pain in my left hand. One morning I got up and rehearsed a section of a Mendelssohn piano piece that had quick strenuous octaves in the left hand. After practicing a bit I noticed my hand was hurting. I stopped.

Later when I returned to rehearsing I concentrating on holding my body easily erect with a naturally elevated head. I soon forgot about what I was doing and continued rehearsing. At the end of the rehearsal my left hand actually felt better than it had at the beginning and I had not consciously tried to do anything different with the hand, just the whole body.

Interestingly this applies to performance anxiety.

Performance anxiety is a way to concentrate on an unhelpful partial aspect of what is happening. In fact it is the least important aspect. Here is where the Alexander Technique teaches “inhibition.” One must cease to try to things the way that is screwing them up. Be that physical or mental (more probably both).

I find that if I try to not think about the anxiety and the supposed source of the anxiety. More than not think about. Try not to do the anxiety.

I am in the middle of trying this out.

I was ill this week and missed an important day of prep for the pieces I will play today. Indeed I was still shakey yesterday as I rehearsed.

But I have inhibited my self-recrimination and fretting which I usually lapse into when I am not as prepared I want.

Instead of returning from my organ rehearsal and confiding in my wife my self-doubts and frustrations, I suggested she accompany me for a quick trip to the grocery store. Came home and treadmilled. Then showered and had a bit to eat. Much more relaxed.

I am performing Virgil Thomson’s variations on “Shall We Gather At the River” for the prelude today. The point of the entire composition is that Thomson keeps juxtaposing hilarious oom pah pah accompaniments to this stodgy little pompous American tune.

In three of the variations I have to count the eighth notes very carefully. If I count I can play it. But it is hard to feel it. Normally in performance I would rather play with feel than counting. These are the three variations I have concentrated on this week.  This morning I need to “inhibit” my propensity to worry about this. I need to “inhibit” caring and even thinking too much about it. If I count, I can play it. It’s that simple.

I could skip these variations, but they are actually the charm of the piece.

The other thing I am inhibiting is concern about the Mendelssohn postlude I have scheduled.  I am playing part of his Fifth organ sonata. It alternates between two musical ideas. One of them is duple and grandiose feeling. The other is triple and strikes me as more fanciful, playful and even a bit lyric.

The duple section has some pedal runs that I have spent a great deal of time with this week.  I can play them. Just not very quickly. The trick will be to play them slowly enough to play accurately and not lose the musical idea.

What I tend to do is to jump in and make music and the hell with the notes. In this case, I don’t think that’s warranted. Better to play the duple section slow enough to strike the notes exactly in the pedal.

Another solution (rationalized due to my illness this week) would be to only play a section or two of this eight page movement. After all no one listens to the postlude, heh.

But this is unsatisfactory because it disturbs a lovely symmetry and beauty of the piece.

Better to “inhibit” my concern and let the piece happen.

Alexander Technique teaches this as avoiding mis-use of self.

Even though I probably don’t have this exactly correct, I do think that throughout my performing life I have done something very similar when I allow myself to just play the music and let it come through me.

I finished Kathryn Davis’s “The Thin Place” last night.

I think I am a bit disappointed. She has a nifty style that allows not only overhearing humans in the plot but also their cats and dogs, the beavers in the pond, the plants in the field. She also situates her little New England story in the history of the life of the planet quite neatly as well.

What bothers me is the way she tied the plot together in a traumatic scene in a church service where people are stabbed, shot and the most interesting character in the book loses her powers. Mees sees deeply into reality and helps things come back from the dead. She loses this power much like we lose something when we move from childhood to puberty.

I don’t mind a book about this. Davis did it in a scene that wouldn’t have been out of place in a dumb B movie. Her charm did not extend to this device of tying her plot together.

I have just finished kneading basic sweet roll dough (Recipe from Betty Crocker). I am planning to attempt cinnamon rolls this morning. This is brave of me, because my mother-in-law, Dorothy, makes what have to be some of the world’s best. I will settle for decent. Actually, it’s hard to make BAD yeast based cinnamon rolls. Heh.

I have had some interesting cases of “overlapping” stuff, not to say synchronicity, this week.

I have recently been confronting some of the academic attitude toward Mendelssohn as a composer.  I have found the influence of Charles Rosen working across resources. Rosen seems to have an odd attitude toward Mendelssohn which combines respect for his genius with a suspicion that Mendelssohn’s compositions delved in areas of questionable taste.

I discovered that Rosen’s chapter on Mendelssohn in the wonderful book, “The Romantic Generation” is entitle “Mendelssohn and the Invention of Religious Kitsch.” Ouch. I have read about half of this book but had not reached this chapter.

It could easily be that I myself admire things that Rosen (and other worthy bright types) would label “kitsch.” I remember discussing the French Baroque style with my deceased teacher, Ray Ferguson. He commented that if the music were superficial he still had no trouble admiring and advocating it.

I admire HIM for such an attitude.

“Kitsch” seems to be German for “worthless.”

It is often used in the phrase “Religious Kistch” (as Rosen does). This makes sense. If we soften the word to mean “bad taste” (whatever that actually means), it does seem like an inordinate amount of U.S. religion embraces it on a whole scale basis.

I was reading Roger Scruton’s little book called “Beauty” this week

and ran across this:

“We distinguish true beauty from fake beauty–from kitsch, schmaltz and whimsy.”

Hmmm. Fake beauty, eh?

Of course Scruton is wrestling with a philosophical take on just what beauty actually is. I’m interested in that. That’s why I’m reading his book.

Rosen seems to contrast Mendelssohn’s graceful composition with the nobility of the work of his (Mendelssohn’s) hero, Beethoven. I would like to think I am attracted to the sheer grace and sweep of Mendelssohn’s musical ideas. I know that, in truth, I find his music attractively playful and fun to play and listen to. Oops.

In his New Yorker article, “Top of the Pops: Did Any Warhol change everything?” (which unfortunately is not online. bah.), Louis Menard quotes the dubious art critic, Arthur Danto:

Avant-garde artists were compelled to make nonrepresentational paintings, he [Danto] argued, because of the mass production of commercially manufactured culture–kitsch. Kitsch–popular fiction, Hollywood movies, and so on–was realistic, and its subject was the satisfactions of middle-class life under consumer capitalism.

So, here I was reading in a different place about “kistch.” Now defined by Danto and quoted by Menand  to mean “commercially manufactured culture.” Interesting.

I myself have noticed my prejudice against that which is designed primarily to be consumed–pop music, fiction, movies. Of course not all of these are made with the primary purpose of sales, but it seems pretty easy for me to figure out that many of them strike me that way.

So. Is the music I perform and write kitsch? Oy. It is possible. Nevertheless this does not diminish my enjoyment of it. Much.

We are performing a short movement from Mendelssohn’s Elijah on Sunday. I am planning to perform an organ prelude by Virgil Thomson and postlude by Mendelssohn.  This music which might be Rosen’s kitsch will probably elevate the tone of the worship a millimeter. Heh. At least I hope so.

My final overlap is that last night I read about sixty pages in one of the books I inter-library loaned.

You will notice the author. Menand is also the guy who wrote the article on Warhol. Cool. Overlap.

This book by the way has totally sucked me in. Menand is looking to write about the ideas of several people (Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles S. Peirce, and John Dewey). He believes that their ideas in the wake of the post-Civil War changed and shaped America.

Specifically he seems to think they turned away from certitude and ideology with the conviction that certitude leads to violence. In its stead, they sought a middle ground of examination of self and ideas that led them to their various conclusions and philosophies and lives.

Holmes is the first he writes about. He goes from idealist, to disillusioned wounded soldier to the great Supreme Court Justice he became. Good stuff. And easy applicable to America today.

I dragged myself around yesterday, making sure my Mom got to where she wanted to go, despite my aches and pains from what seems to have been a body cold. I was unfortunately too achey to practice organ. After blogging (see yesterday’s post), I alternated between groggily reading in bed and coming downstairs and playing a few bars on the piano of Mendelssohn.

I seem to have read the New Yorker which arrived in the mail from cover to cover. I got up this morning and bookmarked as many of the articles as the editors saw fit to put online.

Campbell McGrath had nice poem which talked about the incessant nature of watching television [Link to entire poem]

That it never ends, O Lord, that it never ends!

That it is relentless, remorseless, and it is on right now.

That one sees it and sees it but sometimes it sees you, too,

cowering in a corner, transfixed by the crawler for the storm alert,

home videos of faces left dazed by the twister, the car bomb,

the war always beginning or already begun, always

the special report, the inside scoop, the hidden camera

revealing the mechanical lives of the sad, inarticulate people

we have come to know as “celebrities.”

from “Shopping for Pomegranates at Wal-Marts on New Years Day”

“Number Nine: Sonia Sotomayor’s high-profile début.”  by Lauren Collins was an excellent article about the new supreme court justice. [link to article]

There was an equally good article on Andy Warhol that doesn’t seem to be online (my New Yorker is laying upstairs in the dark by my bed…. I don’t want to go check on the title of this article because I will disturb the sleep of  my lovely wife.).

Finally a quite good short story by Jennifer Egan called “Safari” [link]

This morning I am feeling better, I think.

My old body aches in the morning anyway, but I think this morning’s aches are not a body cold. Made coffee with my new used coffee maker and it seems to be a better than the old cheapo coffee maker made.

I have a composer meeting today which I am going to skip. I missed a day of organ rehearsal just when I have scheduled some works that need attention. I am planning to play Virgil Thomson’s “Shall we gather at the river” from his “Variations on Four Sunday School Hymns.” This has three variations that I find a bit challenging. Also “Allegro Maestoso” from Felix Mendelssohn’s fifth organ sonata. I will need all my energy today (and tomorrow) to prepare these pieces for public performance.

hmmmm

Maybe I’ll make bread as well.

I will miss chewing the fat with the Composers in Grand Rapids.

When my brother who is an equally avid coffee drinker as myself was visiting he remarked that I might do better with a coffee maker that heats the water a bit hotter than my little Miejers Cuisinart thingo.

So yesterday when I was at Dittos with my Mom I spied the one above for 9 dollarinnis. Bought it. It is in good shape and seems to work.  Will see if it makes good coffee or not.

I just got back from taking my Mom to Walgreens, the Dollar Store and the 8th Street grill. I went to bed kind of achey last night. Got up this morning still not feeling great. Exercised in case that was the problem. Temporarily felt better but now am read to crash after a bit of blogging.

Mary Daly died on Jan 3rd. She was  bit of a hero of mine. I love her wickedary:

Her obit in the NYT [link] described her as a “leader in feminist theology.” I wonder what she would think of that. I like her word play. And the fact that she abandoned the Roman Catholic church with such aplomb. We need more people like her. At least I do.

One last little thing before I go lay down. Dropbox seems like a pretty cool software. I wonder about how quickly it would work. But the idea is that it is an online storage system (free as far as I can tell) which you can access from any computer or smart phone. I like the idea quite a bit. But haven’t downloaded the program yet.  Click on the pic above to get to the web site. Watch the video. I did even though videos that explain make me a little crazy.

okay enough. off to rest.

What do you blog about? asked my new guitar student after I told her that blogging was part of the therapy of this part of my life. Everything, I responded glibly.

I told her she could check for herself and mentioned my clever web site address (jupiterjenkin.com) and cautioned her that it was an X rated site. But then mentioned that I’m X rated in person as well. Heh.

I have been reading through and thinking about Mendelssohn’s Prelude and Fugue in E minor for Piano, Op. 35 no. 1. I consulted Peter Mercer-Taylor’s Cambridge Companion to Mendelssohn this morning and found some interesting comments.

Two authors of essays in the book writing on different topics (Glen Stanley on the keyboard music & R. Larry Todd on M’s sacred music, real and imaginary) mention Charles Rosen’s observations on the fugue in Op. 35 no. 1. Rosen says (both authors quote), that this fugue which shifts from minor to major complete with the statement of a chorale like melody in the soprano is both an “invention of religious kitsch” and a “masterpiece.”

Rosen says this in his wonderful book, “The Romantic Generation.” I have just read through the six pages he devotes to this work. I am astonished that he says that Mendelssohn was the inventor of religious kitsch in music. He says the feelings inspired by this “masterpiece” evoke only the shell of religion but not religion itself.
Reading this passage seems to tell me more about Rosen’s idea of religion than Mendelssohn’s musical ideas.

I understand that Mendelssohn believed strongly in reason, but more strongly in the power of beauty without words (this was his thinking behind his piano “Songs Without Words). If Mendelssohn was evoking wordless emotion in this fugue, I am reminded more of Beethoven’s faux chorale at the end of the ninth than the tons of religious kitsch in music one encounters. I say “faux” because he like Mendelssohn invented his melody.

I think Rosen’s ideas might possibly be more about his subjective response to discussing the music of Mendelssohn. I see Mendelssohn as more of a classicist speaking in the Romantic genre. At least that’s how I hear his music. So where Rosen hears kitsch, I hear nobility in the face of death. It could be that I myself am too superficial to plum the depths of Rosen’s take on Mendelssohn. So be it.

In fact I would go a bit further and say that I am aware that I am capable of both missing points and making them. One point that strikes me is that scholars and academics often miss their own subjectivity. I think Mendelssohn has suffered from the stereotype of being a light weight composer. This is probably due to a combination of natural academic disdain for everything that moves and the reductive idea that Mendelssohn was either a Christian or a Jewish composer. (I think he was neither. I think he was a composer. One who was a cradle Lutheran with a stake in the Jewish identify of his time and probably note religious in the modern sense of personal conviction and la la la).

Earlier in Peter Mercer-Taylor’s Companion to Mendelssohn, he writers of the “narrative of decline” that many musicologists ascribe to Mendelssohn. By this I think they mean that his composing got more and more trivial or less profound as he got older instead maturing. This decline, Mercer-Taylor says, “has always admitted a diverse body of exceptions, including the D minor Piano Trio op. 49, the Variations serieuses, Op. 54, the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream op. 61, the “Scottish” Symphony op. 56, the Violin Concerto Op. 64 and the F minor String Quartet op. 80.”

I think this list belies the point that Mendelssohn’s work declined. Good grief. A list like that seems pretty decent to me. And I think it defies the stereotype.

I had a couple of disturbing conversations this Xmas in which I found myself in the uncomfortable position of defending optimism.  The shallow nature of humans is not something I dispute. I can see it only too clearly in myself. But I tend to see it more clearly in institutions most of which I find suspect (i.e. church, school, business, government) than individuals I encounter.

It is necessary to do a bit of reductive thinking (such as stereotyping mentioned above) in order to even reason or analyze anything. One must begin with some conceptions or basis for one’s ideas. But ultimately one circles around and examines them for their inevitable flaws.

Over and over, I see that an organization of individuals quickly takes on it’s own self-perpetuation as the reason for its existence discarding or disguising it’s original ideas about its purpose.

And over and over again, I see that individual humans are capable of rising to insights and creating beauty which takes my breath away. I see these as the result of individuals working within a communal context, but still individuals that I admire and want to connect with.

Mendelssohn is one of those.

I have been using Diigolet to keep track of the books I read. Diigolet is an online bookmark service (free).

I have been using this kind of service for years as a sort of cyber clipping drawer. I started with the NYT online archive service for subscribers. They stopped doing this a while ago and passed on their unfortunate users to one service. Then that service stopped working and passed on stuff to another. Somewhere in there one of them passed my bookmarks to Diigolet. It says I have 898 bookmarks the oldest of which was created in October 2005.  I do have articles earlier than that bookmarked, but I think this is some sort of date that indicates a shift from one service to the other.

My holiday depression is starting to abate a bit. I have been reading in “Indirect Procedures: A Musician’s Guide to the Alexander Technique” by Pedro De Alcantara.

I have been interested in the Alexander Technique since reading about it in Roberston Davies essays. Unfortunately the nearest teacher of this method of natural whole posture and feeling and thinking is in Ann Arbor. So I have had to content myself with reading about it. This book has lots of interesting insights for musicians. And like every book on the Alexander Technique it says you can’t learn it from a book. Of course.

I had time to rehearse piano yesterday. Worked on Mendelssohn piano trio part. Then some Mendelssohn piano pieces including the fascinating Prelude and Fugue in E minor Op. 35 no. 1. I tried to research this fugue on line, but was blocked from entering music scholarly journals.

One offered to let me have 24 hour access for $28.00. This makes me crazy.

Anyway I found some info from a couple of less stingy purveyors of info (Thelma Hunter program notes on CD Baby [link] & Naxos notes to a recording by Benjamin Frith [link]). In the latter, the story is told that Mendelssohn wrote the fugue at the deathbed of his friend August Hanstein in 1827.  Thus at the astonishing age of 18 or 19, Mendelssohn forgoes maudlin sentimentality and writes a Beethovian treatment of this romantic fugue. It ends with a composed choral switching to the major and sounding very positive and redemptive. This type of stuff flies in the face of the idea of Mendelssohn as the creator of sappy little piano pieces and light scherzos.

I also spent time with Haydn at the piano. My left hand is hurting quite a bit these days. This is one of the reasons I am reading about the Alexander Technique. I began yesterday morning reading the last page of the Mendelssohn fugue. In this section the left hand has continuous octaves. After I was done my hand was unusually sore.

After reading a bit in “Indirect Procedure” I returned to the bench later in the day and my left hand actually felt a bit better after playing.

I also looked over Tallis’s two contributions to the Fitzwilliam Virginal book. I am/was considering pairing up a keyboard piece with some choral settings by him in the Feb recital. The two in the Fitzwilliam Virginal book are a bit long and dry. Hence they are usually thought of as organ works. (god  help us.. if it’s boring, it’s probably organ)….

I haven’t totally ruled them out. But I will at least abbreviate it if I use one of these.

I find that I am a bit burned out by Xmas. Depression. Melancholy. Obsessing about the silly stuff in my life.  Maybe it’s lift a bit today. I hope so.

I begin with last night’s dream. I hope it amuses anyone who reads it as much as myself:

In my last dream last night, I seemed to have been courting George Bush’s daughter. In the course of our romance I had written up a four page obliquely worded critique of her father and given it to her. She was so taken with my critique that she replicated it on pink sheets and sat her father, her mother and myself down to read it to us.

As she read it I realized how poorly prepared the critque was. There was a paragraph about Vooks (video books). No one in the room but me seemed to know what Vooks were.

Her father had been reading through it. He tossed it aside and began talking to me sternly. I was no Bill Clinton, he said. The report was poorly prepared. Misspellings. (I was sure he meant Vook).

As I stammered an apology and explanation, his wife teared up.

Then suddenly I was in line with James Earl Jones at Wendys. He had lost patience with my studying of the menu and was proceeding to order. The place you order was situated so that one couldn’t see the menu as one ordered. I thought to myself, no problem I can just order.

I said to the middle aged order taker that I would have a single patty. She said without a plug? meaning a bun I guess. I said no. With a plug and onions. She said I have josephines. I said that would be fine. With mustard.

I have several interps of this dream, but they are a bit personal so I will omit them from this public forum, heh.

Church pretty much depleted me physically and emotionally yesterday.  I find it takes enormous energies to teach and perform an anthem and then to do the service then teach another several anthems to my choir.

I would like to do a choral recital in February. God knows why. Saturday I spent a couple hours transcribing a Sanctus by Antonio Lotti for yesterday’s rehearsal.  The choir seem to take to my choices for upcoming music. Interestingly enough they read quite competently through the Mendelssohn I had ready. (“O Come Everyone that Thirsteth” no. 42 in Elijah)  Mendelssohn seems to be an aesthetic that makes sense to them. Likewise the Lotti. At the end of rehearsal I through in a little Gospel arrangement of “This Little Light of Mine” for a week from Sunday (Hey, it’s epiphanic, n’est pas?)

The pop rhythms were harder for my little group. I guess that’s the flip side of classical music literacy.

Anyway I came home exhausted and a bit depressed. As usual. I watched my wife walk out the door to go snow shoeing with her friend Barb just as I was arriving. They were excited to try out Eileen’s new poles.

I had some lunch and then read the Knight’s tale in Ackroyd’s retelling of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. I also interlibrary loaned some books from a recent best of 2009 list.

Of course I do this out of curiosity so I don’t know really what these books contain.

But here are a few. All quotes taken from this link.

“Menand’s point was that the actual experience of the American Civil War – impeccably “moral” though it may have been as a cause – was so nightmarish that it left an entire generation of intellectuals with a hatred of moral certitude of all kinds. The blessing, though, was that instead of turning merely inward or to nostalgic authoritarianism, as the post-World War One intellectuals did after a similar disillusion, it turned them to a new and more anti-authoritarian idea of what morality might be and what the truth might be that supported it.” Adam Gopnik

“Every creature in the small New England town lifts up its voice, from the beavers to the lichen to the living and the dead. But it’s not twee. Nor precious, affected, or a Marquez rip-off, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s an epic, that just happens to be about the lives of three 12-year-old girls. Even if one of them can resurrect the dead, it’s hardly the traditional territory for an epic.” Jessica Crispin

“LeBlanc is a journalist and spent 10 years documenting the family’s struggles with poverty, drugs, parenthood, love and jail. It’s an important social document and an incredibly compelling read. It’s been my mission to get everybody I know to read this book.” Miriam Toews

“John Ehle, from North Carolina, is now 84, and is still shockingly unknown. It has taken a small press, Down Home Books, to begin republishing his work in the last two or three years. The Landbreakers is a great American novel, way beyond anything most New York literary icons have produced. And that is only one of several remarkable novels, though the one a reader new to Ehle should begin with.” Michael Ondaatje

“We must all come to terms with our parents, and this can be the task of a lifetime. Watching someone as talented as Gray undertake this challenge would be compelling enough, but with the background panorama of the Russian Revolution, Nazism and the intimate family life of the ultimate power couple – it’s like a voyage to another social planet in business class. Gray pulls this off with a generosity that is surprising given all she suffered from her parents’ narcissism.” Michael A. Marrus

I end with a poem that caught my attention yesterday. It captured my dismal mood:

The Erotic Civilization
The infinite erotic civilization we created
is declining now. Breast and penis wag in public
as in primitive times, when nothing was erotic but the gods,

and they wave placards and besiege the legislature,
demanding their right to go naked, unmolested,
unnoticed like anyone else through the pubic airwaves.

There are still heroes of eroticism,
those we call `The Antediluvians’, who appear in g-strings
behind aquarium glass, as if anyone were watching,

and there are still those who watch them
in the tired chrome and neon of the Erotomania Club
or on a last streetcorner of transvestite whores.

We still sometimes enjoy the very significant old bromide
whereby the decolletee is made to seem momentarily
the sacred cleft of the buttocks. Yet now

it all has the shuttered umbrella-folding sad
end-of-the-season feel that any religion will exude
as it survives stubbornly into the new age.

And the new age: how few steps are left to take
for the ever-developing machine of the body
before we get there. The distances are very big

but crossable, given merely a life that could be counted out
in simplest arithmetic, though it would have to last
longer, they say, than the universe is going to.

And it would be–will be–a boring journey,
like a bus trip across the Australian desert, sixty hours,
with the two drivers taking ten-hour shifts, each sleeping

while the other jounces and rots and the passengers look out
on the unvarying succession of pebbles, no two alike
and no two distinguishable: as if a mite should crawl

across one of those paintings of North African stone and sand
in which Jean Dubuffet submerges into the pure `thingness’
and dignity of earth’s basic material. Yes,

though we bury our penises in the sand, we have to see
the erotic age is now dead and in the world coming to be
will be infinitely pitied by our sexless shadows.

For the time being, however, we remain: brittle
elders, almost insensible, almost impotent, yet alive
by the sufferance of our young, who could easily grab us

and wring our necks, if they ever should desire to.
But they don’t desire. Who can understand them? They care
nothing at all for the mating song and dance

except that its necessary management provides some jobs.
They say right out loud that pleasure is a patina,
something to ease the bitter with the sweet,

and that the abyssal wealth of nature, custom,
and personality was all illusion, a mistake.
Nor can anything we do seduce or divert their resentment,

now that our most alluring female is only an old
half-bursting vacuum cleaner bag, whose penis envy
is about to vanish forever into white oblivion.

Still, we possess the last great strength of the erotic
age: intoxicated terror. Let them do as they please,
their advances can’t help moving us to the passion

of agony and sorrow while we die… The final
penetration, the thrust home, is coming, and they will be
the deliverer, whatever they do or don’t desire.

Around the last salons and saloons the human wave
mounts and howls willy-nilly with an electronic chuckling,
we can hear a click-click-click of commercial stilleto

heels: an undreamt body is stalking to be sold naked,
to be chained by the wrists to a white pillar
in the flap-snap-flop of the laundry of the future

strung out the windows of tropical highrise slums.

by A. F. Moritz (link to source)

My brother and sister-in law left at around eleven yesterday. I jumped on the treadmill for the first time in three days. Then got to work on doing some planning so that I would have something for today’s post service rehearsal.

I found a very interesting Mass by Antonio Lotti which includes a couple of violin parts as well as a continuo. [Here’s a link to the entire PDF file if you are feeling perverse]  I have had a soft spot in my heart for this composer for quite a while. I was introduced to his writing through some simple choral adaptations I performed years ago in Oscoda. Since then I keep an eye out for his work. I was gratified to find recently that Bach, Handel and Mendelssohn all thought highly of his stuff.

It took me quite a while to figure out the provenance of this piece. Lotti’s opus is pretty disorganized scholarly wise. It looks like the research is pretty current.  I found a web site (link to Ancient Groove Antonio Lotti Page) which included a list of his work dated October of last year.

Unfortunately though Ancient Groove is attractively named I couldn’t quickly discern the basis of their claim of scholarship. I did eventually find a reference (can’t remember where this morning) that made it clear that the violin parts were added later. But maybe not too later. So it makes them less suspect in my mind. And in fact I like the arrangement I found online.

Unfortunately the key was a bit of a problem in that it was for ATB. I dumped it into Finale and put it up a major third which seem to be more in the range of the singers I am working with.

I am only planning to do the Sanctus since the readings for Feb 7 include the famous Isaiah passage which contains the beginning of the Sanctus [link to lectionary reading page ]. This is the day I would like to schedule a choral recital as well. I think it might be kind of cool to perform this piece in church that morning and then repeat it at a recital that afternoon.

I am planning to do it with violin viola cello and harpsichord.

Also planning to repeat pieces we did this year by Arvo Part and Bach. Today I’m going to perform organ pieces by Buxtehude and Armsdorf on Wie Schon Leuchtet as the prelude and postlude. The anthem today is an arrangement I did myself in 2007 of another Irish carol.  I’m hoping enough of the choir vaguely remembers it to be able to teach it in one setting.

Next week I have scheduled a movement from Mendelssohn’s Elijah.

“O Come Everyone that Thirsteth” seems like a good anthem to sing on Baptism of Christ. I just hope I can teach it effectively today in our post service rehearsal. It’s not that hard, but we’ll see. I may need to come up with something else for next week.

I tried to go over to church yesterday afternoon and found the place crammed with wedding people. I waited until later and went back and made copies of anthems (legal)  and practiced organ.

In the meantime I spent a great deal of time on the piano last night. Mendelssohn and Rorem this time.

I persist in my embrace of beauty in these troubled times. It keeps me connected to myself.

I cooked up a pretty good New Years/Xmas meal for family yesterday. My niece, her fiancee and my nephew had to skip coming over and sharing with us due to inclement weather.

I cooked up a turkey roast which was a bit better than the one I served my wife and mother recently. I had foolishly purchased a turkey loaf thinking my wife and mother would not mind. They were of course gracious but remarked on the difference. This was Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving the small turkey roasts were on sale. I picked one up and put it in the freezer and served it yesterday.

I did manage to get a tiny bit of piano playing in despite having company. I am always fearful it is rude to sit down and play but think it was probably okay yesterday. I keep thinking about Satie, Ned Rorem and the Fitzwilliam Virginal book and played little bits of them yesterday:

Satie Nocturnes 5 & 2,

Rorem Barcarolles 1 & 2

and an Allemande by William Byrd from the Fitzwilliam Virginal book.

We exchanged gifts without the rest of the people being present. I had wrapped up a bunch of silly stuff for my guests. This was a bit less effective without the whole crowd but was fine.

Mark and Leigh bought me an elegant edition of Ackroyd’s retelling of Canterbury Tales:

Very nice.

I haven’t treadmilled in two days and am only just starting to feel the lack of it. I have been standing in the kitchen most of the time so that my body is getting some exercise.

Today I have to plan more anthems for tomorrow’s post game rehearsal.

I am looking at renaissance anthems and have some stuff sort of in mind. Probably should rehearse tomorrow’s prelude and postlude as well.

I am dealing with some depression.

This is probably due to holiday silly stuff. Poor me.

I got up early this morning and wrote in my journal before writing this post. Xmas has really been a good time. I got to cook and even play a bit of piano. But underlying my fun was a bit of a darker mood. About me. Being a musician who is essentially rootless and independent (no colleagues, no connection to professional stuff like college or recording) sometimes leaves me a bit insecure I guess. Thrown entirely on my own resources and motivations and understandings. I do have many imaginary conversations with my past teachers and great composers and writers. This is the life I have chosen and I would choose it again.

As I cooked yesterday I played bits and pieces of Northwestern U’s version of the Magic Flute. This music helps me tremendously. [link to Google video of the first act]

So yesterday I had great fun cooking. I made two quiches, one without meat. Also made Cauliflower Pea curry. Surprisingly all of the diners tried and seemed to like all of the food. Except my mother, who found the mild curry a bit spicey for her.

Of course, sick Eileen was not dining with us. She restricted herself to light meals.

In the afternoon, I put out veggies, dip, cheese and crackers. I bought some Stilton and now affirm that Stilton and Port is a good combo.

I broke my hard liquor fast and had some of my brother’s Bowmore Islay single malt scotch whisky.

In the evening Mark and I went to Meijers to buy a new vaporizer for Eileen.  She was pretty miserable all day with a stuffed up head and had difficulty resting. All of our vaporizers seemed not to be working. Hence the new one.

I have already done three loads of dishes this morning. Just received word that my niece,  nephew and  niece’s partner are not attempting the drive over from Detroit this morning. Makes sense. It is kind of snowy. They also had an evening of partying. We will miss seeing them this year.

Just discovered the turkey was roasting at 425 degrees instead of 325 degrees. Oops. I will put it back in after a bit of cooling.

I even managed some practicing and studying.  Not enough to be rude, I hope.

Mark informed me this morning that there actually was a tv series made in relation to Anthony Burgess’s book length poem, “Moses.”

Another quick post before getting started on today’s cleaning and cooking.

I did make Anadama bread yesterday.

I use the Bentley Farm Cookbook recipe (called Frank Ryan’s Anadama bead). Here’s a link to something similar… but leave out the nutmeg. This is a NYT link, but it doesn’t give the background of the name of the bread. Here’s a link to a version claiming to be the original.

I don’t know if it’s so, but it is similar to the one in the Bentley Farm Cookbook.

I also made Mango chutney and Raita yesterday.

Planning to make a curry today as well as a quiche. Busy busy busy.

Yesterday evening while waiting for my brother and his wife to arrive I read another graphic thingo:

Cool. Another good one.  These stories alternate between one reality and another quite nicely. I especially liked the second story which is more cartoon like. This is the first page of this story:

Granpa Greenbax is a sort of McScrooge Duck character. But the story gets darker when he kills his nephew and then suddenly is pulled out of the reality of the story into a larger reality that shows that he is actually a frog which has a computer implant and is acting out his story for a live tv show. I don’t want to ruin the ending but I do recommend these authors. Good stuff.

After I finished that book, I segued into Anthony Burgess’s book length poem called Moses.

Originally a very unique screen play treatment, it seems never to have been used for a movie. Hard not to picture Charleton Heston however. But it is Burgess I haven’t read, so what the hey.

I now have a shitload dishes to do and even some work for church (I want to pick out some renaissance anthems to do in Lent and in our Feb recital before Sunday. We’ll see if I succeed.)

I’m still looking for more conversation on my insularity. Nothing so far. Oh well. Fun while it lasted.

Happy new year, eh?

Hey check it out. I had TWO comments for the last post. I hope I wasn’t rude in my response to Hitchhiker. Instead of us both being insular, maybe we just live in different worlds. I’m willing to accept the world of stories, literature, music, poetry, history and art is a bit insular. But it also has some broad aspects that interest me. Generalizing about “most” people doesn’t help me that much anyway. I’m just flattered someone read my blog and posted.

My daughter Elizabeth gave me this to read while she was here:

It’s mildly disturbing in an entertaining way.

Last year (I think) my daughter Sarah gave me this one:

I finally read it this week. Hard to say what my reaction to it is. I guess I found it kind of interesting and entertaining as well.  Seems to be a good time to read these books. Plus I’m expecting a visit from the famous graphic artist, Jeremy Bastian (who happens to be engaged to my lovely niece, Emily).

I interlibrary loaned a few 2009 graphic whatchacallits. Read these yesterday:

The first is really quite well done. It takes place mostly in Detroit and is about a kid who actually has a story to tell. It seems to me that many of these writer/artists are fixated on a sort of narcisstic R. Crumbish writing down of their lives or something close to. Unfortunately they often don’t interest me as much Crumb used to.

The second is a retelling of the Invisible Man. Not bad.

Couldn’t resist putting this into today’s blog.

Okay, I’ve got stuff to go do. I made pies yesterday. Today I make bread.

I have sketched out a menu for my brother’s fam’s visit:

Thurs: Cauliflower curry, homemade chutney, Raita, Rice, Quiche (one brocolli, one carnivore), anadama bread, pie, salad.

Fri: Roast Turkey (in the freezer purchased cheaply after Thanksgiving), stove top stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy (veg and carn), Momma stanberg’s cranberry relish, anadama rolls, yams (for me, I’ve been craving them), pie, salad.

It’s not unusual for me to decide to get out of bed after being annoyed at what I am listening to on the radio.

This morning a report suggested that eleven years ago (!) there existed  common cultural referents to allow a united sense of identity to emerge.

Now not so much. The examples (actually they were the lead information) were Seinfeld and the winner of American Idol.  [link to annoying story…. audio supposedly available after 9 AM this morning]

The idea was that Seinfeld held us together because so many Americans had watched the show that they got the jokes and references. Now fewer watch American Idol.

I wondered why this annoyed me.

I think it was because it was obvious the woman who had written and/or narrated the piece hadn’t really thought much about what she was reporting on.

She did suggest the absence of a common cultural referent like Seinfeld made it harder to create a united sense of purpose in the society.

I doubt if she had heard of E.D. Hirsch’s idea of “cultural literacy.” He published back in the stone ages of 1987, two years before Seinfeld even began to air. Even then it was obvious that he wasn’t trying for a deep insight, just some observations about what common notions were  needed for one to communicate well to others in U.S. society.

Further, the idea that there is a system of thinking about meaning (semiotics) may never enter the brain of the people who made the annoying report that got me moving this morning.

I sometimes think of these kinds of ideas as resonance and context. It is difficult for me to believe in the mirror that radio, tv and other sources of information seem to hold before us these days.

Are we really so shallow that we do not detect the false comparison of a story (Seinfeld) to the marketing ploy referred to as American Idol. Not that Seinfeld is sacrosanct or terrible significant. It’s just that narrative always beats shallow commerce.

Reality shows viewed from afar seem to be more unreal than real. (Viewed from afar because I’m not sure I ever watched one all the way through). I suspect they are the Gong show of my youth writ large.

Like the dancers of the marathon in the movie, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” the contestants  are locked into a false story of humiliation and simple carnival-like lies.

This is the cultural referent that the narrator of this morning’s reporter is suggesting we lack? God help us. Surely we are not the shallow simple people that politicians and TV pundits and NPR radio report announcers seem to think we are.

What about the idea that each life is a life of genius worthy of reflection?

That there is a common humanity that draws us out of our simple mundane narcissistic  tendency for the easy way out and toward our better selves, our bliss, our daemon.

I think this is what Joyce is pointing to in Ulysses by enshrining the common hero of Leopold Bloom and having him lead the arrogant image of youthful preoccupation with the artifice of culture, Stephen Dedaelus, to a deeper insight into living.

This may even be a basic insight of much human art: to draw us from the shallows of selfishness and stupidity into the larger realm of historical human community and beauty and truth.

I know that in addition to being very interested in what music and art is being created now, I still am drawn into the world of the previously created…

I increasingly think that the world of ideas and words is important to realizing any sort of human potential. Of course it’s not the only way to be human. But if we discard systematic thought in favor of image and only the spoken (or viewed) word is important, we will need to return to a deeper use of our memories in order to think thoughts and live lives that are not advertisement shallow.  I think that the human will persist whatever the context. But I admit to an unreasoning belief in the individual and his/her worth and capacity.

The evil and dishonesty that we all must confront is most of all that which is inevitably in ourselves not our neighbors.

Puts me in mind of Martin Buber’s ideas of I/Thou or even Christ’s deep belief in people’s potential.

Sigh.

Heavy thoughts for this early in the morning,   I guess.

Surprising how fatigued I have been this week. Yesterday I spent some time with Ned Rorem’s lovely Barcarolles for piano.  Right now I’m listening to an hour long interview of him which includes most of a performance of the first one of these. Here’s a link: [link to PRX web site interview of Ned Rorem]. Warning that you have to sign up for a log on in order to listen to it. I glanced over some of the other programs available and they looked interesting so I signed up for a free membership.

Written in 1954 (3 years after the year of my birth), these piano pieces of Rorem are beautiful.

Earlier this morning I listened to BBC broadcast of a Bavarian Chorus singing Saint-Saens’ entire Christmas Oratorio and then two Christmas carols by Arvo Part. Serendipity for sure. Since we performed excerpts from the Saint-Saens at Xmas eve this week and did a piece by Part last Sunday. [temporary link to the BBC IPlayer of this program]

By the way, the BBC programs online are amazing. You can listen to dramas and music. They even post recordings of recent bell change ringing going on in English churches. cool.

While I listened I cleaned the kitchen and made blueberry muffins. The muffins are cooling right now.

I have scheduled two Noels by Dandrieu. I love the French organ Noels and try to do a few this time of year.

whew. So Xmas did take quite a bit out of me. Feeling guilty that I haven’t gotten back to my bud, Jordan about playing sax pieces while he’s home from “collage”. He gave me scores and linked me in to downloads of recordings of the pieces. I am just getting to messing with it today. Lovely music. But I don’t think I will have time while he is home to work up the accompaniments. As the great bigoted Healey Willan used to say of himself, “Can’t play for beans.”

Christmas Day found me a bit stunned. I had invited my Mom over for breakfast. She decided to stay warm and safe in her apartment due to the inclement weather. We visited her for about an hour and took her Xmas goodies.

Then we drove up to Whitehall for the Hatch gathering. When we arrived the party was in full swing. The majority of the people crowding the double wide trailer where Eileen’s Mom lives were kids. Happy kids. Good energy.

One of the happier Hatch events I have attended.

After a few hours we were back home in Holland.

I was beginning to tire. Elizabeth’s plane was due in around 10 PM in Grand Rapids. We managed to drive into the new set-up there and pick her up without even having to park. I think we were all glad to see each other. Back home through the dark icy rain to some happy chatter and trading stories. Nice to have Elizabeth home in person. She is planning on taking Edison away which is good news for her partner Jeremy, but slightly sad news for me. Edison is the best cat I’ve ever had to live with. I tried to talk her into taking the crazy cat (also hers) Mischief but to no avail. Mischief is like our slightly dotty cranky old aunt living with us.

I did manage to track down some of the online readings David Brooks recommended in his NYT article recently. [link to his article]

He calls them the Sidney awards.

He recommended (couldn’t give an award to because he made NYT articles ineligible) David Rohde’s series on being held captive by the Taliban. I read these as they were posted on the web. I find that I am most entranced by good writers who spread out and use a few thousand words. I enjoyed this quite a bit.

I haven’t read Atul Gawande’s piece, “The Cost Conundrum,” (David’s Choice no. 1) in The New Yorker. But happily bookmarked it for future reading on health care issues.

On the other hand I have read David’s Choice no. 2 David Goldhill’s “How American Health Care Killed My Father,” in The Atlantic. It was this article that helped me understand that the true customer of American health care is not us patients but the insurance companies.

Speak of Health Care Issues, I clicked on David’s Choice no. 3 and read a wickedly witty little piece by  Jonathan Rauch called  “Fasten Your Seat Belts – It’s Going to Be a Bumpy Flight” in The National Journal. Rauch develops a hilarious metaphor for the cumbersome antiquated Health care in the U.S. What if airlines were run like health care?

I also read David Grann’s “Trial by Fire” in The New Yorker when it was published . This is a disturbing piece on the botched investigation & execution of Todd Willingham, who was accused of murdering his three children by setting their house on fire in 2004. This was David’s Choice no. 4.

I bookmarked Choice no. 5 for future reading. Matt Labash profiled Marion Barry, the fascinating ex-mayor of DC in “A Rake’s Progress”.

David’s Choice no. 6 was a historical article on the region around Afghanistan, “Rediscovering Central Asia” by Frederick Starr in The Wilson Quarterly. I bookmarked it wryly recalling that Americans learn their geography and history through their wars.

Brooks promises more in his next Op Ed piece. I will check them out. I feel a bit smug because Brooks is on the opposite fence of me philosophically (conservative). But I do find him intelligent and usually well reasoned if not informative.

It could happen.

In addition to David Brooks’s links, I ran across a few more things recently:

http://www.html-kit.com/favicon is a cool online program that will convert graphic files into those neat little icons that appear on your browser when you bookmark a link.

Presumably it would appear without the big yellow one.

http://mypalsatan.com/about.php seems to be an online internet video series. A madcap goofy plot about what it would be like to have Satan for a roommate. I plan to check it out in the future when my brain needs serious rotting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/books/review/Cockburn-t.html?ref=world

Joe Sacco is a talented journalist who makes excellent and evocative pictures of his essays. I have read some of his stuff before.  This is a link to a review of his new book, “Footnotes in Gaza.”  Sacco (along with other historians) points to a tragic event in Gaza in 1956 as seminal in what’s going on in the Middle East right now. I plan to interlibrary loan this book if I can.

I bookmarked this one for Eileen:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/wallace-energy

It’s about something called a Bloom Box which generates electricity chemically from waste. Very cool.

Finally a link to a review of bio of Handel. Looks interesting.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/348yjpcs.asp

I have come to realize that when people talk about the “internets” they are often talking at cross purposes. As I read recently online, when was the last time you heard the phrase, Information Highway.

For me it still is an Information Highway as well as a Information Universe. An amazing place with so many people and resources like articles, mp3s, sheet music, online books… not to mention keeping contact with loved ones and interesting ones.

It’s raining on ice in Western Michigan. Still dark. The late service last night seemed to go amazingly well. We performed excerpts from Saint-Saens’ Christmas Oratorio. I do like the instrumental prelude he wrote for this piece and we performed it last night with violin, viola, cello organ. Also, the Hallelujah chorus from the Messiah benefited from a slightly less pompous rendition than usual with violin, cello and harpsichord accompaniment. At communion we broke out the tone chimes and rang random consonant sounds during “Of the Father’s love begotten.” All in all, a solid service.

I broke down and purchased and downloaded a recording of Cantata 142  from www.baroquecds.com. 5.99 what a bargain. We sang this cantata years ago in Oscoda. Although it’s probably not by Bach, it is a fun little piece about Xmas.

I listened to Christmas music and made bread yesterday afternoon.

Unfortunately I forgot to put in the salt. So I found out what that does to bread. Removing it from the oven I thought it looked funny. The lovely shaped loaves had fallen a bit and the top of each loaf was rippled in an odd way. I cut a piece and immediately thought, “needs salt.” Oops.

Today we plan to drop by to say hi to my Mom. We had planned to have her over for breakfast but she just phoned and said she was going to skip going out due to the weather. Who can blame her?

We are driving up to Whitehall to see Eileen’s fam. Then late this evening we meet my daughter Elizabeth’s plane in Grand Rapids. So we will be on the roads.  Hope it’s not too messy out.

My boss preached on the value of the familiar last night. I kept having thoughts about that. I mentioned to her before we left that the familiar is evident in the way people’s minds retain certain things like hymns and poems they have memorized even when most of their personalty and mind has seeped away. Later I thought about how the familiar comes into play with music we love. The resonance and associations we have with certain musics (like Cantata 142) creates a depth of familiarity that is part of why we like it.

Here are a few links to stuff I have been browsing online:

Jeremy Denk is a concert pianist who writes a fascinating, eloquent, intelligent blog.

Recently he had an entry on Chopin:[link to blog].  It was his musings that got me thinking about why I like Chopin again and playing and purchasing  his music. Also I listened to chopin for one entire day this week while I made apple pies.

If you like classical piano music well played and are interested in free downloads, I recommend the Piano Society web site: [link to the Chopin page…. scroll down for free mp3s].

The Boys Choir of Harlem has been defunct for a while. I always admired this combination of good music and helping young people. Too bad. [link to NYT article].

Eunuchs now have the right to be considered a “distinct gender” in Pakistan. Now if we can just get the U.S. to follow the tolerance of this country (just kidding…. they are a bit too tolerant of the violent factions that flourish within their borders). [link to NYT article]

“Saying No, No, No, to Ho-Ho-Ho” by Hilary Stout in the NYT provokes some interesting reflection on how some people are choosing to avoid Christmas this year. [link to NYT article] They don’t go so far as to call it a Christmas fast, but that’s what they’re talking about. It led me to ponder my own evolving thinking about Christmas.

For some reason I am more comfortable than ever with this holiday. I think that I have solidly moved away from seeing my self in terms of religion or popular culture. Falsity is anathema to me right now. So that pretty much cancels out most of the Christian religious expressions about Christmas. Along with abandoning my rigidity and evangelism about the liturgical understandings of this season. And the so called cultural stuff I run up against in the media and popular societal expressions has less and less meaning for me. I just think that we get it wrong. People are not stupid. They’re just like you and me. They just see and experience life differently.

I hasten to add that I have not lapsed into a soft headed relativism. Quite the contrary. I now believe that some things cannot be rationalized away as misunderstandings. Specifically things like the hate that pervades the world.  Hate for the starving, the poor, the ugly, the outcast. Hate for those who are different.

So as my secretary at work kept repeating this season, “MFC.” She then would clarify that she meant: “Merry Fucking Christmas.” heh.

My daughter Elizabeth pointed me to a Lifehacker article on a service that claims it will keep your music in the cloud of the internets for you. Not sure about how this would work. Especially their claim that if the local country doesn’t permit sharing music with your friends they will search the internet for a free (presumably legal) copy. Hmmm. [link to Lifehacker article on Tunebag]

goingjesus.com [link to site] seems to have been collecting bizarre nativity sets for a while. Here’s one of the many I like:

I think it’s a gas how the writer of the site points out that the similarity between this Joseph

and you know who:

Finally I do recommend the NYT annual year in ideas. Always fun to pick up on things you missed. Here’s a link to the G page from which you should be able to move around through the whole article. [link to NYT article]

I have been a busy little elf the last few days. Yesterday I spent most of the day in the kitchen. Made four huge apple pies and gave away three (Ahem. Eileen and I are eating the fourth). I baked two of the four and made up ready-to-bake pies of the other two. This was because I had asked the recipients which they preferred.

I used the old apple corer/peeler. After some diddling with it I got it to work quite well.

I interrupted my day to go have my pre-Xmas conference with my boss. I do like working for this person. I told her that I have had a gentle insight recently. I glossed over it in the previous post I believe.

I was talking to daughter Elizabeth on the phone Sunday and mentioned that I was “winning.” Later I thought about this.  By resisting reacting to people who misbehave I do not defeat them, rather I defeat those parts of me that would like to respond to them in kind.

The basic insight that you can only really affect you own behavior and not that of others keeps coming back to me in my life.

When working with people who do not seem to be conscious it is helpful to concentrate on your own reaction. In my case, it makes all the difference in the world.

This doesn’t mean that I am complicit in others’ misbehavior. It simply helps me, at least, to be more constructive in how I respond. Usually moving quickly past insult to a discussion of content.

In other words I try to collaborate and problem solve with others despite having quite thin skin myself and often hearing intense emotion incorrectly as though it were in fact directed at myself.

It’s not near as big a deal as it sounds. It’s a gentle late middle aged insight for myself. That’s all.

So on to Xmas.

Christmas has been a time of intense cognitive dissonance for me.  Since I learned how the Liturgical year is designed, it bothered me that Christmas is so complex and unattractive in its many forms in U.S. life.

But since realizing that my own beliefs do not coincide with conventional
Christianity and even belief in God, it has helped me not to get too bent out of shape over stuff around like Christmas.

I have eased into just enjoying the parts of Christmas I like and trying to ignore or tolerate the rest.

I wouldn’t dream of not having a real Christmas tree in my house. But now it’s a bit like not letting Halloween go past without carving a pumpkin.

And here’s something weird. I actually like all the goofy music, the goofier the better.  John Waters put out a perverted mix of Christmas tunes that I find hilarious. And I like all the jazz tunes as well.

I do think about the meanings of Christmas but then I find myself in a very strange place.  I usually read through “The Burning Babe” by 16th c. poet, Robert Southwell.

I find the sentimentality and commercialism surrounding me a bit much. But then I also am sympathetic to whatever it takes to get people through.

But T.S. Eliot’s Christ the tiger is more where my head goes this time of year. On the INSIDE.

Managed some decent improvs yesterday at church. The best was probably the postlude on “O Come, o come, Emmanuel.” I find this tune very easy to improvise on. I scheduled improvs both for the prelude and postlude. The prelude I called “Improvisation in the style of Arvo Part by Steve Jenkins.” Presumptuous I know.

I began with a carefully worked out set of notes on the harpsichord based on the hymn tune “Conditor Alme siderum” (Creator of the stars of night) which was scheduled for use later in the service. Then I cued in three people with tone chimes in their hands to begin a carefully worked out pattern of hand chimes. Both of these patterns were based on Arvo Part’s theories of composition. I gradually increased the complexity of the harpsichord part using only notes in Part’s theories. This turned out to be a good thing because the harpsichord was out of tune when I arrived and I only had time to tune notes to be used in the prelude. Then I added a flute and a soprano singing “Ahh” on the hymn melody pausing between each phrase.

After the melody was done. I gradually simplified the harpsichord part and then cued the hand chimes to stop. Finished with the same fixed improv I began with.

That was fun.

I managed to keep my head above water yesterday.

I am coming to the resolve that my take on music and listeners is a coherent one even if it differs from others. My understanding of what want to buy diazepam seems musical to me as I perform is deepening. I find that thinking of music as something one does, instead of reifying it especially into some sort of Platonic ideal is helpful to me.

The common listener (like the common reader) seems important to my understanding. In fact more and more I see myself in the role of the common listener and reader. My previous youthful ideas of complexity for its own sake which often disguised a rigidity I now find distasteful in myself  plays a much smaller role in my thinking.

What I’m saying is that performing music in a room where there are many others who have a literally academic understanding of what music is can be a bit of an internal battle. Yesterday I won. I found myself connected to the music throughout the morning while realizing that some of the musicians in the room probably disapproved of or were confused by my musicality.

Someone asked if I was varying tempos on purpose in certain areas. This actually ended up being a clarifying moment for me because I asked the person if what I was doing seemed unmusical to her because I simply was trying to interpret musically.

Later it occurred to me that I seem to use different parts of my brain for thinking musically and thinking analytically (i.e. determining if I am unintentionally distorting something like tempo).

I emerged yesterday with a strengthened notion of my own approach to music. Very encouraging.