I woke up this morning extremely grateful that I didn’t have to go play a church service. My evolving new life is already something I enjoy since it is mostly made up of enjoyable bits I used to do in between earning a living. Eileen continues to plot ways for me to add bookshelves by keeping an eye on local auctions. She is busily organizing and tidying up her various loom sites including an entire room upstairs. We are on our way.

I do have some trepidation about my upcoming eye surgery. The odds are on my side that it will be easy and extremely helpful. But it would be silly not to recognize that in a very small number of cases statistically the results can range from unhelpful to disastrous. I think the large number of unknowns contribute to my slight unease.

I will most certainly have to desist some of my daily exercises like sit-ups and weight lifting. The surgeon told me to do no lifting after surgery. Nothing heavier than a milk carton he said. I also don’t know how quickly I will regain use of my eyes. There are two surgeries scheduled a week apart next Wednesday being the first one.

It seems to me I have heard only good things about this surgery from people who have had it including a quick recovery.

I am trying to knock a few books off my reading list by finishing them. I have discovered that in some of my current reading I am not that far from the end of the book. Last night I finished Dying of Whiteness and A Black History of the White House by Clarence Lusane.

Today I plan to spend some time with Rutherford’s Homer.

I only have 15 pages left in it. I’m also over halfway through Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. But I don’t have plans to speed that up. Shakespeare is always fun to savor.

I’ve also been dipping into books by Charles Rosen. In addition to his book on the Classical period he wrote a guide to the Beethoven Piano Sonatas. I also listened to a bit of a 2012 lecture by him on YouTube. He died later that same year.

It’s odd reading and listening to a musician of Rosen’s caliber these days. On the one hand he speaks from the upper echelons of the classical music world. In my experience this world rarely condescends to connect with schmucks like me. For example in the video Rosen says that all pianists begin at the age of 3 or 4 or they “fall off.”

Notre Dame did a number on my head since I learned that the profs there fully expected me to flunk out owing to my poor audition. It was probably a typical music department with motherfuckers and very few humans teaching. I didn’t flunk out. I did well. But I left with the feeling that despite having graduated with good grades I was a second or third rate musician. Oh well. Fuck em.

Since then I think I have learned more about myself and see myself and my musicianship with a bit more clarity. But these unhappy people did not help.

The other half of listening to someone as wonderful and informed as Rosen is how unimportant the entire field of classical music seems to be these days. I have watched major newspapers like the New York Times drop coverage of classical music to a minimum with an emphasis on the contemporary and the noise around popular music is very loud these days, loud enough to drown out coverage of non-pop music.

As with so many things in my life I insist on being connected to both worlds in my own way. By classical music standards my abilities may be limited to some keyboard facility and an understanding of theory and composition. By popular music standards I have had a life of very little commercial potential in terms of popular music eventually even hounded off the streets of Holland as a busker for playing my music too loud (It was a Mozart piano sonata, but nevermind).

It’s hard to know how much my wrinkled appearance has had to do with all this. More than I suspected at the time that’s for sure.

I don’t mean to be so negative this morning. I’m not feeling that way. I am feeling grateful. Not only for not having to do church this morning but for being able to access so much wonderful music and so many cool ideas in my reading. Life is good.

I’ll end with a video of a group that blew me away on YouTube. They seem to be playing electric Urhus (The name means two strings) and definitely doing some throat singing. What’s not to like?

I broke my alcohol fast last night for the second time in 8 days. I had a real gin martini followed by 3 scotches. I can feel it a bit this morning which is unusual for me. Eileen suggested that I find a pattern that would allow me to have an occasional drink and stick to it. But I don’t see a clear way to do that. Meanwhile, back to the fake gin tonight.

I have resumed reading Martha Nussbaum’s 1998 Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. I’m not sure when I stopped reading it, but my place is clearly marked. In the back of the book, there is a newspaper clipping of her article, Making Philosophy Matter to Politics, which is undated, but seems to have been published in 2002. It’s probably been that long since I have read in it. I had marked my place with a charming bookmark made for me by my daughter, Elizabeth. It’s dated December 1999.

Anyway, I think it’s still very pertinent and interesting to read. This morning I was a bit amused to read that even in 1998 profs were finding that students didn’t have acceptable writing skills. Nussbaum describes three classroom experiences of taking a class on feminism at St. Lawrence U, Washing U. at St. Louis, and Stanford. She reports that first year students at St. Lawrence “do not write very well” and their prof spends a lot of time correcting grammar and style in papers they hand in. Nussbaum is examining their papers to partially determine what the teacher has communicated and the atmosphere prevailing in the classroom.

I’m also trying to finish the library’s copy of Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland. I resist purchasing my own copy of this book even though I have learned a lot by reading it. The author, Jonathan M. Metzl, is a sociology and psychiatry prof at Vanderbilt as well as director of its Center for Medicine, Health, and Society.

This book has helped me understand how people in this country routinely support public policy that is harmful to themselves. The short answer is that they understand this and are willing to sacrifice themselves and their loved ones for what they believe. What they believe is usually confused and situated in misconceptions and societal racism. They are not conscious of this and would resent it being pointed out. But I am beginning to make more sense of them with Metzl’s help.

He seems to be a good listener. He and his assistants do focus groups and interview many people. He considers three policy ideas in three different states, all of which he has spent time living in: gun ownership in Missouri, health care in Tennessee, and education in Kansas.

I am learning some new concepts. Reaction formation and the formation role of nostalgia on identity.

There is actually a Wikipedia article on the former. Basically reaction formation is a personality swing from one extreme reaction to its opposite to mask it. Metzl uses it to postulate why Kansans imagine they are living in a vibrant progressive and rejuvenating place when they are living in an “ennui-inducing’ place of endless cornfields and plains. He expands this psychological diagnosis to include the “formation role of nostalgia on identity.”

I have about forty pages to go in Dying of Whiteness.