I listened to Ladies of the Canyon as I took my shower this morning. I keep wondering if anyone is writing pop music to the standard of the music I heard in 70s. I think it’s a stereotype to consider the pop music you heard when you were young as better than what is being made now. If I amend that to music that I am able to find now it’s hard for me not to think it is so especially in terms of song writing/.

There is a lot of great music being made now including pop music. But I’m thinking specifically of craft.

I also know that familiarity where music is concerned is tricky. We can like something because we are familiar with it. If we take time to become familiar with music it often increases its attraction.

I wonder about the music of the 70s. It was a dark time but much of the music has hope and stringent comment in it. I think now that hope is harder.

Nostalgia is an inevitable factor and I don’t even resist. I take my joy where I can find it.

I am meeting Rhonda in an hour to play some duets and listen to her play a piece she is working on. It is good to have a friend in her. I think of all the friends I have had over the years and there are few that still connect with me. As I play the memories of friendship I realize that it did not occur to me that I would lose so many friendships. This makes the memories both sweeter and sadder. But no matter.

No reason to feel sorry for myself when my life is going so well.

And part of this fun is listening to music, both from my past and new music.

I need to quit and grab some breakfast.

If you’re thinking about the Supreme Court at all, the latest podcast from the Constitutional Center is excellent. I’ve listened to most of it. Steve Vladeck is amazing in his analysis and understanding.

I received a nice postcard from a woman who attends church at Grace yesterday. She has always been very complimentary of me. Her compliments seem to speak from a place of pain and consolation. So many compliments a sort of bouquet of weird tribute resonant with distancing and misunderstanding. But I think it is important to take compliments well. This is not easy but is something you learn to do. Anything else is ungracious to say the least.

We live in such a weird time of consumerism where everything is at some point reduced to a commodity. It’s difficult to break out of this mindset. But it’s probably necessary to be human.

My admiring friend used words like “grateful,” “joy,” and “hopeful.” I know that she is someone who doesn’t often miss beauty or substitute something for it. She put me in mind of Christopher Small and his ideas about music being a verb and also the result of many hands and minds.

These hands and minds of Small are not just the immediate participants, including the listener, but the hands of the people who set up the chairs, the minds of the people who make up the community where the music happens. I logically extend this to include every human who has lived and made music. And even all humans who ever will live and make music.

So someone like my postcard writer is intrinsic to music in a way that is difficult pinpoint in a society much defined by economics and consuming.

She didn’t put a return address on her postcard. I’m hoping I can run her address down and drop her a note in response. I’m sure to include Christopher Small’s ideas in my appreciation of her reaching out to remind me how important music is to all of us.

I sometimes say that music is constituent to being human. Unfortunately, my OED tells me my use of this word is obsolete.  That which “constitutes or makes a thing what it is; formative, essential; characteristic, distinctive” is not longer the meaning of this word. Oh well.

I would like to add that honesty itself is also something I have been thinking about. In this discussion, I think that to me perceived honesty or authenticity is important. This importance extends to the music that draws me in and that I end up liking or making. It even includes loving. Honesty is something I aspire to and admire when I find it operational in others.

I think the absence of honesty is something we live with on a daily basis. It doesn’t do us any good. Although it’s not always easy, honesty is definitely something worth striving for.

End of sermon.