It has been over a month since I started drinking fake fin in my nightly martini. This is working. Blood pressure is low and my weight is slowly falling.

After church yesterday, Eileen and I were both weirdly exhausted. We remained so for most of the afternoon and evening. I attribute this to the difficult exit I am experiencing at Grace. As I said yesterday attendance was low.

After we got home Eileen remarked that though I am retiring I am having to work a bit harder than usual. This is odd but she is probably reflecting the toll taken on me by the waffling and weirdness as I make for the exit.

As per usual the very people who are exerting unhealthy pressure on shaping my behavior did not attend Eucharist yesterday. Their absence may have weight on me more than usual as I attempted to lead a small group of non singers through the liturgy.

Eileen and I binged watched The Sinner. This is very unusual for us but it seemed to be the ticket yesterday. I like Bill Pullman but that was a bit silly.

Toward evening I began to feel more like myself. We are very lucky to have AC since it was miserable all day.

Early this morning I read a disturbing article on my phone in the New York Times app. It was about health workers on Staten Island protesting about mandatory measures around Covid. Here’s a link. My best guess is their weirdness is a combination of Republican nonsense and anecdotal perception. One worker had a reaction to her vaccination. It was not life threatening, but I wonder how many of her fellow workers were influenced. Also another worker would not believe that most of their cases were  from the unvaccinated even though the count showed they were.

Shame and blame make me crazy and drive shit like this. But we do live in a weird time.

I am having second thoughts about leaving my marimba and congas at church after I retire.

The reason is that I like the sound of these instruments and could conceivably want to use them again. Poor Eileen. She’s still asleep but I’m already making plans that will affect her.

This morning I spent my routine listening to Vaughan Williams.

First i started out with my beloved Oboe Concerto. This made me realize that I also don’t want to leave scores at the church that I may want to study in retirement. The Vaughan Williams is one of them. I have a complete miniature score at work. That’s coming home.

Then I discovered two new pieces by Vaughan Williams. His “Flos Campi ” for viola, small orchestra and chorus. The chorus doesn’t sing words thankfully. This is beautiful. Then on the recording I was listening to it went on to his Piano Concerto.

Hmmm. I must just be in the mood.

This morning there were about 30 people at Eucharist. Jen asked if we could do my Jazz Mass for my remaining Sundays. Despite the fact that I improvised on it for the prelude, the participation was weak.

The hymns were weak as well. When this is the case my inclination to to play a bit on the strong side so that if someone does sing they will feel supported.

Before we arrived, Eileen predicted a small turnout because of the reinstating of mandatory masking.

Both Eileen and I were too tired to go to a restaurant today after Eucharist. it’s been weird trying to keep pace with changing expectations of my last two weeks.

This morning I suggested to Jen that instead of ending with “This Little Light of Mine” as the closing hymn next week, we end with “Sweet, Sweet Spirit,” another favorite. Originally she was planning to invite choir members to stand by the piano for the last hymn. But we have reserved the last four pews for people who would prefer to social distance. This would be defeated by singing choristers lined up directly behind them. So she was happy to change.

I think she is planning to talk to the choir this Wednesday when they meet for final tryouts for filling my position.

The humidity and the temperatures are high today. So coming home to a cool house with excellent food from our refrigerator seemed to be the way to go.

Saving Pedagogy: Dante as the Poet of Education – Public Discourse

I continue to finish up reading the Divine Comedy. I’m reading three translations simultaneously so it can take some time.  I’m on Canto 29 of Paradisio. There are 33 cantos so I’m getting closer.

This article came up on my Facebook feed this morning. It was piano teacher who shared it. Bookmarked to read later.

How ‘Washington Week’ Host Yamiche Alcindor Gets It Done

I can’t figure out if I’m a fan of Alcindor or if she just stands out as the rare competent person on the PBS New Hour. At any rate, I will probably read her memoir which she is working on.

Britain’s Idyllic Country Houses Reveal a Darker History | The New Yorker

If I didn’t have a daughter living in the UK I don’t think I would know what National Trusts were. As it is I have been in a few. I haven’t spotted any racism yet, but apparently it is there in some of them.

Sounds, words, and language have always been part of my daily life as far back as I remember. I am staying open to how I will spend my remaining years.

Last Wednesday, my doctor told me I would live to 2029.  That’s the year when I need to have my next colonoscopy. When she told me that, I said I hoped to live that long. She laughed and said I would. I laughed and said that it was reassuring when your doctor tells you are going to live a few more years.

So maybe I’ll do some writing after I finally retire. I don’t want to jinx it by talking about it too specifically. I told my therapist that yesterday. With music, I have found that talking about a project can sometimes short-circuit it and and slow of even stop progress.

David Foster Wallace was working on his last project(published posthumously as The Pale King). I think he would only refer to it as “something long.” When his agent asked him to a celebration of some sort of anniversary for his wonderful masterpiece, Infinite Jest, he demurred.

“You know I will if you ask me to, but don’t ask me to. I’m working on something long and have difficulty getting back to it after an interruption.”

So there is definitely a time when making something up is between oneself and one’s work.

But it’s pleasant to me right now to think about what I might put into prose.

I have many, many interesting memories that would probably make good prose. I have had a reasonably interesting life. Although it probably doesn’t matter I wonder if upon reading my rendering of incidents involving them if people who know me would be angry.

I have thought about only writing about people who I have known who are dead, starting of course with family (Mom, Dad, grandparents, uncle Richard) and so on.

I have thought about simply reminiscing. I have a great memory of falling in love with Bach’s music in the living room of my cousin in West Virginia. I was entranced with him and his imagination. He held up a record before putting it on the turntable. He explained that the music we would hear was something Bach had written for his students, the two and three part inventions.

Later my romance was confirmed when I read in The Glass Bead Game how near the end of his life the teacher of the Magister Ludi sat at a keyboard and played a Bach two part invention slowly with two fingers.

But this stuff only dimly reflects my deep love and passion for Bach and music.

Also, I know that I have the chops to make up stuff. I know what it’s like to start a story and not know where it’s going to go but simply listen to its unfolding.

This makes me think I probably want to write some fiction. Fiction that doesn’t refer directly to my life.

Wallace was a tennis enthusiast. Tennis works its way into Infinite Jest. Zadie Smith’s Caribbean Mom and middle class white Brit Dad make disguised and not so disguised appearances in her fiction.

And there’s the admonition to write what you know.

I have found it easy and fun to write poetry, songs, and compose other kinds of music. At this point I’m not thinking of writing more poems or songs. The songs that I wrote were largely but not all confessional. All were personal and subjective. Maybe now is the time for some other stuff.

I will probably dash off a poem or two until I die. However my poems and my songs probably do not hold much interest for listeners and readers for some reason.

My youngest daughter loves a story as do I.

But  now is a time for me to open myself to the fun of doing something else. Last night after a stressful day of thinking about church music I felt my body relax unreasonably. What was this, I wondered? I think it might have been freedom pouring into me and reminding me that we all do whatever we want to do and  I will start my own next chapter soon.

I usually lay in bed in the morning looing at my phone, doing the NYT Spelling Bee Puzzle, reading Heather Cox Richardson’s daily email. This morning there was a disturbing email from a choir member as well. I couldn’t help but click on it.

It turns out the choir is not only planning to sing on Aug 28th but was asking me to help them do it. They were hoping to sing “Jesus met the woman at the well,” something I stole off a Chanticleer recording. They were planning a midweek rehearsal and a Sunday morning rehearsal to throw this together along with “This little light of mine” and something more classical.

I emailed my boss and asked, “What is this?”

She said the choir has been talking about singing something for me at the Aug 28th Eucharist. She understood it was going to be surprise. But now she sees they have enlisted my help.

This is the Sunday they are planning to say “goodbye to Steve.” I knew it would be painful but didn’t count on having to inflict wounds myself via leading the choir.

Naturally when I got up from bed and took my blood pressure it was high. Weight continues to gradually go down. 220 this morning. Down from a Covid high of 232.

I asked Jen if there was any way I could get out of conducting the choir this one last time. I didn’t mention it, but it is a group of elderly voices that is woefully out of practice. If I knew I was going to have to lead them in public we would have been rehearsing for weeks just to get their voices back.

Of course, one of my stipulations was that I didn’t want to work with the choir before retiring.

So much for that.

But I am hoping that Jen will talk them down.

postscript

I just received an understanding email from Jen. She will meet with the choir after the tryouts for candidates next Wed and direct them to stuff that will require no prep from them or me.

She said she will invite them to come stand at the back for the closing hymn which will be “This little light of mine” congregational style (We have an anthem based on it, but I don’t remember it being compatible with congregational singing).e

Crisis averted? Hope so. Stay tuned.

Eileen is not up yet. It’s “date day” today since we were busy on our usual day.

I broke my piano last night. I called the piano tech. His wife answered the phone and  was a bit  incoherent. She said she had just awakened from a nap. It was around martini time, but I’ll take her word for it. He probably will get a message. She said it would be sometime next week before he could get to it unless it was urgent.

It’s not urgent but I’m unhappy not to have a functioning piano. I was playing some Jelly Roll Morton and there was a loud snap. After that, a low F would not dampen. I didn’t take the piano apart. It may be a broken string or just a broken damper. Whatever it is I certainly would like it repaired.

I have had two emails from people on the local AGO board asking me to do stuff in the upcoming season. There was a request to play at their first meeting in September and another to help a presentation later. I turned them both down. It’s odd that I would receive these requests. One of the people responded to my excuse of retiring that I could still play organ after I retired.

Yes but do i want to?

I started the novel There There by Tommy Orange last night. At first I was a little put off by his syntax and novelistic strategy. The novel begins with a list of twelve people under the title “The Cast of Characters.” Then a lengthy prologue recounting some history of the abuse of indigenous people who lived where the country of the USA is now. Then finally it begins chapters based on the cast of characters in the order presented. After a few of these I relaxed because it’s so obvious that Tommy Orange knows what he’s doing.

Plus he derived his title from a Radiohead song and also a wonderful quote from Gertrude Stein. Cool.

I purchased way too many mushrooms and tomatoes at the Farmers market yesterday. Time to go prepare some for my breakfast so I ‘ll be ready when Eileen comes downstairs.

I finished the two novels I have been reading, On Beauty by Zadie Smith and Lilith’s Brood by Octavia Butler. They were both satisfying reads. Butler hit me the hardest.

Lilith’s Brood is actually three novels in one. Dawn, Adulthood Rites, and Imago. My son-in-law recently read Dawn. If I understand him correctly, he felt that Butler had basically played out the story in the first volume and wasn’t interested in reading more.

I, on the other hand, found that the book moved me more and more deeply as I read it. Butler has created a plot whereby aliens save humanity from itself. The Onkali take specimens of humans just before a cataclysmic war. The story is how they wake these specimens up and what happens after that.

The Onkali determine that humans are genetically programmed for self destruction due to the existence inherent tendencies for both high intelligence and hierarchical impulses. They themselves are collectors of diverse forms of life. Butler does a good job of gradually having humans do terrible things that bear out this thesis.

Hierarchical nonsense can be used to understand a lot of bad stuff in humans like racism and misogyny.

In addition to this theme, Butler expands the notion of mating and parenting to include male and female Onkali and a third kind of alien, the ooloi. The ooloi are necessary for any kind of mating. Before she is finished Butler has groups of co-parents existing between all of the species represented in the book.

The sexual drive is married to curiosity in the aliens.   The result was a beautiful poem about sexuality and humanity. I thought it pretty profound.

Speaking of achieving goals, I had my annual check up today. This morning when I took my BP and weighed at home, I have lost well over ten pounds since gaining some Covid weight and my BP is consistently lower.

Weight and BP were higher by the doctor’s measurements, but she believed me that I am making headway with my diet and abstaining from real gin.

We had a pretty amazing day yesterday catching up with Steven Frayer-Isaacson. We knew this guy when Eileen and I  were both teaching at St. Damian’s school. The last time we saw him he was 11 years old. We have reconnected due to his diligence on Facebook. We took him and his husband down to the beach and out to lunch. It was a fun day. Lots of memories and catching up with stories from Detroit.

China Set to Pass One of the World’s Strictest Data-Privacy Laws – WSJ

How a ’00s College Debate Team Predicted Today’s Culture Wars

I sometimes say that composers look at music differently, that they see how it works. But I’m convinced that just by enjoying music a very similar connection happens with most listeners and performers.

I have often pointed out to musicians who say they don’t understand music theory that they understand the music, that they can tell when themes recur, when harmonies are moving in new directions or on their way to resolution.

Maybe composers are a bit more interested in how the music works. Or at least in the mundane tools used to make it work. But I remain a bit skeptical. that others do not understand music with the same depth.

I feel like I’m stuck in the never ending story of retirement now. I am beginning to think beyond the church music chapter of my life. In fact that’s where I would like to live. But I have some hoops left to jump through in order to extricate myself from my church gig.

Granted, I could have walked away. But I would not like to let down my boss and the community in that way. I just want out.

I’m beginning to wonder about the next step for me. It feels like a time of incubation. I have found that I jinx myself by talking too much about what is happening inside me when I think about making things. So I’m not going to speculate here.

One of my current goals is to finish some goddam books. I sometimes have a tendency to read many books at once and even forget which books that I am reading. I would like to finish several books soon so that i can start up some new ones.

I read in my John Szwed’s bio of Miles Davis this morning. I continue to be pleasantly surprised how Szwed understands musical trends I lived (and am living) through. I’m on page 316 of 407.

I’m nearing the end of a couple of novels.

I’m on page 558 of 746 in Bulter’s Lilith’s Brood. 

Page 369 (at least) of 443 in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty. 

I say “at least” because I somehow lost my place. I’m sure that I made it to page 369 and will resume reading there.

I have been keeping Butler and Smith upstairs by my bed. I brought them down this morning with the hope I could chip away a bit at them.

Tomorrow’s scheduled “date day” is postponed until Thursday. We are expecting Steven Frayer-Isaacson and his husband Jeremy for a visit tomorrow. We haven’t seen him since he was in grade school. It should be fun. But no reading.

Three Sundays left. I don’t think Jen is actively seeking a sub for Labor Day weekend judging from her comments to the congregation this morning. Oh well.

We had a small group this morning. Under forty people were present. The singing was sketchy. When this is the case I try to lead solidly with the organ.

Everyone was masked this morning. Eileen and I went out to eat afterwards to the local sushi place. When you enter the restaurant there are signs to mask up. But we ate outside so discarded the masks after we were seated.

Robin Diangelo mentioned Metzel’s Dying of Whiteness: How the politics of racial resentment is killing America’s Heartland in her book, Nice Racism. 

I interlibrary loaned a copy. Like Diangel’s book it is working largely from a white point of view. In this case, Jonathen Metzel, the author, writes about three states where he has lived or worked.

It is an enlightening text with lots of first person witnesses who endorse lack of gun controls, anti-ACA and anti-education reform. The basic insight is that people are not being duped into taking positions that inevitably hurt them. They are happy to do so if it means in their own mi vnd they are sticking it to non-whites and immigrants who are poised to unfairly receive governmental assistance.

While it is dispiriting it is enlightening.

Classical Music’s Suicide Pact (Part 2) | City Journal

Although not everything in this article is untrue, I find the anger and much of the unsubstantiated stuff weird. Where does all this anger come from?

I drove back and forth to Delton yesterday for Jeremy’s birthday. I had planned to ask Eileen to drive back if it was dark (because of my poor eyesight), but we left well before dark. We had a nice time. I hope Jeremy  (the birthday boy) had one as well. I suspect he did.

This morning I chose to do a Meijer trip instead of a Farmers Market trip since I didn’t think I had energy for both. Later we chatted with Sarah online.

I hope we can see her in person before too long. She seems to be a bit stressed by her life now: Covid, kids, family, numerous day trips. The increasing numbers of Covid cases are not encouraging. But I hope we can travel soon.

I have returned to reading David Foster Wallace. I do enjoy his prose style quite a bit. I have read most of his novels. I don’t think I have read The Broom of the System his first one. But I own a copy. I have been trying to catch up with his essays and short stories.

I have taken to keeping a stack of books next to my bed. I now retire to reading. My fake gin doesn’t affect my motivation to do some reading before sleeping. I’m still going to bed around 7. But now I read for at least an hour. David Foster Wallace books are sitting, waiting for me as well as other books by Zadie Smith and Octavia Butler.

I recently purchased Joy Harjo’s excellent anthology, When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through.

I checked out a copy of this a month ago and did quite a bit of reading in it.  After purchasing my own copy,  I decided to begin once again and carefully read through the Table of Contents (something I do now) and introductory essays as well as all the poems. I learned to consider rereading by watching my grandson, Nicholas. He rereads books he likes constantly or at least he used to.

I find the poems in this anthology attractive. I guess I like outsider stuff.  A book of Harjo’s has been chosen as a community read here in Holland but I’m not sure which one.

I have books waiting for me at Readers World and the library to pick up. At some point today I will drop by and get them and then go post hymns at the church.

I am a bit tired from yesterday but not too exhausted.

Life continues to be good.

We are driving to Delton Michigan today to help celebrate the birthday of Jeremy Daum, Elizabeth’s husband. I have finished my morning routine (clean, make coffee/tea, stretch, exercise, feed cat continuously). Eileen is still resting.

One of the things that seems to be important to me to continue at this point is this silly blog. It helps me to sit and write each day. So what the heck. I’ll blog a little and then read until Eileen gets up.

I have been listening to Charles Ives string quartets. I wanted to look at the scores and discovered they are not on IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project). Dang. I was able to request them via the inter library loan. Ives does a lot of quoting of hymn tunes and melodies. I would like to see how he does that exactly. Hymn tunes are still attractive to me especially when used by Ives.

The silly podcast I put on yesterday’s blog about disinformation drove me a little crazy this morning. Both of the participants had an annoying tendency to end their sentences on a high pitch. I found myself listening less to the content of what they were saying and examining how they used that trending to an upper pitch of voice at the end of statements as is sometimes done with questions. I decided that it might be an indication that they were going to continue the thought in the next sentence. Good grief.

Despite this, I did find the conversation interesting. Here’s an article by the expert: Disinformation: It’s History – Centre for International Governance Innovation.

But speaking of being annoyed at stuff, I have discovered that City Journal, the site/mag that published the article on the suicide of Classical Music is actually sponsored by a right wing think tank. Sooprise sooprise. I figured this out after reading a lengthy debunking of why we need to mask up right now. Here’s the article (remember.. it’s crap!)Do Masks Work? | City Journal

Here’s a better article on Covid. Delta Has Changed the Pandemic Endgame – The Atlantic

Can We Ever Look at Titian’s Paintings the Same Way Again?

My meeting with Jen was fruitful. She didn’t really expect me to want to keep playing weekends in September. She is going to look for subs starting with labor Day. I am already committed for that weekend but would like to stop playing these services as soon as I can.

Eileen told me that she didn’t sleep well the night before last because of Jen’s email about extending my tenure another month. We are both ready for me to be done with this gig.

I went to the Farmers Market yesterday. I have fallen into a rhythm of doing this before Eileen gets up. That works well. I bought a salmon.

It was the smallest one he had. It was a bit over 9 lbs. They were on sale at 5 dollars a pound so it seemed like a good idea. On the ride home I began to wonder about the wisdom of it. Thank god for youtube. With the help of a video I cut it up.

These all went into the freezer with Eileen’s help wrapping them.

This morning I made bread.

Then while the oven (and the kitchen) was hot, I cooked up the scraps from the salmon and all the mushrooms in the refrigerator. The mushrooms needed to be used.

The mushrooms were a mix of white mushrooms from Meijer and oyster  mushrooms from Market Wagon. I know it looks kind of weird  but this is good eating.

I read Ghost Forest by Pik-Shuen Fung yesterday. It was a random Facebook recommendation according to my notes. NYT has a useful synopsis.

“In Fung’s quietly moving “Ghost Forest,” the author takes a choral approach to her unnamed narrator’s family history, after her largely absent father’s protracted illness and death. The young woman’s family immigrated to Vancouver in the 1990s, but her dad stayed back in Hong Kong to keep his manufacturing job, visiting them only sporadically. “Astronaut family,” she explains: “It’s a term invented by the Hong Kong mass media. A family with an astronaut father — flying here, flying there.” The narrator learns early in life to seek her father in the spaces he vacates — like in the smell of his pajamas, left behind after one of his brief trips to Canada.”

The Vancouver-Honk Kong connection was interesting. The chapters are very shot. I think they could easily pass for prose poems although I am not fond of that technique for poetry.  One review called them “vignettes.” That’s a good description. The story unfolds in charming jumps and starts with local color in Vancouver, Hong Kong, and Hangzhou. This last city was where the narrator studied Chinese painting. She later returned to the city visit her father.

The title of the book is the title of a paining by the narrator. I learned some history from this novel. Guan Daosheng was a thirteenth century painter and poet. Her husband was also a painter. Fung says that Guan Daosheng has only one authenticated painting that survives, Bamboo Groves in Mist and Rain.

It’s hard to see clearly in what I could find online, but details reveal the beauty of the work.

Guan Daosheng was also famous for her beautiful calligraphy as was her husband and her son. The mutligenerational aspect is also something Fung puts in her novel. She studies art, both Western and traditional Chines. Her mother was a frustrated artist and her grandmother composed an opera.

Eileen is thinking of reading this novel. I liked it.

This morning I listened to a podcast on  Laundry done right.

That was a bit goofy but it distracted me. Basically I learned that we are doing our laundry right in a front loading washer with cold water. Also there was info on dishwashers. Using a dishwasher uses less energy than running hot water for two minutes from the kitchen faucet. Who knew?

After that I listened to string quartets by Barber and Charles Ives. Great stuff.

For my more vigorous exercise I listened to Flaming Lips.

Eileen got up early because she planned to go downtown to visit a sale at Terrmanns. She just got back a few minutes ago. She bought a clock as a gift for our great niece Cassidy who is getting married.

I also listened to The Lawfare Podcast: With Disinformation, The Past Isn’t Past. 

I haven’t finished it yet but it’s not too bad. I like the Lawfare podcast.

My boss emailed me and asked if I would play Sundays in September. I meet with her this afternoon. I am planning on saying no to this. They are in the last stages of interviewing. Jen thinks they’ll have a candidate very soon but expects the person will need some lead time before they begin.

I am feeling more and more free from this job each day. There is no way I want to keep playing weekends. However, I did promise Jen not to leave her high and dry. So I will probably play if they can’t find subs. I think that subs are available.

I have been thinking about my own preference in music styles and realize that I don’t really know anyone who shares my taste. This is fine. But it’s a sort of odd place for a musician to be in.

For example this morning, I listened to a lovely recording by Christopher Parkening.

This is a great album .I have been listening to on my music app, PrimePhonic. It’s not on Youtube as far as i can see but here’s the second movement to the first Vivaldi Concerto.

Whenever I hear this, I usually think of a man named Gary Smith. He was a DJ when we were in high school. One day I was listening to this and he got very excited. “That’s the one. That’s the piece I have been looking for.”

Besides Vivaldi there is another cool piece.

It says this piece is by Peter Warlock on the app. But one of the commenters on YouTube says that it’s by other composers.

““Capriol Suite” by Peter Warlock (Philip Heseltine) is in fact only an arrangement of music written by Thoinot Arbeau, issued in his tractate “Orchesographie” (1596). Second part is a famous “Pavane” (“Belle qui tiens ma vie”), often performed and recorded by early music ensembles and choirs. ;)”

Thank you, Collegium Vocale! Whoever wrote it, I like it. And typing this up, I realize that I own Orchesographie by Arbeau. Worth a look.

I listened to this while I cleaned up the kitchen, make coffee and morning tea for Eileen, and did my morning stretches.

Then I needed some more up tempo stuff for exercising.

Time for Hall and Oates.

As I think about leaving church music I am aware that I will not miss the snobby approach to music that so many Anglicans go for.

I was trying to explain this to Eileen. If people who go for the more typical Anglican church music style heard me play it wouldn’t just be about the choices of music. They way I play would probably offend them. Too much rhythm.

I remember at my audition for Notre Dame. During one of the pieces I shifted my body in sympathy with the rhythmical nature of the music I was playing. There was an audible gasp of disapproval from the group of professors in the room. it was a miracle I got the teaching assistant scholarship. They must have been desperate. Hah.

Despite this, I am very happy with where I am musically at this age. It’s also lucky that most of my interests can be pursued solitarily.

 Classical Music’s Suicide Pact (Part 1) | City Journal

As I have become friends with myself, I have come to the realization that struggle is what I do.

I don’t have ambition, but I thrive on my own passions. I  try to keep their harsh light from shining on others in my life, but it can be hard to do this.

I suspect one of the reasons I am retiring is the lack of challenge in my work. More than that, I suspect the whole shebang to be a bit dishonest, but that’s not that new or even relevant to me jumping ship at this time of life.

I haven’t always been able to escape my own pretentiousness and self pity. But I continue to try.

I have found that church work has lowered  my tolerance, especially for the trivial, the mediocre,  and over-blown.  It’s important to me to stay as honest as possible with myself and at the same time keep these insights to myself.

I look forward to having a bit less of it in my life.

I continue to enjoy reading and studying.

I finished Addonizio’s charming collection of poems, Now We’re Getting Somewhere.

I wanted to link in a couple of poems by her but they don’t seem to be online.

Here’s some exerts.

from Little Old Ladies

Light flashes in our eyes
the vitreous gel detaching from the retina
our skin loosening & separating from our weak little bones

It’s just like a fairy tale, we’re turning into birds—ortolans
about to be dined on in dark institutions

Soon we’ll be pissing vodka in our bedpans
pulling the fire alarm, wandering out into traffic
No one will know about our epic journeys down the hall
sailing to the dining room & back
or the monsters we had to bitch slap to come this far & survive

Ortolans

from Death and Memory

Some people open the cage door & step in with the tiger
deliberately or accidentally…
Either may boost their book sales briefly…which is seldom the reason…
It’s more like a pleasant but unintended outcome…that they can’t enjoy…

(…)

It’s hard to keep thinking of the dead…when they never call or text…
like people you used to be in love with…who said they couldn’t live without you…

Interlibrary loaned The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece by John J. Winkler. Published in 1990, it looks like a fun read.

This is the frontispiece.

Its caption is “See how they grow. Woman waters phalloi.” Attic red-figure pelike in the British Museum, E819.

Who knew the plural of phallus was phalloi. A pelike is a vessel with a sagging belly used for holding liquids. …

I did my morning stretches to Praetorious.

Exercised to Modest Mouse’s new album, Golden Casket.  I liked it all but especially this one.

The Heebie Jeebie Girl by Susan Petrone

YA novel that looks interesting to me.

Tate donor warns: ‘I’ll take back my £20m Francis Bacon collection’ | Francis Bacon | The Guardian

‘Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped’ – The Washington Post

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” Each shout got louder. The man shouting stood underneath the balcony where I was playing the organ. The service had ended a bit ago. I was attempting a postlude on the tiny, bad  pipe organ.

“Hey!”

I stopped and looked over the edge.

“Would you turn out the lights when you are done?”

I was reminded of this incident yesterday. Despite suspecting that colleagues were present and not necessarily disposed to approve of my musicianship, I improvised a rather clever little postlude.

While marking time until my complete retirement improvising preludes and postludes is so much easier than learning pieces. I have spent my entire life preparing organ and choral music for church services. Often I took great pains to choose and prepare these pieces.

During the plague, I would spend time at church reading through organ music for the fun of it. Most of my life I have made a note right on the music of the time and place of performance. So that the music itself is a record for me to refer to especially when choosing new music. I want to know if I am repeating a piece. I was continually surprised to see how much music I have actually performed.

The closing hymn tune yesterday was the Welsh melody Bryn Calfaria. It is in G minor. I took it a bit under the suggested tempo in the hymnal. When performing Welsh music I remember that I have read descriptions about the stately tempos they are sung in Wales.

The congregation was singing up a storm yesterday so I felt free to vigorously play this hymn. I quite enjoyed doing so.

I began the postlude improvisation on the swell cornet with a repeated riff in the lower register. I moved to the great organ and increased the intensity. After a short bit I brought in the lovely hymn melody in the pedals. It went on from there. By the time I was done I thought it was pretty cool. It was certainly loud.

As usual I pretty much cleared the room with the postlude. During the service, Rev Jen mentioned my upcoming retirement. There was applause. I joked to Eileen on the ride to lunch that  it may have been an expression of approval of my leaving.

I noticed that Eileen was talking to our tech guy. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t know what I was thinking.” Apparently after the closing hymn she had shut down my computer which is the camera and mic for the organ. If you had been watching the service online the postlude went away.

As I said, this reminded me of the loud usher asking me to turn out the lights when I leave.

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I looked around at church today and saw several people I didn’t recognize. After screwing up the introduction to the opening hymn, it occurred to me that maybe one or  more of them were candidates for my gig.

As my work as a church musician comes to a close, it’s interesting to look back over my life and see just how this played out.

I fell into this work in Oscoda. I answered an ad in the paper that the local Episcopal church had placed. At the time I was working as a badly paid bar musician and a part owner in a used book store. I thought I could use the extra money and that it might be interesting to play in a church.

I was raised in the Church of God and had never seriously considered working as a church musician in that denomination.

I can remember the Episcopal priest’s wife who oversaw my audition looking at me closely. I could feel her misgivings but also her hope that I would be someone who could do the job.

The Episcopal church surprised me with it’s worship and music practice. I loved the language of the prayer book (1928 version) and was surprised that the hymnal was not only interesting musically but had some pretty cool stuff in it.

The bar work petered out. The book store didn’t work out. I decided it might be a decent way to earn a living if I could learn more about the trade of being an organist. My first plan was to move to Detroit, study organ, and take the American Guild of Organists exams for certification. I had no idea of going back to college when I moved to Detroit. I got a gig in a Roman Catholic church which paid about $5 K a year.

Before too long, Eileen was working in the church’s school where I played. She was an accredited teacher. This income helped tremendously. My organ teacher encouraged me to study at Wayne State U where he taught. He advised me to take music classes that interested me and eventually I would have a degree.

In the meantime, I had more than a passing interest in liturgy. While in Oscoda I read Dom Gregory Dix’s The Shape of the Liturgy and listened to a tape of the liturgist, Louis Weil. I found this stuff romantically attractive sort of like poetry . When I began working at the Roman Catholic church in Detroit, I read much of the Vatican II documents.

I can remember wondering if any of the people I was working with knew about them.

My music skills had improved ever since the book store. There was a room in the back of the store with a piano where I practiced. I began at that point working on scales and technique and playing music I love. I am still doing that.

When I think of my life as a series of church music jobs, I can see that I combined knowing something about church with loving music to make some money. And combined with Eileen’s jobs we made enough money for us to raise a family.

Now I am grateful that soon I will no longer have to work in a church. I have not ceased to enjoy the musical part of the work. But I think this more about my own constituent love of music.

But money is not the problem for Eileen and me as it was when we began our lives together. I don’t need the job for that. And in September I turn 70. I would like to spend my remaining time alive doing stuff I love like reading, practicing, composing, and being with Eileen.

As a couple of the singers at my current gig said to me on learning of my retirement, “It’s been quite a ride.”

I see the number of people interested in this blog is dwindling. Yesterday I only had four hits. Ah fame.

My grand daughter, Lucy, has a birthday coming up. Apparently they are going to do an Alice in Wonderland theme for her birthday.  Hence, today’s embedded music.

Sarah bought a hokey sign with this on it at the Alice in Wonderland Shop in Oxford recently.

We chatted with her today.

I just got back from posting the hymns for tomorrow’s service. They fucked up the opening hymn. I had put words for it in the document I edit for Sundays, but they decided it would be better to put the music, an admirable impulse. However, instead of putting the third stanza in as written, they opted to only put the descant in for that verse. Confusing. i don’t think it’s necessary to let anyone know this evening. They most certainly would not bother reprinting it with a correction.

So there’s that.

I have been drinking fake gin for several evenings. I’m on my second bottle of the three bottle shipment I recently ordered. I do put a splash of vermouth with it so I’m not entirely alcohol free, but close. My blood pressure has dropped, but my weight has stabilized.  I hope that I will continue to shed some of my excess pounds by not snacking in the evening, but I guess we will see.

Eileen is making sweet and sour pickles. The house smells like pickles.

By the way, the video of Gore Vidal I embedded yesterday is pretty lame. As it continues, it’s easy to see that Vidal is not at his best. I still admire him. But I no longer recommend this video.

Burgess and the Atomic Age: Sonata in H – The International Anthony Burgess Foundation

I love this movement.

Both Eileen and I are feeling a bit lazy today.

I have been meaning to complain about the New Yorker ad I keep hearing on podcasts in which David Remnick claims that the magazine has the best writing in the world. Really? Really? How’s your Russian? I mentally ask this guy every time I hear this obnoxious claim. Good grief! As though English and American English at that were the  only language in the world.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the New Yorker magazine and look forward to it dropping through my mail slot. But they are far from infallible or definitive as far as I’m concerned.

I figured out that I wasn’t confused about Herodotus being an earlier historian than Thucydides. I was confusing Herodotus with Suetonius. I thought I had misplaced my copies of Herodotus and Thucydides. But recently I was looking around and discovered my copy of The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius. Oh. It was Suetonius I was thinking of not Herodotus. Suetonius is later than Thucydides and writes in Latin. So i was correctly placing him later and in Latin. I remember a lot of this stuff by visualizing the books I own. I don’t own a copy of Herodotus’s histories.

This morning sitting in the cool air, I read the following in Montaigne:

“It is not perhaps without good reason that we attribute to simplemindedness a readiness to believe anything and to ignorance the readiness to be convinced, for I think I was once taught that a belief is like an impression stamped on our soul: the softer and less resisting the soul, the easier it is to print anything on it.”

from the essay, “That it is madness to judge the true and the false from our own capacities”

Michel de Montaigne 1533-1592

The Far Right’s Manufactured Meaning of Critical Race Theory – FAIR

In it, he tells a story about Harold MacMillan and the De Gaulles.

They are meeting some time after the end of WWII. MacMillan says to Madame De Gaulle in his eloquent French, “Now that the war is over, Madame De Gaulle, what do you want out of the rest of your life?”

She replies equally charming, “I want a penis.”

MacMillan is understandably flustered. He notices Charles De Gaulle snickering.

De Gaulle leans over and confides to MacMillan that what Madame means is that she she wants “‘appiness.”

I admit that I love Uncle Meat by Zappa. I was listening to it this morning while exercising and I remembered that this was the album my parents forbid me to play at home since the woman speaking (Suzie Creamcheese) says “fuck” on it.

When I listen to it now I continue to be blown away by Zappa’s compositional prowess.

I’m probably just dating myself, but I think much of what he wrote continues to stand up fifty years later (or whatever it is).

I’m afraid I was grumpy to Eileen yesterday and I’m not proud of it. It makes me crazy. I find myself analyzing my bad behavior and coming up with only that I’m just too sensitive for my own good. No excuse, however.

Today, we hosted Eileen’s sisters, Mary and Nancy. We were supposed to go shop the sale at Teermans which is closing, but unfortunately it was closed on Wednesday.

We had a nice lunch at Cranes anyway.

I went to the Farmers Market this morning. I have been missing real tomatoes. I decided I wanted some heirlooms. There was only one stand which had them.

I bought them and some sunflowers.

I continue to think about and listen to Gore Vidal. I finished listening to the interview I embedded yesterday (at least all but the entire Q and A afterwards…). Vidal has sent me back to Montaigne, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Aristotle.

I liked what he said in the interview about Aristotle. He had been pretending to have read him all his life and decided to finally, actually read him.

I can relate to that.

I interlibrary loaned Klinenberg’s Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure can help fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life.

I read the introduction at the beach yesterday.

This Conversation Changed the Way I Interact With Technology Ezra Klein

The Questions Concerning TechnologyThe Convivial Society: Vol. 2, No. 11 L. M. Sacasas

This is the blog post that interested Klein.

The Convivial Society

Gore Vidal is a breath of fresh air for me the last couple of days. He was an acerbic, clear, incisive public intellectual.

Last night I pulled out his collection of essays, United States: Essays 1952-1992.

Some passages  I marked:

The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small ‘yes’ at the center of a vast ‘no.’  from the essay, “Novelists and Critics of the 1940s,” originally published in New World Writing #4, 1953

The only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, quoted by Vidal in the essay, “Sex and the Law” originally published in Partisan Review 1965

There is no position so absurd that you cannot get a great many people to assume it. from Sex and the Law” originally published in Partisan Review 1965

At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice. from Sex and the Law” originally published in Partisan Review 1965

Those last two quotes seem to be very pertinent to the present chaotic moment in the US.

Here’s the video I am working my way through. It’s from 2008. In the last years of his life I think Vidal had some clear insights into the collapse of the American Empire we are living through.

How the KKK birthed new extremist groups in Michigan

This Lansing State Journal article by Krystal Nurse will probably appear in tomorrow’s Holland Sentinel. It was on the website today (which I check daily instead of looking at the paper). Some valuable information about the hate groups in Michigan.

Untitled, a poem by James Baldwin

Finally on his birthday, a poem by Baldwin. This was on Facebook and the last four lines (!) were omitted.

Another tune I love.

Eileen and I went out to eat again today after church. I’m hoping that eventually we can skip the church on Sunday and just go out to eat.

I finished The Killing Hills by Offutt a few days ago. I’m afraid I can’t recommend this one. The writing is competent. But the story is pretty pedestrian. It does read like a TV series.

Our local library has a good selection of Graphic Novels. I like to just grab a handful and bring them home to read.  I’m pretty sure I have read Daniel Clowes The Death-Ray before. But It bears rereading. It’s a bit dark, but I liked it.

Stumbled on to a full video of “Gore Vidal: The United States of Anxiety” on YouTube this morning. I do love Vidal. It makes me want to go back and read some of his stuff.

Last Sunday, Eileen and I waited for 45 minutes for a table at The Biscuit, had a nice lunch, then went to Meijer to grocery shop. Today, we opted for The Curragh. It was a beautiful day to eat outside. No grocery shopping today even though I still find myself with more energy than usual on Sunday morning.

My daily regimen of 25 sit-ups used to be a “near-death” experience for me. But for the last few days, this has not been the case. I feel like I could do more of them, But I have not added more and probably won’t.

On Saturday I had conversations with my daughter-in-law, Cynthia, in California and daughter, Sarah in the U.K. Cynthia called me and we had a pleasant chat. Eileen and I were scheduled for our weekly video chat with Sarah but Eileen was off gallivanting having lunch with her sisters and friends so Sarah was stuck with chatting with me. I think we both enjoyed it.

Is the pushback against ‘critical race theory’ rooted in misconceptions?

Female gymnasts use music while men gymnasts don’t — and the reason dates back a century – CNN

When women were first allowed to participate they apparently used live music (a pianist). Wow, who knew?

I’m listening to this right now. It definitely sounds better on my Bose speaker than the computer’s speakers.