I made some serous progress on my Greek this week. I am reading Milton Parry’s The Making of Homeric Verse. I just hit a section where it would really help me to understand Homeric meter. I found an amazing video which clearly teaches this kind of complicated subject.

In addition, I had been scanning the beginning of the Odyssey in Greek (scanning means working out exactly how the meter is working). I began dropping lines into a web site which automatically scans the Greek along about Book 2. I realized that I hadn’t done so at the beginning. I got four lines into and my web site couldn’t figure it out.

But after listening to Tom Ford’s clear video on scanning, I think I figured that line out.

All this is to say, that Jupe who already has tons of obscure skills (French Harpsichord chops, Church hymn playing, understanding of Liturgy) is adding another skill with his pursuit of Greek. What the hell. I am enjoying it.

James McBride’s Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown came in the mail recently. I was excited to find that McBride wrote this book pretty recently. It was published in 2016. Brown (whom I do admire) died in 2006.

This book is not just about Brown’s music, but about America now. I have already started reading it.

I finished Denis Johnson’s Fiscador. It’s quite a book. It’s Johnson’s second book. In the intro he says he owes a lot to Victor Turner, Bruno Bettelheim, James Campbell, Oliver Sachs and others. Published in 1985, I guess some think it’s a bit of dystopic novel. I found the title in a review of a Margaret Atwood book by Lorrie Moore. I’m seriously considering a second read on this one.

George Saunders

Ezra Klein recently interviewed George Saunders. Saunders is another writer I admire. Klein seems to have gotten a NYT article and a podcast out of the interview. Here’s a link to the transcript of the interview. Saunders recommends a bunch of books at the end including The Hundred Dresses.

The illustrator, Slobodkin, is the dude who did Caps For Sale. I have requested this book via inter library loan along with some books of poetry Saunders recommends. It’s a good interview. Saunders is a gentle, wise man. The link is below.

I can feel the fact that I haven’t had a Sunday off for about a year. Tomorrow I am playing a piece by Ned Rorem and a Kyrie by Zoltán Kodály.

I do like Rorem.

Zoltán Kodály

The  Kodály is part of a companion organ piece (Organoeida ad missam lectam, 1944) to his Missa brevis for choir and Organ (1942, orchestrated 1948). I believe we did the orchestral version of the Mass when I was in undergrad at Wayne State U.

Gerald Near

The following week I am doing two lovely pieces by Gerald Near. The week after that I have scheduled Dawn to come a play several movements of Vaughan Williams’ Six Studies in English Folk Songs.

Speaking of folk songs, I don’t think I have written here about finding a connection between my collection of the tunes to the Child Ballads and some settings in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Both the Child Ballads and the Fitzwilliam Virginal book are interests of mine that stretch way back to before any college, probably pre-1970. This coming together of two of my interests is satisfying and intriguing.

He Was a ‘Bad Boy’ Harpsichordist, and the Best of His Age

How Viet Thanh Nguyen Turns Fiction Into Criticism | The New Yorker

Ezra Klein interviews George Saunders, transcript

Here’s the link I promised above.

I decided to pull my organ bench closer to the music rack and keys yesterday. I am experimenting because between my worsening eyesight and having to wear a mask which often fogs up, I sometimes have difficulty seeing the music clearly. This worked okay today even though I accidently played today’s hymn with my driving glasses instead of my reading glasses.

I have been thinking a lot about the accuracy of my playing in these  streams. I differentiate between a mistake which sort of comes out of nowhere and screwing up a passage I have been working on. It is the latter that I find troubling since it seems to relate directly to my practice techniques.

Today I played the prelude pretty accurately. The mistakes in the postlude were of the inadvertent type and did not detract too much the performance.

I finished James McBride’s Deacon King Kong recently.

I quite liked it. It wasn’t what I was originally expecting after reading the NYT book review of it, but no matter. It is the story of a neighborhood in New York. The people are clearly and vividly drawn to my taste.  The story revolves around a housing project where many of the characters live, a church which dominates many of their lives, and the history of the area. This history includes a mural in the back of the church which was loosely based on a Giotto painting of Jesus.

The reader does not learn this until late in the book when McBride does not resist someone confusing Giotto with Gelato since he was Italian.

There is a mystery of sorts in the book. But what I enjoyed most was the characters in the book including the character Sportcoat who spends a lot of time in dialog with his recently deceased wife and drinks a good deal of the homemade hooch, King Kong. McBride is apparently a musician as well as a writer. I have ordered some more titles by McBride.

I have asked my boss for some time off. She emailed me early this morning to encourage me to schedule some. She and several of the other staff members have been taking time off. The way I have been feeling my own burn out is that I am strongly disinterested in all things Christian. I shouldn’t say all things. But, the main thing that keeps me interested at work is working with Jen and making music. The church stuff hasn’t been that critical to doing my job. I just can feel my own dwindling interest.

On the other hand, I have been doing a lot of reading and thinking and learning. As I have mentioned before, I am enjoying Rutger Bergman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History. This is probably one of those books I will buy and give away. I have already ordered an audio CD of it being read for my daughter in England, Sarah. She is feeling housebound these days. I’m hoping that Bergman’s hopefulness might help her a bit.

I want to finish it before giving it away. It is amazing how many stories and ideas in my brain are wrong due to public misperception. Bregman carefully documents his debunking of experiments and news stories that present human nature as apathetic, selfish, and prone to “just follow orders.” He talks about William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (Golding’s story is not how a marooned group of boys actually ended up behaving in real life),

Adolf Eichmann (actually a bit of a monster),

Stanley Milgram’s experiment in which people were fooled into thinking they were shocking and hurting people (misreported and misunderstood),

and Kitty Genovese’s death in a New York neighborhood where 37 onlookers did nothing as she was murdered (She actually in the arms of someone who rushed out to help her).

These are just a few of the stories that contribute to our false notion idea that civilization is a thin veneer on our terrible innate propensities.

But Bregman is no Pollyanna. Himself, a historian, he is quick to criticizes his own ideas and point of view in order to get at what is really the truth. I am learning a lot from it. Here’s Bregman and Andrew Yang going at it. I didn’t know Yang was a proponent of Universal Basic Income.

I continue to spend a lot of time listening and playing to Mendelssohn. I’m also developing a very strong admiration and attraction for the music of Thelonious Monk.

What Mars sounds like, and the rover’s welcome party – CNN