I have a very full day today. Planning to exercise at 9, practice organ at 10, 10:30 staff meeting with a private meeting with boss immediately following. Then ballet classes (with an hour off for lunch) until 5:30. Then pick up Eileen at 6 and off to drinks and food probably at the pub.
Yesterday I chose organ music to perform this weekend for the prelude and postlude. Am doing a couple of movements (II & IV) of Handel’s Organ Concerto in G minor, Opus 4 Nr 3.
This music sounds very English to me. For some reason I think Handel wrote them for English organs (which had a much less developed pedal keyboard than the continent). At any rate they are lovely little chamber like pieces. Traditionally when played by the organ alone one registers the solo instrument on a different manual (the original solo organ part has no pedal parts anyway).
This has to be a short post because my day is beginning. It looks like it’s going to be up in the seventies today. Woo hoo!
Thinking about writing and blogging this morning I found this lovely passage in Virginia Woolf.
“For centuries the writing-desk has contained sheets fit precisely for the communications of friends. Masters of language, poets of long ages, have turned from the sheet that endures to the sheet that perishes, pushing aside the tea-tray, drawing close to the fire (for letters are written when the dark presses round a bright red cave), and addressed themselves to the task of reaching, touching, penetrating the individual haert. Were it possible! But words have been used too often; touched and turned, and left exposed to the dust of the street.”
Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room
I like “penetrating the individual heart” and the entire last sentence: “But words have been used too often; touched and turned, and left exposed to the dust of the street.” The Interwebs is, indeed, a place where “individual hearts” can be penetrated and where words are “used too often” and are “exposed to the dust of the street.”
This past Saturday when my web site went down for a few hours, I had in mind this poem for my blog post:
Dream Song 258
Scarlatti spurts his wit across my brain,
so too does Figaro: so much for art
after the centuries yes
who had for all their pains above all pain
& who brought to their work a broken heart
but not as bad as Schubert’s:
that went beyond the possible: that was like a man
dragged by his balls, singing aloud ‘Oh yes’
while to his anguisht glance
the architecture differs: he’s getting on,
the tops of buildings change, like a mad dance,
the Piazza Navona
recovers its calm after he went through,
the fountain went on splashing, all was the same
after his agony,
abandoned cats had what to say to you,
lovers performed their glory & its shame:
Henry put his foot down: free
John Berryman
The pics are the Piazza Navona in Rome.
I love it that Berryman mentions Scarlatti, Mozart and Schubert, all favorites of mine that I regular visit at the piano.
I finished the section of Anne Sexton’s poems which contains her book, “To Bedlam and Part Way Back.”
The next section of her complete poems is her book, All My Pretty Ones. I was struck by this epigraph she uses:
“… the books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation—a book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.”
from a letter of Franz Kafka to Oskar Pollak
I know that books are a very minor pleasure for most people, but for me this quote sums up something I have felt about books and sometimes even experienced with them since I was a kid.
After that last high falutin quote and comment, I admit that I purchased and read Margaret Atwood’s new short story, “I’m Starved for You.” It’s a fun little piece that reads like a chip off of The Handmaid’s Tale by her. Only $2.99 and as far as I can tell only available in e-book form. Recently published.
I also bought the Kindle deal for the day yesterday which was Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson’s The Flatey Enigma. I’m about half way through it. Ingolfssohn is apparently an Icelandic mystery writer. Flatey (or FlatØ) is a real place being one of zillions of little islands off of Iceland.
I have attended a concert at the Crystal Cathedral. It is a breath taking piece of vulgarity. Sound passes through much of the plate glass window making a huge space with odd acoustics. Schuller went to school at Hope College. OOrah.
All governments are jerks. (I know I know this contradicts my usual insistence that government is not the enemy but is the community, but it is a quote from a friend I knew who escaped with her family from Romania in the 70s…. hard not to remember)
After church yesterday, Eileen and I grabbed something to eat then went off to Meijers to purchase a house warming gift. We were invited to an open house celebrating the purchase of a new residence for some friends.
Church felt pretty weird yesterday. The retiring assistant was the star of the show. He did a forum in which he played DVD recordings of Simon and Garfunkel (at least that’s what he said, I didn’t attend). Then some people asked if they could play music for him on his last day. So they did the prelude and postlude. He ended his sermon with a recording of Pete Seeger singing “We Shall Overcome.”
I felt pretty disconnected the entire service which is not that unusual I guess.
It was odd to have so many compliments directed at me when I had so little to do with most of the service, I accompanied the hymns and the service music as usual. Whippy skippy.
The open house was a very odd blend of people, church and college. The retired former chair of the music department at Hope was there, but he was busy drinking and chatting with other people. I’m not sure he remembers our little conference several years ago just before he retired in which he assured me that Hope needed me as an adjunct. Never happened. Both Hope and GRCC managed to lose my resumes at that point. Interesting coincidence but probably that’s all it was.
Another prof who is also connected to church asked me if I was still teaching at GVSU. Haven’t done that for several years. I told him working in the dance department is therapeutic for me. He said something about improvising in the style of Chopin. I was at a loss to explain that was not quite the deal. Certainly the chair of the dance department occasionally asks for something like that, but she really means something a bit more watered down. And I find myself improvising in many different styles and forms which keeps me interested.
I noticed how the people at the open house sort of divided themselves up into the old people and the young people. I guess that’s natural. Most young people at church seem to barely see me. This is sort of how I experienced the open house, but admittedly I was exhausted as I usually am on Sunday afternoon.
Came home and found this music video online:
I quite like the sound of this group and quickly found them on Spotify.
This morning Eileen has already left for a dentist appointment. I have read my usual poetry and then played some Scarlatti on the piano.
I feel pretty strongly that states should not kill except in the most dire of circumstances (like a dam war that is unavoidable…. something we haven’t seen since WWII and even then I think war is to be abhorred must less the clinical ordering of a remote death).
I continue to be amazed at the confusion regarding the Republican rhetoric that somehow equates deregulation of corporations with liberty of citizens.
Never mind that reams of Congressional testimony, market analysis and academic research have shown that regulation has not been an impediment to raising capital. In fact, too little regulation has been at the root of all recent bubbles and bursts — the dot-com crash, Enron, the mortgage meltdown. Those free-for-alls created jobs and then imploded, causing mass joblessness. quote from above link
“In 2013, we’re going to prosecute the first cases,” Steven M. Wise, a lawyer and president of the Nonhuman Rights Project, recently told me. “Their goal will be to use the latest science to help persuade state court judges that such creatures as whales and chimpanzees should be accorded common law personhood and rights.”
So if all the criminals who took plea bargains went to trial the whole thing would collapse. It’s apparently prosecutors not judges who are running things.
Couldn’t get my website to come up this morning so I wrote offline. So now I’m posting late, so no pics today.
Eileen and I used our day off for tasks instead of relaxing. She worked on taxes. She got our federal mostly done, but stalled trying to figure out the interest we paid on one of the four student loans for our youngest daughter, Sarah. I went to church and worked on picking out anthems.
My enthusiasm for church (and family stuff) has waned recently. Some of this is because I am acutely aware of how at my church I cannot really function as music director in the present situation. ‘Nuff said.
Anyway, I managed to choose anthems for the rest of the year which is a load off my mind.
I was having problems with the interwebs this morning. My web site wouldn’t come up. My admin page wouldn’t come up. Bluhost (the server where my web site is hosted) is upgrading their OS. I suspect that might be the problem since I can’t logon to Bluhost.
then I tried to bitch about it on Facebook and Facebook wouldn’t let me. I managed to circumvent its reluctance by putting the bitch in a comment instead of a status.
Sheesh.
Otherwise this morning is going well. Put most of the clocks an hour forward. Read poetry and Virginia Woolf. Played some Schubert on my electric piano with headphones on.
And now of course my web site is back because you are reading this.
I got a free copy of Nation in a PDF since I filled out one of their surveys. This totally worked as I am seriously considering resubscribing via online delivery.
This article is an example of why…. I like how it talks about evolving consciously of individuality via painting….
Also that a book it referred to was available in a free ebook:
I changed my pattern a bit this morning and followed up reading poetry by Berryman and Sexton with reading a bit more in Viginia Woolf’s novel, Jacob’s Room.
I started this book yesterday. It was one of Alexandra Harris’s five recommend books in her Fivebooks interview. I have been a reader of Woolf in the past, having read A Room of One’s Own, Orlando and To the Lighthouse. I have also read in her collection of essays entitled The Common Reader.
I think I was ready to read some fiction that was a bit more adult than The Hunger Games and more meaty than my typical light reading.
I am benefiting a bit from my travels. Jacob’s Room begins in Cornwall where I visited.
It moves eventually to Cambridge which I have not visited but can visualize somewhat especially after walking the streets of her sister college town, Oxford.
Woolf is known for the beauty of her prose and its streaming of images, ideas and plot. Reading Jacob’s Room is somewhat like reading poetry the words fall together so nicely.
It seems to be just what I need right now. I will continue to read Mockingjay (Hunger Games volume 3). But it is a bit like watching a movie in its depth. Very different from reading Woolf.
I also found myself dipping into Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata 3 this morning. I have studied and played through the first two which have a lot of beauty in them.
I must have it in for Russians right now since I continue to think about and play through Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues Opus 87.
The Calefax Reed Quintet transcription of this opus arrived in the mail yesterday. I ripped it to my hard drive. Then I did what I have been doing and made a play list on Spotify dumping my own ripped tracks into it. But Spotify went a little nuts and mis-identified several tracks confusing me.
It took me a while to realize that the mis-labeled tracks were accurate in everything but their labels. I went to re-label them with the Spotify edit function and found that they were labeled correctly there. But they persist in being labeled wrong in the playlist. I didn’t delve into the i.d. tags which may or may not be where they are mis-identified. Fuck it.
I also read an essay by Nicholas Cook this week entitled “Music as performance” found in The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edition. There is some interesting thinking going on around this topic trying to locate music somewhere beyond the composed text and combining text with instances of performance and apprehension.
I am interested because of my own strong conviction that for me music is something one does. So when my former teacher was bragging that he was learning music by just sitting and studying the scores in a chair, my first reaction was ‘where’s the fun in that?’ since the physical rendering of the music is one of the things I enjoy most about it.
I like “looking under the hood” of course, but am cognizant that the deeper understanding of how music is constructed is not always that related to how I hear and perform the music.
The visiting dance teacher said something to the class yesterday about the fact that dance is not always connected to music, but when it is one must dance it clearly and with life.
I found his teaching technique pretty interesting, since he did not use images the way the other teachers in the department do. Instead, he used his body. He would ape mistakes in a way that made the class laugh and then demonstrate the better more artistic moves.
It was fun working with him. At the end of class, ballet etiquette kicked in and the ballerinas lined up to curtsy one at a time to him. He murmured something to each dancer about her technique instructing them to keep working on this or that. Very cool.
America is basically run by dead people: We elect new representatives, but continue on with policy from decades ago. To go forward, Congress needs to confront the past.
Chatting with the young New York based dancer, I remarked to him that Holland was the most conservative place I have ever lived. Then I told him what I sometimes say: “Who wants to live where you agree with everyone?”
This young man was actually raised in Holland. My guess is that he comes from a fairly sophisticated affluent background which enabled his career. He did not, fortunately, attend Hope.
So he whether he himself sees himself as conservative or liberal, he understood what I was saying. He also said that he didn’t think that he and his girlfriend would end up living in New York even though they were buying a place there.
Later I was thinking about this and began wondering if I was incorrect in assuming that Holland is the only conservative place I have lived. Before my father died, he and my mother were invited to Greeneville Tennessee to celebrated some sort of centennial with the church community he served there. I didn’t go, but I did get to see the celebratory video that was made of the celebrations which included a huge carnival on the lawn of the new church building and excerpts of services and communal meals.
The entire thing felt like a Republican advertisement. One thing that struck me was the absence of black bodies and faces. I remember that Greeneville had a black population on the other side of the tracks. I don’t remember seeing many black people as a child. I do remember that at one point I saw a black person and commented, “Look, Mommy, a chocolate person!” So it must have been novel for me to see people of color.
My dad told a story that he heard from the editor of the town newspaper that a national magazine wanted to come in and profile Greeneville in the 60s. They wanted to feature the absence of racial tension. The local editor was dead set against it. He felt that it would stir things up and ruin the quiescent tenor of the place.
I do remember that where to buy cheap diazepam after my Dad and Mom had moved to Flint Michigan in 1963, they were considering joining in the civil rights demonstrations in the south. They said that when they contacted friends in the south about possibly coming and staying with them, they were told that if that was the reason they were coming, they were not welcome.
I don’t remember them mentioning people by name, but I can’t help but wonder if it was some of the people in Greeneville.
My brother was born in Greeneville and I spent my childhood there.
It looks like living in Holland is a bit of a return to the environment of my childhood. It’s just this time I’m a bit more aware of the prevailing tone of so-called conservatism.
I says so-called because I don’t think that many conservative pundits and politicians seem interested in “conserving” much. By their own description it’s as though they long for a time in America which doesn’t seem to have existed.
Destroying government is a radical notion, not one that “conserves.”
And of course there are the fringe (or not so fringe, see Santorum, Gingrich and Limbaugh) expressions of puritanism, racism and sexism.
The stuff that fires up the base, I guess. Disturbing to witness.
I have been feeling pressure from church stuff and family stuff. Somehow, after my first ballet class, I felt the cloud lifting. After three more classes I was walking home thinking it was exceptionally good to be alive!
Not sure what to ascribe this to. Some of it is the release of simply sitting and improvising. The visiting young teacher was fun to work with. He has a droll sense of humor and no detectable arrogance even though he seem to scare the shit out of the students, probably with his reputation and career.
Some of it had to be the weather which has been exceptionally lovely. It’s a bit warmer (not warm) and the wind has been blowing like a crazed frantic dog in the air.
Also I was looking forward to martinis and conversation with lovely wife after she got off work.
Jupe and his martini (and toast)
All of it seemed to combine and lift my cloud which seems to be still absent this morning.
Having finished off Ginsberg’s little book of poetry, I thought it might be nice to turn instead to reading Anne Sexton’s poetry.
I continue to read ten or so Dream Songs by Berryman a day. I do find him a bit dated in his misogyny and outright licentious sexism.
Still this is his sitz im leben. I find it tiresome when people try and convict historical figures with only the contemporary understanding of issues. The founding fathers were slave owners. Yes it was wrong, but we cannot self-righteously imagine ourselves into their situation any more than we can into the heads of their slaves.
I began reading the introduction to The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton. I have long admired her work and am thinking it might be interesting to read her like I did William Carlos Williams, that is: straight through her opus.
I found it interesting if she was alive she would be two years young than my mother. She committed suicide in 1974.
I’m about half way through the introduction to the Complete Poems.
I had a dream last night which seems to me to have obvious symbolism. There are three things about it that persist in my mind this morning. The dream seemed to take place at a camp, presumably a church camp, where my father was in charge. He actually was the head dude at a summer church camp which I recall was called Camp Caesar, somewhere in the south.
In the dream, we were all swimming in a river. But the frustrating thing was the rock bed of the river was very very shallow, so that we skimmed along the top of surface. I kept wanting to go deeper, but my father warned me not too.
The second thing in the dream was that he warned me not to go too far in the river.
He was calling me back.
Interesting aside: When my father was director of Camp Caesar there was a drowning in the pool. He was always troubled by it and felt that there was more to the story than the fact that a camper had broken into the locked pool and gone swimming alone.
The third thing was that there was music in the camp and I remember reflecting how easy it would be for me to write some of it, fitting vapid tunes to vapid words.
This all seems like a dream response to the vapidity of events at my church this week. Nothing dire, but as usual I feel a bit caught in other people’s conception of church as comfortable and mediocre. I try to duck this sort of thing because it has such an ill effect on me.
Maybe tonight I’ll dream of dodge ball.
Finished off Kaddish and other poems by Allen Ginsberg this morning. Re-reading Ginsberg I find that I have a tenderness towards him as man and poet. I find his poetry surprisingly meaningful and beautiful.
I search in vain for what William Carlos Williams described derogatorily as his profanity or something when he encouraged Thomas Merton to read him.
For me, Ginsberg is the opposite of profane. I find him very spiritual and helpful in pondering contemporary madness.
Will probably continue to read him.
I received another book in the mail recently and began reading a bit in it yesterday. In Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them? A scientific dialog with the Dalai Lama narrated by Daniel Goleman, I was fascinated to read the results of fMRIs on the brain of a meditating Buddhist monk.
These tests were conducted early in this century and revealed groundbreaking aspects of the stages of Buddhist meditation, all of which apparently are detectable and defy what was previously thought about how the brain moves from emotive state to emotive state.
fMRIs are apparently MRI videos.
I ordered this book from my PaperBack Exchange account where I have built up credits by mailing off books to other people when requested.
I search the PaperBack Exchange site regularly when I get interested in someone like Daniel Goleman.
I finished reviewing my reading notes on his book on Denial this morning and began moving ahead with reading in it. The problem is that the brain science is dated because it was written in the 80s. However I am still learning from it.
And it dovetails nicely with Freud, Religion, and the Roaring Twenties by my friend, Henry Idema which is teaching me a lot about Freud.
It’s funny to keep returning to Freud, but I recall someone (Harold Bloom?) said that he was actually at his best when considered an essayist. So I think of him a bit like that more than as a groundbreaker in the “science” of the study of mind (psychology).
Feeling pressure yesterday I retreated in Mozart, Beethoven and escape reading (besides the books mentioned I eventually devolved into the last volume of The Hunger Games).
I have a full day planned today. I am taking my Mom to see her new shrink for a second time. Then ballet classes. My regular teachers are going to be absent. One of the substitutes is a dancer from the dance company Mobius. I might have that wrong. I just looked at Mobius’s web site and I don’t see a familiar name.
Anyway, that should be interesting.
At the end of the day, Eileen and I have a dinner date. I look forward to that.
I put this here because I couldn’t get it to show up on Facebook. It was shared by Lou Beach, the author of 420 Characters. He continues to put up short vignettes on Facebook which I enjoy.
I know this is kind of sleazy, but it does say something about the far right.
Blood on our hands. I abhor the entire idea of treading terrorism in any way but criminal. Assassination is an arbitrary evil act that I find difficult to justify in most cases.
The tinny electronic chime on our clock just rang out that it’s 7 AM (it actually chimes at 7:02 I have discovered). I did the follow up on my Mom’s care yesterday. Spoke to her psych nurse who told me they were “discharging” Mom from in-home care. It was unclear to me if this was because she was refusing services from the occupational therapist member of their “team” or because her psych med doses are unchanged at this point.
The psych nurse said I might be missing things in my Mom’s behavior that would help me better understand her functioning. This is funny because that was exactly my thought about the psych nurse. She did exceed my expectation by being familiar with Mom’s current meds.
I took her advise to heart and questioned the person the psych nurse suggested I talked to at Resthaven where Mom is living.
This person seems to be in charge of the care given to residents. She was much less sure that Mom needed to go immediately into more supportive care and classified Mom as borderline between “independent” living and supportive care.
I put “independent” in quotes because Mom is thankfully not all that independent in her present circumstances. She does not administer her own meds, the nurses do and I am particularly grateful for this having done this little duty for Mom and Dad was Dad’s competency plummeted and Mom’s mental health went into a spin.
After talking to the person in charge I chatted with Mom. She seems open but not enthusiastic about moving to supportive care. She is improving very gradually. Her affect has returned to her face. Her awareness of her surroundings is much higher than it was. She is not as weak or confused as she was three or four weeks ago.
Unfortunately, I do think if this is a plateau she has reached rather than a stage in recovering some of her functioning that she probably needs supportive care.
But for the time being we are waiting to see if she continues to improve.
I also arranged to meet with my Mom’s estate lawyer today.
He had indicated that Mom is at the point we need to reassess managing her assets. Not sure what this means, but this guy’s knowledge of the law around these issues exceeds local judges. He helped tremendously to salvage large amounts of Dad’s estate so that Mom could be provided for and Dad was able to receive excellent end of life care.
Eileen is going to be present for some of this. My brother Mark will be there “telephonically” (the lawyer’s phrase).
All of this is taking a good deal of time and mental and emotional energy. I love my Mom and I love family, but I also want to be careful not to spend more time and energy on this than is healthy for me.
This links are for Nick who actually read the Micheal essay I linked in at the last post. The first article credits the second. They both refer to some recent research that indicates most of us are not aware of our own lack of abilities and competence. Since I am largely an autodidact (despite years of schooling), self assessment is very important to me. Thinking about my own lack of awareness (and denial) helps me get closer to having perspective.
We have had a long conversation in this country about class, race, ethnicity, and gender, how the moral, intellectual, and emotional qualities attributed to those in favored or disfavored categories create the circumstances of their lives, and, as they do so, reinforce an acceptance of the belief that these qualities are real, these characterizations are true. When there were no women in medical school or law school, or in higher education, it was easy to believe that they would not be able to endure their rigors. We in this country are fortunate to have a moderately constant loyalty to the idea of equality that has moved us to test the limits imposed by these cultural patterns, some of them very ancient, some of them once virtually universal and now still deeply entrenched in many parts of the world.
In his book on Religion and the Twenties, my friend and colleague, Henry Idema quotes from this short story. The whole thing is online. Cool. I admit I looked it up because I couldn’t believe a character was named Kieth (Is this pronounced KYE eth? or is it just another spelling of Keith?)
Tried to take a bit of Saturday off. It was my shot at a day off last week.
I ended up having to play a funeral in the morning. Eileen and I went out to eat at Panera and then went to see Star Wars I in 3D. We didn’t realize we had already seen it in 2D. But what the heck. It sure is a long movie, thin on plot. The 3D was a bit contrived in places as well.
Yesterday I performed two preludes from Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues for Piano, Opus 87, one for the prelude and one for the postlude. I was very surprised when one parishioner whom I’m pretty sure thinks I’m a musical hack was complimentary about these pieces.
I did play them well, I think.
Satisfying.
One of the choir members pointed out that the Calefax Reed Quintet which recently performed here in Holland played transcriptions of Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues for Piano, Opus 87. Serendipity.
I came home and poked around online but could not find MP3s of these recordings to listen to. I settled for listening to a transcription of them for brass ensemble. It is interesting to hear these pieces played this way. It helps me hear them more clearly when a separate instrument is playing each line.
I am feeling a bit tired this morning. I am dreading calling my Mom’s psych nurse. I’m afraid she is going to recommend that Mom be moved to assisted-living. I’m dreading this because I don’t have confidence that this nurse is totally up to speed with Mom’s evolving condition. So I will have to quiz her (again) about what she knows about Mom’s meds and other health care providers. Then I will have to make up my mind what to recommend to Mom.
Fuck.
Here I am again over analyzing and anticipating events before they occur. The curse of my brain, I guess.
I mostly plan to take it easy this morning. I will probably treadmill. Then it’s off to play 4 ballet classes. They will most surely do post mortems on the recent dance concert I attended. Unfortunately, as I think I mentioned here, there was no program so the intention of the dances were not as clear as they might have been. And of course I had to guess who choreographed what and what music they were using if I didn’t recognize it.
I had a weird series of emails recently, in which the writer invited me to enter my choir into a choral competition in a nearby city. Very little info in the email other than a cell phone number which “Gregg” (no last name) wanted me to call and discuss it with him. I emailed him back that I needed a bit more info. He replied with another sketchy email with no mention of sponsor or intent of the competition. I told him it sounded vague and that I was going to pass. He emailed me again. I declined again.
I resisted asking if he was emailing me from Nigeria. It might be legit. But if it is it’s either naively or badly organized. Either way, I’m not interested in attempting to drag my choir somewhere only to find out we are the only classical choir in an American Idol type pop choir competition.
Salient observations from Maureen Dowd. I particularly liked this:
Rush and Newt Gingrich can play the studs, marrying again and again until they find the perfect adoring young wife. But women pressing for health care rights are denigrated as sluts.
Interesting comparison of the lives of two recently deceased peopleby a conservative commentator (“right-wing provocateur Andrew Breitbart and the neoconservative scholar James Q. Wilson” both obits showed up in my links a few days ago).
Some statistics about political leanings of students and teachers…. yes a lot of college students are “liberal” but they were either that way when they arrived or reflect the usual loosening up of their age group… I wonder how true this is for college campuses where I have spent time like U of Notre Dame and Hope College…..
"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." The line comes from Act 1 Scene 5 of Shakespeare's play Hamlet, spoken by the title character to fellow student Horatio after they've both seen a ghost.
“But there are secrets, secrets, I may yet—
hidden in history & theology, hidden in rhyme—
come on to understand.“
Dream Song 159, John Berryman
Reading these lines this morning they seemed to me like an epigraph for an essay.
Yesterday I was reading in my new ebook copy of How to Live or a Life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer by Sarah Blackwell. She points out the original meaning of essay:
Essayer, in French, means simply to try. To essay something is to test or taste it, or give it a whirl.
I have long been fond of Montaigne’s essays. I thought it might be nice to have them sitting in an ebook as well as the lovely paperback edition of M. A. Screech’s translation I own.
And sure enough there they are sitting online free in Charles Cotton’s 1877 translation.
I continue to ponder Don N. Micheal’s insights about context. (N.B. I think I have found an online version of his essay entitled “Some Observations on a Missing Elephant” link . I highly recommend reading it for yourself.)
I give context quite a bit of thought. Micheal lists it as both an example of our contemporary blindness to the disintegration of systems (elephants) which he calls “The Dilemma of Context.”
He asks how many layers of context will we plumb as we orient ourselves to a given question or idea? Is it possible to limit these layers?
But then in his list of response to our mutual ignorance he also mentions context. To be “context alert” is to retain some deep understanding in a small number of areas at the same time cultivating an awareness of the always multivalent “depth of complexity of ‘differing values, priorities, contexts, boundaries and so on.’”
I find this a question for thinkers. When I gingerly test others about context in conversations, I often find that I not many are thinking about what is “hidden in history & theology— hidden in rhyme.” (Berryman’s words above)
Is it any wonder I resonate with Michael’s insights?
As I read and think a parade of ghosts surround me. Allen Ginzberg proclaims his beautiful insights into the poetry of life…. John Berryman mourns Delmore Schwarz and guiltily celebrates the young female poets he lusts after…. Montaigne’s visage is serene and self-ironic as he shares insights that are common to all people…
Then there is the context of musicians. I am constantly in the company of people like Shostakovich, Schubert, Bach and on and on.
Context is important. It may be my strongest reality.
Speaking of context, I didn’t admire everything this guy came up with but I think he had hold of an important part of an elephant of sorts. (Get it? Blind men and elephant story which is debunked by Don N. Michael in the contemporary context? I mentioned to Eileen recently that I benefit from being an anachronism in my thinking about values and context…. I suspect Wilson did as well)
In a couple of hours, I am playing a funeral of an elderly man. The last time we spoke, he was wearing a breathing apparatus and was asking me about a hymn.
He was wondering if it was in our hymnals (since we print a lot of hymnody). I don’t remember the hymn, but he said he was going to need it soon. I presume we are singing it this morning at his funeral.
Death is kind of a theme this morning. I am reading the section in Berryman’s The Dream Songs where he gives way to several poems in memory of Delmore Schwarz who had recently died.
I like Schwarz but I found Berryman’s elegies a bit self referential to the world of poetry he knew. In his style of tell all relentless self scrutiny I suppose this sort of thing is inevitable.
I also suspect the fatigue is my own. Yesterday I felt a continual hum of mental of fatigue.
Mostly at the troubles of others around me. By the end of the day, I wanted nothing more than a martini and a conversation with my wife. Which is how we ended the day. Followed by attending a dance concert at which I recognized a good number of the dancers from my classes. There were no programs (ran out), so we as an audience were left to guess at the context and creators of each piece.
I think I figured out most of the choreographers.
This morning I finished In Search of the Missing Elephant by Don N. Michael. I am sure he is on to something. His insights resonate with me, but not necessarily with you, dear reader, which is why I will put them in different section below at the end of the daily links.
6 ways we don’t know what we are talking about (from Don N. Michael) … not only are we the blind men in the elephant story but we are the blind storyteller.
1. We have too much and too little information.
Information come at us fast and furious. Too much to process. The feedback loop is slower than real time so we process too late.
2. We have not set of shared set of value priorities.
3. the Dilemma of Context contributes to our mutual ignorance
“How many layers of understanding are necessary to have enough background to deal with the foreground?” asks Michael in this section.
You have no frame of reference here, Donnie.
4. Spoken language is too linear to map complexities that need mapping.
5. An increasing unavoidable absence of boundaries in our lives.
Without defined boundaries, there is no system… i.e. no elephant..
6. Self-amplifying unpredictable acting out of the shadow side of each of us….
Michael admits that the shadow side of humans is where creativity resides, but points out that “often, in this complex world, the shadow is also in the service of violence, oppression, selfishness extreme positions of all stripes.”
Hmmmm. Reminds me of what passes for political rhetoric in the US right now.
8 responses to the fact of our mutual ignorance, blindness
1. We are unavoidably seekers of meaning as humans
2. It seems essential to acknowledge vulnerability and finiteness both in ourselves and our works
3. We must seek a poverty of spirit in the sense of “being poor in pride and arrogance and in the conviction I/we know what is right and wrong, what must be done, and how to do it.”
4. We must act in hope, not optimism.
5. Our commitments but “tentative commitments…” that is looking at situations carefully, committing ourselves to action but at the same time recognizing we may well be wrong and continual evaluate our direction
6. We must be “context alert.”
This means acknowledging that you can only be deeply understanding a few matters because of the depth of complexity of “differing values, priorities, contexts, boundaries and so on.”
7. We must be learners/teachers: question askers.
8. We must practice compassion….
“Given the circumstances I have described, facing life requires all the compassion we can bring to others and to ourselves. Be as self-conscious as possible, as much of the time as possible, and thereby recognize that we all live in illusion, we all live in ignorance, and we all search for and need meaning. We all need help facing that reality, and that help goes by the name of compassion.
I finished the penultimate chapter of In Search of the Missing Elephant: essays by Don N. Michael this morning, “Leadership’s Shadow: The Dilemma of Denial.” I bought the book and decided to read it with an eye on the last essay in the book, “Some Observations with regard to a Missing Elephant.” So I’m looking forward to finally reading it.
In the meantime this last essay has some very salient observations and insight especially when set against a national presidential campaign.
Michael is basically asking the question how can we understand the present and the future when it is so chaotic? And what does this mean for how we run our societies and the world?
He attempts constantly to unearth hidden assumptions and taboos.
Here’s his list of questions that emerged after World Wars I and II that “opened certain conventionally unexamined representations of social reality to questioning and to changes in conduct.”
“the sufficiency of the belief in the civilizing contributions of education and reason….
the legitimacy of white colonial goals and norms,
the responsibility of government for the welfare of its citizens,
and the banality of evil, all emerged as legitimate issues for public examination.”
Michaels noted that contemporary political conversations fail to take into account unconscious taboos and needs that guide us and our leadership.
He says that as humans experience the dissolution and chaos of their societies that these will turn into “generative circumstances—the disasters,accomplishments and conflicts…” and that humans might “learn from them that which might moderate behavior into the compassionate ways needed to live humanely…. That is we might interpret our experiences in such ways as to engender values and a psychology that sustains a society of explorers—learners.” [emphasis added]
I love this paragraph:
“But perhaps it isn’t necessary that most people deeply understand the world they live in? Perhaps the underlying mess and current ignorance about what to do about it need not be acknowledge? Perhaps we can depend on an innate something to bring out the right judgments in the population—the heart’s reasons, so to speak? This perennial belief arguably had some validity in simpler days, when the republicanism perceived social reality pretty well matched that described by sophisticated observers. But not today and tomorrow! Or, indeed, even yesterday. For example, the constructors of the US Constitution were quite explicit in their understanding that the common good depended on more than an inchoate impulse to do the right thing, to choose the right leaders. It depended on an electorate educated in and acting out a commitment to civic virtue.”
Michaels has helped me distinguish between hope and optimism. It seems to me like a time to retain hope in the face of the inability to be realistically optimistic.
My stupid left ear is stopped up this morning. Blah. Sipping hot lemon water. At breakfast Eileen and I were laughing about being old and having gross body stories to tell (not just ours, but other people’s as well). Life is pretty good, really.
I have lighter day today. One class, one meeting with the boss, but my trio has canceled. So even though I enjoy the trio, it’s nice to have time off. I probably will do the groceries. Fascinating, eh?
My copy of Goleman’s Vital Lies, Simple Truths arrived in the mail yesterday.
I am using my notes to mark up the new (used) book. Then I will keep my notes in the book itself which is my usual procedure.
I am also finishing off In Search of the Missing Elephant: Selected essays by Donald N. Michael. This is where I found the reference to Goleman’s book.
Michael and Goleman seem particularly apt when witnessing the madness of the Republican nominee race.
Michael says that leaders face the taboo of actually naming the problem. Most importantly that societal problems have gotten so complex they are beyond analytic thinking and that most people trying to do this thinking have been “mal-educated” (this seems to be a word Michael has coined).
Leaders by obfuscating, talk the talk of denial. In Santorum’s case I believe he is talking the talk of the narrow language of puritanical ethics that is in itself largely wrong-headed. So maybe he is a bit more consistent than some of the others, but no less frightening.
I do know that he carried western Michigan in Tuesday’s primaries. I see the puritanical stance as one of denial of what is best in humanity. But of course that’s just little ol me. Heh.
I suppose I should clarify that rigid moral codes are more appropriate for individuals to be free to exercise than for society at large which is much more complex and diverse than Calvinism and Catholicism (as it is presently promulgated).
In my lifetime I have witnessed time and time again people with rigid moral codes reevaluate them when they have to apply them to real life situations. I actually see this as a saving grace, not a bad thing.
So when a staunch opponent to abortion suddenly sees things a bit different when his or her young daughter is pregnant, I find that a good thing.
I avoid the word conservative because I don’t think what is being debated in the public sphere really connects to conserving or liberating anything.
It’s more about winning and a weird reduction of politics from a way to come to an agreement about how to live as a society to a sports event where the victors take all.
Certainly this is not a democratic thought.
But enough.
It’s odd how much time I spend thinking about this sort of thing and reading books like the ones by Goleman and Michael when in fact most of my time is taken up thinking about beauty (music, poetry, art) and its context (history, contemporary world wide instances of music, poetry and art).
Thus the government quietly destroys another good thing with the complicity of the organized church. Is it any wonder I think these institutions are useless?
I’ve landed on the lovely prelude of Shostakovich’s Prelude and Fugue in G # minor piece for the Prelude for Sunday.
I think it fits a meditative mood for Lent.
And the Prelude from his Prelude and Fugue in Ab Major for the postlude.
I figure this is melodic enough to at least be present while the cong chats its way to the exits.
Of course I have been playing and thinking about this music recently, so it’s nice to have a place to at least play them in public.
Finished this last night. On to volume 2 which since it wasn’t sitting on the shelves at the library I bought as an ebook and began reading.
Romney won the Republican primary yesterday. Surprising how many votes Santorum received. What I hear of his rhetoric seems mad and full of hate (JFK’s separation of church and state made him throw-up…. Andy Borowitz, the comedian, suggested Santorum was interested in forming a new way to run his country called Stirch. Get it?)
Our janitor at church is obviously Republican and was wearing an “I Voted” sticker. I have to admire this genial guy as he sits in a room with mostly rabid anti-Republicans. We had a luncheon yesterday honoring Henry Idema who is retiring. Henry hates Republicans for sure and is a vocal kind of guy.
I keep thinking about this interview (which I did eventually read). Gabler has insights about how our political culture is dissolving into a movie where it’s who beats the bad guy (the opponent) that counts and not issues. As Gabler says: governing is a bad movie.
A couple of quotes I marked:
On American cynicism Americans are deeply cynical about politics generally. And one of the reasons we’re cynical is because we get it. We get how it works.
What Gabler wants from better candidates I want to know who a candidate really is. I want him to speak honestly and forcefully to me. And I also want to understand policy-wise what choices is he going to make? What interests are we going to– is he going to serve? You know, these are questions that are almost never addressed in a political campaign and yet they’re the fundamental questions of a political campaign.
A better definition of “politics” When I say politics I don’t mean the horse race aspect of it. I mean the bargaining, the negotiations, the policy, all of those things which are the essence of real politics and political decision making, Americans hate that and they are cynical about that. They feel it doesn’t work.
Democracy or a movie Movies are clean. Democracy is a mess. That’s what makes it democracy.
Implications of politics as movie. When we get into the cold light of the sidewalk after the movie is over, what is the impact of all this? What is it going to mean for my life? What is it going to mean for America? And if we don’t start asking those questions we can’t move this forward at all.
Apathy is a sickness and term limits are not more than a symptom of that inaction. “The price of Freedom is in fact Eternal Vigilance” Thomas Jefferson…
Took the performance scores of my piece “Postlude on Erhalt uns” for piano trio and re-edited the originals to reflect corrections and emendations from Sunday’s performance. This piece is now available on my “Free Mostly Original Sheet Music” page.
My cellist told my wife I should publish this piece. Hah. As usual, I remain unconvinced of my commercial potential but not of the worth of doing what I do. Quite the contrary. I like my stuff and I like doing it. I dread marketing or convincing others of the worth of it.
I like the ending. It gives you a flavor of the poem.
Money! Money! Money! shrieking mad celestial money of illusion! Money made of nothing, starvation, suicide! Money of failure! Money of death!
Money against Eternity! and eternity’s strong mills grind out vast paper of Illusion!
Anyway, I like the poem.
Today I want to pick organ music for this weekend. Last weekend was a big effort with all the Mozart and original composition. This weekend it’s my intention to choose music that wont require tons of prep.
I continue to play through the Shostakovitch Preludes and Fugues.
I found an interesting YouTube channel yesterday which specializes in recordings of composers playing their works.
The context (such as physically sitting in or out of a box) turns out to be important to thinking processes. Makes sense actually. Sort of a liturgical idea being shaped by immediate experience of environment.
Two strings and a piano are evidently insufficient as a postlude against the onslaught of chatter and relief of a group of people in a church who had been holding their breath throughout the first Sunday of Lent. It’s a shame, but not that big a shame.
I’m referring to yesterday’s performance of my little piece based on the closing hymn. I am calmly satisfied today, but realize that much of the beauty seem to miss the mark yesterday. The beauty was there, I think, in the music and the prayers. That is sufficient for me.
The early Sunday morning found me at my silent keyboard, headphones on, carefully preparing my piano parts for the day. The performances later were similar as I reentered the quiet space of doing music. The Mozart piano trio went pretty well and was of course beautiful. But I was most proud of my performance of my piece, tucked in between the rushing conversations of people fleeing the room around me.
I made the piece too gentle and sublte for a postlude even though that was the title I gave it: “Postlude on Erhalt Uns.” But our clear little performance of it was rewarding.
Maybe now I can return to some more composing.
I realize that I rarely perform for “audiences” at church. By “audience” I mean the silent conversation of energy between the listener, the composer and the performer. Instead music is tucked in between what people are doing or think they are doing at the time. We are more accustomed to invisible music. Music made by clever machines for dull ears doing something else.
Elevator music gone wild, blooming into a larger horror than ever imagined and offered to the unaware as they wait for the moment to stop and they get out.
Anyway, yesterday went very well. Eileen and I came home, grabbed something to eat and then went to check on my Mom at the nursing home. She was laying in bed fully clothed. She feels sheepish I think when we come in and she is in bed as usual even though her comfy chair has been repaired. She got up and sat it in it and chatted with us a while which is a good sign. Her main theme now is that her back hurts her quite a bit. This makes sense as we have tried to lower her confusion (increase her coherence and awareness?) and strengthen her by changing a dose in one of her pain meds.
When she was filling out (when I was helping her fill out) her intake form for her new psychologist, she indicated that she is lonely and depressed. Hopefully Eileen and/or I can pop over more often and just chat with her like we did yesterday. It does seem to raise her spirits a bit.
Common sense on the last phase of life: Attributes of “… a graceful death…” include “… being comfortable and in control, having a sense of closure, making the most of relationships and having family involved in care.”
“Industrious, affable, having brain on fire
Henry perplexed himself; others gave up; “
John Berryman, Dream Song 58
Like I did with my initial read of Paterson by William Carlos Williams I am basically just reading Berryman’s The Dream Songs cold without any background reading or information other than consulting the dictionary.
I have always done this sort of thing: throw myself right into something complex. I admire Zappa for this. Having only a high school education, as a young percussionist he threw himself into the world of Edgar Varese.
At my age, this is only one of my approaches. I discovered recently that Paterson has been revised and edited by Christopher MacGowan. He is the surviving editor of the two volumes of WCW I just finished and was solely responsible for the second volume. It’s only a matter of time until I pick up his Paterson and learn more about WCW’s incredible poem.
As I pondered The Dream Songs this morning the dictionary yielded excellent results. Examples of new words I learned:
tinchel – a circle of sportsmen who surround an extensive space and gradually close in on game… Gaelicl, timchiol circuit
The tinchel closes. Terror, & plunging, swipes.
I lay my ears back. I am about to die.
Dream Song 56
Issa – Haiku poet, Kobayashi Issa… the name Issa literally means ‘one cup of tea’
Issa & his father who
sat down on the grass and took leave of each other.
nitid – bright, lustrous Latin nitidus – shining bright nit[ere] to glisten
Nitid. They are shooting me full of sings.
I give no rules. Write as short as you can,
both of these words from Dream Song 54
You get the idea. There were several more just this morning. I figure there are probably edited editions available with explanations if not web sites with the same. But as I said, I enjoy throwing myself directly at the art.
This morning’s upcoming service of Lent I will include some fun music: Piano trio movement by Mozart for the prelude, “Adoramus Te” by Mozart for the anthem and a world premiere of my latest composition based on the closing hymn for the postlude.
I need one last practice session this morning on the electric piano with headphones while Eileen sleeps. It will be interesting to see how this all comes off.
Memorial Facebook pages for dead loved ones. Logical. Funeral homes are probably in a frenzy of anxiety over this one since they offer those ghastly online memorial sites. My dad has one.
The last couple of mornings I have spent time playing through some of the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues for piano. I was reminded of his work by listening to the 2008 Randy Newman Desert Island Disc program online on BBC.
They are more fun to play than listen to, I think. I feel that way about blues as well. More fun to do than hear.
The ballet class yesterday was interesting in that it preceded the opening night of the rather elaborate winter show called Dance 38. This literally means the 38th year they have presented a dance concert at Hope. Pretty amazing. Eileen and I have comp tickets for next Friday’s performance.
The dancers’ energy ranged from pale fainting anxiety to excitement.
I learned Thursday that my boss’s partner has come out of the closet at Hope. I find this encouraging. I hate working for institutions that are so filled with hate (colleges, churches) so it encourages me when I discover that good things have actually happened.
Of course now my boss and her significant other hold their breath waiting for her to get fired. They have already decided that she is going to quit in two years anyway. That partly prompted the coming out.
I also learned from another colleague that a friend of hers was shot and killed on Wednesday. It is particularly wrenching to watch people dealing with stuff like that.
I don’t mention these people by name in order to be appropriate. However, I found it interesting that in Randy Newman’s interview in 2008 he indicated that if he could come up with a good song and it offended someone he loved he still would not hesitate to make it.
When asked, he pointed to a song he wrote about his first wife, while married to his second. Her reaction was not good. She asked him not to perform it if she was at a concert, but he couldn’t remember if he respected this request or not.
I think he is an excellent song writer and composer, so it gave me food for thought since I do censor myself from time to time in order not to offend people I love or care about.
Discovered this morning that poetry was the family business at the Ginsberg household. Allen’s dad published at least two books of poems (the first two rhyme are not terribly great) which Allen refers to in a poem I read this morning.
This is kind of odd, using Facebook to select people you are willing to sit next to. I guess it makes sense if you are traveling alone. I always enjoy travelling with Eileen and would only think about this if I was heading off by myself.
The Syria thing is out of control. I totally abhor war, but do wonder about how we and other countries do not seem to be able to stop this. This article outlines a strategy.
Thoughtful observations from an on the ground observer at one of the world’s finest news organizations.
I love this:
“Law is a culture that puts other cultures, like religion and ethnicity, in a working relationship with each other. The US invasion of Iraq destroyed its legal culture. As a Kurd interpreter said to me in 2004, “Toppling a regime is like toppling a tree; you can’t just make another tree.” I believe law is a culture implicit in each human person. It is the idea that nobody is stupid, not even me, so why not work together on simple things like trash and loud noises?”
Often I looked at the spine of a book I was reading (William Burroughs, Samuel Beckett) and saw its imprint.
I didn’t know much about the press itself other than the fact that many of the books I pulled off of book store shelves to purchase and read had its imprint. So I was interested to read the obit of its founder yesterday.
After the Ash Wed service this week I came home and fell into bed feeling like a body cold or flu was coming on. For 48 hours, it really got no better or worse. Yesterday I did the ballet class, met with my boss and had a piano trio rehearsal feeling like any moment I would be really sick.
My piano trio read through my composition and that was fun. The violinist seem to like it. We are playing it as the postlude Sunday and that will also be fun. I am still trying to learn the piano part.
I came home and basically sat in a chair for five hours until Eileen got home.
I tried to read but basically just sat there. Finally I went to bed and listened to stuff online.
His first choice was “Helpless” by Neil Young. Well I like both Pink Floyd and Neil Young but was basically bored and annoyed with this approach so I queued up the 2008 show that featured Randy Newman. It was much more interesting.
I guess I’m more interested in Newman than Pink Floyd.
Got up this morning (feeling much better) and played through a couple of Shostakovitch preludes and fugues after listening to Newman’s choice of Shostakovitch’s 15th symphony as one of his desert island disks.
I try not to dwell in my own echo chamber of sources that I’m pretty sure I agree with. But I was impressed that Fernandez has written a book that seems to agree with my assessment of Friedman ever since the Iraq war.
I surprised myself this morning when I turned the last page on the second volume of the collected poems of William Carlos Williams. I have enjoyed reading his poetry. I think I am drawn to American voices. I am reading the rest of Allen Ginsberg’s volume of “Kaddish and Other Poems.” I also read the first twenty or so of John Berryman’s Dream Songs.
Nice lines in Berryman’s sonnets:
My psychiatrist can beat up your psychiatrist
Rilke was a jerk
Dream Song 5
Reading Ginsberg and Berryman is a return to the loves of my youth.
Bacevich continues to knock it out of the park for me. I gave one of his books as a retirement gift to the Rev Hendry Idema this week. In this article he re-reads a Life article entitled “American Century” which appeared in the Feb 1941 issue.
“Luce’s essay manages to be utterly ludicrous and yet deeply moving. Above all, this canonical assertion of singularity—identifying God’s new Chosen People—is profoundly American. (Of course, I love Life in general. Everyone has a vice. Mine is collecting old copies of Luce’s most imaginative and influential creation—and, yes, my collection includes the issue of February 17, 1941.)” Bacevich from the linked article
