It’s looking distinctly like my church is going to help me get my computers in better working condition.
A while back I quit using one of my laptops because it was running hot.
We had already put one new fan in it and due to our new financial situation I didn’t want to put more money into it.
At staff meeting this week I asked Rev Jen if I could submit a ticket to BandA the service that the church subscribes to that helps with all our computer issues. She said yes. Then I asked about upgrading my other laptop. She also said yes to that.
So I did that. I actually submitted what the service calls a Query about my other laptop. BandA responded quickly to that and suggest that instead of installing a solid state hard drive, I could improve speed by adding memory. I want to confirm that the church will do this before moving ahead. Also I think it might be good to get the older laptop functioning first.
But anyway, that’s cool.
My security software is expiring. We can’t really afford to put our money into computer security software at this point.
I asked my brother about free ones and he was very helpful. He told me what he uses and pointed out that PC mag reviews them.
I went with that. Downloaded and installed it today and uninstalled my present one.
Our friend, Barb Phillips, is coming to visit today. Yesterday Eileen’s Mom and sister Nancy came to Holland to Christmas shop. I joined them for lunch. I spent most of the day working on church stuff, picking anthems and practicing.
Managed the two mile walk back and forth to see my Mom with Eileen yesterday.
This is a good way to get some exercise in. My blood pressure has been low for a while now. Not sure exactly why (not losing the weight I want to), but it might be related to the fact that I finally got a little vacation.
Two days ago I decided to attempt to learn Francis Jackson’s “Fantasy on ‘Sine Nomine'” for next All Saints Sunday.
As you can see it is reproduced in hand written fashion. It is a twelve page romp and I have been practicing and poring over this piece in every spare moment.
I have a plan B if I don’t feel like it is ready by next Friday or so. I’m also learning a Scherzo by Alan Ridout which is much easier and could easily substitute for it.
I will eventually use the Ridout even if I do not resort to plan B on the Jackson piece.
I finished Silence: A Christian History by MacCulloch this morning. Despite my momentary distaste with his distaste in church music that lacks decorum (see yesterday’s blog), I still have great admiration for this book and its author.
I especially appreciate the way he manages an intelligent criticism of some of the stuff that I think is wrong with Christianity (its historical approach to slavery, homosexuality and antisemitism).
He is careful to show that in order to get to ethical places with these issues one cannot take the Bible as the “inerrant Word of God.” MacCulloch is above all a historian and constantly shows the benefit of approaching his subject through that lens.
There can be no Christianity without the canon of Scripture, and the Christian life has characteristically demanded a searching and researching of it. The great gift of the Enlightenment to Christianity, contextual criticism of the text, has not sought to deny that demand, only to enrich it.
Diarmaid MacCulloch
In distinguishing himself from those who misuse the Bible he quotes this lovely little sentence of Thomas Fudge, “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.”
If that needs unpacking for my less religious readers, some Christians go looking in the Bible for quotes to back up their preconceived ideas on, for example, the three issues mentioned above or other things. Quotes used in this fashion are “proof texts.”
I am still slowly working my way through MacCulloch’s wonderful bibliographic essays at the end of the book. He points the reader toward many fine books some of which I am tempted to purchase and read and study.
In the penultimate section of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s book, Silence, MacCulloch seems to get a bit huffy for a minute. He sympathizes with the reformers Zwingli and Calvin who object to music in communal prayer and especially (and here McCullough seems to be weirdly in full agreement with them) “European Mass settings… which exhibit infuriatingly operatic and deeply inappropriate [!] settings of that congregational plea for peace in the Agnus Dei.”
He goes on to say that Mozart is a prime offender. And then writes this unfortunate sentence: “There is a decorum to be observed in sacred music which such solecisms [such as Mozart’s setting presumably] violate; I will not point to more modern instances in which that decorum has been forgotten.”
Sheesh. Decorum, eh? What about fiesta, dude? And a whole host of musical styles and genres that would be out of place in many a stuffy Anglican setting?
He goes on to cite Michael Tippett’s The Vision of Saint Augustine as an example of a contemporary “transcendent” setting, presumably one that does not violate decorum.
Here’s what I think is the third movement of the piece if you’re curious (like me) what it sounds like.
Hope College owns the CD of this piece. I think I can check it out. And while Tippett’s piece does sound interesting, this doesn’t draw me closer to MacCulloch’s view on this subject.
Other than this, I have found MacCulloch interesting and helpful.
On the other hand, I was drawn to Amiri Baraka’s vision of America in his poem, “Oklahoma Enters the Third World.”
But it’s not decorum, he indites. Rather it is the insipidity of our culture. It’s “candy brain-destroying/ fraud, fakery & Madness…” And “the money-dick slavery/ klan wax nazi white/ supremacy primitive cave/ savage airbrushed, violent/ greedy ignorant culture.”
This man (Gigout) was in my dreams last night. I was visiting in his country home in France in the past. He showed me his innovative pedal devise (not something that actually exists) in which the notes were flat black buttons.
Then we looked out the window. In his view were many large trees bundled up like tumble weeds. They were moving over the hillside in a dance of beauty.
I said to Gigout, “Master, do you compose in this country home? These trees remind me of your music.” (This is not as weird as it might sound. French students have been known to call their teachers, maître… “master”)
In the dream I believe I was thinking more of the music of Vierne.
Louis Vierne (1870-1937)
My dream Gigout responded that he did not composer at that place but that I was correct that his music resembled the dance of the tumble weeds.
An earlier dream I had last night found President Obama as Professor Obama reprimanding and encouraging students in the classroom. I looked on.
Not sure where all that came from.
I’m just about done with MacCulloch’s book on silence. I was happy to read that he sees Merton much as I do: as someone who changed from a basically conservative Catholic to one who connected to the entirety of humanity.
My ballet instructor, Julie Powell, surprised me yesterday by asking me to switch to Tuesdays and Thursdays next semester. I demurred. She told me it was easier for the other accompanist to do the Mondays and Wednesdays since she drove from Muskegon and would benefit from back to back scheduling. I told Julie that I would be glad to drop out for a semester.
If that happens it could be the end of my work as a ballet accompanist which is fine. It’s midly disappointing not to be so “wonderful” at what I do that they would want to keep me on. But the prospect of free time outweighs for me the enjoyable work, online resources access and meager pay.
I have told Eileen if she thinks we need the money ($25 an hour) I will do the switch next semester. She is thinking on it.
At any rate the access to online resources will probaby continue for a while. I think they renew it annually.
My copy of Alone Together arrived yesterday. I was not happy to see underlining in it.
I try to purchase used books in as pristine condition as possible so that I myself can write in them. The underlining is very light and in pencil. It seems the previous reader mostly underlined words, presumably ones that he/she needed to either clarify the meaning of or think about.
After copying my notes from my library copy of the book, I read my own copy this morning with an eraser in hand. Not sure I will have the motivation to keep reading it like that.
Joplin and Bolcolm’s “Ghost Rag” kept creeping into my improvs yesterday. This beautiful music is on my mind for some reason. My brother gave me a bunch of files when I visited him. I made a playlist of the first CD of Alan Lomax’s wonderful collection of American music: Sounds of the South: A musical journey from the Georgia sea islands to the Mississippi delta.
For some reason, American sounds interest me greatly right now. I am enjoying listening to this CD (Thank you, Mark!) I have long admired Alan Lomax and his father John Lomax for their groundbreaking work in documenting the music people make in their lives.
John Lomax and Uncle Rich Brown, 1940. (says Wikipedia)Alan Lomax, 1940
Eleen is planning to drive up and see her Mom today. Dorothy (her mom) has been having some physical problems, swelling of her feet which is connected to some heart function which is failing (the upper chambers). Dorothy is 90 and still living alone. Eileen’s sister, Nancy, drops by every day and is very involved in making sure Dorothy is okay.
We left our Boggle game at Mark’s and Leigh’s house. Boggle has become a regular pastime for Eileen and me. Yesterday morning I drove early to Meijer to see if I could buy one. No luck. Eventually Eileen and I located a copy of “Big Boggle” at the local toy store and went and bought it in time to play after lunch (our favorite time for this activity).
Eileen trounced me yesterday at this new version which has more letter cubes.
Quotes from this morning’s reading
“One must sell it to someone, this sacred name of love.” James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
This leaped out at me. Commodification is such a constant drumbeat these days.
In “King Lear” (which I am slowly reading in the mornig as well) when the Duke of Cornwall asks the beleagured but honest (and supposedly exiled) Earl of Kent why his is angry, Kent replies referring to Cornwall himelf (and for some reason reminding me of some Facebooger conversation):
“That such a slave as this should wear a sword,
Who wears no honesty: such smiling rogues as these,
Like rats oft bite the holy cords a-twain,
Which are too intrinse t’unloose: smooth every passion
That in the natures of their Lords rebel,
Bring oil to fire, snow to the colder moods,
Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks
With every gale, and vary of their masters,
Knowing nought (like dogs) but following:
A plague upon your epileptic visage,
Smile you my speeches, as I were a fool?”
Finished reading This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems by Wendell Berry this morning. I have a mixed reaction to this collection. I like Berry but sometimes found him a bit preachy in this book, a bit religious for me. I like him angry. His “Mad Farmer” series is one of my favorites.
There’s also his notion of “Sabbath” which is a bit sectarian. The first Christians eventually abandoned praying on the Jewish Sabbath and began praying on the first day of the week: Sunday. There were reasons for this one of which was that their Christ was himself the new Sabbath, the new Law and actually embodied the entire notion of their faith as distinguished from the Jewish faith.
This is my liturgical training which apparently is harder to shake than an overall belief in God. I know that Christians now have almost as many notions of Sabbath and Sunday as their are sects/denominations. I take Berry’s notion to be sort of a mix of the Protestant “Sabbath” = Sunday and the more prevalent idea that one can worship better in nature than in a church building.
Nature has definitely been important to me in my life. And it often feels more spiritual than the prayer I experience with other people present.
And I like Berry’s attitude toward nature. I also like his politics. I read this book both from the beginning and working my way backwards from the end one poem at a time. I am curious to see how American poets and artists manage to make art after the cataclysmic time we have lived through (and are living through). So I didn’t wait until the end in a chronological ordering such as this to find out.
This odd blend of feelings that I have about Berry’s beautiful work is faintly echoed in my experience of church yesterday. On the one hand, the music went well. The Bach cello sonata movement was well played and is a beautiful piece of music.
My drummers quickly came through with good playing on the service music and the last hymn. It was especially satisfying to watch a young fifth grader acquitting herself with a bit of unusual skill on the maracas in the Fraction Anthem. The choir sounded pretty good on the little Handel adaptation and my Handel postlude showed the hard work I have been putting in on it.
On the other hand, it felt odd to be immersed in the Bach cello piece and surrounded by parishioners talking and ignoring us like a particularly lively restaurant or bar. The closing hymn was “We are marching” the South African freedom anthem. The drums played along and it was mostly voices and drums (with some reinforcement from the piano during the procession). I could sense that the cong was ready to break out into applause after this.
I jumped on the organ and began the Handel concerto movement. Although most of my attention was on my playing it was hard not to notice that I was competing once again with the congregational buzz.
Having an understanding of prayer as community causes me to appreciate communal moments and congregational buzz as healthy stuff. But I do wonder about the gentle beauty that gets drowned out. I don’t know what that means. For me the beauty is essential. I’m not sure it’s the language of the people I serve beyond the notion that the music is probably “good” music and its interesting that I persist in doing such a wide variety.
It’s weirdly related to Berry’s silence on race in his work or at least in this book of poetry. The history of America is the history of racism. And of course it’s still playing out.
As I write I am listening to a playlist I made this morning. Once again the gentle strains of Bolcolm’s “Ghost Ray” are playing. To it, I have added some of the more gentle renditions of Joplin that I like.
Maybe this is the deal. An old man typing on a computer listening to gentle beauty.
I woke up with this gentle thing in my head (Graceful Ghost Rag by William Bolcolm). I showed it to my brother this week and he remarked that it was beautiful. I have to agree. I just played slowly through it. Unfortunately there is one stretch in the right hand that is too big for my little hands. But I just roll it.
I am feeling calm this morning. Got up and made coffee (blood pressure okay today, but gained a pound). Read in Finnegans Wake. I have added an extradordinary web site to my daily Finnegans Wake reading: finwake.com.
It effectively uses a split screen with hyper links. Finnegans Wake is a natural for the hyper link thing. I am continuing reading the original text, McHugh’s Annotations, and Campbell’s Skelton Key. But I find that this site helps me with pagination and also if I use it as a final read of a section I am reading and studying, it draws the whole meaning together in a way I find helpful.
I am finishing up MacCulloch’s Silence: A Christian History. This dude is very erudite and his footnotes are full of excellent shit. God help me I am thinking of checking a couple more theological writers and their books out: Martin Laird and Rachel Muers.
McCulloch quotes from this book: “it has been well said that silence ‘has no opposite and is the ground of both sound and the absence of sound.”
Wow.
Then Mcculloch writes this beautiful sentence: “It [silence] is an ambassador between the mundane and the sublime, solving tensions and miseries which words cannot touch.” p. 218
He also footnotes this guy and his web site saying that Pisaro has futher wise words on silence. I didn’t find any essay by this guy that struck me yet, but I did find a link on his page to this:
I don’t know if you can read that, but if you’re interested click on the pic to go to this short beautiful little testimonial about Pisaro’s music. It made me want to check it out. I’m listening to this right now:
This reminds me of the beginning of McCulloch’s chapter 9. He introduced me to the concept of “wild-tracks.” These are extra recordings sound engineers make to use to patch up a recording of an interview or panel or something. They reinforce the idea that “every silence is different and distintive.”
Today is the last day of my time away, at least for now. My brother, Mark, and his wife, Leigh, have been gracious hosts this week and last. I have enjoyed the conversation and time together. I miss this sort of thing. Maybe now that Mark is living closer he and I can have these conversations more often.
This second set of three days away has been more calm for me, less desperate feeling. Once again I practiced at St. Paul’s UCC church. This time the musician there did not respond to a request, but the woman in the office was very happy to authorize me for a couple sessions. It was very helpful.
Mark fussed with my lap top a bit and it is running faster. He has offerred to install a solid state hard drive if I buy one. This, of course, would speed things up. We are pretty strapped for bucks right now, so this is not an immediate option. It is nice that he was able to remove a ton of Google Chrome start up options that eats up resident memory inevitably slowing down the stupid stupid Windows 8 operating system.
I am planning one more extensive rehearsal session after driving home today. I am playing a Handel organ concerto movement for the postlude tomorrow. It’s a good transcription by James Engel in D minor. I have a note question about the ending but haven’t been able to identify the orginal concerto and Engel gives no reference. I have a working solution but will probably check my own copies of organ transcriptions and see if I can find this movement. I suspect the original might not be in D minor since all of those in D minor on the IMSLP (Intermational Music Score Library Project)do not seem to have this movement in them.
I’m also rehearsing a gamba sonata movement by Bach I will be accompanying in the prelude. I like these sonatas where Bach writes an interesting right hand part (as opposed to the more usual practice of the time of expecting the keyboard player to improvise the harmony based on the bass line). But due to that, the accompaniment is a little like a six page two part invention. I and my cellist find this piece very attractive.
Tomorrow church should be fun. I am expecting 5 parishioners to play percussion tomorrow on my service music and probably the closing hymn. Plus the choir is singing a Handel SAB adaptation by Hal Hopson and the prelude will be the cello piece and the postlude the Handel organ concerto movement. Should be satisfying.
Amusing. Either the people involved with the show couldn’t read Arabic or were too busy to notice the subversive messages the graffitti artists put on the wall. The online comments run the range of evaluation of the show’s racism.
Having a good time at my brother’s house. So good, I’m blogging late and not going to do much of a blog post.
Now it’s even later. I guess this is going to be pretty much a place marker blog so that if you come back you a little something new. It’s been my goal to update this blog daily since before the word, “blog,” was coined (at first I thought of it as my web site built to engender conversation and connection).
It’s 5:26 PM in Gregory Michigan. It’s been a beautiful bracing day. The drive into Chelsea to practice organ had me gaping at the magnificent sky and clouds.
I hate to be all bible and shit, but this article is about a recent discovery of a first draft of the King James Translation in the hand of one of the translators.
Up early this morning again this Thursday preparing food to take to my brother’s and his wife’s house. Last Thursday I was a mess. This morning I was a tad less of a mess. Also last night’s choir rehearsal was not the disaster the previous week’s was.
My pie crust didn’t fall together very well this morning (a lot like last week… maybe cooking at the break of dawn isn’t always the best thing to do, eh?). But this time I was a bit more reasonable about it and instead of starting over I just put what I had together. It’s not beautiful but I think it will probably taste good.
After cleaning up my mess, I made marinara sauce again. This time I used Eileen’s leftovers from canning. It looks (and smells) to me like it worked pretty well.
I had fun last night at the drum rehearsal. One young man showed up with his mom in tow. I invited her to play (she must have been thinking of doing so anyway because she said she used to be a percussionist). A bit later, a choir member arrived with her grand daughter who told me Sunday she wanted to play. This young person did a good job drumming as well as on maracas on the Fraction anthem. The mom added some nice fills and the young man was obviously skilled.
I was more prepared for the choir’s negativity last night. More patient and beat myself up less afterwards. We spent a half hour on two pieces, one beautiful (and I mean beautiful) renaissance motet by Josquin and the other a newer piece called The Choir Invisible, a setting of lines from George Eliot’s poem. Eliot’s wikipedia article lists 12 volumes of poetry and only 7 novels. Who knew?
George Eliot (1819-1880)
It’s 8:50 AM and Eileen hasn’t come downstairs yet. Last Thursday I was dragging. But this morning I am in a much better space and ready to go. Halfway to being recharged, I think.
Somehow I ran across a review of Sherry Turkle’s new book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. I was intrigued. So I interlibrary loaned a couple books by the author including Reclaiming Conversation.
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2011) arrived recently. I have read the author’s introduction and am 13 pages into it and am hooked.
Turkle is a clinical psychologist as well as founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. She has written two other books that look interesting.
The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (1984). The title is a tribute to Simone de Beauvoir’s book with the same title.
and Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (1995).
Turkle seems to be in running commentary with what’s happening to our society in the last few decades.
I closed yesterday’s blog musing about the lack of depth in so much of what passes for converation and thought online. Turkle is doing research and thinking about this as well.
From notes on my morning’s reading in Alone Together (written in 2015):
“I leave my story (Alone Together) at a point of disturbing simmetry: we seem determined to give human qualities to objects and content to treat each other as things.”
“I believe in our culture of simulation, the notion of authenticity is for us what sex was for the Victorians–threat and obsession, taboo and fascination.”
“Authenticity, for me, follows from the ability to put oneself in the place of another, to relate to the other because of a shared story of human experiences: we are born, have families, and know loss and the reality of death.”
Some thinkers (notably David Levy author of Love and Sex with Robots 2007) seem “to celebrate an emotional dumbing down, a willful turning away from the complexities of human partnerships—the inauthentic as a new aesthetic.”
Speaking of an elderly woman estranged from her son and petting Paro the therapeutic robot: “In attempting to provide the comfort she believes she needs (to the robot), she comforts herself.”
I would be interested in hearing stuff by this guy. Recently I played Schumann’s Study after a Caprie of Paganini which is not even mentioned in this review. It’s a marvelous piece and I said before that it demonstrates how a virtuosic piece need not be empty display.
I got up yesterday morning and was so relaxed that for a while I forgot I had to go to work. I do like having a later begin time with the ballet classes. However, on the walk home from the second class I began to feel tired. I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that I checked the distance between my home and the ballet class building. It is .7 miles. That means by walking back and forth twice I walk 2.8 miles. It’s enough to make you tired.
Today I have a full day planned even though it’s technically a day off. I am meeting in separate rehearsals with Amy, my violinist, and Dawn, my cellist at 10 AM and noon respectively. Then I have a half hour to get up to my piano student’s fancy house on Lake Michigan to give him a piano lesson. I moved all this activity from Thursday and Friday to today in order to clear the days so that I can leave town again.
I was upstairs messing with my book collection yesterday. I think I would like to have all my art books in one place, so I started bring some more down to join those already in our living room. It seems to me like art books and “coffee table” books need to be somewhere where I can grab them and peruse them easily. If they are available downstairs this will be more likely to happen.
I grabbed this book to look at.
It’s actually an Art Annual. The topic is “The Academy.” And though the primary concept is one of the Academic schools of art, I find the topic fascinating.
The concepts of academy, university and college have always held an attraction for me. What do they mean today? What is the history of the idea?
According to the introductory essay in this book by Thomas B. Hess, the first academy was the one Plato ran near the Acropolis.
The idea reemerges in the Renaissance as an organiztion that challenged the concept of the Guild which had many rules and was rigid in its ideas and conduct.
I find this hilarious. Because if one associates the idea of “Academy” with universities and colleges, they are now the institution weighed down by rules and rigidity.
As I was thinking about this and reading in my beautiful old book, it occurred to me that the resonance of an idea like academy and the ensuing contemplation of its implications is a deeper resonance than can be sustained in the Interwebs.
I am very bad with dates. I have trouble remembering birthdays and anniversaries of the people I care about. I keep getting asked how long I have worked at Grace so this morning I set out to figure it out. I found a copy of the original contract I worked out with Rev Jen. It is dated Sept 1, 2005. How about that? I can see now how very lucky I was to find this gig.
I was looking at an old resume which I prepared for an unsuccessful attempt at getting adjunct work at Hope College. It said that my tenure at the Lutheran church stopped in 2004. I quit my Catholic church job in 1999. This means I wasn’t able to stay away from church work very long. You can see from my resume that if I continue on at Grace for two more years it will be as long as served Our Lady of the Lake.
Wow. I put the anniversary date of my contract into my Google calendar. This is how I keep track of dates.
Yesterday I resumed my work at Grace with a bit of renewed energy and good humor. I attribute this to getting away for a few days and hope I can increase these with a few more days off this week.
The organ music that I practiced so hard did not go perfectly. But as I remarked to Eileen alone after church, just think how badly it would have gone without the intense prep I put in. And it wasn’t bad. I had trouble concentrating.
Between the choir pregame and the service I quietly played through the psalm of the day several times because when I rehearsed the choir from the organ I could tell that I was having trouble concentrating on it. My plan was to rehearsal the organ music before service but didn’t get to that. I think it would have gone better if I had had the chance for a last minute intense prep.
This is odd because my history is not to rely on last minute intensity like that, instead to prep steadly for a long period of time before a performance. I can remember Ray Ferguson telling me that sometimes I would be working on learning a piece thoroughly right up until performance. He was right about that.
When I think about the fact that I have been working at Grace for ten years and remember that these ten years (and a bit before) represent a sea change in my own attitude towards and technique of practicing, when I think of all that it makes sense to me that I feel like I rehearse perform better at the age of 64 than I have ever done before.
I think I’ve mentioned here before John Hartford’s reaction when he found out he had a terminal disease: he started practicing hard. Less time left.
This blog will be mostly links. I tried to catch up on a couple days of New York Times this morning.
I also haven’t done my morning reading yet. I think I’m half way there to getting rested up mentally. I am looking forward to three more days away this week, visiting my brother, Mark, and his wife, Leigh.
A relatively recent pic of Mark, Leigh, Eileen and myself. That’s Matthew Locke to my right. He’s in England not Gregory Michigan right now. Heh.
I had a very good time there last week. Lots of good food, good conversation and booze. I was surprised that my blood pressure was low this morning. I took it at the grocery store last night and it was high. I didn’t take my blood pressure kit with me.
I have been thinking a lot about this column. It does give one pause that the material to build a gun is readily available for about $20. But this article seems to contradict other understandings of how regulating guns DOES effect violence and crime. But I think the author is on to something by saying the gun discussion is missing the larger point.
My question is if our problem is a culture of violence, how in the world does one go about changing that? I don’t have a clear idea, but I am thinking about this a bit differently.
These people are trying to keep track of gun violence in the USA. There is no denying that we have more mass murders and gun incidents than is acceptable in a civilized society.
So whether there is a statistical connection between the presence of unregulated guns and crime is not swaying me away from the need for regulation and also keeping track of our society’s violence.
Frank Zappa died in 1993 and did not ever get up to speed with the whole copyright/fair use thing. After reading this obit, I suspect Gail Zappa has had a lot to do with the tight restrictions (and very expensive scores) on Frank’s music. I wonder if that will change. Probably not.
Although a particularly eloquent online reader comment challenges the writer of this article (and may be correct in his criticism of an incomplete picture that omits Western Imperialism in the area), I still found the rehearsal of unfamiliar and familiar history helpful and enlightening.
One of the comments on this article challenges that we get “free stuff” if we pay taxes. I think the whole discussion misses the concept of citizenship and the social contract altogether.
Although keeping track of State laws can be like watching paint dry, it’s still very very important that our gerrymandering cease. Some slightly hopeful news form Florida.
But three days is probably not enough to get my groove back so after consulting with Eileen, I’ve asked them if we can come back next Thursday through Saturday. They readily agreed, so that’s the plan, if I can arrange it. I have already emailed my piano trio people in an attempt to move our Thursday rehearsal to Tuesday. Dawn is scheduled to play at Eucharist two Sundays in a row beginning with a week from tomorrow, but I think if we can rehearse Tuesday that would be enough.
I’ve also emailed the organist at St. Paul’s to ask if I could practice there again. I have a rather involved postlude a week from this Sunday and it would be good if I could continue to practice while visiting here in Gregory.
One of the fun things about visiting is that Leigh allows me to rifle her piano music library. She has a lovely little Steinway baby grand and I have been practicing and playing on it. While doing this I came across a Bach piece that I have seen before but never quite figured out how it fits into his opus, the Fantasy in F minor.
It’s a great piece. But when I have run across in it in piano anthologies (as I did here this week) I notice that it is a very unusual Bach keyboard piece. It has many hand crossing reminiscent of D. Scarlatti (another favorite of mine). Blair Johnston has observed that this piece is on “the very brink of leaving the Baroque behind texturally speaking.” I would even go further than that and say not only the texture but the musical ideas do not remind me of much of Bach. Nevertheless I like the piece and have put a copy on my tablet.
This piece exists in an manuscript version that is authenticated as being in the hand of Bach.
Getting away from town helped me. I was very grumpy yesterday as you may remember. But by the time we arrived at my brother’s house in Gregory Michigan the cloud had lifted.
We seem to have gone a bit overboard on the food. But it’s all good. I splurged and had a cheese sandwich and a piece of apple pie for lunch. Everyone else joined in. Mark seemed especially happy that we had some white cheddar to go with (still warm) apple pie.
I then called the church where I was planning to practice. No answer. But that did not deter me. I set the GPS on the phone and drove over to the church (not without screwing up and driving further than necessary due to my lack of awareness of east and west).
The secretary let me in and remembered me. She had put the phone on voice mail because she was in a meeting. She was very courteous and helped me get settled at the Rodgers organ.
I feel a bit like an organ snob,
but the organ sound was quite bad. I tried to turn off the reverb with some success. Finally I stumbled across the preset midi sounds and proceeded to practice sounding like Wendy Carlos. That was actually a bit fun.
I came back and Mark chatted me up in a most amiable manner. Cool. My resolve to walk two miles went away quickly and Mark made me a 5 PM Martini with his fancy gin.
We put together a good supper of marinara sauce on capellini and a salad with good bread.
Then we watched tv or I should say that the rest of the group watched tv while I snoozed on the couch.
This morning I got up and showered, cleaned the kitchen a bit, made coffee, read Finnegans Wake and did Greek. Life is good.
Mark mentioned this link to me. Apparently it’s an app you can install and develop “recipes” of instructions to remember and do stuff for you. Looks interesting.
I woke up in an unusually bad mood this morning. Cooked anyway. I put on Charles Ives Concord Sonata played by Kirkpatrick (thank you Spotify). Ruined a pie crust. Made another one. Then proceeded to make an apple pie and fresh marinara sauce to take with me to my brother’s house. Listening: Keith Richard’s new CD (which I highly recommend) and Mozart’s Piano Trio K. in C Major K. 542, second movement (which I also highly recommend).
I did get a place to practice while visiting my brother in Gregory, Michigan (Thank you, Geoff Stanton and St. Paul’s UCC church in Chelsea). We will drive over this morning so Eileen can spend a few days helping Mark get started weaving on his loom.
I felt unusually incompetent last night after choir rehearsal. Ironic after a couple days of inspiring talk with my friend, Ken Near. O well. Sometimes you eat the bar, sometimes the bar eats you.
I’m trying not to share my mood with lovely Eileen who is sitting and having breakfast while I do this.
Ken recommended this novel to me. It’s about pacifist parents with a son who becomes a marine and gets killed in Iraq. I guess there’s some Episcopalian shit in it. It’s on my list to read.
Eileen put this link up on Facebooger yesterday. I have it boomarked to read. The low information crowd is going nuts with the nation’s discussion of our gun madness. I’m about ready to condone taking away everyone’s guns except those specifically for hunting. The low information crowd thinks all liberals are like that anyway, so fut the whuck.
One of the low information crowd posted the above meme. I have ceased to try to engage angry people on Facebooger, but I couldn’t resist running this down.
The incident in the meme took place in 1997. And sorry, Mr meme, it was covered in the New York Times which specifically mentions that Joel Myrick had his handgun with him.
I had a great time visiting with old friends last night. Ken and Karen Near took the time and trouble to drive over from Detroit where they are currently living to chat with Eileen and me and have supper together.
I knew Ken and Karen at the beginning of my church music career. Ken is a year older than me and was an Episcopal priest in nearby Tawas City when I lived in Oscoda (1976ish). It was while living in Oscoda that I got the church music bug.
I was raised in a church family but didn’t anticipate the beauties of the Episcopal service and music in the Book of Common Prayer 1928 and Hymnal 1940. I stumbled on to them after answering an ad in the local Oscoda paper that a church was looking for a musician.
I was a bar musician at the time. I passed the audition even though I had no real organ skills and began my time at St. John’s Oscoda. I remember it as a time of fun. I did a lot of crazy things and wasn’t very good at the whole deal. But I learned a ton. And we did a lot of music there. Ken was part of this time and actually performed with me at least once since he was a semi professional horn player at the time as well as a new priest.
Last night I was reminded about how much delight I took in my life at Oscoda. My life now bears some resemblance to that time of my life then. I now live out many (but not all since I have changed) of the values I had then.
I’m hoping I can pick up my friendship with Ken and Karen. They are intelligent people in at a time of ignorance, they are progressive at a time of regressive values in the good old USA. Both of them are well read and articulate. What a gas!
On the home front, I got up this morning and was struck forcibly by the beauty and brilliance of a poem by Amiri Baraka. If you look at the top the page I have added the entire poem as a link (not sure how long I will keep it there). It’s called “Rhymn & Blues 1) by Amiri Baraka.
Maybe it’s my feeble mindedness, but I think this is an excellent poem. If you don’t like the American beat poets you might not like, but I suspect if you examine it at all you will see its skill and value.
Here are some lines that are haunting me this morning.
“An action so secret it creates.
Men dancing on a beach.”
“the peacock insolence of zombie regimes
the diaphanous silence of empty churches
the mock solitude of a spastic’s art.”
“A tub, a slick head, and the pink houses waving
at the night as it approaches.”
“If I see past what I feel, and call music simply ‘Art’ and will
not take it to its logical end. For the death by hanging for
the death by the hooded political murderer, for the old man
dead in his
tired factory; election machines chime quietly his fraudulent faith.”
“There is no ‘melody.’ Only the foot stomped the roaring harmonies of need. The
hand banged on the table, waved in the air. The teeth pushed agains
the lip. The face and fingers sweating. ‘Let me alone,’ is praise enough
for these musicians.”
“I am deaf and blind and lost and still not again sing your quiet verse. I have lost
even the act of poetry…”
I think I am in need of some time away again. While things are going well, my personal mental space is not terribly good. Yesterday, despite having time off, I spent a lot of the day stressed. Poor me, eh?
I did cook. I made cornbread in the morning and a nice roasted tomato pasta and pear/gorgonzola salad for lunch. Usually cooking helps. I walked to my Mom’s. Eileen stayed home reserving her energy for an evening Weaving Guild meeting in Grand Rapids. I also walked to church. Again I rehearsed Franck as well as upcoming stuff.
Haven’t heard back from the churches and people I contacted regarding getting some organ rehearsal time while I’m away this week. Oh well. Not that big a deal. The pieces are in good shape. It’s the choral anthem that needs the work.
Stumbled across this poem this morning. It’s not a happy one, but it hit me. I like that he ends such a screed with a redemptive “yes.” I put it on Facebooger just now.
A couple of links from Diarmaid MacCulloch. I am reading the section of his book Silence: A Christian History which deals with Christian Amnesia. The section on slavery is particularly eloquent. Basically he says we have revised our own Christian history to only reflect the recent complete renunciation of slavery. Before that (and even now in the US white supremacy groups) the Bible was used to justify slavery because it clearly condones slavery.
These two links he gives to illustrate how the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel is changing its past. At one point not only did this English Missionary society have slaves, it also had it’s own brand. None of this info can be found on the links. The second link is an archive link which shows links to information about this. MacCulloch says they have been removed. The links for more info don’t work, but I think this all interesting and disturbing.
Yesterday was the Feast of St. Francis. It was also the annual blessing of the animals at Grace Episcopal Church where I work. It is about the seventh annual celebration of this rite. But yesterday was the first time I didn’t play any Bach. Usually I take my electric piano and play a bunch of Bach while the animals are blessed. I also accompany the two hymns. For some reason yesterday I thought it would be more fun to improv. I think part of this was that our closing hymn at Eucharist was “He’s got the whole world” and I thought it would have been cool to have a jazz piano trio postlude on it. However it was just me at the piano and I jumped up after the closing hymn and went quickly to the organ to perform the schedule postlude.
So at the Animal Blessing, I played some souped up versions of hymns instead of Bach. I was particularly happy with playing “On the wings of a snow white dove.” Get it? I’m not sure if anyone else did, but I thought it was clever.
I was going to post some pics here of the blessing but couldn’t find any on Facebooger. People were taking pictures with their phones and cameras but I didn’t find any thing I was tagged in or any thing else for that matter.
This morning I thought it might be interesting to search pod casts for something on Finnegans Wake. Lo and behold I found one.
This guy sounds pretty normal. Maybe not what you’re looking for if you’re looking for an expert. But I listened to his introduction and learned something from it (a third way to see the title of the work reading the word “wake” as in the wake of boat… this is very signifcant as bodies of water play a huge role in this book).
Also he promises to do a podcast where he talks about all the books he uses to help him read Finnegans Wake. Cool.
This seems to be a dead project (last dated piece is March 2011). Who knows what happened? Maybe the guy died. But at any rate I thought I would poke around on this site sometime as well.
I learn interesting things from obits. Such as Mr. Felder also played bass on many recordings. This makes me want to go back and listen to the Crusaders again.
Eileen finally asked me to stop reading sections of this article to her and just send her the link. Lots of info on the effectiveness and history of recycling. I am going to put this link up on Facebooger as well.
Hot Damn! The New York Times has abandoned the panel approach for this column. It makes me so happy I left what was probably my first online comment for the NYT.
I also noticed that the stupid app I use to read the paper finally (finally) fixed the glitch for the poem in the Sunday magazine. When the magazine format recently updated, the poem was never there. One had to click a link and it never worked for me. I finally gave up. Yesterday I noticed that the poem was now right there on the app. Wow.
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