Help with the Holidays

"I believe in all that has never been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.
If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing  you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea."      Rainer Maria Rilke

Calling the Thanksgiving and Christmas season "the holidays" was always a cruel irony  for me.  During my nearly 40 years of music ministry, November through Christmas was the busiest, most stressful, and most emotionally difficult time of the year.  The last four years not so much since I was only responsible for the music of one adult choir.  But the Christmas of 1983 was one of the most challenging.

That year, like many years before, I was responsible for children's music, youth choir music and adult choir music.  That particular year I not only supervised two younger children's choirs, but I rehearsed and  directed the older children's choir, the youth choir and the adult choir.  All three of them were doing major Christmas productions. Also our Hanging of the Greens service was a big deal involving all five choirs and a handbell choir that I directed.  Musically during December there was a lot going on that I was responsible for.

This year, since I have retired from vocation music ministry, I have experienced a strange mix of emotions.  Before now, the early Christmas decorations and Christmas music in the mall would send chills up my spine.  The Muzac may have been "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year", but all it meant to me was that the clock was ticking on the Christmas music.  All that the Christmas cheer was saying to me was, "You're running out of time".  This year my hypothalamus, the reptilian brain, ignites with the fight or flight response before my frontal lobe processes that I have absolutely no performance responsibilities. My only obligations for Christmas '15 involve family and friends. Thankfully, the stimulus- response "holiday" fright lasts less than a second..

It was unfortunate that all those years I missed out on much of the seasonal celebration for focusing only on what was my responsibility. Or what I thought was my responsibility. The worst part of my delusion was that I not only felt responsible for the Christmas productions, somewhere in my psyche was the thought that I was responsible for everyone's Christmas. As goes the music so goes their Christmas.

In 1983 during early December I was in really terrible emotional shape.  Back then, on a good day, depression was just below the surface. On a bad day, it could get pretty bad.  That afternoon I was sitting in the back door of our unfinished basement with my feet out the door and my head in my hands. At that moment what I had bitten off for Christmas seemed like much more than I was going to be able to chew.  All of a sudden my two year old son was standing beside me. He put his hand on my shoulder.  Having no good reason to know what I was thinking and feeling,  he hugged me and said, "Daddy, Jesus loves you and he'll take you to Christmas." Imagine that.  This One that we celebrate will take you to His celebration.  He's planning the party. All you have to do is show up.

I would like to tell you that I gave up all my Christmas stress that afternoon.  I would like to tell you that the message to me that came, as far as I was  concerned, from Gabriel through my son cured me from my magnificent obsession with my own importance. I would like to tell you that my over- inflated Christmas ego was immediately shrunk to a reasonable size.  But I still had the same hypothalamus. I still had the same gut reaction to the same stimuli.  But that year and every year since then I took into the season the realization that Christmas would happen with or without me. That  Christmas has its own beauty and power.  That the Baby who caused all the fuss in the first place would somehow Himself  take me to Christmas.  That Christmas joy takes care of itself.

"May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back".  One of the largest and most powerful hydroelectric dams in the country is less than fifteen miles from where I sit.  Those mighty turbines do nothing to turn but to be available.  The water supplies 100% of the energy to spin the turbines and generate hundreds of gigawatts of power. The entire process is effortless on the water's part as well. It just flows downhill.  All I have to  do is plug in the lamp and turn the switch. I have come to imagine Christmas being like that potential and kinetic energy.  The power of one Christmas world-wide is beyond comprehension.  You can't stop it if you try. What I can add to it, regardless of its scope, is a drop in the ocean. An important drop for those I love the most, but just a drop.

Now because of additional holiday travels and  my winter driving angst, I've got to learn to deal with "Let it snow!  Let it snow! Let it snow!"

Preoccupation

pre-oc-cu-py: to engross the mind in thoughts to the exclusion of other thoughts

I have been accused for most of my life of being "absentminded." One of the dictionary definitions of "absentminded" is "showing a habitually inattentive disposition".  The truth is that absentminded people are very attentive people.  They just aren't, in that moment, attentive to you. They are attentive to something else.

For example:   You and I are having a conversation about beer. Beer is not only something I enjoy drinking from time to time, I enjoy talking about drinking it as well. I'm interested in what you have to say and I'm engaged in the dialogue.  But all of a sudden at ten times  the speed of light I start thinking about a funny story my first cousin told me several years ago about my teetotaler dad and a can of beer.   But as you continue to talk about your favorite  beer you  notice my eyes glaze over or obtain a far-away look.  You think that I am no longer interested in the conversation. You may even think I'm very rude. I'm not rude; I'm inspired.  Your words inspired me to go to another time and another place.  My mind is far from "absent".  It's just present in another place. Give me a second and I'll be back with you.  I didn't mean to wander off. I really couldn't help it. It's partially your fault.

My mind wanders.  The image I have of my own mind's function is that of a lighthouse.  There is a beam of light inside of my head that is constantly searching.  Millions of times per second it goes around and around and then locks on a thought.  That lock may last for several minutes, hours or even days, or it may lock for only a piece of second and move to something else. This modus operandi of my brain can be a  problem.  I developed this habit as a child.  I'm always thinking about something. So many times I've wished that I could, from time to time, remove my head from my neck and place it to the side for a little while.  The brain would keep on thinking, but those thoughts wouldn't be bothering me. Just for a little while. And when I go to sleep at night, the adventure has just begun. Ah thinking!  My best friend. My worst enemy.

Since removing my head is not a viable option, I have developed other methods of dealing with the problem. of random and  scattered thoughts.  All of these techniques involve time alone. I gain my energy from being by myself and not from being in a crowd of people.  A crowd of people drains my energy. If I do not find a way to renew my personal power, I can grow very grumpy and very agitated. Being alone for me isn't selfish. It's necessary.

The techniques I have employed most often over the years to center my thoughts are reading, listening to music, photography and writing.  I have read volumes of books and literature. I've read works of fiction and non-fiction.  I have read the classics. I've read biographies, I've read autobiographies. I've read American history from the European  settlers' point of view and the American Indians' point of view. I'm more of an Indian than a cowboy.   I've read world history. I've read philosophy and inspirational books.  I've read the Bible through and through. I've read the Book of Mormon (most of it). I've read much of the I Ching.  I've read books on physics and quantum mechanics. Books about photography. Books about writing.  Books about books. I never tire of reading about our solar system, galaxy and the universe. I've read hundreds of books and tens of thousands of pages. Books provide an unending source of energy and inspiration.

I could write volumes about listening to music.  They call music "arrangements".  Music rearranges the molecules of my brain in ways that provide calm and personal peace. Millions find calm in the bottom of a bottle (glass and plastic), I find it with my brain inside my Bose noise-canceling headphones. And I've never had a hangover from music. Tinnitus yes. Hangover no. I experience this retreat some part of nearly every day.

Photography is a relationship of a person, a camera, and light.  The camera sees things in sharp focus (a little pun).  My Canon camera sees so much more than I can see.  But it can't see by itself.  The camera needs my help. It needs me to set the aperture, the shutter speed, the ISO, the metering and the white balance. Do I want aperture priority or shutter priority? Once I do all that, point the camera toward the subject and press the shutter release, the camera does the rest. It creates a world of surprise and beauty. With my camera in my hand I'm as focused (get it?) as can be.  For that matter the biggest part of most of my photos are out of focus. Bokeh.  A camera is a dialogue with available light. When I'm walking through the woods with a camera, I am thinking of little else.

Writing is perhaps my most effective tool in centering.  When I write I start with a thought( no surprise there). This morning I'm thinking about how I think and how I deal with how I think. And I start writing about it.  It takes all my concentration to write. I not only have to find the right words to convey what I'm thinking and feeling, but I have to pay attention to  diction, grammar and punctuation. As I write I'm constantly aware of the fact that the words will be read.  I want my reader to understand as well as possible what I'm trying to say.  All of that requires my total concentration for several minutes or sometimes hours. I am seldom more present in the moment than when I'm writing. You tell me that you enjoy my writing, but I write much more for me than I do for you. However, I find  great pleasure in the fact that my bliss can sometimes be yours as well.

I started writing this over two hours ago. During that time  I've thought of very little but writing. Oh and the soundtrack from The Bridge of Spies by Thomas Newman has provided focus and inspiration. The music rearranges my thoughts as I arrange the words. But to be honest I'm tired of writing. I think I'll find my camera.

Cheap Advice--Dealing with Mistakes

"Writing has always been my therapy, a mode for me to work through my problems and neuroses by crystallizing them in a way that makes sense for me".  Zeba Blay,  The Huffington Post

This cheap advice I'm offering wasn't cheap for me.  I had to pay for it.  But it's cheap for you. Your only expense is the time to read it and the energy to consider how it might apply to you.  And why am I willing to give away this advice?  One is that I enjoy helping people and, two, as I relate these thoughts to you, I'm working through it again.

I hate making mistakes.  I try to never make mistakes.  But recently I made a mistake. And I felt really bad about it.  It was not illegal. It was not immoral.  It was not unethical.  It was not all that costly, but it was a mistake and I don't make mistakes.  And somebody got really upset with me.  

Even after restitution had been made with the person involved, I still felt bad about it. The feeling of remorse and embarrassment continued to the point that I decided to talk to my counselor.

He told me two things. He said, "David, you function at a very high level.  Much is required of you and you deliver on those expectations over and over again.  But no matter how hard you try to be perfect, you're not.  You are going to eventually drop the ball.  You are eventually going to screw up.  The reason for that is that you are human being. Human beings screw up." And then he told me a personal story.  Personal stories with him are rare. He very seldom relates something from his  own  life and experience. But in this case, for this dialogue, he did.  Without disclosing  anything specific he told me, he too did something dumb. Like my mistake, it wasn't illegal,  it wasn't immoral, it wasn't unethical, yet it was  a potentially costly oversight on his part. It could have been a personal disaster.  It could have cost him dearly. When he told me what happened, I could sense just how upset he was about it at the time. I knew that what he did mattered to him and made him feel like, at least temporarily, a total klutz.  This man, my counselor, has a PhD in Clinical Psychology and years of experience. But he was telling me about one of the worst blunders of his career.

As the clock on my 55 minute session continued to tick, I knew why he told me that story. He was saying, "David, I know you trust me. I know you think highly of me. I know you respect me. But guess what?  Sometimes I screw up too! We all eventually screw up!. No matter how many degrees we've earned. No matter how good our intentions, we  eventually mess up. Welcome to the human situation! Oh, and by the way, things usually work out ok."

We then discussed that there are consequences for mistakes, but that those consequences for good and honest people can usually be contained. Not always, but usually. And this was the case for both of us. No permanent damage in either case. Things got fixed.

So what's my cheap advice? My advice is when you mess up, make whatever apologies and restitution is necessary and forget about it. Stop feeling bad about it.  No amount of feeling bad will change the fact that it happened. And obviously no amount of feeling bad will help you to feel any better.  You will feel bad right up to the moment you don't.

 If you keep feeling bad or embarrassed and don't want to feel that way,  then maybe you should consider paying for professional help like I did. But I can't believe that the advice you have to pay for will be much better than what my counselor and I are offering.  To recap my cheap advice, here is my six step remedy for mistake angst: 1.Recognize the human condition, i.e. humans make mistakes.  2. Recognize that you are a  human being. 3. Therefore, you make mistakes. 4. Do whatever is reasonably within your ability to make it right.  If the offended party can't accept that, then that is now their problem and not yours. You've done all you can do. 6. Forget about it. Think about something else.

I don't know if you feel any  better, but I sure do.

The Book of My Life in Five Short Chapters

"How did it  go so fast you'll say as we are looking back.
And then we'll understand that we held gold dust in our hands."  Tori Amos

Chapter Five (continued) The Golden Years

The awful truth (as in awe and wonder) is that I may not be entering my "golden years", I may be entering my "golden months" or "golden days" or "golden hours." God knows.  Because of the realities of life and death, because of the realities of cell division, the circulatory system, lane changes, ballistics and aerodynamics, I have become acutely aware of the brevity of existence. I wake up thankful every day to be alive. I go to sleep grateful for having been given another day. But I hope to be entering my "golden years." Because of a significant amount of planning from years ago the "golden years" are a possibility for us. But when the book of my life is written, if these words are, in fact, the remnant of my golden hours, I will have died content. This spot where I sit is my happy spot. Thanks to Toshiba, Intel, Microsoft, our electricity provider,  our cable provider,  Facebook, Netflix, Spotify and Bose, I have a portal to the world. No ticket or passport required. And this world has a portal to me. I'm in this portal now.  I explore this world hour after blissful hour, day after day. But I can't write this chapter because this chapter hasn't happened yet. Someone else will have to finish Chapter Five.

Chapter One: Enterprise, Alabama

I spent the first nineteen years of my life in Enterprise, Alabama.  In 1953 I was born at Gibson Hospital.  In August of 1973 I left town in my grandfather's Oldsmobile to move to Birmingham, Alabama. Well that's where I thought I was moving. Looking back,  I was moving just north of there to Jasper. The nineteen years between 1953 and 1973 could, in so many ways, be "the story of my life." If my life had ended that August of 1973, I would have lived a full and vibrant existence.  It would have included my family and extended family.  It would have included so many childhood friends. It would have included an elementary school, a junior high, a high school and a junior college. It would have included two churches, my family's church and first church where I was the music director. There is not enough space in this short book to begin to line out my lifetime in Enterprise. It was indeed a wonderful life.

Chapter Two: The New Prospect Baptist Church

As I said, I left home to move to Birmingham. There I transferred as a junior from my junior college to Samford University.  In June of 1976 I graduated with a five year double major of music education. But in retrospect, it was that part-time job I accepted that shaped my life in more dramatic ways than school itself. I actually drove to Jasper, fifty miles north of Birmingham, and led the music at the New Prospect Baptist Church the weekend before I started classes at Samford. As a student I was on campus through the week and maintained eighteen semester hours, but in many significant ways I lived in Jasper. After church one Sunday night before I drove back to school, I met a girl.

Chapter Three:Seminary

Several months later I asked that girl from Jasper, Alabama to marry me. We both graduated in June of 1976 and got married in October.. In August we moved together to Louisville, Kentucky where I enrolled at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Although I did serve as music director of a church and that relationship was important, it was the seminary education that was most remarkable part of those two years. Musically and academically I excelled in every way possible. I found my wings. Besides the educational and performance opportunities at school, I performed twice with the Louisville Symphony and Opera Association.  That kid from Enterprise did himself proud. And my grandmothers in Enterprise were proud too.

Chapter Four: The Years 1979 to the Present

And then in May of 1979, we left Louisville and  moved to Rossville, Georgia. And six years later we moved five miles down the road to Ringgold. These years are not just a book, they would be volumes of books. Four different churches. A hospital where my wife worked. Several different jobs. Another college degree.  Another hospital where my wife works.  Back in '81, a son--he rolled over. he's walking. he's talking. school, baseball, basketball, band, girlfriends.graduation. Another graduation. Another graduation.   He gave us a granddaughter. Which made me a grandfather. No words.  And then there are grandchildren to whom we are not related. Well, at least their is no trail of DNA. Home. Work. Church. Home. Books.Friends. Restaurants. Home. Alabama. Concerts. Books. Friends. Florida. Movies. Restaurants. Family. Arkansas. Work. Home. Books.  Alabama. Church. Movies. Indiana. Work. Books. Concerts. Missouri. Church. Family. Restaurants. Home. Indiana. Friends.Home.  Indiana. Family. Indiana. Work. California(we didn't see that one coming). If these words, starting with "Home", were links, then you could read a remarkable story. You would find remarkable people doing remarkable things. There are no ordinary people or ordinary places in this story.  They are all remarkable.  And in the center of this story you will find me.  And that's remarkable. Because I'm so ordinary.  I'm from a small town in southeast Alabama famous only for its statue to  an ordinary bug--a boll weevil. In 1920 a group of men in Macon, Georgia started the first commercial crop dusting company. They formed the company for one reason--to eradicate the boll weevil in the Mississippi delta. They knew it as the Huff Daland Dusters. We know it as Delta Airlines. That's remarkable.

Chapter Five

In  just the past two weeks. there has been a terrorist bombing of a Russian airliner, suicide bombings in Beirut and a terrorist attack in Paris. Not to mention thousands of other lives lost to senseless killings here and around the world. And now the military retaliation has begun. Who started it and who's retaliating? Cain killed his brother over an argument about meat and potatoes. This has been going on a long, long time. How can I be so selfish tonight to be thinking about the significance of my own  life? How can I be so insensitive to the realities of the world to say that that  life is good? That any life is good?  In light of all the killing and horrors, to say that my story even matters? To say that any story matters.

This is where I live. There is no where else to live. Interstellar travel is still some years away. But if the movie is any indication, we take our problems with us to outer space.  Human nature, for better or for worse, doesn't change.

I have a granddaughter.  This is where she lives. She has no where else to go. Am I supposed to tell her to run for cover, hide under a rock and to not come out until the killings stop? Should I tell her the truth? That the killings will never stop?  When she writes the story of her life, I certainly hope that Chapter One is simply "Greensburg, Indiana" (she probably won't remember W. Lafayette).

We are entering our "golden years". I've never known why retirement was called that--Golden Years.  Don't you have as many problems in retirement as during any other time of your life?  Just because you're not working as much, does that somehow mean every day is full of magic and wonder?  Does that somehow make all your emotional, mental and relational issues just go away? Not that, relatively speaking, we have all that many.

The "golden years"? It took a song by Tori Amos and an elementary school basketball game in Greensburg, Indiana for me to understand.

They are all golden years.

Once Saved. Always Saved

Several years ago I spent the night with a friend. An acquaintance of his was there also. My friend's house had a small kitchen area with a small round table.  If you wanted to eat, it was the only place to sit. The other guest was already seated at the table when I walked over with my Cheerios and milk.  It was about 7:30 in the morning and I hadn't even had my first cup of coffee.

I was hardly seated when with not as much as "good morning" he looked at me  and asked, "Do you believe in 'once saved always saved'?"  My theology being what it was and my mind working the way it did, at least 10,000 responses flashed through my head in less than a second. Response 8,456 would have been "No." Response 8,457 would have been "Yes."But that's not what I said. Response #1 involved re-framing the question. There was no way for me to answer the question if we didn't agree on the question.  Responses 2 through 684 involved the realization that the two of us would never agree on the question.

I knew what he was asking.  He was asking the question that had been posed to me since I was a young child in a Southern Baptist church in south Alabama. I heard it quite often from the pulpit, especially when the hell-fire and brimstone evangelists rolled into town twice a year: "There are only two kinds of people in the world" they shouted, "those that are saved and those who are lost.  The saved will enjoy an eternity in Heaven with Jesus.  The lost will be tormented in a Devil's Hell for all eternity."  Or another way they were fond of expressing it, "The lost will 'split hell wide open'! " Even as a kid I imagined grabbing my right knee and splashing into hell with a can-opener, But it still was not a place I wanted to go.

This belief then led to the question "Once you are saved ( not bound for hell but bound for Heaven), can you be lost again (bound for hell)? Tens of thousands of good churches  split on this issue.  And thousands of new churches were formed upon the foundation of which way they fell. So I can assume that my breakfast mate's question was this, "Once you are saved and bound for Heaven, can you then somehow through sin or apostasy become lost and go to hell?"  So as I stated, I wish I had just said, "Yes" and let him talk.  After all he was not the least bit interested in my answer to his question; he only wanted to tell me the gospel truth about "eternal destiny."

So instead of answering his question I went with Response #1, to re-frame the question.  I said something like, "First of all I don't think of 'saved' and 'lost' as being about eternal destiny.  I think of being 'saved' as the quality of my life today.  So 'yes' I believe you can be 'saved' and 'lost' several times a day.  If I am living in forgiveness, grace, love, gratitude and spiritual abundance then I am being saved. If I am living my life with worry, regret, self-punishment, anger, unforgiveness and emotional distress then I am being lost. In this regard, I can be 'saved' one minute and 'lost' the next over and over again on any given day."

I really don't remember any more of our conversation.  I was much more concerned about my Cheerios getting soggy than his answer to my response. I do remember that he really didn't know what to say and that we spent the remainder of our breakfast in uncomfortable silence.

Why do I have all this on my mind this morning? My job involves inspecting people's crawl spaces under their house.  This week as I was crawling back through the crawl door into the light of day, the next door neighbor spoke to me.  He was working in his flower garden and I approached him and talked across his chain link fence.  He wanted to know about my knee pads so we chatted about that a few minutes.  He then asked, "If you died today do you know where you will spend eternity?"  My theology is much more liberal than it was seven years ago, and my brain runs even  faster.  So nearly 100,000 responses flashed in my  head. Response #65,892 was "Yes." So I went with that.  "Yes I do",  I said. Apparently unsatisfied with that response or more than likely a pre-prepared follow up he asked "Would that be in Heaven or hell?"  Staying on course I said, "Heaven."  Still not satisfied he asked, "And what do you base that on?" At this point I was officially annoyed and just wanted out of the conversation as quickly as possible.  I found him, his theology and line of questioning to be rude and invasive. Of the nearly 6 million responses I considered for this question, I simply gave him what he was looking for. I said, "When I was 10 years old I invited Jesus in my heart. He came into my heart and that's where he is today. That's how I know I'm going to Heaven." To my surprise, he had no further questions. And I bid him good day and walked away.

I'm constantly amazed by the legions of people who dismiss and devalue their own lives to only give credence to what happens when they die.  If there is a Heaven that is certainly where I want to end up. If there is a hell then I certainly have no desire to roast like a marshmallow for all eternity.  But I try to live my life in such a way that it doesn't matter if either place exists.  If I don't enjoy all the resources of grace here on Earth, what makes me think I'll enjoy them any more in Heaven? If the here and now is not satisfying and enjoyable, then why would I think the amenities of Heaven will be any better? If I don't develop the capacity to experience at least occasional bliss while on Earth, is it reasonable to think I will be only blissful for all eternity? I would think dirt and grass to be more comfortable than streets of gold.  I think I would find harp music to be interesting for an hour or so.  Mansions have never appealed to me much. But a cabin in the woods by a mountain stream sounds very nice.  And angel choirs?  "Ok, fine, I like choirs. But is that 'Rock and Roll Heaven' really here? I've heard they have a helluva band."

And all those relatives you'll spend forever with, if you don't enjoy their company now, why would you enjoy it then? Are  all those annoyances suddenly forgiven and forgotten when you walk through the Pearly Gates?

But I digress.  Do I believe in 'once saved. always saved?"  "No, I do not. I definitely do not".

Making the Grade

Throughout my school days I never particularly enjoyed studying for tests and taking tests, but I usually did really well on them. And I took hundreds of them.

Although I was an A-B student from grade school through graduate school, my proudest grade was a C.  As a freshman when I looked at the curriculum for Bachelor of Business Administration, I saw calculus during my senior year.   For three years calculus loomed on the horizon. Reading that catalog it looked like and felt like a formidable obstacle to obtaining my degree. But I had three years to worry about that.

My senior year arrived. I had passed nearly all my courses with flying colors, but now I was staring calculus right in the face. My college  had a math lab where tutors were available from 8am to 8pm to help the students.  I lived in that lab. I spent countless hours with assignments and exam preparation.  When the final exam arrived, I was barely hanging onto a C.  The final wasn't easy. I had studied for days and I gave it my best shot, but I just didn't know.  There were functions on that final I had never seen. I didn't leave the room with a warm, fuzzy feeling. Just before Christmas I booted up my semester grades. Amongst the As and Bs I  saw a C!!   A solid C!!  I was ecstatic.  It was one of the best Christmas gifts ever. Calculus was in my rear view mirror.  Four months later, at the age of 57, I walked the stage to receive my degree. Cum Laude.

But my proudest test grade was at another college for a different degree.  On my way to a Bachelor of Music Education in 1976, I had to pass several different music theory courses. Each one was harder than the previous class.  Music theory is basically the function of notes and chords in tonal Western music. When you're listening to tonal "Classical" music, if you freeze the music at any point, the notes make musical sense both horizontally and vertically. When you look at the vertical chord created by the horizontal melodies and harmonies, there is a mathematical name for each chord.  The names include both words and numbers.  Not just any words and numbers, but the right  words and numbers. These numbers are specific to that chord. Within the music, however, there are certain "non-harmonic tones" that don't belong to a certain chord. They belong to the composition, just not to the chord.

One of my favorite types of music is the fugue.  The fugue is highly complex and profoundly beautiful. The  composition involves the same melody entering part by part as the music evolves. Layer upon layer of a single melody are woven into a  magical musical masterpiece. Because of the nature and the structure of a fugue, it creates a  myriad of non-harmonic tones.  Just like there is a name for each chord, there is a name for each of these tones--passing tones, leading tones, neighboring tones, anticipations, suspensions, etc. You know which is which by its proximity to the chord, the way it approaches and leaves the chord.

 In this particular advanced theory class the exam was to name each of those tones.  The professor simply copied a page of a Bach fugue and circled the non-harmonic tones. All we had to do was name them.  Most of the class failed the exam.  Several passed with a C. A few made a B.  And one or two students made an A.   I made 100!  I named 100% of the tones correctly.  That was forty years ago and I'm still pumped about it. It was a very proud academic moment for me.

Last evening I was listening to a fugue from J.S. Bach's Mass in B Minor.  I was enjoying the music, but I was thinking about that test.  I'm sure those students who failed that exam passed the course, earned their degree and have led rewarding and productive music careers.  But I can't imagine that any of them enjoy listening to a fugue any more than I. The whole is certainly beautiful, but the sum of its parts is quite remarkable as well.

Calculus is the  mathematical study of change.  And that's about all I remember about it.

Gold Dust

"Sights and sounds

pull  me back down

     another year

I was here

I was here

how did it go so 

fast

you'll say as we are looking back

and then we'll understand

we held gold dust in our hands
in our hands"

    from Gold Dust, Tori Amos

I will preface these words with this--I would not change one thing about my life. My significant relationships mean more to me than I could ever say. With that said...

I wrote recently of the powerful emotional effect while listening to music of the 60s on Sirius/XM.  Is what I feel wonder or regret? Wonder is a good thing. Regret is not. The biggest problem with regret is that it's an emotion that leaves you totally without any means of changing anything. No matter how much you might wish that something had been different, it wasn't different. It happened the way it happened.  You can certainly change how you think about the event, but you can't change anything of the event itself.

Those emotions have now been profoundly complicated. I was invited to join a memories group on Facebook,  Memories of Enterprise, Alabama. My hometown. So I joined. At first the moderator posted historical photos of the city from the 1800s and early 1900s as the city was founded. THese photos include those of the dedication of the world famous Boll Weevil Monument in 1919, a monument that defines the identity of the town.

Over a period of weeks those photos became more and more recent. More and more personal. He started posting photos from my  school years. The emotional whiplash was intense. If the music of the 60s dragged me back 50 years, the photos cruelly froze moments of time.   A lot of moments of time. Photos of my schools and classrooms. College Street Elementary School. Enterprise Junior  High School that I watched burn to the ground. Enterprise High School that got blown away by a tornado. .Photos of my classmates. Photos of me with my classmates.  Photos of my teachers. Photos of my band marching in The Festival of States. It's an aerial photo but I'm somewhere in that picture blasting my trombone. For five years that was my band. Heck, my senior year I was president of that band! Photos of  my friends. Photos of girlfriends. Photos of girls I wanted to be my girlfriend. Photos of girls that  I knew liked me, but who I never gave the time of day. I could have. Maybe I should have. But I didn't.

Looking at the photos of those young men and women in my class reminded me of how much unfinished business I had left there.  This experience for me is completely different than going to a class reunion. At the reunion it's the grown up version of the person I'm reminiscing with.  These photos are the then version of all of us--frozen and forever unchanging.  That unfinished business? What can I do about any of it?  Absolutely nothing.  What can I feel about it?  A world of things. Anything I choose to feel. And it doesn't feel all that good.

The lesson for me --As tempting as it is to try to go back to Neverland, it's a Sirene's song. Gold dust is a byproduct of machining gold. Pure gold. Why should I settle for the gold  dust of wishful thinking when I can have the solid gold of reality?  After graduating from the junior college, I left Enterprise,  Alabama in 1973 at age twenty. That was forty-two years ago.  Do I really think the 60s have anything for me? Anything at all? Did I leave something there that I should have brought with me?

I live in Georgia with my wife of thirty-nine years. She wasn't a high school sweetheart. She was my college sweetheart. She was  from another time and another place. Strange thing though, I not only have our shared history from the beginning of our time together, but she shares my collective history from before our time. "Enterprise" belongs to her too. She went with me to those reunions. Although she didn't meet those girls in the photos, she met real living, breathing human beings. She laughed along with some of those "girls" I never gave the time of day.  Guess what?  They didn't care. Believe it or not, they've had a pretty good life without me. Joke's on me.

When I watch a good movie, I don't just watch it, the movie watches me. I recently watched  a movie on Netflix that I had never heard of. The movie is  Hector and the Search for Happiness.  Hector leaves his job and Clara the woman he loves to travel the world to find happiness. He also left to find Agnes, a woman he used to love. And thinks he may still love.  When he finds Agnes after traveling the world, he finds her very married and with three children. As he struggles with his unfinished business and tries to tell her how he feels, she says, "Hector, I don't know who you think you're in love with, but it's not me."  He goes home. He goes home to his work and to Clara. And he's happy.

For the most part, in spite of the punch it packs, I have enjoyed listening to 60s music.  Seeing all those old photos?  Not so much. But starting today I'm listening to Classical music for a while. It was all composed long before my time. And I've left that Facebook group. "Sights and sounds pull me back down another year." I think from now on I'll go forward.