Quite often on trips when we're deciding whether or not to stop here and there, whether or not to eat at the nicer of the restaurants, whether or not to make the trip in the first place, my wife and I look at each other and one of us will say, "What would Nana do?"
Nana, pronounced nanay, was my great aunt, my maternal grandmother's sister. My oldest cousin couldn't say Annie Rae, he said "Nana" and so it was for generations. Nana earned a college degree,at the turn of the 20th century, was an educator (a principal in Birmingham), a successful businessperson and civic leader in Enterprise, Alabama, and an incredible aunt to my siblings, my cousins and me. Nana was generous with her time and money, she taught us basic manners and etiquette. Because she read newspapers, magazines and books she clued us in on both what was going on and what was about to be going on. I wondered at times if she was clairvoyant (without knowing that word), but she just read a lot.
Of all the gifts Nana gave us, perhaps the most valuable were the trips she took us on. These trips might include other adults and always included some combination of the cousins depending on the destination and the mode of travel. I actually have a few memories of the trip to San Antonio, Texas that just included the two of us when I was five years old. My uncle was stationed at Ft. Sam Houston. Nana decided to go see him and for reasons I'll never know took me with her. I remember very few details about the trip, but I remember our stop with her friends in Louisiana when their granddaughter kissed me. And I remember the Alamo (get it?). There was the trip to Saint Augustine. If there were not already plenty of attractions in Saint Augustine, we stopped many places along the way including Weekie Wachee Springs, Silver Springs, and a memorable waypoint in Tampa. My mother talked for years about her Billy Goat Salad in the outdoor cafe across from the sponge divers. And there was a drug store that spanned an entire city block. Nana bought some orange marmalade preserves that we ate the rest of the trip. Nana was about extravagance--she left no experience stone unturned. She wanted us to see it all and experience it all. Since she never married and "had a family of her own", we were all her children--her prized possessions.
The trip that was most memorable and pivotal for me was the trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee just before I started the first grade. Besides the main attractions on Lookout Mountain, Rock City, Ruby Falls and the Incline Railway, the mountain itself was magical for me. Many of the streets and attractions involved the words fairy or fairly land and so it was--the habitat of fairies.
When I was a teenager Nana encouraged me to take a trip to Oklahoma with my brother when I thought I had better things to do. She said, "He's your brother. Just go." Just wow. My brother and I still take trips together.
When my nephew was small he called where we live "Georgia-Tennessee". That describes our locale extremely well. To meet our friends for brunch today we drove from Ringgold, Georgia through Chattanooga Valley, Georgia just across the line to St. Elmo, Tennessee. The restaurant where we met them is less than 100 feet from the ticket booth and entrance to the world-famous Incline Railway. It was a perfect day to sit outside, warm temperature with a cool breeze. And the man playing classic soft rock on his acoustic guitar was perfect for the occasion. I was sitting with my back to the Incline and facing an ice cream store across Tennessee Avenue. After we had had plenty to eat and plenty of enjoyable coffee and conversation at the restaurant, I wondered if everyone would consider some ice cream and thought, "What would Nana do?" I made the suggestion; we crossed the busy street and within a few minutes were sitting outside eating ice cream. This time I was looking straight up the tracks of the Incline Railway. In any conversation I am simultaneously trying to listen, but also processing thoughts. Both are always vying for my attention. Depending on the conversation and the thoughts, that contest can tilt either way. While eating my chocolate fudge ice cream in a waffle cone, my attention was tiling toward the Incline Railway and my greatest of aunts Nana. Just as well, with the traffic noise, and the music across the street I couldn't hear very much of what was being said in the first place.
It wasn't just the fun stuff she let us buy or the places she took us, Annie Rae Pierson was just a wonderfully generous person. She had a deep guttural laugh that would light up a room. Nana stayed bright and sharp into her late eighties. At first the same stories she told over and over were a little amusing. Over time as we fully understood what was going on, there was absolutely nothing funny about Alzheimer's. I remember her last words to me in the nursing home in Enterprise. We had stopped in on our way to Florida to say goodbye. I had learned that I could connect with her through the old family trips. She called me "young man" and never believed I was the little boy in those stories. After talking and laughing, the nurse had asked me to step outside. When I came back in she had no recollection of the conversation a few minutes before. If I had had any way of knowing her question meant so much to her, I would have lied. But I didn't have to. When she asked me, "Young man, is it still morning?" I looked at my watch and with God as my witness it was five minutes til noon. I said, "Yes, Nana. It's still morning." She sunk back into her pillow and smiled as if she'd seen an angel. And I made my exit.
We have the opportunity to fly to San Diego in a few weeks to spend time with our family. In some ways it's not the best time to for us to make the trip. What would Nana do? "Thanks Nana. You have a way of reminding me what really matters and who really matters. And I want you to know that I ate that chocolate fudge ice cream on a waffle cone in your honor today. The Incline Railway hasn't changed all that much over all these years, but thanks to you I sure have."
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Saturday, April 29, 2017
G
Any singer has a range. The singer has a low note that is at the bottom of his or her range and then there is a note that is at the upper limit. Just like an adrenaline-infused athlete, in certain circumstances this range can be stretched slightly. In my vocal performance prime, as a bass-baritone I could sing a low Eb to a high F. And in some songs on certain vowels, I could comfortably push the upper note to an F#. This note is not high for a tenor or a soprano, but for a baritone it's fairly impressive. Over my lifetime I have experienced very many sensations that feel good, but to nail an F# at the end of an aria was right up there with the top five good feelings.
In any conversation about music school, like the one I had this week, I am asked quite often, "What was your instrument?" In many ways I wish I could say piano, or trumpet, or saxophone or oboe or any number of instruments, but I say "Voice." And all things considered, I'm very proud of that. The fact that my instrument was a physical part of my body is an awesome thing. For me to be "in good voice" I had to be in good everything.
Until I transferred into Samford University as a junior, I had never even heard an opera, much less sung in one. I had used as my taped music school audition the song O Give Me A Soapbox from a youth choir book. At school I learned that my classmates had submitted famous arias from world-renowned operas. Music degree. Should have known.
During that year I not only listened to recordings of operas, but had attended a few and had come to love the medium. The music was a far cry from youth musicals. And the next year I found myself in the lead role of Gianni Schicci in the Puccini opera by the same name. The fifth from the last note in my most important aria was a high G. In rehearsal, since I didn't have a G, I defaulted to an E. The E was in the chord, but had none of the power or prestige of the G. I practiced for hours trying to get my voice to stretch one half step higher, but it just didn't work. On a piano keyboard, a half step would be from a black key to the white one beside it. But my vocal cords knew their own limits. Both of the tenors more or less insisted that I figure out a way to sing the G. Tenors are like that, especially since a G wasn't a challenge for either of them. During the final rehearsals, I went for broke and nailed the G a couple of times. It was a tenuous G, but it was a G. I thought I'd crossed into the promised land.
The night of the performance, and there was only one, it came my turn to sing this aria, my moment to shine. I think I can speak for all singers when I say that the "high note" is all that matters. If you nail the high note your night is complete and your life is worth living. If you flub the high note, then all those other notes you sang well really don't matter. The G was not only foremost in my mind as I started singing the aria, it had been foremost in my mind for days. It's real time now. I'm singing and every note I sing gets me closer to that fateful moment. I'm now singing the last line of the aria; it's do or die. It's a solo. It's me. I'm the one singing and no one else.
I knew I didn't have it. I think basketball players feel that on the would-be game winning three. But they shoot anyway . I could embarrass myself, everyone on stage, and everyone in the audience or I could fink out to an E. I sang the E.
I couldn't tell you what I ate for breakfast yesterday, but I remember what that felt like. And I remember the scorn of my cast as if I'd ruined the whole performance. The interval from an E to a G is a third, a simple step of a triad. But there was a world between those two notes that night in Birmingham, Alabama. What if Neil Armstrong had stopped on that bottom step and said, "Just to be this close to the surface of the moon is such an honor for me and for my country."
Singing solos can be exciting, exhilarating, challenging and fulfilling, but it is also cruel. Only a singer knows what I mean. It keeps you up at night, it stays with you for days. Days? Did I say days? That was forty-two years ago.
Nobody there died that night. Nobody went to bed hungry. Nobody lost any sleep. Except me.
After graduation my sweetheart and I got married and moved to Louisville, Kentucky to graduate school. Besides my academic studies, there I was the featured soloist in several ensembles. My voice professor even invited me to sing the baritone solos in one of his original works. I also performed with the Louisville Symphony and Opera Association. I was good. My pivotal decision in the heat of the moment had not ruined me for life.
A few years ago, although there was no one there to hear it, I got my redemption. I dreamed that I was a tenor. Yes, a tenor! I was singing Nessum Dorma from Giacommo Pucchini's opera Turando. In this opera the high note is not a G or an A, but a B. A high B! Another third above that G I couldn't sing. It is said that tenors like to turn slightly purple on the high note just to make it look like they're working hard. In my dream I don't know if I turned purple or not, but in the moment of glory, I nailed it. Pavarotti had nothing on me. I woke up feeling like I had been born again. I had taken one small step onto the moon.
Looking back, I made the right decision. Only the cast noted my decision to sing the E.. Everyone there would have known if I had decided to sing the G. Damage control. For physical reasons I don't understand, my singing voice left me. I have not sung a solo for several years. But I am getting pretty good on my synthesizer. And the range is 88 keys. From A to shining C. Do I get as much satisfaction from playing that C as I did from singing that F# several octaves lower? Not even close. That F# was from my own body. That C is from a machine. But it's music and how I love making music. But I'll get off my soapbox now and help my wife make breakfast. The kitchen is only a few steps up from here.
In any conversation about music school, like the one I had this week, I am asked quite often, "What was your instrument?" In many ways I wish I could say piano, or trumpet, or saxophone or oboe or any number of instruments, but I say "Voice." And all things considered, I'm very proud of that. The fact that my instrument was a physical part of my body is an awesome thing. For me to be "in good voice" I had to be in good everything.
Until I transferred into Samford University as a junior, I had never even heard an opera, much less sung in one. I had used as my taped music school audition the song O Give Me A Soapbox from a youth choir book. At school I learned that my classmates had submitted famous arias from world-renowned operas. Music degree. Should have known.
During that year I not only listened to recordings of operas, but had attended a few and had come to love the medium. The music was a far cry from youth musicals. And the next year I found myself in the lead role of Gianni Schicci in the Puccini opera by the same name. The fifth from the last note in my most important aria was a high G. In rehearsal, since I didn't have a G, I defaulted to an E. The E was in the chord, but had none of the power or prestige of the G. I practiced for hours trying to get my voice to stretch one half step higher, but it just didn't work. On a piano keyboard, a half step would be from a black key to the white one beside it. But my vocal cords knew their own limits. Both of the tenors more or less insisted that I figure out a way to sing the G. Tenors are like that, especially since a G wasn't a challenge for either of them. During the final rehearsals, I went for broke and nailed the G a couple of times. It was a tenuous G, but it was a G. I thought I'd crossed into the promised land.
The night of the performance, and there was only one, it came my turn to sing this aria, my moment to shine. I think I can speak for all singers when I say that the "high note" is all that matters. If you nail the high note your night is complete and your life is worth living. If you flub the high note, then all those other notes you sang well really don't matter. The G was not only foremost in my mind as I started singing the aria, it had been foremost in my mind for days. It's real time now. I'm singing and every note I sing gets me closer to that fateful moment. I'm now singing the last line of the aria; it's do or die. It's a solo. It's me. I'm the one singing and no one else.
I knew I didn't have it. I think basketball players feel that on the would-be game winning three. But they shoot anyway . I could embarrass myself, everyone on stage, and everyone in the audience or I could fink out to an E. I sang the E.
I couldn't tell you what I ate for breakfast yesterday, but I remember what that felt like. And I remember the scorn of my cast as if I'd ruined the whole performance. The interval from an E to a G is a third, a simple step of a triad. But there was a world between those two notes that night in Birmingham, Alabama. What if Neil Armstrong had stopped on that bottom step and said, "Just to be this close to the surface of the moon is such an honor for me and for my country."
Singing solos can be exciting, exhilarating, challenging and fulfilling, but it is also cruel. Only a singer knows what I mean. It keeps you up at night, it stays with you for days. Days? Did I say days? That was forty-two years ago.
Nobody there died that night. Nobody went to bed hungry. Nobody lost any sleep. Except me.
After graduation my sweetheart and I got married and moved to Louisville, Kentucky to graduate school. Besides my academic studies, there I was the featured soloist in several ensembles. My voice professor even invited me to sing the baritone solos in one of his original works. I also performed with the Louisville Symphony and Opera Association. I was good. My pivotal decision in the heat of the moment had not ruined me for life.
A few years ago, although there was no one there to hear it, I got my redemption. I dreamed that I was a tenor. Yes, a tenor! I was singing Nessum Dorma from Giacommo Pucchini's opera Turando. In this opera the high note is not a G or an A, but a B. A high B! Another third above that G I couldn't sing. It is said that tenors like to turn slightly purple on the high note just to make it look like they're working hard. In my dream I don't know if I turned purple or not, but in the moment of glory, I nailed it. Pavarotti had nothing on me. I woke up feeling like I had been born again. I had taken one small step onto the moon.
Looking back, I made the right decision. Only the cast noted my decision to sing the E.. Everyone there would have known if I had decided to sing the G. Damage control. For physical reasons I don't understand, my singing voice left me. I have not sung a solo for several years. But I am getting pretty good on my synthesizer. And the range is 88 keys. From A to shining C. Do I get as much satisfaction from playing that C as I did from singing that F# several octaves lower? Not even close. That F# was from my own body. That C is from a machine. But it's music and how I love making music. But I'll get off my soapbox now and help my wife make breakfast. The kitchen is only a few steps up from here.
Friday, April 28, 2017
Music-Songs
"Ah, feel the signs
I worried about rain
And I worried about lightning
But I watched them off
To the light of the morning." 715 Creeks, Bon Iver
After Justin Vernon, Bon Iver, had produced two highly successful albums, he, like many musicians, experienced an existential crisis. Only instead of turning to alcohol, drugs and sex, as so many do, he turned to himself. To try to deal with the two-headed dragon of anxiety and panic, he sought solace in a remote Greek island. But he said that instead of "finding himself", things just got worse. You might can outrun a dragon, but it's hard to escape his fire. He did take with him a traveling companion, his robot OP-1. This small all-in-one synthezizer, sampler and sequencer is the digital force behind the most unusual music I've ever heard.
I was introduced to Bon Iver a few weeks ago in a strange and wonderful way. While enjoying coffee with my wife and friends at a local coffee shop in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I found my heart and spirit strangely warmed. And as is so often the case, my ears began to hear the music my spirit had already been listening to. I was immediately translated into that surreal experience of simultaneously being in the room and somewhere else. I can only imagine that these experiences approximate what you feel smoking dope or dropping acid. Since I have done neither, I really have no way of knowing that for sure. When the song was over, I remained in my trance-like state for a few more minutes and then it faded into wherever those sorts of things fade into. Recently I stood in the very spot of my most significant transcendental experience years ago, and it was just an ordinary gazebo on an ordinary street. Nothing transcendental here. In the coffee shop I had never totally left the conversation and I was now fully back in it. "Always another one" my five year old son had said after another gutter ball. Transcendent experiences are nice from time to time, but pleasant conversation with friends is even better. On the Mount of Transfiguration, after witnessing the fusion of Heaven and Earth, when Peter said to Jesus, "Let's just stay here", He said, "Our work is in the valley, not up here. Let's go." "Dang."
Instead of letting it all go, I walked up to the counter and asked the barista about the song. I asked her if there was any way of knowing what song she had played. She said, 'Sure it's an iTunes playlist on my phone". Within seconds she said "The song is Holocene by Bon Iver".
From that "other-worldly" experience came my very down-to-earth experience of exploring both the world of Bon Iver and that of the creator Justin Vernon. From his existential crisis on that Greek island flowed his album 22, a Million. He says of that album that since his anxiety had continued unabated, he quit before he had finished. A good friend took his musical and emotional hand and said something like, 'No, you're going to do this. No, we're going to do this. We're going to do this together and it's going to be good" I had listened to most of the album before I read anything about Vernon or the album. Somehow I knew that this music had flowed out of personal crisis. I am not unfamiliar with that process. But after reading the article what he wrote and sang made so much more sense, "
Vernon calls each of his creations "music-songs". He says that this designation helps him to take neither himself nor his music too seriously. I can only say that his "music-songs" which sometimes lyrically make little or no sense, make perfectly good sense to my soul and psyche. That's the way it is with the visual arts and poetry, they point to something transcendent without being definable in and of themselves. I had this experience at the National Gallery in Washington D.C when I was looking at original Monet, Renoir, Picasso and other famous artists. Who knew that seeing the actual paintings could be so vastly different than the photographs I had seen all my life. Just like my experience in that coffee shop a few days ago, I fell through the canvas to somewhere else. You explain to me what "and at once I knew that I was not magnificent huddled far from the highway aisle, jagged vacance thick with ice..." (Holocene), you explain that meaning and I'll explain the meaning of Picasso's Accordioniist. You can buy the Bon Iver CD for about $20. You can buy the Picasso for about $10 million.
Vernon said of his muse, "Help me OP-1; you're my only hope." And from that collaboration flowed 22, a Million.
I doubt making his new album cured his anxiety and panic. Even prayer, meditation and creating music seldom exorcise these demons. But just like the millions of gallons a minute pouring through the hydro-electric dam less than fifteen miles from here, this energy can be synthesized. It can power a city. It can change a life.
And it can turn a coffee shop into a mystical world of delight. I could have let it go and not asked about that music, but that's not the way I roll. I don't want to live in the land of "All play and no work" but it's nice to visit there from time to time.
Of the production of his new album Justin Vernon said, "I was healing myself through that stuff." I was too.
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
A Postcard from Myself
Yesterday I got a postcard from myself. This is not hypothetical or figuratively speaking. I, actually, got a postcard in the mail from myself yesterday.
For as long as I can remember, and that's a long time, someone has said to me "So go and enjoy yourself." And every single time someone has said that to me over all these years, I have had no idea what they meant by that. For me to "enjoy myself" there has to be at least two selves. Let's call them Self 1 and Self 2. Self 1 enjoys the company of Self 2. Self 1 has to be in the mood for company and Self 2 has to be the sort of person to provide that company. That's the only way that I can see for "me" to "enjoy myself."
Let me explain this in another way. When our son was two years old and fell down and hurt himself, he would say, "I hurt me." So then "I" and "me" were different people. Right? "Me" is the one who is hurting and "I" caused the pain.
Until fairly recent years "I" did not enjoy "myself". If you knew me, you probably saw me as a likable, reasonably happy and considerate person. I was friendly and had a keen sense of humor. If you offended me, I would quickly forgive you. If you cut me off in traffic, I probably wouldn't blow my horn or salute you. If you were sick and in the hospital, I might come and visit you. If we were friends, you could depend on me to be your friend. That's the Self 1 you would have known. The Self 2 that I lived with was demanding and critical. He was never satisfied with anything I did. He constantly told me that I had upset someone and that I needed to be upset until I made it right. If I went to that person, I often learned s/he was never upset in the first place. But that never stopped Self 2 from suggesting some other fault or failure. So no I couldn't go "enjoy myself." Myself was constantly under assault. Those "fiery darts" the Bible speaks of are real things.
So I got this postcard from myself yesterday. I wrote this card to myself back in September at a leadership retreat. I had completely forgotten about it until it came in the mail. Here is what "I" said to "me", "Know who you are. Be who you are. Enjoy who you are." My sentiment to me made me smile. It made me smile that of all things I could have written, I wrote these words. And it made me smile that for quite some time all of this has been possible for me.
About twenty-five years ago I met a woman named Beverly who had three distinct personalities. This is not schizophrenia, it's multiple personality disorder. Besides Beverly, she was another female and a male personality. To make this phenomenon even stranger, these three people didn't know each other. If you attempted to talk to her, you had to figure out quickly who you were talking to. Beverly and the male were nice enough people to be around. You didn't want to mess with that other female. She was crude, rude and angry. Some years later I ran into Beverly while walking out of my office. I asked her how she was doing. She smiled and said "I'm keeping it together these days, how are you? Are you keeping it together?"
Now, instead of Self 1 and the accuser Self 2, I'm just "me." And I like "me." The most significant part of my redemption was to realize that I am a human being. And human beings make mistakes. Therefore, it follows that I make mistakes. As much as I don't want to, sometimes I say and do things, for example, that offend people. I try to make it right. If I can't, that's on them and not on me. I can't help that. Once I realized that, Self 2 ceased to exist. He had nothing more to say. And yes as my postcard exhorted, I enjoy being me. "Know who you are." I am a human being made in the image of God. "Be who you are." That's easy. I can't be anyone else. "Enjoy who you are." There's nobody I'd rather be with. That's not being selfish; that works best for both of us.
Another interesting thing about that postcard, I addressed it with an incomplete address. I'm quite sure that I got distracted by someone and just didn't finish it. But you know what? It got here all the same. Which is exactly what I've been trying to say. I should have completed the address, but I didn't. And it didn't matter at all.
On my bookshelf is a book my mother gave me my senior year in high school. The book is How to Be Your Own Best Friend by Mildred Newman and Bernard Berkowitz. Even then she knew I needed help. Look at that title again. There's more than one person involved, right? "Me" is a friend of "mine". Somebody needs to write the book about just one person, How to Be. Maybe I started the book with that postcard. It may take two to tango, but even a child can dance.
For as long as I can remember, and that's a long time, someone has said to me "So go and enjoy yourself." And every single time someone has said that to me over all these years, I have had no idea what they meant by that. For me to "enjoy myself" there has to be at least two selves. Let's call them Self 1 and Self 2. Self 1 enjoys the company of Self 2. Self 1 has to be in the mood for company and Self 2 has to be the sort of person to provide that company. That's the only way that I can see for "me" to "enjoy myself."
Let me explain this in another way. When our son was two years old and fell down and hurt himself, he would say, "I hurt me." So then "I" and "me" were different people. Right? "Me" is the one who is hurting and "I" caused the pain.
Until fairly recent years "I" did not enjoy "myself". If you knew me, you probably saw me as a likable, reasonably happy and considerate person. I was friendly and had a keen sense of humor. If you offended me, I would quickly forgive you. If you cut me off in traffic, I probably wouldn't blow my horn or salute you. If you were sick and in the hospital, I might come and visit you. If we were friends, you could depend on me to be your friend. That's the Self 1 you would have known. The Self 2 that I lived with was demanding and critical. He was never satisfied with anything I did. He constantly told me that I had upset someone and that I needed to be upset until I made it right. If I went to that person, I often learned s/he was never upset in the first place. But that never stopped Self 2 from suggesting some other fault or failure. So no I couldn't go "enjoy myself." Myself was constantly under assault. Those "fiery darts" the Bible speaks of are real things.
So I got this postcard from myself yesterday. I wrote this card to myself back in September at a leadership retreat. I had completely forgotten about it until it came in the mail. Here is what "I" said to "me", "Know who you are. Be who you are. Enjoy who you are." My sentiment to me made me smile. It made me smile that of all things I could have written, I wrote these words. And it made me smile that for quite some time all of this has been possible for me.
About twenty-five years ago I met a woman named Beverly who had three distinct personalities. This is not schizophrenia, it's multiple personality disorder. Besides Beverly, she was another female and a male personality. To make this phenomenon even stranger, these three people didn't know each other. If you attempted to talk to her, you had to figure out quickly who you were talking to. Beverly and the male were nice enough people to be around. You didn't want to mess with that other female. She was crude, rude and angry. Some years later I ran into Beverly while walking out of my office. I asked her how she was doing. She smiled and said "I'm keeping it together these days, how are you? Are you keeping it together?"
Now, instead of Self 1 and the accuser Self 2, I'm just "me." And I like "me." The most significant part of my redemption was to realize that I am a human being. And human beings make mistakes. Therefore, it follows that I make mistakes. As much as I don't want to, sometimes I say and do things, for example, that offend people. I try to make it right. If I can't, that's on them and not on me. I can't help that. Once I realized that, Self 2 ceased to exist. He had nothing more to say. And yes as my postcard exhorted, I enjoy being me. "Know who you are." I am a human being made in the image of God. "Be who you are." That's easy. I can't be anyone else. "Enjoy who you are." There's nobody I'd rather be with. That's not being selfish; that works best for both of us.
Another interesting thing about that postcard, I addressed it with an incomplete address. I'm quite sure that I got distracted by someone and just didn't finish it. But you know what? It got here all the same. Which is exactly what I've been trying to say. I should have completed the address, but I didn't. And it didn't matter at all.
On my bookshelf is a book my mother gave me my senior year in high school. The book is How to Be Your Own Best Friend by Mildred Newman and Bernard Berkowitz. Even then she knew I needed help. Look at that title again. There's more than one person involved, right? "Me" is a friend of "mine". Somebody needs to write the book about just one person, How to Be. Maybe I started the book with that postcard. It may take two to tango, but even a child can dance.
Monday, April 24, 2017
The Things We Do For Love
pri.or.i.ty: a thing that is regarded as more important than another.
My wife and I both grew up in Alabama. I grew up in the southeast corner of the state in Enterprise and she grew up north of Birmingham in Jasper. We were both students at a college in Birmingham, but we met in Jasper. I was on the part-time staff of a church in Jasper and I made the one hour drive several times each week. The women in my church were telling me about a girl from Jasper who was a student at Samford. The women in her church were telling her about a young Samford student who was the minister of music at the New Prospect Baptist Church in Jasper. She made the first move. One Sunday night before our senior year, she came to our church to hear our youth musical. After church she made her way to me and introduced herself. For both of us it was whatever is the opposite of love at first sight. Since she had a job in Jasper and also made the drive every weekend, in spite of the awkward beginning, we decided that it made good sense for us to share a ride to Jasper every weekend. "So David, where did you and your wife fall in love?" "Somewhere between Birmingham and Jasper, Alabama."
About a year and half later there was a wedding. The night I got married I choked my way through "for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in death." Neither of us had any way of knowing what we were saying. It wasn't so much that I was saying those things to her, but that she was saying those things to me. Five years later we had a son. Twenty seven years after than he had a little girl, our granddaughter. During my wedding ceremony my heart was filled with passion and love. The morning our son was born was heart was melting. The morning our granddaughter was born I thought my heart would explode. Because of complications with the pregnancy, there was an elevated risk that she would never be born alive. There was a snow and ice storm in Indiana that we drove through to get there the night she was born. I hate driving in those conditions. Earlier in the day the interstate had been completely closed. But who cared. We got to the hospital in Indiana from Georgia at about nine o'clock pm. At about ten minutes after midnight the nurse came into the waiting room and said, "You have a healthy and beautiful baby girl." "Well, when is her birthday?", someone asked. "I don't know it was too close." A few minutes later we learned that she was born at one minute after midnight. My son later said, "Dad, her head was born on the twenty second and her feet were born on the twenty third. I guess they counted her feet." When it was my turn to hold her there was not enough room in my chest to contain my emotion and joy.
Since our family is spread across Florida, Alabama, Indiana and California, when we travel it's always to one of those places. Any trip to San Diego is a vacation, but it's still a trip to visit family. Because of this a few weeks ago we decided it was high time that the two of us take a trip somewhere together. Just us. A trip to spend time with each other. After all from that first love all the other loves flowed. Except for that wedding in Jasper nearly forty years ago there would be no trips to Indiana and California.
Since we didn't want to spend all of our time driving, we did a Google search of resorts within 200 miles of Chattanooga. One of them that popped up was the Chateau Elan northeast of Atlanta. About twenty years ago we had a hookup with Marriott properties. She gave us a weekend there and it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of our lives. So the Chateau Elan it was. We began filling in the details. How good it was going to be to spend time in the Inn, exploring the winery and maybe taking in a couples massage. Just the two of us at long last. "For better or for worse" through Atlanta traffic. "For richer of for poorer" since we would be footing the bill. "Till death us do part", always a possibility on I-75 and I-285. But we would take our chances.
As we were finalizing our plans, our granddaughter's mom in Indiana contacted my wife and said, "Your granddaughter's next to last basketball tournament is weekend after next" That was the weekend of our trip. We looked at each other, considered our options, discussed it for about thirty seconds and said "We'll be there."
Last night at about midnight, as we were entering the city limits of Chattanooga after a six hour trip through rain and fog we were still talking and laughing about things our nine year old granddaughter had said and done. Not the least of which that her team won both games and she was one of the high scorers. One of the dads behind us had said, "She has excellent form." To say the least. And on those trips up and back, just like on U.S. Highway 78 forty one years ago, it had been just the two of us--"for better" and not for worse. "For richer", and not for poorer. Chateau Elan will still be there when our granddaughter is married with children of her own. And we can only hope and pray that we will still be here too. They say it just gets better. I really can't imagine.
"Love, had you rather go to Chateau Elan for that honeymoon we've always meant to take or watch your great-granddaughter play basketball?" "What time's the game?"
My wife and I both grew up in Alabama. I grew up in the southeast corner of the state in Enterprise and she grew up north of Birmingham in Jasper. We were both students at a college in Birmingham, but we met in Jasper. I was on the part-time staff of a church in Jasper and I made the one hour drive several times each week. The women in my church were telling me about a girl from Jasper who was a student at Samford. The women in her church were telling her about a young Samford student who was the minister of music at the New Prospect Baptist Church in Jasper. She made the first move. One Sunday night before our senior year, she came to our church to hear our youth musical. After church she made her way to me and introduced herself. For both of us it was whatever is the opposite of love at first sight. Since she had a job in Jasper and also made the drive every weekend, in spite of the awkward beginning, we decided that it made good sense for us to share a ride to Jasper every weekend. "So David, where did you and your wife fall in love?" "Somewhere between Birmingham and Jasper, Alabama."
About a year and half later there was a wedding. The night I got married I choked my way through "for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in death." Neither of us had any way of knowing what we were saying. It wasn't so much that I was saying those things to her, but that she was saying those things to me. Five years later we had a son. Twenty seven years after than he had a little girl, our granddaughter. During my wedding ceremony my heart was filled with passion and love. The morning our son was born was heart was melting. The morning our granddaughter was born I thought my heart would explode. Because of complications with the pregnancy, there was an elevated risk that she would never be born alive. There was a snow and ice storm in Indiana that we drove through to get there the night she was born. I hate driving in those conditions. Earlier in the day the interstate had been completely closed. But who cared. We got to the hospital in Indiana from Georgia at about nine o'clock pm. At about ten minutes after midnight the nurse came into the waiting room and said, "You have a healthy and beautiful baby girl." "Well, when is her birthday?", someone asked. "I don't know it was too close." A few minutes later we learned that she was born at one minute after midnight. My son later said, "Dad, her head was born on the twenty second and her feet were born on the twenty third. I guess they counted her feet." When it was my turn to hold her there was not enough room in my chest to contain my emotion and joy.
Since our family is spread across Florida, Alabama, Indiana and California, when we travel it's always to one of those places. Any trip to San Diego is a vacation, but it's still a trip to visit family. Because of this a few weeks ago we decided it was high time that the two of us take a trip somewhere together. Just us. A trip to spend time with each other. After all from that first love all the other loves flowed. Except for that wedding in Jasper nearly forty years ago there would be no trips to Indiana and California.
Since we didn't want to spend all of our time driving, we did a Google search of resorts within 200 miles of Chattanooga. One of them that popped up was the Chateau Elan northeast of Atlanta. About twenty years ago we had a hookup with Marriott properties. She gave us a weekend there and it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of our lives. So the Chateau Elan it was. We began filling in the details. How good it was going to be to spend time in the Inn, exploring the winery and maybe taking in a couples massage. Just the two of us at long last. "For better or for worse" through Atlanta traffic. "For richer of for poorer" since we would be footing the bill. "Till death us do part", always a possibility on I-75 and I-285. But we would take our chances.
As we were finalizing our plans, our granddaughter's mom in Indiana contacted my wife and said, "Your granddaughter's next to last basketball tournament is weekend after next" That was the weekend of our trip. We looked at each other, considered our options, discussed it for about thirty seconds and said "We'll be there."
Last night at about midnight, as we were entering the city limits of Chattanooga after a six hour trip through rain and fog we were still talking and laughing about things our nine year old granddaughter had said and done. Not the least of which that her team won both games and she was one of the high scorers. One of the dads behind us had said, "She has excellent form." To say the least. And on those trips up and back, just like on U.S. Highway 78 forty one years ago, it had been just the two of us--"for better" and not for worse. "For richer", and not for poorer. Chateau Elan will still be there when our granddaughter is married with children of her own. And we can only hope and pray that we will still be here too. They say it just gets better. I really can't imagine.
"Love, had you rather go to Chateau Elan for that honeymoon we've always meant to take or watch your great-granddaughter play basketball?" "What time's the game?"
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Playing in Concert
"Some music needs to be seen as well as heard." Meredith after attending the Moscow Symphony
While viewing a YouTube video of Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, I was struck with an analogy.
If you've ever played in a band or an orchestra you know that the conductor is the only person on stage who is following the entire score. All of the instrumentalists-- strings, brass, percussion and woodwinds, are following only their respective parts. Another consideration of playing on stage with an orchestra is that the conductor and the audience are the only persons who can hear the entire orchestra. Well, for that matter the audience hears it somewhat better than the conductor as the sound is reverberating off the walls. Regardless of the superiority of the acoustics in the hall, each individual player is mostly hearing the performers around him or her and not the entire piece. Furthermore, since they are hearing the other players' music on the rebound from the hall, there are various delays of milliseconds as the sound from other instruments arrives at their ears. The player needs only to follow the conductor for this potential distraction to be a non-issue.
I was noticing how each player was playing close attention to the music on the stand in front of him, but always remained aware of the conductor. The conductor had a much larger score on his stand. He was paying close attention to the orchestra, but his gaze never strayed far from his score. Musically speaking, those page turns are life and death. Then I noticed several other things that were significant to the performance. The players were not just playing together, they were swaying together. The strings were moving their bows in concert. The woodwinds were not only moving their bodies, but their instruments were dancing to the rhythm of the music. The orchestra was moving together like a flock of birds or a school of fish. So although they were each playing his or her individual part, there seemed to be an invisible cord connecting all of them.
So here's the analogy: The stage is everyone and everything around us. The individual players represents our lives. We play only our part. We really have little idea the specific notes being played by the person beside us or anywhere else on stage. For that matter, if we get focused on what s/he is playing, we are not doing a very good job playing our own part. It's only when we're playing our part correctly and artistically that the music being heard by the conductor and the audience is what the composer intended. If you believe in God and that S/He is more or less behind things and in control of things, for the sake of this analogy, is God the composer or the conductor? Or both? I'll leave that for you to decide. One very important consideration regarding playing only your part, sometimes your part is an elongated rest. During your rest--rest! It is not your turn to play. The music will go right along just fine without you. If you play during your rest, you'll just embarrass yourself and mess it up for everybody. Count the beats in your rest and play when it's your turn to play.
The fact that the individual performer can only hear those players well who are immediately around him can be compared to your family and persons in your sphere of influence. You may read about or see on the news that things are going on in the world, but you have little to no influence over it. Your world is that world you live in day by day. If you want to affect the world at large, then affect your world, the world immediately around you. And don't concern yourself with the rest of the world. You need to keep in mind that you do affect your world every day whether you want to or not. But you decide how you're going to affect it.
To take the analogy a little further, the concert hall becomes our solar system, our galaxy and the entire universe. The universe is a very big place. Distances, as you know, are measured in light years---the distance covered by a ray of light in one year traveling at 186,000 miles per second. And then those distances between stars and galaxies go into the billions of light years apart. But in spite of its unfathomable vastness, this universe is still our home. Planet Earth resides there and so do we. We live and breathe in that enormous hall.
My father told me something many years ago that is apropos to this discourse, As we were returning from a concert, he said, "Because of your education and experience, I expect that you enjoyed that music on entirely different level than I did. There were intricacies and aspects of that music that you understood that I will never understand. But just because I didn't enjoy it the way you did, doesn't mean that I enjoyed it any less. Your musical aptitude didn't affect my musical inferiority at all. Your experience wasn't better. It was just different." So then, just because some people live in nicer homes, drive nicer cars, have children who attend better schools doesn't mean that they are enjoying life any more than you are. Just because they have more of some things doesn't mean they have more of the things that give meaning to your life. Who knows? They may sense something in you that they wished they had.
A symphony is defined as a composition of different elements. No matter how beautifully written the composition, it will never be heard if you don't play your part. Just play your part and the symphony takes care of itself.
While viewing a YouTube video of Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, I was struck with an analogy.
If you've ever played in a band or an orchestra you know that the conductor is the only person on stage who is following the entire score. All of the instrumentalists-- strings, brass, percussion and woodwinds, are following only their respective parts. Another consideration of playing on stage with an orchestra is that the conductor and the audience are the only persons who can hear the entire orchestra. Well, for that matter the audience hears it somewhat better than the conductor as the sound is reverberating off the walls. Regardless of the superiority of the acoustics in the hall, each individual player is mostly hearing the performers around him or her and not the entire piece. Furthermore, since they are hearing the other players' music on the rebound from the hall, there are various delays of milliseconds as the sound from other instruments arrives at their ears. The player needs only to follow the conductor for this potential distraction to be a non-issue.
I was noticing how each player was playing close attention to the music on the stand in front of him, but always remained aware of the conductor. The conductor had a much larger score on his stand. He was paying close attention to the orchestra, but his gaze never strayed far from his score. Musically speaking, those page turns are life and death. Then I noticed several other things that were significant to the performance. The players were not just playing together, they were swaying together. The strings were moving their bows in concert. The woodwinds were not only moving their bodies, but their instruments were dancing to the rhythm of the music. The orchestra was moving together like a flock of birds or a school of fish. So although they were each playing his or her individual part, there seemed to be an invisible cord connecting all of them.
So here's the analogy: The stage is everyone and everything around us. The individual players represents our lives. We play only our part. We really have little idea the specific notes being played by the person beside us or anywhere else on stage. For that matter, if we get focused on what s/he is playing, we are not doing a very good job playing our own part. It's only when we're playing our part correctly and artistically that the music being heard by the conductor and the audience is what the composer intended. If you believe in God and that S/He is more or less behind things and in control of things, for the sake of this analogy, is God the composer or the conductor? Or both? I'll leave that for you to decide. One very important consideration regarding playing only your part, sometimes your part is an elongated rest. During your rest--rest! It is not your turn to play. The music will go right along just fine without you. If you play during your rest, you'll just embarrass yourself and mess it up for everybody. Count the beats in your rest and play when it's your turn to play.
The fact that the individual performer can only hear those players well who are immediately around him can be compared to your family and persons in your sphere of influence. You may read about or see on the news that things are going on in the world, but you have little to no influence over it. Your world is that world you live in day by day. If you want to affect the world at large, then affect your world, the world immediately around you. And don't concern yourself with the rest of the world. You need to keep in mind that you do affect your world every day whether you want to or not. But you decide how you're going to affect it.
To take the analogy a little further, the concert hall becomes our solar system, our galaxy and the entire universe. The universe is a very big place. Distances, as you know, are measured in light years---the distance covered by a ray of light in one year traveling at 186,000 miles per second. And then those distances between stars and galaxies go into the billions of light years apart. But in spite of its unfathomable vastness, this universe is still our home. Planet Earth resides there and so do we. We live and breathe in that enormous hall.
My father told me something many years ago that is apropos to this discourse, As we were returning from a concert, he said, "Because of your education and experience, I expect that you enjoyed that music on entirely different level than I did. There were intricacies and aspects of that music that you understood that I will never understand. But just because I didn't enjoy it the way you did, doesn't mean that I enjoyed it any less. Your musical aptitude didn't affect my musical inferiority at all. Your experience wasn't better. It was just different." So then, just because some people live in nicer homes, drive nicer cars, have children who attend better schools doesn't mean that they are enjoying life any more than you are. Just because they have more of some things doesn't mean they have more of the things that give meaning to your life. Who knows? They may sense something in you that they wished they had.
A symphony is defined as a composition of different elements. No matter how beautifully written the composition, it will never be heard if you don't play your part. Just play your part and the symphony takes care of itself.
Friday, April 14, 2017
Dan Fogelberg--My Lifetime Friend I Never Met
"Off in the nether lands I heard a sound like the beating of heavenly wings.
And deep in my brain I can hear the refrain as my soul as she rises and sings.
Anthems to glory and anthems to love and hymns filled with earthly delight
Like the songs that the darkness composes to worship the light." Nether Lands, 1977
I feel deaths. Of course I feel the deaths of close relatives and dear friends, but I feel the deaths of people I've never met, especially when those people have touched my life as deeply as did Dan Fogelberg. When I read of his death on December 16, 2007, I cried.
My favorite Sirius/XM station is Channel 32, The Bridge. The station plays soft rock 24/7 from the 70s with no commercial interruptions. The station seldom plays Fogelberg so I was pleasantly surprised when they played Longer on my way to work yesterday. It was still playing when I got there so I just shut off the car and let it play. I could have listened to Longer anytime on my CD or on Spotify, but there's something special about hearing a favorite song on the radio.
I was introduced to the music of Dan Fogelberg during the summer of 1981. My sister was living in the family beach house for the summer. She had a pretty good stereo and a lot of good records. It was a rather dark, rainy morning at Laguna Beach, Florida. I don't remember why I was the only one in the house at the time, but there I was with nothing better to do than play some of my sister's tunes. The silhouette of the rather "hippie" looking singer on the album cover of Nether Lands caught my eye. I pulled the album out of the sleeve being careful to hold it against the palms of my hands, placed it on the turntable and dropped the needle. There's this thing that happens to me from time to time when I listen to music. This thing usually happens when I'm driving and what I'm hearing and seeing all melt together in a mysterious wedding of blissful feelings. I dropped that needle nearly thirty seven years ago and I still remember what I felt that morning. My psyche remembers it as I listen to Nether Lands now. Mix the beauty of a dark and rainy Florida panhandle morning with my immediate enchantment with Fogelberg's Nether Lands and it was a recipe for pure pleasure. And a lifetime of music.
I own nearly all of Fogelberg's CDs and have listened to all of them a multitude of times. Considering that much of that listening was on the road, those tracks probably have traveled with me several hundred thousand miles.Besides the recorded music I was able to attend two of his concerts in Chattanooga. The first one, at the Tivoli Theater, was my favorite, but I enjoyed the second one as well at the Memorial Auditorium. At his second concert he was having some vocal issues and was not able to sing his signature falsetto. He had to sing alternate melodies for some of his most popular songs. I was listening to what he was singing, but my mind was editing it as he sang. Occupational hazard. It was one of those times that it was to be the last time I would see him alive, but I had no way of knowing that. After 90 minutes of singing during that first concert he announced an intermission. Only instead of leaving the stage, he put down his guitar, walked across the stage and sat down at the grand piano. I certainly took no intermission either. He played the unmistakable broken opening chord to To The Morning. To have that memory of Fogelberg playing that song on a stage flooded with blue light is very special to me. It felt like he played it just for me,.
The week after Christmas 1981, my son's first Christmas, I was pulling into the parking lot of a grocery store a few miles from my home to buy a few supplies for a youth retreat to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Some songs I've never heard before, I know from the first note that I'm going to like it. Same Old Lang Syne hit me in my musical and emotional wheelhouse that cemented it to my soul. As Fogelberg sang the last line, "Just for a moment I was back in school and I felt that old familiar pain. And as I turned my way back home, the snow turned into rain.", it started snowing. I think in the end, the universe is a kind and benevolent place. I never pass that store or shop there without recalling my introduction to Same Old Lang Syne in the winter of '81,
It's no wonder I feel so connected to Dan Fogelberg. In a radio interview in 1977, he asked about the meaning of his song Nether Lands. He said, "It's about the two forks of existence, acceptance or denial. It comes down to that. That's the only thing we have if you think about it. Any other choice we have is contingent on that. Either accept the life you're given or deny it and commit suicide. It's either one. You have to make that choice every day."
Dan Fogelberg died nearly ten years ago at 56 years old after a three month struggle with prostate cancer. Since I only knew him through his music, as I listen now to To the Morning I feel as close to him as ever. I'm sure to his wife, his friend and collaborator Tim Weisberg and those who knew him best, the loss is much deeper. I can't speak to that.
"Cloudy and warm
Maybe a storm
You can never quite tell
From the morning." from To the Morning, 1972
If there's a rock and roll heaven, I'm quite certain there'll be folk rock as well. And I'll bet the farm that Fogelberg's got his falsetto back. Hope so anyway. I don't want to spend eternity editing his music while he sings.
And deep in my brain I can hear the refrain as my soul as she rises and sings.
Anthems to glory and anthems to love and hymns filled with earthly delight
Like the songs that the darkness composes to worship the light." Nether Lands, 1977
I feel deaths. Of course I feel the deaths of close relatives and dear friends, but I feel the deaths of people I've never met, especially when those people have touched my life as deeply as did Dan Fogelberg. When I read of his death on December 16, 2007, I cried.
My favorite Sirius/XM station is Channel 32, The Bridge. The station plays soft rock 24/7 from the 70s with no commercial interruptions. The station seldom plays Fogelberg so I was pleasantly surprised when they played Longer on my way to work yesterday. It was still playing when I got there so I just shut off the car and let it play. I could have listened to Longer anytime on my CD or on Spotify, but there's something special about hearing a favorite song on the radio.
I was introduced to the music of Dan Fogelberg during the summer of 1981. My sister was living in the family beach house for the summer. She had a pretty good stereo and a lot of good records. It was a rather dark, rainy morning at Laguna Beach, Florida. I don't remember why I was the only one in the house at the time, but there I was with nothing better to do than play some of my sister's tunes. The silhouette of the rather "hippie" looking singer on the album cover of Nether Lands caught my eye. I pulled the album out of the sleeve being careful to hold it against the palms of my hands, placed it on the turntable and dropped the needle. There's this thing that happens to me from time to time when I listen to music. This thing usually happens when I'm driving and what I'm hearing and seeing all melt together in a mysterious wedding of blissful feelings. I dropped that needle nearly thirty seven years ago and I still remember what I felt that morning. My psyche remembers it as I listen to Nether Lands now. Mix the beauty of a dark and rainy Florida panhandle morning with my immediate enchantment with Fogelberg's Nether Lands and it was a recipe for pure pleasure. And a lifetime of music.
I own nearly all of Fogelberg's CDs and have listened to all of them a multitude of times. Considering that much of that listening was on the road, those tracks probably have traveled with me several hundred thousand miles.Besides the recorded music I was able to attend two of his concerts in Chattanooga. The first one, at the Tivoli Theater, was my favorite, but I enjoyed the second one as well at the Memorial Auditorium. At his second concert he was having some vocal issues and was not able to sing his signature falsetto. He had to sing alternate melodies for some of his most popular songs. I was listening to what he was singing, but my mind was editing it as he sang. Occupational hazard. It was one of those times that it was to be the last time I would see him alive, but I had no way of knowing that. After 90 minutes of singing during that first concert he announced an intermission. Only instead of leaving the stage, he put down his guitar, walked across the stage and sat down at the grand piano. I certainly took no intermission either. He played the unmistakable broken opening chord to To The Morning. To have that memory of Fogelberg playing that song on a stage flooded with blue light is very special to me. It felt like he played it just for me,.
The week after Christmas 1981, my son's first Christmas, I was pulling into the parking lot of a grocery store a few miles from my home to buy a few supplies for a youth retreat to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, Some songs I've never heard before, I know from the first note that I'm going to like it. Same Old Lang Syne hit me in my musical and emotional wheelhouse that cemented it to my soul. As Fogelberg sang the last line, "Just for a moment I was back in school and I felt that old familiar pain. And as I turned my way back home, the snow turned into rain.", it started snowing. I think in the end, the universe is a kind and benevolent place. I never pass that store or shop there without recalling my introduction to Same Old Lang Syne in the winter of '81,
It's no wonder I feel so connected to Dan Fogelberg. In a radio interview in 1977, he asked about the meaning of his song Nether Lands. He said, "It's about the two forks of existence, acceptance or denial. It comes down to that. That's the only thing we have if you think about it. Any other choice we have is contingent on that. Either accept the life you're given or deny it and commit suicide. It's either one. You have to make that choice every day."
Dan Fogelberg died nearly ten years ago at 56 years old after a three month struggle with prostate cancer. Since I only knew him through his music, as I listen now to To the Morning I feel as close to him as ever. I'm sure to his wife, his friend and collaborator Tim Weisberg and those who knew him best, the loss is much deeper. I can't speak to that.
"Cloudy and warm
Maybe a storm
You can never quite tell
From the morning." from To the Morning, 1972
If there's a rock and roll heaven, I'm quite certain there'll be folk rock as well. And I'll bet the farm that Fogelberg's got his falsetto back. Hope so anyway. I don't want to spend eternity editing his music while he sings.
Monday, April 10, 2017
Noise-cancellation--Magic or Myth?
"Noise-cancelling headphones feature a miniature microphone in the ear piece that picks up ambient external noise. Electronics in the ear piece create a noise-cancelling wave that is 180 degrees out of phase with the ambient noise. this wave acts like a noise eraser. It cancels out the annoying sounds that surround you without diminishing the audio you want to hear. The result, a peaceful enclave to enjoy the music or movies of your choice."
Until I looked it up, I considered "ambient sound" to be pleasant. By a sound engineering definition, ambient noise is any background noise that is different than what you want to hear. But still, if you search "ambient music" on Spotify, you will find music that is pleasing to the ear and to the senses. It's pleasing to mine anyway.
John Cage (1912-1992) was famous, or infamous by some opinions, for making noise and calling it music. For that matter, he once said, "If it makes a sound, it's music." By that definition I would think that dragging your fingernails down a chalkboard creates music. For me, and I think for most of us, that noise sends chills up my spine and I just want the noise to stop. One of Cages's most famous and controversial pieces was the work he titled 4'33. The title means that the piece lasts four minutes and thirty-three seconds. His first performance consisted of three movements of thirty-three seconds, two minutes and forty seconds, and one minute and twenty seconds, respectively. The piece can be performed with any instrument or combination of instruments including a full orchestra.. It is usually performed on a piano. In that case, the pianist walks to the piano, sits down, opens the cover, folds her hands back in her lap and remains in perfect silence. Each musical movement is separated by some physical movement of the performer. Several versions of this work is available on YouTube if you care to look. John Cage was interviewed about this piece many times over the course of his career and his most common answer to the question of what it means was "Silence does not exist." Find a place to sit that is relatively quiet. Set a timer for 4'33 and remain perfectly still. Make a mental note of all the things you hear. All of a sudden, the ambient sounds that you had not noticed become the primary sounds and you can't notice anything else. In the case of any performance of 4'33, the audience creates much noise, so each performance is unique, And Cage would argue that all those sounds were music.
New York City is one of the noisiest cities in the world. If you've been there then there is no need for me to describe it. If you haven't, I'm still not going to describe it. Just use your imagination regarding a city of traffic and noise that never sleeps. The Guggenheim Museum, in the center of the city, has created a quiet space. The artist Doug Wheeler has engineered a space of sound absorbent materials that claims to be one of the quiet spaces in the world--"a profoundly empty soundscape." . The museum only allows five visitors at a time. So far the longest people can endure being in there is about forty minutes. After that they say that they start hallucinating.
Back to that chalkboard. In the book, Annoying, the Science of What Bugs Us, Joe Palca and Flora Lichman present research that suggests that we inherited this reaction from our cave-dwelling ancestors and that the maddening irritation is tied to noises that then warned of life-threatening situations. I doubt the noise is going to kill us, but most of us certainly want it to stop.
Then in her book How Emotions are Made, based on groundbreaking research in her lab, Lisa Feldman Barrett postulates that human beings do not come pre-loaded with any emotional mapping. Based on what she calls "constructed emotion" she says that the entire brain creates every emotion we feel on the fly as it happens. "There is no 'fear center', for example, in the amygdala with accompanying neurotransmitters." "There are no emotional maps lying dormant just waiting to be triggered. We 'construct' those emotions in each new situation". I corresponded with her with a few emails. In the first two I congratulated her on her groundbreaking research and that exchange went really well. But then I asked her if I could ask her a question and she said that I could. I asked, "Then if we construct every emotion on the fly, then in the case of grief, for example, if we don't want to keep hurting so badly, why can't we just choose to stop constructing that emotion? Why can't we just choose to feel something else?" She never replied. But all that to say, she would not agree with the authors of Annoying that our reaction to fingernails on a chalkboard is embedded deep in our brains. So which is true? That's the yin/yang of scientific discovery that makes it interesting. When Charles Darwin published The Origin of the Species, he set the science of biology on its head. But in spite of the book's impact and importance, to this day thousands of noted biologists and theologians do not accept his research as valid. Many say that science still struggles with the question, "Am I my keeper's brother?"
I went to my gym this morning to walk and to stress a few muscles that haven't been stressed in a while. It's main attribute is that it's near our house. One reason I don't go more often than I do is the horrible music they pipe throughout the gym. Another reason is because it's a gym. I find the music to be both pervasive and annoying, When I'm there, I can't escape it. I enjoy listening to many kinds of music including "heavy metal." But this music and the crappy speakers they play it through is more like heavy torture, This morning I swallowed a little vanity and instead of taking my ear buds, I took my Bose noise-cancelling headphones. With my ear buds the sound of the gym "music" bleeds over the music I want to hear. Even with my headphones, I could hear their music. Annoying. However with the combined magic of the noise-cancelling technology and of the human brain, within a few minutes all I could hear was my Spotify playlist. I enjoyed Ray Lynch's Deep Breakfast as much as I would have enjoyed it here at home. Maybe more since I was "taking a little exercise."
Another way of saying "Silence doesn't exist" is "noise is inevitable." However, if I could get to the place with John Cage that "if it makes a sound, it's music", I would live in a world of constant splendor. I just Googled synonyms of "noise". None of them are pleasant. If John Cage enjoyed music as much as I do, and if to him all noise was music, then John Cage must have been the most gratified man in the world.
Until I looked it up, I considered "ambient sound" to be pleasant. By a sound engineering definition, ambient noise is any background noise that is different than what you want to hear. But still, if you search "ambient music" on Spotify, you will find music that is pleasing to the ear and to the senses. It's pleasing to mine anyway.
John Cage (1912-1992) was famous, or infamous by some opinions, for making noise and calling it music. For that matter, he once said, "If it makes a sound, it's music." By that definition I would think that dragging your fingernails down a chalkboard creates music. For me, and I think for most of us, that noise sends chills up my spine and I just want the noise to stop. One of Cages's most famous and controversial pieces was the work he titled 4'33. The title means that the piece lasts four minutes and thirty-three seconds. His first performance consisted of three movements of thirty-three seconds, two minutes and forty seconds, and one minute and twenty seconds, respectively. The piece can be performed with any instrument or combination of instruments including a full orchestra.. It is usually performed on a piano. In that case, the pianist walks to the piano, sits down, opens the cover, folds her hands back in her lap and remains in perfect silence. Each musical movement is separated by some physical movement of the performer. Several versions of this work is available on YouTube if you care to look. John Cage was interviewed about this piece many times over the course of his career and his most common answer to the question of what it means was "Silence does not exist." Find a place to sit that is relatively quiet. Set a timer for 4'33 and remain perfectly still. Make a mental note of all the things you hear. All of a sudden, the ambient sounds that you had not noticed become the primary sounds and you can't notice anything else. In the case of any performance of 4'33, the audience creates much noise, so each performance is unique, And Cage would argue that all those sounds were music.
New York City is one of the noisiest cities in the world. If you've been there then there is no need for me to describe it. If you haven't, I'm still not going to describe it. Just use your imagination regarding a city of traffic and noise that never sleeps. The Guggenheim Museum, in the center of the city, has created a quiet space. The artist Doug Wheeler has engineered a space of sound absorbent materials that claims to be one of the quiet spaces in the world--"a profoundly empty soundscape." . The museum only allows five visitors at a time. So far the longest people can endure being in there is about forty minutes. After that they say that they start hallucinating.
Back to that chalkboard. In the book, Annoying, the Science of What Bugs Us, Joe Palca and Flora Lichman present research that suggests that we inherited this reaction from our cave-dwelling ancestors and that the maddening irritation is tied to noises that then warned of life-threatening situations. I doubt the noise is going to kill us, but most of us certainly want it to stop.
Then in her book How Emotions are Made, based on groundbreaking research in her lab, Lisa Feldman Barrett postulates that human beings do not come pre-loaded with any emotional mapping. Based on what she calls "constructed emotion" she says that the entire brain creates every emotion we feel on the fly as it happens. "There is no 'fear center', for example, in the amygdala with accompanying neurotransmitters." "There are no emotional maps lying dormant just waiting to be triggered. We 'construct' those emotions in each new situation". I corresponded with her with a few emails. In the first two I congratulated her on her groundbreaking research and that exchange went really well. But then I asked her if I could ask her a question and she said that I could. I asked, "Then if we construct every emotion on the fly, then in the case of grief, for example, if we don't want to keep hurting so badly, why can't we just choose to stop constructing that emotion? Why can't we just choose to feel something else?" She never replied. But all that to say, she would not agree with the authors of Annoying that our reaction to fingernails on a chalkboard is embedded deep in our brains. So which is true? That's the yin/yang of scientific discovery that makes it interesting. When Charles Darwin published The Origin of the Species, he set the science of biology on its head. But in spite of the book's impact and importance, to this day thousands of noted biologists and theologians do not accept his research as valid. Many say that science still struggles with the question, "Am I my keeper's brother?"
I went to my gym this morning to walk and to stress a few muscles that haven't been stressed in a while. It's main attribute is that it's near our house. One reason I don't go more often than I do is the horrible music they pipe throughout the gym. Another reason is because it's a gym. I find the music to be both pervasive and annoying, When I'm there, I can't escape it. I enjoy listening to many kinds of music including "heavy metal." But this music and the crappy speakers they play it through is more like heavy torture, This morning I swallowed a little vanity and instead of taking my ear buds, I took my Bose noise-cancelling headphones. With my ear buds the sound of the gym "music" bleeds over the music I want to hear. Even with my headphones, I could hear their music. Annoying. However with the combined magic of the noise-cancelling technology and of the human brain, within a few minutes all I could hear was my Spotify playlist. I enjoyed Ray Lynch's Deep Breakfast as much as I would have enjoyed it here at home. Maybe more since I was "taking a little exercise."
Another way of saying "Silence doesn't exist" is "noise is inevitable." However, if I could get to the place with John Cage that "if it makes a sound, it's music", I would live in a world of constant splendor. I just Googled synonyms of "noise". None of them are pleasant. If John Cage enjoyed music as much as I do, and if to him all noise was music, then John Cage must have been the most gratified man in the world.
Sunday, April 9, 2017
I Walk with Beauty
"As I walk, I walk with beauty." from Prayers and Remembrances, Stephen Paulus
For years I wanted to through hike the Appalachian Trail. That desire has passed. Because of my age and love of all thing comfortable, I know that I will never do that. I do, however, follow the AT vicariously by reading stories and trail journals of those who do make the trek.
Over the years I have hiked portions of the AT and have gotten a feel for what that hike might be like. Short of such experience, I have hiked and backpacked numerous times. Over the years I have followed my feet, as Frederick Buechner says, through streams, valleys, mountains, woods and inviting wooded roads. Many of these hikes rewarded me with incredible vistas. and all of them afforded me much needed communion with nature and good exercise.
The longest hike I ever took was a two-day twenty-eight mile hike near the Shiloh Civil War Battefield, Tennessee. Each day we hiked seven miles in the morning and after lunch hiked seven more in the afternoon. My Boy Scout troup, Troup 99, had traveled by school bus from Enterprise, Alabama to a campground there when I was twelve years old. Since it was April and the temperature was in the high 70s in Enterprise, the only coat I packed was a thin windbreaker. When we arrived at the campground it was twenty-eight degrees. I put on everything I had packed and kept it all on for most of the trip. I was still cold, but I survived. Both days were beautiful days and the hike was extraordinary. Even as a kid I could appreciate beauty and wonder. I was very glad that I had packed a long-sleeved flannel shirt and that windbreaker. The combination of three undershirts, those outer garments, the warmth of the sun and the engine of my own body's warmth meant that I was not only not miserable, but was quite comfortable.
Something rather unfortunate happened the first night we were there. One of the first rules of scouting is to put out your campfire completely before leaving the site. When my tent mate and I left the campsite for dinner, apparently we didn't do that. We returned to the campsite to find our tent half gone. And there were white splotches on our sleeping bags. A scout from a neighboring campground explained that when they saw the tent on fire, they put it out with their hot chocolate. We cleaned up the marshmallows off the sleeping bags that had miraculously survived intact and slept under the stars for the duration of the trip. Considering how cold it was, that experience was not all good. But it wasn't all bad either.
But I digress,. I was talking about hiking. It's unfortunate that we, as human beings tend to do, compartmentalize things. This is good. This is bad. This is enjoyable. This is not. This is meaningful. This is not. Because of that we often live our days wanting to be somewhere that we are not, wanting to be doing something that we are not doing. As important as it is for me to spend time on trails and in the woods, I am trying to learn to enjoy following my feet wherever they take me. I am learning that walking from my car to the front door of Walmart can be a richly satisfying experience. Outside and inside I find numerous people who can't walk at all. Because of physical issues or their size, the power chairs are about their only means of getting around.
I enjoy walking from my car to the entrance of our local shopping mall. It's a far cry from the Appalachian Trail, but quite often my feet find me in Barnes and Noble which also houses a Starbucks. I pull a somewhat random book off a shelf, buy a large Americano, no cream, and settle down with both.
I enjoy walking from my house to the mailbox. I usually just find a bill, a prospectus from a mutual fund and two or three credit card solicitations, but occasionally it's a greeting card from a friend or a book from Abebooks. As Dan Fogelberg says, you just never know what you're going to find in your mailbox.
I so enjoy walking from the parking lot to the NICU. When I get to the locked door I ring the buzzer. If I was a parent the nurse would ask who I'm there to see. In my case she just opens the door. They were expecting me. It feels really good to be expected there. Really good.
I have a long way to go before I'm "self-actualized" as Herman Maslow suggested, but I am learning that the beauty is not in the Appalachian Trail or in Zion Canyon, the beauty is in me. I don't have to walk to beauty; I can walk with beauty. And beauty walks with me.
As you have noticed, while I am scratching up my thoughts and feelings here, I am usually listening to beautiful music. This morning I chose to listen to the works of Stephen Paulus. I was introduced to his music in a rather profound way about fifteen years ago. His music has become a touchstone of beauty and deep peace for me. Spotify just cycled to his Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra, Three Places of Enlightenment. Since it's instrumental music and I do not know where those three places are, I will suggest three places of my own--1. My back deck with a cup of coffee or an IPA. 2.The NICU and 3. This spot where I am sitting. How I so enjoy this spot where I am sitting. It waited for me nearly thirty years.
Every one of those Appalachian Trail hikers talk about places and moments that make all the danger and discomfort that they have experienced worth the walk. I have no doubt that their testimony is true. And I wish them well on their journey. On the other hand, when I get out of my car at Walmart I I feel the warmth of the sun combined with the cool spring air against my face. I see a bird flying by from wherever birds come from to wherever birds go. I smell Taco Bell. I don't eat at Taco Bell but it smells pretty good. I lock the door of my car with a button on the handle. I don't even need my key. And I walk. There were about eighteen months or so of my life when I didn't know how to do that. But somewhere, probably 102 Glenn Street or our house at Laguna Beach, Florida, I took one awkward, wobbly step and fell back down on my diapered butt. But I had learned to walk.
I won't always be able to walk. I'll need help getting into Walmart. And I'll need one of those power chairs. I won't be walking to the mailbox. I won't be hiking any wooded trails. But because a younger me had learned to walk in beauty, I'll be exactly where I want to be. And when I get back home, I'll sit down and I'll remember, I hope to God I can remember. I'll remember when those Boy Scouts walked from their campsite to mine and put out the fire on my tent with their hot chocolate. And I'll chuckle to myself and be very content.
For years I wanted to through hike the Appalachian Trail. That desire has passed. Because of my age and love of all thing comfortable, I know that I will never do that. I do, however, follow the AT vicariously by reading stories and trail journals of those who do make the trek.
Over the years I have hiked portions of the AT and have gotten a feel for what that hike might be like. Short of such experience, I have hiked and backpacked numerous times. Over the years I have followed my feet, as Frederick Buechner says, through streams, valleys, mountains, woods and inviting wooded roads. Many of these hikes rewarded me with incredible vistas. and all of them afforded me much needed communion with nature and good exercise.
The longest hike I ever took was a two-day twenty-eight mile hike near the Shiloh Civil War Battefield, Tennessee. Each day we hiked seven miles in the morning and after lunch hiked seven more in the afternoon. My Boy Scout troup, Troup 99, had traveled by school bus from Enterprise, Alabama to a campground there when I was twelve years old. Since it was April and the temperature was in the high 70s in Enterprise, the only coat I packed was a thin windbreaker. When we arrived at the campground it was twenty-eight degrees. I put on everything I had packed and kept it all on for most of the trip. I was still cold, but I survived. Both days were beautiful days and the hike was extraordinary. Even as a kid I could appreciate beauty and wonder. I was very glad that I had packed a long-sleeved flannel shirt and that windbreaker. The combination of three undershirts, those outer garments, the warmth of the sun and the engine of my own body's warmth meant that I was not only not miserable, but was quite comfortable.
Something rather unfortunate happened the first night we were there. One of the first rules of scouting is to put out your campfire completely before leaving the site. When my tent mate and I left the campsite for dinner, apparently we didn't do that. We returned to the campsite to find our tent half gone. And there were white splotches on our sleeping bags. A scout from a neighboring campground explained that when they saw the tent on fire, they put it out with their hot chocolate. We cleaned up the marshmallows off the sleeping bags that had miraculously survived intact and slept under the stars for the duration of the trip. Considering how cold it was, that experience was not all good. But it wasn't all bad either.
But I digress,. I was talking about hiking. It's unfortunate that we, as human beings tend to do, compartmentalize things. This is good. This is bad. This is enjoyable. This is not. This is meaningful. This is not. Because of that we often live our days wanting to be somewhere that we are not, wanting to be doing something that we are not doing. As important as it is for me to spend time on trails and in the woods, I am trying to learn to enjoy following my feet wherever they take me. I am learning that walking from my car to the front door of Walmart can be a richly satisfying experience. Outside and inside I find numerous people who can't walk at all. Because of physical issues or their size, the power chairs are about their only means of getting around.
I enjoy walking from my car to the entrance of our local shopping mall. It's a far cry from the Appalachian Trail, but quite often my feet find me in Barnes and Noble which also houses a Starbucks. I pull a somewhat random book off a shelf, buy a large Americano, no cream, and settle down with both.
I enjoy walking from my house to the mailbox. I usually just find a bill, a prospectus from a mutual fund and two or three credit card solicitations, but occasionally it's a greeting card from a friend or a book from Abebooks. As Dan Fogelberg says, you just never know what you're going to find in your mailbox.
I so enjoy walking from the parking lot to the NICU. When I get to the locked door I ring the buzzer. If I was a parent the nurse would ask who I'm there to see. In my case she just opens the door. They were expecting me. It feels really good to be expected there. Really good.
I have a long way to go before I'm "self-actualized" as Herman Maslow suggested, but I am learning that the beauty is not in the Appalachian Trail or in Zion Canyon, the beauty is in me. I don't have to walk to beauty; I can walk with beauty. And beauty walks with me.
As you have noticed, while I am scratching up my thoughts and feelings here, I am usually listening to beautiful music. This morning I chose to listen to the works of Stephen Paulus. I was introduced to his music in a rather profound way about fifteen years ago. His music has become a touchstone of beauty and deep peace for me. Spotify just cycled to his Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra, Three Places of Enlightenment. Since it's instrumental music and I do not know where those three places are, I will suggest three places of my own--1. My back deck with a cup of coffee or an IPA. 2.The NICU and 3. This spot where I am sitting. How I so enjoy this spot where I am sitting. It waited for me nearly thirty years.
Every one of those Appalachian Trail hikers talk about places and moments that make all the danger and discomfort that they have experienced worth the walk. I have no doubt that their testimony is true. And I wish them well on their journey. On the other hand, when I get out of my car at Walmart I I feel the warmth of the sun combined with the cool spring air against my face. I see a bird flying by from wherever birds come from to wherever birds go. I smell Taco Bell. I don't eat at Taco Bell but it smells pretty good. I lock the door of my car with a button on the handle. I don't even need my key. And I walk. There were about eighteen months or so of my life when I didn't know how to do that. But somewhere, probably 102 Glenn Street or our house at Laguna Beach, Florida, I took one awkward, wobbly step and fell back down on my diapered butt. But I had learned to walk.
I won't always be able to walk. I'll need help getting into Walmart. And I'll need one of those power chairs. I won't be walking to the mailbox. I won't be hiking any wooded trails. But because a younger me had learned to walk in beauty, I'll be exactly where I want to be. And when I get back home, I'll sit down and I'll remember, I hope to God I can remember. I'll remember when those Boy Scouts walked from their campsite to mine and put out the fire on my tent with their hot chocolate. And I'll chuckle to myself and be very content.
Friday, April 7, 2017
The Dawn of the Jesus Movement
"Two thousand smiling faces
A thousand glistening eyes
Shining through the darkness of Satan's viscous lies.
Reflecting Jesus kindness and witnessing His love
That all might see salvation, grace from our Lord above." Skip Temple, 1971
Earlier this week I drove by a church, a Clear River fellowship, in Dawnville, Georgia. Dawnville isn't a town exactly, but more of a community with a Dalton address. We have very good friends in the area and I have driven that road dozens of times. The fellowship is either very new or more likely I had just never noticed it. And I couldn't help but wonder if the good folk of Dawnville had any idea where their church had come from.
The Jesus Movement officially arrived in Enterprise, Alabama in the fall of 1971 when Kim Pierce, Pat Hatcher and Skip Temple wound up at the Enterprise State Junior College. Fresh from the official Jesus Movement in Southern California, through their presence and their music they brought a rather radical Christian element to our small college and our town. A movement of the Spirit, or of Something was already in progress in Enterprise. We drove our parents, Sunday School teachers and deacons crazy with our blazing fire and enthusiasm. We had no name for what we were feeling and experiencing. What started in one church with one group of young people spread like wildfire to area churches and even surrounding cities. Besides remaining active in our respective churches of all denominations, we got together informally for prayer vigils, campfire fellowships and formally in hymn sings and youth rallies. The love we felt for Jesus and for each other was no less than that of the first Christian explosion related in the book of Acts. They didn't know for sure what was going on either.
In the fall of 1971 because of Kim, Pat and Skip we had a name for it. We were a part of a much larger phenomenon in progress across the country from the west coast called The Jesus Movement,. Chuck Smith organized the Calvary Chapel in 1965 as an alternative to traditional church. The theology was a combination of fundamentalism and charismatic euphoria. It was perfect for the Haight-Ashbury hippie culture looking for a place to coalesce in the late 60s around a healthy and yet equally exciting alternative to psychedelic drugs and unbridled sex. They found that place in a personal relationship with Jesus and the Calvary Chapel. in Costa Mesa, California.
Calvary Chapel grew, as churches tend to do, and became a loosely organized denomination called Vineyard churches. Vineyard churches, the first to offer "Christian contemporary music", can be found all over the United States and the world. The Vineyard Fellowship split about ten years ago over issues about women in ministry.. The new denomination, Clear River, interpreted the words of the Apostle Paul that women should not have places of seniority over men, To each his own.
In 1970 Chuck Girard encouraged several of his musician friends to leave their respective bands to form the very first Jesus band--Love Song. I don't know how I found that music. It's not like I had Spotify or YouTube. I guess the music found me. This Jesus music found me about a year before Kim, Pat and Skip found the Enterprise State Junior College. . You are reading this because some years ago there was a conception and a birth which became you. You are listening to contemporary Christian music because in the late 1960s it was born in the hearts of a few who were full of a new Spirit, a new joy and a new personal destination, Surfers don't make the wave, they just catch it,
Two years after our Jesus friends came to Enterprise, I was living in Birmingham, Alabama and a music student at Samford University. Gone were the late night prayer meetings, the hymn sings, the youth rallies, the spontaneous and meaningful foot washings among friends. Gone were the charismatic utterances at the House of Prayer and Praise. Instead of arriving in musical heaven, I felt that I was in the valley of the shadow of death. I sought out a visiting chapel speaker from Pearly, England. I talked and cried a bit of my spiritual loneliness and desolation. He listened, smiled and asked, "David, have you ever wondered why God placed those angels with the flaming swords at the gate of the Garden of Eden so that Adam and Eve couldn't go back in?" "No, I haven't" "He didn't do it to punish them. He did it because there was something better. He did it so that they and their descendants would go toward life and freedom in Jesus Christ. You don't have to go back David. Go forward. God has something even better for you than what you experienced in Enterprise, Just keep going forward and you'll find it.
On June 21st 1971, two days after my eighteenth birthday, the cover of Time Magazine was a hip sketch of Jesus Christ and the title The Jesus Revolution. The article brought the Jesus Movement into the living rooms and the consciousness of America. Two months later Kim, Pat and Skip, for reasons I don't know, enrolled at my junior college. To this day, I miss all that. Unlike my physical birth,, I remember that birth. Jesus told Nicodemus, "You must be born of water and of the Spirit." When that water broke, my entire spiritual lifetime spilled out.
This Sunday when the good people of Dawnville, Georgia gather at their Clear River fellowship, if they feel Something from somewhere else, I doubt they'll know from whence it comes. But if Dr. Frank Cook of Pearly, England was preaching, he would say, "You feel that? Do you know why? You don't need to know because He knows. And He knows you."
But this morning while listening to this beautiful Jesus music, well "contemporary Christian music", I'm so glad that I know the story. I'm glad that I'm a part of the story. And for that I'm deeply grateful. Thanks Hillcrest Baptist Church. Thanks First United Methodist. Thanks Kim, Pat, and Skip. Thanks Enterprise State Junior College for letting them sing,. Thanks Chuck Girard, Larry Norman, The Second Chapter of Acts, Phil Keaggy, Keith Green and many more who redefined "special music" for a generation lost in space. Over the years the Jesus Movement fractured and faded, but its impact reverberates today in the hearts, voices and instruments of the worship teams of America. Contemporary? Depends on how you define it.
How fitting that this distinctively contemporary music I've been listening to for about an hour and a half just now cycled to a beautiful traditional arrangement of the Doxology, originally published in 1709, and recently recorded on a modern synthesizer. I can't think of a better way to bring my morning thoughts and feelings to a close."Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen."
A thousand glistening eyes
Shining through the darkness of Satan's viscous lies.
Reflecting Jesus kindness and witnessing His love
That all might see salvation, grace from our Lord above." Skip Temple, 1971
Earlier this week I drove by a church, a Clear River fellowship, in Dawnville, Georgia. Dawnville isn't a town exactly, but more of a community with a Dalton address. We have very good friends in the area and I have driven that road dozens of times. The fellowship is either very new or more likely I had just never noticed it. And I couldn't help but wonder if the good folk of Dawnville had any idea where their church had come from.
The Jesus Movement officially arrived in Enterprise, Alabama in the fall of 1971 when Kim Pierce, Pat Hatcher and Skip Temple wound up at the Enterprise State Junior College. Fresh from the official Jesus Movement in Southern California, through their presence and their music they brought a rather radical Christian element to our small college and our town. A movement of the Spirit, or of Something was already in progress in Enterprise. We drove our parents, Sunday School teachers and deacons crazy with our blazing fire and enthusiasm. We had no name for what we were feeling and experiencing. What started in one church with one group of young people spread like wildfire to area churches and even surrounding cities. Besides remaining active in our respective churches of all denominations, we got together informally for prayer vigils, campfire fellowships and formally in hymn sings and youth rallies. The love we felt for Jesus and for each other was no less than that of the first Christian explosion related in the book of Acts. They didn't know for sure what was going on either.
In the fall of 1971 because of Kim, Pat and Skip we had a name for it. We were a part of a much larger phenomenon in progress across the country from the west coast called The Jesus Movement,. Chuck Smith organized the Calvary Chapel in 1965 as an alternative to traditional church. The theology was a combination of fundamentalism and charismatic euphoria. It was perfect for the Haight-Ashbury hippie culture looking for a place to coalesce in the late 60s around a healthy and yet equally exciting alternative to psychedelic drugs and unbridled sex. They found that place in a personal relationship with Jesus and the Calvary Chapel. in Costa Mesa, California.
Calvary Chapel grew, as churches tend to do, and became a loosely organized denomination called Vineyard churches. Vineyard churches, the first to offer "Christian contemporary music", can be found all over the United States and the world. The Vineyard Fellowship split about ten years ago over issues about women in ministry.. The new denomination, Clear River, interpreted the words of the Apostle Paul that women should not have places of seniority over men, To each his own.
In 1970 Chuck Girard encouraged several of his musician friends to leave their respective bands to form the very first Jesus band--Love Song. I don't know how I found that music. It's not like I had Spotify or YouTube. I guess the music found me. This Jesus music found me about a year before Kim, Pat and Skip found the Enterprise State Junior College. . You are reading this because some years ago there was a conception and a birth which became you. You are listening to contemporary Christian music because in the late 1960s it was born in the hearts of a few who were full of a new Spirit, a new joy and a new personal destination, Surfers don't make the wave, they just catch it,
Two years after our Jesus friends came to Enterprise, I was living in Birmingham, Alabama and a music student at Samford University. Gone were the late night prayer meetings, the hymn sings, the youth rallies, the spontaneous and meaningful foot washings among friends. Gone were the charismatic utterances at the House of Prayer and Praise. Instead of arriving in musical heaven, I felt that I was in the valley of the shadow of death. I sought out a visiting chapel speaker from Pearly, England. I talked and cried a bit of my spiritual loneliness and desolation. He listened, smiled and asked, "David, have you ever wondered why God placed those angels with the flaming swords at the gate of the Garden of Eden so that Adam and Eve couldn't go back in?" "No, I haven't" "He didn't do it to punish them. He did it because there was something better. He did it so that they and their descendants would go toward life and freedom in Jesus Christ. You don't have to go back David. Go forward. God has something even better for you than what you experienced in Enterprise, Just keep going forward and you'll find it.
On June 21st 1971, two days after my eighteenth birthday, the cover of Time Magazine was a hip sketch of Jesus Christ and the title The Jesus Revolution. The article brought the Jesus Movement into the living rooms and the consciousness of America. Two months later Kim, Pat and Skip, for reasons I don't know, enrolled at my junior college. To this day, I miss all that. Unlike my physical birth,, I remember that birth. Jesus told Nicodemus, "You must be born of water and of the Spirit." When that water broke, my entire spiritual lifetime spilled out.
This Sunday when the good people of Dawnville, Georgia gather at their Clear River fellowship, if they feel Something from somewhere else, I doubt they'll know from whence it comes. But if Dr. Frank Cook of Pearly, England was preaching, he would say, "You feel that? Do you know why? You don't need to know because He knows. And He knows you."
But this morning while listening to this beautiful Jesus music, well "contemporary Christian music", I'm so glad that I know the story. I'm glad that I'm a part of the story. And for that I'm deeply grateful. Thanks Hillcrest Baptist Church. Thanks First United Methodist. Thanks Kim, Pat, and Skip. Thanks Enterprise State Junior College for letting them sing,. Thanks Chuck Girard, Larry Norman, The Second Chapter of Acts, Phil Keaggy, Keith Green and many more who redefined "special music" for a generation lost in space. Over the years the Jesus Movement fractured and faded, but its impact reverberates today in the hearts, voices and instruments of the worship teams of America. Contemporary? Depends on how you define it.
How fitting that this distinctively contemporary music I've been listening to for about an hour and a half just now cycled to a beautiful traditional arrangement of the Doxology, originally published in 1709, and recently recorded on a modern synthesizer. I can't think of a better way to bring my morning thoughts and feelings to a close."Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen."
For the Love of Jesus Music
"Two thousand smiling faces
A thousand glistening eyes
Shining through the darkness of Satan's viscous lies.
Reflecting Jesus kindness and witnessing His love
That all might see salvation, grace from our Lord above." Skip Temple, 1971
Earlier this week I drove by a church, a Clear River fellowship, in Dawnville, Georgia. Dawnville isn't a town exactly but more of a community with a Dalton address. We have very good friends in the area. I have driven that road dozens of times. The fellowship is either very new or more likely I had just never noticed it. And I couldn't help but wonder if the good folk of Dawnville had any idea where their church had come from.
The Jesus Movement officially arrived in Enterprise, Alabama in the fall of 1971 when Kim, Pat and Skip wound up at the Enterprise State Junior College. Fresh from the official Jesus Movement in Southern California, through their presence and their music they brought a rather radical Christian element to our college and our town. A movement of the Spirit, or of Something was already in progress in Enterprise. We drove our parents, Sunday School teachers and deacons crazy with our blazing fire and enthusiasm. We had no name for what we were feeling and experiencing. What started in one church with one group of young people spread like wildfire to area churches and even surrounding cities. Besides remaining active in our respective churches of all denominations, we got together informally and formally in hymn sings and youth rallies. The love we felt for Jesus and for each other was no less than the first Christian explosion related in the book of Acts.
In the fall of 1971 because of Kim, Pat and Skip we had a name for it. We were a part of a much larger phenomenon in progress from the west coast called The Jesus Movement,. Chuck Smith organized the Calvary Chapel in 1965 as an alternative to traditional church. The theology was a combination of fundamentalism and charismatic euphoria. It was perfect for the hippie converts looking for a place to coalesce in the late 60s as they were looking for a healthy and yet equally exciting alternative to psychedelic drugs and unbridled sex. They found that place in a personal relationship with Jesus and the Calvary Chapel. in Costa Mesa, California.
Calvary Chapel, as churches tend to do, became a loosely organized denomination called Vineyard churches. Vineyard churches, the first to offer "Christian contemporary music", can be found all over the United States and the world. The Vineyard Fellowship split about ten years ago over issues about women in ministry.. The new denomination, Clear River, interpreted the words of the Apostle Paul that women should not have places of seniority over men,.
In 1970 Chuck Girard encouraged several of his musician friends to leave their respective bands and they formed the very first Jesus band--Love Song. I don't know how I found that music. It's not like I had Spotify or YouTube. I guess the music found me. This "contemporary Christian music" found me about a year before Kim, Pat and Skip found the Enterprise State Junior College. Point is, when you're at your contemporary church and listening to your favorite Christian Jesus music it all started in California with the Calvary Chapel and then Chuck Girard's Love Song. You are reading this because some years ago there was a conception and a birth which became you. You are listening to contemporary Christian music because it was born in the hearts of a few who were full of they weren't sure what. But they wanted to sing.
Two years after our Jesus friends came to Enterprise I was living in Birmingham, Alabama and a music student at Samford University. Gone were the late night prayer meetings, the hymn sings, the youth rallies, the spontaneous and meaningful foot washings. Gone were the charismatic utterances at the House of Prayer and Praise.. Instead of arriving in musical heaven, I felt that I was in the valley of the shadow of death. I sought out a visiting chapel speaker from Pearly, England. I talked and cried a bit of my spiritual loneliness and desolation. He smiled, put a loving hand on my shoulder and asked, "David, have you ever wondered why God placed those angels with the flaming swords at the gate of the Garden of Eden so that Adam and Eve couldn't go back in?" "No, I haven't" "He didn't do it to punish them. He did it because there was something better. He did it so that they and their descendants would go toward life and freedom in Jesus Christ. You don't have to go back David. Go forward. God has something better for you. He always has something better."
On June 21st 1971, two days after my eighteenth birthday, the cover of Time Magazine was a hip picture of Jesus and the title The Jesus Revolution. Two months later Kim, Pat and Skip for reasons I don't know enrolled at my junior college. To this day, I miss all that. Unlike my physical birth,, I remember that birth. Jesus told Nicodemus, "You must be born of water and of the Spirit." When that water broke, my entire spiritual lifetime spilled out.
This Sunday when the good people of Dawnville, Georgia gather at their Clear River fellowship, if they feel Something from somewhere else, I doubt they'll know from whence it comes. But if Dr. Frank Cook of Pearly, Englad was preaching, he would say, "You feel that? Do you know why? You don't need to know because He knows. And He knows you."
But this morning while listening to this beautiful Jesus music, I'm so glad that I know. And for that I'm deeply grateful. Thanks Hillcrest Baptist Church. Thanks First United Methodist. Thanks Jim, Frank, Joe, Susan, Lynn, Fonda, Kim, Pat and Skip and hundreds more. All that made all the difference in the world.
How appropriate that this distinctively contemporary music I've been listening to for about an hour and a half just now cycled to a beautiful traditional arrangement of the Doxology on a modern synthesizer. I can't think of a better way to bring my morning thoughts and feelings to a close." Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Amen."
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
A Figment of Your Imagination
"A figment of your imagination --something imagined or created by your mind." Cambridge Dictionary
A relative of mine started seeing things a few years before she died, One of her recurring visions was of a homeless family who lived under a picnic table across the street from her house. She could see them clearly from her kitchen window. For a while the local police department was kind enough to indulge her fantasy and show up when she called. Eventually they were not able to keep up with her requests for help and she had to deal with it alone.
Because of the way our imaginations work, she was actually seeing these people. They existed as clearly in her brain as I did when I appeared on her doorstep. The brain makes no distinction between what we see and hear and what we imagine. Don't you wake up from dreams that were as vivid as any "real" experience you ever had? So to say, "It was just a dream" is not quite accurate is it? Black Elk, a medicine man of the Lakota Sioux, had a profound vision during a life-threatening fever as a child,.This vision shaped his entire future. What he saw and felt had an even more profound impact on him than the fact he fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn and later was present at the Massacre at Wounded Knee, I had a beautiful dream in 1982 that stayed with me for several days. I sought out a minister friend who said, "God has given you an epic dream. If you look at the dream and figure out what it means, it will change the direction of your life." I did. And it did. That was thirty five years ago and I can tell you that dream frame by frame. It not only changed the direction of my life at the time, but it predicted something that would not happen to me for ten more years. "It was just a dream" is a gross understatement. "It is just in your imagination" isn't quite true either.
The problem with our brain's incredible ability to conjure alternate realities is that we allow it to work against us. Fear, anxiety, panic, worry, grief, regret, remorse and a whole host of negative emotions appear to us to be real when they're not. Well, I contradict myself. They appear to be real like this computer desk is real when in fact they are only real like our dreams are real. If a neurosurgeon opened your skull and probed your gray matter to find the dream you had last night, he would never find it. But you can still remember it. It's somewhere. If he looked for your intense fear of snakes there would be no particular neuron are group of brain cells that would contain that fear. That fear does not exist in that sense anywhere in your body. And yet walk up on a snake in your back yard and the fear is more real than the snake itself. The "fight or flight" response is usually flight in this case unless you happen to have a hoe in your hand.
I was thinking about all this earlier today after I was pricked by a painful memory. It was a memory of something that happened over forty years ago. There is nothing about that situation that exists, Some of the people involved exist, but the situation does not exist. But the pain I felt this afternoon was real. The pain did exist. I need to make up my mind, don't I? Did it exist or did it not exist? It did exist, but only in my imagination. I made it up.
The good thing about the imagination is that we can change it on a whim. If we don't like the way our thoughts are making us feel, then we can think about something else. At first you may think that this is impossible, but with practice it becomes second nature. "Make believe you're brave and the trick will take you far.. You can be as brave as you make believe you are."(Whistle a Happy Tune from The King and I).
I want to offer one last contradiction and then bring this somewhat convoluted discourse to an end. Not all emotions can be changed on a whim. Grief is one of the most pervasive and powerful emotions we experience. There is no grief like that of losing your own child. Through a bizarre set of circumstances, I found myself in a grief support group of bereaved parents for a year. I had not lost a child, but they allowed me to share my story of loss and grief with them. As they told their stories of loss over and over, the pain was just as fresh each time. Talking about the pain with supportive people helped, but it certainly didn't make it go away. Unfortunately, that particular pain never completely goes away.
Whereas, I do not want to suggest that you can flip a switch and illumine all your emotional darkness, I do want to suggest that overcoming most negative feelings is possible and is necessary for a full and meaningful life. In the case of my painful memory today, I talked myself off the ledge (so to speak). I had a conversation with myself about it and we both agreed that it was ridiculous for me to invest any time recalling that particular event. We both agreed that I was probably the only one who had given it any thought all those years ago. What possible benefit was there in conjuring it up today? None at all..
Have you ever ventured into The Journey Into Imagination at Epcot? If you did, you heard Figment sing his delightful theme song One Little Spark--"A dream can be a dream come true, if just one spark lights up for you." Everything we see at Walt Disney World, every Disney movie we watch, every song we hear began in Walt Disney's imagination. Imagine that. He thought up the whole thing. Albert Einstein said that the human brain is the most incredible creation in the universe. As a Jew during World War II, he had plenty to worry about. And plenty to break his heart. But his worries were relatively few. He had better things to think about. And so do we.
A relative of mine started seeing things a few years before she died, One of her recurring visions was of a homeless family who lived under a picnic table across the street from her house. She could see them clearly from her kitchen window. For a while the local police department was kind enough to indulge her fantasy and show up when she called. Eventually they were not able to keep up with her requests for help and she had to deal with it alone.
Because of the way our imaginations work, she was actually seeing these people. They existed as clearly in her brain as I did when I appeared on her doorstep. The brain makes no distinction between what we see and hear and what we imagine. Don't you wake up from dreams that were as vivid as any "real" experience you ever had? So to say, "It was just a dream" is not quite accurate is it? Black Elk, a medicine man of the Lakota Sioux, had a profound vision during a life-threatening fever as a child,.This vision shaped his entire future. What he saw and felt had an even more profound impact on him than the fact he fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn and later was present at the Massacre at Wounded Knee, I had a beautiful dream in 1982 that stayed with me for several days. I sought out a minister friend who said, "God has given you an epic dream. If you look at the dream and figure out what it means, it will change the direction of your life." I did. And it did. That was thirty five years ago and I can tell you that dream frame by frame. It not only changed the direction of my life at the time, but it predicted something that would not happen to me for ten more years. "It was just a dream" is a gross understatement. "It is just in your imagination" isn't quite true either.
The problem with our brain's incredible ability to conjure alternate realities is that we allow it to work against us. Fear, anxiety, panic, worry, grief, regret, remorse and a whole host of negative emotions appear to us to be real when they're not. Well, I contradict myself. They appear to be real like this computer desk is real when in fact they are only real like our dreams are real. If a neurosurgeon opened your skull and probed your gray matter to find the dream you had last night, he would never find it. But you can still remember it. It's somewhere. If he looked for your intense fear of snakes there would be no particular neuron are group of brain cells that would contain that fear. That fear does not exist in that sense anywhere in your body. And yet walk up on a snake in your back yard and the fear is more real than the snake itself. The "fight or flight" response is usually flight in this case unless you happen to have a hoe in your hand.
I was thinking about all this earlier today after I was pricked by a painful memory. It was a memory of something that happened over forty years ago. There is nothing about that situation that exists, Some of the people involved exist, but the situation does not exist. But the pain I felt this afternoon was real. The pain did exist. I need to make up my mind, don't I? Did it exist or did it not exist? It did exist, but only in my imagination. I made it up.
The good thing about the imagination is that we can change it on a whim. If we don't like the way our thoughts are making us feel, then we can think about something else. At first you may think that this is impossible, but with practice it becomes second nature. "Make believe you're brave and the trick will take you far.. You can be as brave as you make believe you are."(Whistle a Happy Tune from The King and I).
I want to offer one last contradiction and then bring this somewhat convoluted discourse to an end. Not all emotions can be changed on a whim. Grief is one of the most pervasive and powerful emotions we experience. There is no grief like that of losing your own child. Through a bizarre set of circumstances, I found myself in a grief support group of bereaved parents for a year. I had not lost a child, but they allowed me to share my story of loss and grief with them. As they told their stories of loss over and over, the pain was just as fresh each time. Talking about the pain with supportive people helped, but it certainly didn't make it go away. Unfortunately, that particular pain never completely goes away.
Whereas, I do not want to suggest that you can flip a switch and illumine all your emotional darkness, I do want to suggest that overcoming most negative feelings is possible and is necessary for a full and meaningful life. In the case of my painful memory today, I talked myself off the ledge (so to speak). I had a conversation with myself about it and we both agreed that it was ridiculous for me to invest any time recalling that particular event. We both agreed that I was probably the only one who had given it any thought all those years ago. What possible benefit was there in conjuring it up today? None at all..
Have you ever ventured into The Journey Into Imagination at Epcot? If you did, you heard Figment sing his delightful theme song One Little Spark--"A dream can be a dream come true, if just one spark lights up for you." Everything we see at Walt Disney World, every Disney movie we watch, every song we hear began in Walt Disney's imagination. Imagine that. He thought up the whole thing. Albert Einstein said that the human brain is the most incredible creation in the universe. As a Jew during World War II, he had plenty to worry about. And plenty to break his heart. But his worries were relatively few. He had better things to think about. And so do we.
Monday, April 3, 2017
Playing by Heart
My mother was deeply affected by music. She sang in choirs in school and in church, but as far as I know she never "studied music." But she insisted that her children include formal music training in their activities.
Every time I switch on my Roland RD 800 synthesizer, I think about my mother and thank her for encouragement to include music in my life. It's a strange irony, however, that I had to overcome a lot of what my mother taught me about playing the piano to get to the place that I actually enjoy it.
This synthesizer is quite incredible. For every button, switch and setting I know how to use, there are dozens that I have not figured out. It is these settings that I don't know how to use that stopped my enjoyment of the machine for quite some time. None of this was Mother's fault and is not the point I want to make about her. All of this is on me. Then it occurred to me to use and enjoy the settings I do understand. It was at that point that I began to spend quality time making music on my synthesizer.
The piano was the gateway my mother choose for me to enter the world of music appreciation. In many ways, however, the opposite happened. "Practicing the piano" was drudgery. While my friends were outside playing, I had to "practice the piano" for thirty minutes a day. Like going to the dentist, it was just something I had to do. "Practicing the piano" involved playing and memorizing boring songs all of which meant nothing to me. Furthermore, our piano was rather crummy and produced no sounds that were particularly aesthetically pleasing. But for five long years I "practiced the piano." In spite of my attitude, I did learn to play pretty well, There was little "music" involved, but at least I could play.
Our piano was in our living room. Strange thing about that room. We had a small two bedroom house. After my sister was born, Mom and Dad remodeled the house to add another bedroom and bathroom. But the odd thing is that they added a fairly large living room. A room we seldom used. It had some nice furniture and a piano. We spent our family time in the den of the original house. But I spent a lot of time in the living room alone "practicing the piano." As I got older and my ability increased I began to make up music on my own. This music I really enjoyed playing. But inevitably mother would yell from the den, "You're not practicing!" And I would get back to my required playing.
In spite of my "early childhood development" or lack thereof, I entered music school and earned a couple of degrees. I also earned the respect of my professors and classmates as an accomplished musician. But most of that music was someone else's creation and I was simply re-creating.
But my music, that music I was pounding out on my piano in my living room all those years ago, had waited long enough. About three years ago I bought a synthesizer, a Roland RD 800. And the rest, as they say, is history, my personal music history. Every time I switch it on I think "Mom, you'd be proud. I'm about to 'practice my piano' in ways that you never imagined." I smile when I open my favorite "lesson book", The John Thompson Modern Course for the Piano, Third Grade Book,. This is the book I was in when I quit taking piano in the eighth grade. And before you judge, "Third Grade" doesn't mean easy. But it isn't playing from that book that brings me the most joy, it's the music I create and compose that I enjoy playing the most. And I "practice" for hours at a time. And the amazing thing is that much of this music is based on themes, chords and motifs I created back home in my living room (when Mom wasn't listening). Through seven years of formal music education, singing and directing a world of music, my own music never left me. I just needed the right instrument.
When I'm at home and I want to listen to beautiful music, I boot up Spotify and switch on my Bose headphones. But sometimes when I want to listen to beautiful music, I plug my headphones into my synthesizer, switch it on, open my composition book and I play. I'm the one that's playing, but I'm also the one that's listening--to my own music! And I think "Thanks Mom. Sometimes meaning well is good enough. You had the wrong approach, but you had the right idea and for that I'm eternally grateful"
That.living room was a lot of empty space. But it wasn't wasted space. There was a piano in that room and I played it quite often. My head thought I was "practicing", but my heart was listening all along.
Every time I switch on my Roland RD 800 synthesizer, I think about my mother and thank her for encouragement to include music in my life. It's a strange irony, however, that I had to overcome a lot of what my mother taught me about playing the piano to get to the place that I actually enjoy it.
This synthesizer is quite incredible. For every button, switch and setting I know how to use, there are dozens that I have not figured out. It is these settings that I don't know how to use that stopped my enjoyment of the machine for quite some time. None of this was Mother's fault and is not the point I want to make about her. All of this is on me. Then it occurred to me to use and enjoy the settings I do understand. It was at that point that I began to spend quality time making music on my synthesizer.
The piano was the gateway my mother choose for me to enter the world of music appreciation. In many ways, however, the opposite happened. "Practicing the piano" was drudgery. While my friends were outside playing, I had to "practice the piano" for thirty minutes a day. Like going to the dentist, it was just something I had to do. "Practicing the piano" involved playing and memorizing boring songs all of which meant nothing to me. Furthermore, our piano was rather crummy and produced no sounds that were particularly aesthetically pleasing. But for five long years I "practiced the piano." In spite of my attitude, I did learn to play pretty well, There was little "music" involved, but at least I could play.
Our piano was in our living room. Strange thing about that room. We had a small two bedroom house. After my sister was born, Mom and Dad remodeled the house to add another bedroom and bathroom. But the odd thing is that they added a fairly large living room. A room we seldom used. It had some nice furniture and a piano. We spent our family time in the den of the original house. But I spent a lot of time in the living room alone "practicing the piano." As I got older and my ability increased I began to make up music on my own. This music I really enjoyed playing. But inevitably mother would yell from the den, "You're not practicing!" And I would get back to my required playing.
In spite of my "early childhood development" or lack thereof, I entered music school and earned a couple of degrees. I also earned the respect of my professors and classmates as an accomplished musician. But most of that music was someone else's creation and I was simply re-creating.
But my music, that music I was pounding out on my piano in my living room all those years ago, had waited long enough. About three years ago I bought a synthesizer, a Roland RD 800. And the rest, as they say, is history, my personal music history. Every time I switch it on I think "Mom, you'd be proud. I'm about to 'practice my piano' in ways that you never imagined." I smile when I open my favorite "lesson book", The John Thompson Modern Course for the Piano, Third Grade Book,. This is the book I was in when I quit taking piano in the eighth grade. And before you judge, "Third Grade" doesn't mean easy. But it isn't playing from that book that brings me the most joy, it's the music I create and compose that I enjoy playing the most. And I "practice" for hours at a time. And the amazing thing is that much of this music is based on themes, chords and motifs I created back home in my living room (when Mom wasn't listening). Through seven years of formal music education, singing and directing a world of music, my own music never left me. I just needed the right instrument.
When I'm at home and I want to listen to beautiful music, I boot up Spotify and switch on my Bose headphones. But sometimes when I want to listen to beautiful music, I plug my headphones into my synthesizer, switch it on, open my composition book and I play. I'm the one that's playing, but I'm also the one that's listening--to my own music! And I think "Thanks Mom. Sometimes meaning well is good enough. You had the wrong approach, but you had the right idea and for that I'm eternally grateful"
That.living room was a lot of empty space. But it wasn't wasted space. There was a piano in that room and I played it quite often. My head thought I was "practicing", but my heart was listening all along.
Saturday, April 1, 2017
Bernstein Meets Einstein
con.duct--the art of directing a musical performance
Homonyms are words that have the same spelling and pronunciation, but different meanings. There are hundreds of them, if not thousands, in the English language. Homonyms are some of the reasons the English language is so difficult to learn as a second language.
A "crane", for example, can be a bird. It can also be a large machine used for moving heavy objects. Or as a verb one can "crane" his neck to see better. "Leaves" fall from trees. There are "leaves" of a table., Or as a verb, every morning your mother "leaves" for work.
A homonym close to my heart is "conduct." It can mean the way one "conducts" himself, the way one behaves. A wire can "conduct" electricity allowing the flow a current from one place to another. But the definition that describes how I have much of my time is the verb regarding my ability to "conduct" choirs, something I have done for most of my life.
So many activities involve "the art and the science" of that endeavor. Although the definition calls it an art, conducting a choir or an orchestra certainly involves both. More specifically, conducting encompasses one of the "formal sciences" called mathematics. A piece of music is divided into measures. Each measure has a specific number of beats. Four beats, called Common Time, is in fact very common. But a measure can have one beat, two beats, up to as many as twelve beats. Depending on the tempo and other artistic considerations, a conductor can conduct each beat separately or group them together. For example, in a measure of six beats, the conductor may conduct each beat or conduct two beats of three notes. This decision can become quite complicated in a measure with an odd number of notes such as a seven measure. In a faster tempo, the conductor directs two beats in each measure. But s/he has a choice of how to conduct the three or the four group of notes. The conductor directs two beats, but either the group of three notes or four notes can come first or second. That choice creates an entirely different rhythmic pattern. Furthermore, that pattern can change measure by measure depending on the intention of the composer, lyrics of a choral piece and the decision of the conductor.
Any novice conductor learns conducting patterns to wave in the air. Each of the groupings above requires a different pattern-- a four pattern or a three pattern, etc. There are several different patterns that music directors use. Again there are choices. In a measure of six beats, s/he might conduct a six pattern or a two pattern depending on the tempo and artistic considerations. The members of the ensemble depend on those patterns to know where they are in the music and what's expected of them.
My undergraduate music degree was music education. And then I earned a master of conducting at the graduate level. I know more than a little about the art and science of choral conducting. In my next life I am going to focus much less on the science of conducting and much more on the art. Maybe a wire's ability to conduct electricity and the musicians ability to conduct a choir are not so different after all.. The music doesn't just come to you, it comes through you.
During my years of formal music education, I learned as much watching conductors as I did in any classes of instruction. The conductor of the choir at my undergraduate level was a conducting wizard. He conducted as much with his facial expressions as he did with his arms and hands. Like a master puppeteer, he pulled the strings of his a cappella choir of sixty four-- eight voices for each of eight vocal parts The result was extraordinary. Each voice was a living, breathing pipe of that magnificent organ. For three years I was one of those voices.
It was my experience, however that his ability to teach the conducting method was much less than his ability to conduct. He said something several times in class that I took literally. That comment was to profoundly affect my conducting method for over forty years. He admonished, "Important too is the back view." I never stood before a choir without considering what my conducting behavior looked like from behind me. And then at the graduate level, my very accomplished conducting professor reversed "the sum of its parts" and disassembled a musical score to each measure and sometimes to each note. From mainland China, his English left a little to be desired as he often asked,"Class, how are you going to do with that beat?" So concerns for my back view and the science of each note became my modus operandi, The science is vitally important, and it served me well, but should not have superseded the art. Next time.
The best conductors, the great conductors are not too concerned about that. The art of conducting is much more profound than its science, They conduct with their entire bodies--hands, arms, head, face, shoulders, torso. Watch Leonard Bernstein in particular. He not only used his arms and hands, but used all of his body to conduct-- to allow the music to flow through him, He was especially adept at using his shoulders, but he often virtually danced on the podium to move the choir and orchestra.
Just like my undergraduate choir conductor was not a bad teacher, I was not a bad conductor. But in his case and mine, we could have done better. Instead of "Important too is the back view", he could have said, "Music creates its own energy, so just go with it.." And I could have taken his back view admonition with a huge grain of musical salt. Burt he said what he said and I did what I did and in spite of that much good music ensued.
One incredible irony of the universe we live in is that just as you can't escape the science of art, science can't escape its art. In the early 20th century Albert Einstein postulated in his theory of relativity the existence of gravitational waves. Just in the last two years the scientists of the LIGO project (laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory) have discovered these waves millions of light years away. The waves of gravity no longer exist only in Einstein's mind, but they actually exist. And as the fates would have it, these waves are singing. They are not only singing, but they are singing on middle C. Art can't escape science and science can't escape art. Then is Someone conducting these waves? That is a question more for theologians than for scientists.
But in my next life I may come back not as an artist, but as a scientist. Both the infinite macrocosm of the cosmos and the microcosm of quantum physics excite me. The science would be the main course of study, but the art would not be far away. While studying calculus at another college later in life, for the first time I understood the adage "the beauty of math." I actually derived aesthetic pleasure from this formal science. It was the most demanding course of study in all my years of education, but my barely passing grade was one of the most satisfying accomplishments of my academic life.
Art and science are opposite sides of the same coin. They can't be separated. During all those years as I demonstrated the science of conducting, the artist was at work as well. The music of those choirs I conducted could have been better, but if I had not been standing on that podium the music wouldn't have existed at all.
I'm listening to Ola Gjeilo's The Spheres for choir and string ensemble. It is written in 2/2. Two beats in each measure and the half note gets the beat. I would direct it in two. But the tempo is so slow and the music so fluid. I think I could conduct it with only my head and face. My undergraduate conducting instructor would say, "I rest my case. The back view is perfect. And the music is perfect too." "Thanks for your instruction, It made all the difference in the world. And I love my world."
Homonyms are words that have the same spelling and pronunciation, but different meanings. There are hundreds of them, if not thousands, in the English language. Homonyms are some of the reasons the English language is so difficult to learn as a second language.
A "crane", for example, can be a bird. It can also be a large machine used for moving heavy objects. Or as a verb one can "crane" his neck to see better. "Leaves" fall from trees. There are "leaves" of a table., Or as a verb, every morning your mother "leaves" for work.
A homonym close to my heart is "conduct." It can mean the way one "conducts" himself, the way one behaves. A wire can "conduct" electricity allowing the flow a current from one place to another. But the definition that describes how I have much of my time is the verb regarding my ability to "conduct" choirs, something I have done for most of my life.
So many activities involve "the art and the science" of that endeavor. Although the definition calls it an art, conducting a choir or an orchestra certainly involves both. More specifically, conducting encompasses one of the "formal sciences" called mathematics. A piece of music is divided into measures. Each measure has a specific number of beats. Four beats, called Common Time, is in fact very common. But a measure can have one beat, two beats, up to as many as twelve beats. Depending on the tempo and other artistic considerations, a conductor can conduct each beat separately or group them together. For example, in a measure of six beats, the conductor may conduct each beat or conduct two beats of three notes. This decision can become quite complicated in a measure with an odd number of notes such as a seven measure. In a faster tempo, the conductor directs two beats in each measure. But s/he has a choice of how to conduct the three or the four group of notes. The conductor directs two beats, but either the group of three notes or four notes can come first or second. That choice creates an entirely different rhythmic pattern. Furthermore, that pattern can change measure by measure depending on the intention of the composer, lyrics of a choral piece and the decision of the conductor.
Any novice conductor learns conducting patterns to wave in the air. Each of the groupings above requires a different pattern-- a four pattern or a three pattern, etc. There are several different patterns that music directors use. Again there are choices. In a measure of six beats, s/he might conduct a six pattern or a two pattern depending on the tempo and artistic considerations. The members of the ensemble depend on those patterns to know where they are in the music and what's expected of them.
My undergraduate music degree was music education. And then I earned a master of conducting at the graduate level. I know more than a little about the art and science of choral conducting. In my next life I am going to focus much less on the science of conducting and much more on the art. Maybe a wire's ability to conduct electricity and the musicians ability to conduct a choir are not so different after all.. The music doesn't just come to you, it comes through you.
During my years of formal music education, I learned as much watching conductors as I did in any classes of instruction. The conductor of the choir at my undergraduate level was a conducting wizard. He conducted as much with his facial expressions as he did with his arms and hands. Like a master puppeteer, he pulled the strings of his a cappella choir of sixty four-- eight voices for each of eight vocal parts The result was extraordinary. Each voice was a living, breathing pipe of that magnificent organ. For three years I was one of those voices.
It was my experience, however that his ability to teach the conducting method was much less than his ability to conduct. He said something several times in class that I took literally. That comment was to profoundly affect my conducting method for over forty years. He admonished, "Important too is the back view." I never stood before a choir without considering what my conducting behavior looked like from behind me. And then at the graduate level, my very accomplished conducting professor reversed "the sum of its parts" and disassembled a musical score to each measure and sometimes to each note. From mainland China, his English left a little to be desired as he often asked,"Class, how are you going to do with that beat?" So concerns for my back view and the science of each note became my modus operandi, The science is vitally important, and it served me well, but should not have superseded the art. Next time.
The best conductors, the great conductors are not too concerned about that. The art of conducting is much more profound than its science, They conduct with their entire bodies--hands, arms, head, face, shoulders, torso. Watch Leonard Bernstein in particular. He not only used his arms and hands, but used all of his body to conduct-- to allow the music to flow through him, He was especially adept at using his shoulders, but he often virtually danced on the podium to move the choir and orchestra.
Just like my undergraduate choir conductor was not a bad teacher, I was not a bad conductor. But in his case and mine, we could have done better. Instead of "Important too is the back view", he could have said, "Music creates its own energy, so just go with it.." And I could have taken his back view admonition with a huge grain of musical salt. Burt he said what he said and I did what I did and in spite of that much good music ensued.
One incredible irony of the universe we live in is that just as you can't escape the science of art, science can't escape its art. In the early 20th century Albert Einstein postulated in his theory of relativity the existence of gravitational waves. Just in the last two years the scientists of the LIGO project (laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory) have discovered these waves millions of light years away. The waves of gravity no longer exist only in Einstein's mind, but they actually exist. And as the fates would have it, these waves are singing. They are not only singing, but they are singing on middle C. Art can't escape science and science can't escape art. Then is Someone conducting these waves? That is a question more for theologians than for scientists.
But in my next life I may come back not as an artist, but as a scientist. Both the infinite macrocosm of the cosmos and the microcosm of quantum physics excite me. The science would be the main course of study, but the art would not be far away. While studying calculus at another college later in life, for the first time I understood the adage "the beauty of math." I actually derived aesthetic pleasure from this formal science. It was the most demanding course of study in all my years of education, but my barely passing grade was one of the most satisfying accomplishments of my academic life.
Art and science are opposite sides of the same coin. They can't be separated. During all those years as I demonstrated the science of conducting, the artist was at work as well. The music of those choirs I conducted could have been better, but if I had not been standing on that podium the music wouldn't have existed at all.
I'm listening to Ola Gjeilo's The Spheres for choir and string ensemble. It is written in 2/2. Two beats in each measure and the half note gets the beat. I would direct it in two. But the tempo is so slow and the music so fluid. I think I could conduct it with only my head and face. My undergraduate conducting instructor would say, "I rest my case. The back view is perfect. And the music is perfect too." "Thanks for your instruction, It made all the difference in the world. And I love my world."
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