Tangents

So, between allergies and scratches and figurative kicks in the teeth and waking up hung over (which seemed profoundly unfair because it was one flute of prosecco during a retirement-party Zoom and one flute of vermouth after dinner, but apparently that's one digestif too many for my metabolism these days) and nearly putting antibiotic ointment instead of toothpaste on my brush -- well. Hello, dregs of February.

But I slogged through this, that, and more, so some deliverables got delivered, some reportables got reported, the house is cleaner, and I pulled together a lemon-rosemary-olive-panko-parmesan-macaroni thing for dinner. It was mild enough today to walk to the Little Free Library in sandals. There have also been three rabbit holes: One was the lore surrounding St. Matthias, in the course of pulling together twelve lines for tomorrow's Tupelo poem; I was also intrigued by the why and wherefore of coppices, but that didn't make it into the draft. (Today's contribution was 14 lines of dog-gerel, so to speak . . .)

The second was triggered by Sam's Tumblr post on Sargent's depiction of Robert Louis and Fanny Stevenson. What an intricate household that was. I did not know that Fanny and her daughter Isobel were both cougars (with the same writer-illustrator).

I have not watched this video of "Let Beauty Awake" in full yet, but even a few seconds . . .

The last is a current memory-melody worm: there's a Swedish cradle song in a 1957 textbook called Singing in Harmony that one of my elementary schools discarded when I was a kid. (The Commonwealth of Kentucky Public Instruction stamp inside the front cover has a line where one was supposed to indicate "White" or "Colored" . . .) The setting is similar to some Beethoven art-songs I'm fond of; the next-to-last measure particularly gets me, and I've played it several times today:



Last night I looked up the composer and lyricist. There doesn't seem to be much online about W. Th. Söderberg (though the song got around enough to merit sheet music for mandolin and guitar -- published in Seattle . . .), but the author of the English words, one "Auber Forestier," turns out to have been the formidable Aubertine Woodward Moore, whose many roles included serving as music director of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin. (For some other day: she apparently gave Whitman season tickets she couldn't use and may have been on a first-name basis with Alcotts and Emersons and fiddlin' Bulls . . .) This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/172559.html.

...a friend or associate of a former classmate tweeted a video of harpsichordist Scott Ross, who died of AIDS-related pneumonia 30 years ago.

There is a recording on YouTube of Ross playing the Gigue from Rameau's "First Book of Keyboard Pieces," which happens to be what I played most often on the harpsichords around Connecticut College back in July.

This morning I sang a solo about God having countless names and faces, and slid a stone into our water communion bowl in memory of Thomas Peck.

This entry was originally posted at https://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/159186.html.

People gathered from near and far,
In small groups and large,
To share their fears and grief
And the darkness in their hearts.

A year like no other, this was,
Testing us beyond what we'd ever imagined.
Day after day, week after week,
We found ourselves growing
And becoming sturdy
Because there was no other choice.

[I sang this years ago. Something I learned today: the ritual it comes from was co-written by a Unitarian Universalist and "a self-described Quaker witch" (source: http://indysolstice.com).]

This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/406596.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.

There's a feature on Dr. Ysaye Barnwell in the current issue of UU World. It includes this:

She turns solemn and angry talking about how "Kumbaya," which means "Come by Here" in the Gullah language, has become snarky shorthand for feel-good or weak-minded groupthink. A soulful cry sung by the Georgia Sea Island slaves, the song was carried on by Southern blacks in the time of Jim Crow and lynch mobs, and later by the Freedom Riders when they learned three of their workers had been murdered by Klansmen. "When people say, 'It was a Kumbaya moment,' it clearly was not a Kumbaya moment," Barnwell admonished. "It's actually an invocation for God to come by here now because things are needed. If you hear people use it mistakenly, gently correct them."

Barnwell elaborated on this at the end of today's workshop at First UU Nashville, whose members will be singing a half-dozen-plus songs/arrangements by Barnwell tomorrow morning (9 a.m. and 11 a.m.). The Freedom Riders sang "Kumbaya" in their camp at a point where calling to God felt like the only option. Barnwell demonstrated how she sometimes opens concerts with a furious, fast, rough-edged rendition of "Kumbaya" that is nothing like the Girl Scout version -- to get the audience toward hearing it as the bone-deep cry for help the words are to convey.

A recurring theme in the workshop: take time to think about the words of spirituals from the perspective of the enslaved, often after being preached to by so-called Christian masters. What is being taught or signaled?

A book to read: Rising from the Rails -- how the Pullman porters led the creation of the black middle class, all the while navigating social tightropes. Barnwell described how the porters closely observed the lives of affluent white passengers , to then subsequently teach about investing and other skills new to most postbellum communities. How the porters would gather up discarded newspapers in the cars, bundle them up, and toss them into towns where newspapers weren't available.

There was much more. I sat, stood, and danced among and between several different people during the course of the day. The afternoon session included a quolidbet that combined "Honor, Honor," "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," "I’m a Rollin’," "Couldn’t Hear Nobody Pray," "My Good Lawd Done Been Here," and "Please, Lordy," with "Honor, Honor" in harmony.

Something for me to work toward and look forward to: taming my schedule enough to sing more marching songs and quolidbets. Someday.

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/132896.html.

#joyfuljan

Something I have been giving thanks for recently: living long enough to enjoy the company of people who share my interests, and to see some of those interests catch hold in larger circles and even get their fifteen minutes (and then some).

The John Laurens biography is a gift from around 15 years ago, from a friend I met back when our journals were on Diaryland. I first heard of Laurens during the 1984 miniseries on George Washington, and developed such a crush on the combination of his idealism + tragic fate (or, to be precise, Barry-Bostwick-as-Washington's reaction to it) + the actor portraying him (Kevin Conroy, since known mainly as the voice of Batman) that I ended up combing through all the Washington bios in the high school and local university library for any mention of Laurens, writing two papers on him and drafting a third ("Alexander Hamilton's Best Friend") in my 30s.

So it was a hoot for me to check in on Jen Talley's timeline yesterday, where she was live-tweeting about Hamilbrarians rapping (#alamw4ham #Lib4Ham #alamw16)...

Nothing quite like a roomful of librarians singing at the top of their lungs "When you knock me down I get the F*#% BACK UP AGAIN!" #lib4ham

— Jessica Storrs (@wanderingjess) January 9, 2016

...which is icing on top of my Hamilton-Laurens stocking stuffer having 1066 hits as of today.

If I'm remembering right, I "met" Jen through a Sayers mailing list and then stayed connected through Diaryland and now Twitter. I met dichroic through the same Sayers list, and this year she answered my yearning for the baby Loch Ness monster ladle in the photo above. A friend I met through Snupin fandom sent the sleeping dragon cake pan.

I mentioned both the ladle and the pan yesterday night at a party, having been greeted by the substantial Nessie sculpture in the host's front yard. During the course of the evening, the conversations also included Cthulhu, Doris Salcedo, earring backs, film processing, Stephen King, parks, bruxism, real estate, the High Museum, imaging tech, karaoke at the American Legion, cold water flats in Africa, and trying to finish art/craft projects begun mumble-mumble years ago.

And also cancer and health: one of the guests was a man younger than me with a newly installed replacement hip -- one of many surgeries resulting from cancer + treatment. He emphasized how glad he was to still be here. Another guest was a librarian who, as she put it, will be living with myeloma for the rest of her life. The day before, a friend from high school e-mailed me about a classmate who has just begun treatment for leukemia.

Which all ties back to feeling so immensely grateful that I am here, and you are here, and we together get to giggle and admire and obsess and shout out these things to each other and (if/when we choose) to those in the wider world longing for the spark and sizzle and solace of shared interests, and the things we make and send in celebration.

This entry was originally posted at http://bronze-ribbons.dreamwidth.org/399830.html. I see comments at DW, IJ, and LJ (when notifications are working, anyway), but not on feeds.

A June tradition at my church is Music Sunday, and this coming Sunday, at 9 a.m. and at 11 a.m., the choir will be performing a new setting of Darrell Grant's Ruby Bridges Suite.

It is going to be outstanding. Darrell Grant is on piano and keyboard; man can play. Brian Foti on drums -- ditto. Same for the guy on string bass (whose name I didn't catch, apologies!). Connye Florance is one of the soloists (I haven't heard Lari White yet, who's another). Majic Jackson narrating, with words by MLK and Maya Angelou and others. The gifted and dedicated Seth Adler working sound. Yes, I'm name-dropping, because some of you locals need that to get you out of the house on a summer morning (and I include myself in that group).

Some of the songs have had me tearing up as I study them. The text alone won't convey why -- it's the rise and fall of melody and harmony that hits me in the gut -- but here are some of the lines anyway. In "Hold My Hand," Ruby's mother sings to her:


Hold my hand, child, hold my hand
Someday you will understand
Straight ahead, child, never fear
God is watching, love is near

For the world, child, is not fair
Danger follows everywhere
Lift your eyes, child
You will see
God is watching
You are free

And in "Come in," a teacher sings to her student:

Ruby, you're a special one.
Pray that I can see you through.
There's so much meanness in the world
but you should know they don't see what I see.
In here you're just a little girl
who has a right to learn who she can be.

With faith, and time,
you'll see that I believe in you.
We've much to learn, we two.

Darrell says he spent twenty years writing the finale, "We Rise," originally composing it for a sophomore album that fell through, and then revising it periodically (with a four-bar stretch that kept defying his attempts to perfect the piece), and then realizing that all the great creators resort to "shims" at times, and later recognizing that the suite was where the piece belonged...

Rise up, brand new day
You know that love will find a way
Together we cannot be broken
Up from the bitter past we rise
To build a world where peace is spoken
The time is now
At last we rise
This time the circle can't be broken
This time the ghosts of hate must die
We'll throw the gates of Freedom open
The time is now
At last we rise

Again, the music is essential -- left to my own devices, I don't know that love will find a way, I see circles broken every damn day, and on, and on, but when I'm singing those words, my unbelief doesn't matter. Rise up, brand new day.

Like many other commuters, I've been cranky about the congestion amplified by CMA Fest (a friend retweeted Gretchen Peters's quip about meanderthals, and I admit I laughed out loud) ... but I've also been entertained by the skin and plumage on display, and I managed to miss the fish parts on the interstate snarl-up, and I give thanks yet again for the pleasure of living in a city with session players on virtually every block. When I got home tonight, the rock cellist and/or guitarist (not always sure what the instrument is, but the playing is consistently good) who lives a couple of houses away was practicing licks.

Music in the air, fireflies in the yard, doggie at the door, piano waiting ... praise.

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/107424.html.

I have been humming "I Am That Great and Fiery Force" to myself since Sunday, when it was sung as one of the morning songs at church. Words by Hildegarde von Bingen, set to "Ave Vera Virginitas" by Josquin Desprez -- you can hear a bit of it sung by Missing Rachel, and longer versions of the tune on YouTube, inluding one by a Slovak choir, the Hilliard Ensemble, et al. The verses:

I am that great and fiery force
sparkling in everything that lives;
in shining of the river's course,
in greening grass that glory gives.

I shine in glitter on the seas,
in burning sun, in moon and stars.
In unseen wind, in verdant trees
I breathe within, both near and far.

And where I breathe there is no death,
and meadows glow with beauties rife.
I am in all, the spirit's breath,
the thundered word, for I am Life.

The chamber choir sang two pieces, including the Real Group's "Words," which was applauded at both services.

Present reading: Erica E. Hirshler's Sargent's Daughters: The Biography of a Painting

Recent cooking: Chicken with mushroom-wine sauce (and parsley from an early birthday present); Mexican-ish brownies for a Cinco de Mayo potluck (using salted caramel cocoa mix, throwing in a cupful of chocolate chips, cutting the sugar in half, and ancho chile powder -- they turned out fine. The intern who shares my office gushed about them without knowing I was the one who made them. \o/); fufu (to go with the leftover chicken)

Today's workout: a long swim. I had lane 2 to myself, which meant I could indulge in backstroke as well as freestyle.

Today's remaining goal: some ironing. Chores toward comfort: story of my life. ;)

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/105325.html.

I attended a memorial service for the extraordinary Elizabeth Papousek this morning. At the end of the service, Rev. Seavey said that opening the hymnal at random (a habit of Elizabeth's at worship committee meetings) had led her to these words of Maria Mitchell (a Unitarian as well as an astronomer):

Small as is our whole system compared with the infinitude of
creation,

Brief as is our life compared with the cycles of time,

We are so tethered to all by the beautiful dependencies of law,

That not only the sparrow’s fall is felt to the uttermost bound but the vibrations set in motion by the words that we utter reach through all space and the tremor is felt through all time.

After the reception, I stopped at the Green Hills library, where some Advent calendars from the collection of the Steele Family were on display, including one featuring planets and stars:





(I also saw three other church members at the library while I was there. My tribe indeed.)

This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/94143.html.

From Sophie Appleby, via Kat McNally:

In the busyness of the everyday, taking time to nourish the soul doesn't reach the top of the 'to do' list as often as it should. What nourishes your soul? How would you like to incorporate more of this into your life in 2015?

This year, there were a handful of Fridays where I was able to stay offline from sundown on Friday to sunrise on Saturday, and sometimes even until sundown on Saturday as well. I'm a happier woman when I can manage it. It can be time for reading. Time at the piano. Time with crayons and pencils and markers. Time with my plants and seeds and my plans for them. Time ironing -- which is, yes, a chore, but also a pleasure, in wearing clothes and using and linens that look and feel better when cared for in that fashion. Time with the dog. Time sifting through old papers and keepsakes. It sharpens the saw, to borrow Franklin Covey terminology. It brings a bounce back into my brain. It forces me to wait for answers instead of racing toward them, and insists on my enjoying slices of the "someday" ("someday I'll read that book..." "someday I'll get the hang of sight-reading pieces with umpteen sharps in the key signature..." "someday I'll expand those eleven words into a full sestina...") that I would otherwise not get around to anytime soon. Tuesday night, I was so dead on my feet that lighting candles was out of the question. Tonight was nice, though. It was a long day at the office and there was yet more work-related stuff to deal with when I got home, but once that was out of the way, it was time for light and for some writing and wrapping. I sketched this hanukkiah a couple of weeks ago during a visit to Martin ArtQuest Gallery at the Frist Center (where, full disclosure, I'm currently working as their interim editor). Earlier this week, I spent the end of my lunch break at another crafting station stocked with metallic crayon-pencils and translucent bookmark, the better to add a chalice to my bulletin board: (Yes, Michigan tweeps, that's a Zingerman's postcard. I dig the moose and waterfowl.) On a related note, here's what's happening at the Center the rest of the year, narrated by the newbie: http://fristcenter.org/calendar-exhibitions/detail/at-the-frist52 This entry was originally posted at http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/93944.html.

Last summer, when I went to the Highlands-Cashiers Chamber Music Festival in North Carolina, I was captivated by the beautiful woman turning pages for William Ransom. She had silver hair and wide eyes and she was so engaged with the music -- not histrionically or showtastically or in any way in the way of the performance, yet vibrantly, fully present.

I was introduced to her at a reception after the concert, but with our first names only, so several minutes went by before the clues added up and I realized I was talking to a woman whose hymns I'd sung many times. At which point I fear I went into stammering fangirl mode, but she handled that graciously, of course.

Last night -- at the end of chamber choir rehearsal -- I learned that Shelley's husband had passed away in May, and that she died on Sunday of a heart attack.

I have Singing the Living Tradition open at the moment to #86:

Spirit of great mystery,
hear the still, small voice in me.
Help me live my wordless creed
as I comfort those in need.
Fill me with compassion,
be the source of my intuition.
Then, when life is done for me,
let love be my legacy.

--Shelley Jackson Denham, 1987

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