Mother's Day

We gathered around her sickbed – my two younger brothers and I. And we watched as our mere presence began to revive her. First, she got color in her cheeks. There was a clear, bright sparkle returning to her eyes. There was a brown bruise mark near her left eye that she’d gotten when she fainted six weeks ago, when she fell head-first and hit the pavement. We watched as her wounds began to fade. She was weak and tired, from a month of pneumonia and we watched as she began to perk up, respond to our meager jokes with a smile – she gets it. She had no appetite, she said. And we coaxed her into eating. Ice cream was the essential ingredient – one quarter of a turkey sandwich and a whole scoop of ice cream – and we watched as her energy level began to rise.

We worked hard to be attentive, but not hovering; to engage but not over-tire her; we gave her all of our attention without expecting any return. It was our turn. We were just there: Rob would go out to the patio for a cigarette but he was sure to remain in sight; he texted his wife who was 600 miles away – he is both places at once. Mark checked his email on my laptop, and conversed at the same time with that easy, hearty laugh he is the master of joviality. I ran down to the dining room to get her a cup of orange juice, or fixed the CD player and put some music on, I was generally puttering and being present at the same time. Late at night, I laid on the couch and listened for her gentle old-lady snore to signal that she was sleeping and then I slept.

I thought about the delicate balance of dignity and the quality of life. Eighty-nine years old and facing the end like a wall. What she wants is to get back to normal. This IS the New Normal: nobody thinks beyond the moment when we all return home to our lives and she continues to recuperate. The New Normal is an apartment in an old “independent seniors” facility. Normal is everyone who knows her who waits while she dredges up their name and tries to be polite and honest at the same time.

She wonders if it’s worth the effort. Maybe she does it for us - her kids? For the sake of her friends? For the memory of Dad? For one more dish of ice cream? One more game of bridge? And a constant prayer… “surrounded by the love of God” ? And all she wants is for us all to be together again - her “three good kids.”

We all did the best we could.

Let Evening Come

Text & Time In The Music

All right, all right - I've had it!

I know the answer, and I've been waiting for somebody to ask me the question - but I can't stand it any more. Sitting through HOURs - months! - of rehearsals; being yelled at by punk-baby conductors who "...can't understand why your diction isn't clear! ... can't understand what we're singing!... yadda, yadda, yadda!" This is Basic Brow-beating 101. And they just don't get it! Somebody print this up and put it on his piano!

Diction is a property of time.

It is not a matter of how you pronounce it but when.

In the rhythm of the text everything happens in precise sequential moments in time, together, all the same way. Just as unison vowel color results in a beautiful choral tone, so does rhythmically articulated consonants result in crystal clear text.

All the time people tell me - "I've never been very good with rhythm" And I tell them, I was never very good with rhythm, UNTIL I learned how to count-sing.

So the task - as a choral musician begins to learn the music is as follows:
1. Count-sing ( eewww ...we hate count-singing! we just wanna sing the music)
Why? - because count-singing gives the pitches a metric context in time.
Repeat after me: "count-singing gives the pitches a metric context in time."

It's about accents, and weight within the measure. It's about tapping your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time. It's about reading music without having to think of anything but the count. It's about finding and maintaining a consistent tempo in an ensemble. It's about multiple parts all singing the same words: "One-e-&-uh, Two-e-&-uh, Tee-e-&-uh." It's about articulating something together for clarity.

Robert Shaw said, "It's harder to sing in time than in tune." (p.2 of my autographed score of the War Requiem by Benjamin Britten)

Ash Wednesday

A time of reflection:
"We are dust and to dust shall we return."

All life is, is energy; energy never dies but is transformed. It thickens and slows, sometimes freezes and congeals. The more something rots, the more alive it becomes. Not one organism, but billions of organisms, then returns to liquid, then gas, then ether, then disperses and feeds and joins new life all over again - even dust.

Indeed, as matter is constantly recycling, so the spirit - that higher energy frequency, that super super-consciousness - travels through time, becoming manifest. Matter and material - physical and incarnate - again and again and again and again, ad infinitum, up the ever-winding spiral of double helix doubled and doubled again until we find our way home. A gain.

We are dust. And to dust shall we return.
We are light. And to light we must return.
We are heat. And to heat we will return
We are photons and neurons, gamma rays, ions and quarks.
And to such stuff as stars are made, we seek to return.

The End of the World

The other night I experienced a rare and sudden seizure of rage and anger. I didn’t stop to think about where it came from, what was I mad about, or what would be the consequences of my emotions. I just yelled – loud. I slammed doors and then I cried – hard. For a split second, I was surprised by the flaring pain in my chest and then I turned and raged some more and cried some more.

It did not feel good. I did not feel better.
But it was not the end of the world either.

I think I was always afraid that if I ever got really mad, it would be so dire and consequences so great that I could bring on the end of the world. (there’s a little arrogance for ya.)

And then I looked around – and it was the end of the world! The stock market plummeted and people lost their jobs; the earth quaked, crops failed, marriages failed and families fell apart; loved-ones died; whole families were wiped out in car accidents and plane crashes, marketplace bombings, coups and riots, floods and tsunamis.

Prophets and seers are pretty safe in their predictions, because for someone, somewhere, everyday, all the time - the world is always ending.

...and it's NOT my fault. And just because I don’t have an occasional dramatic, what we call a “scenery-chewing” tantrum, I can’t save the world, either.

But in the morning, the world is reborn. I am reborn, to go on – be kind and thoughtful; be hopeful and generous; be faithful and truthful.

God is with us; we are not alone. Thanks be to God.

In the Desert

I came here just to look around and try to decide what to do next.

This vast sculpted land!

God tried his hand at carving: by erosion, by landslide, by earthquake and cataclysm, each a different tool of creation like chisels and plane and sledge hammer, in this giant eternal media. And then God steps back to see how light plays on all his creation: Never ever ever to see the same scene the same way twice, or be seen the same way again.

And so God stays here in the high desert to play – fine tuning and tweaking this limitless Creation – even today – What will a drought do to the color of this sand? How might a hot wind refine the curvature of this gorge? One new wildflower imported from the south by a thirsty bird can take seed on that dust-worn mesa and in a matter of a few dozen generations will color that valley a red/yellow never seen before; nor again.

Is God ever satisfied? Does God ever finish?
What would God do if God ever got tired of creating? At most, rest? And then begin again?
And we observe and wonder, record and remember, imitate and emulate, worship and adore, honor and each in our own way – do likewise.

And I - no-talent genius -
I walk the land of enchantment,
I see the fields of creation,
paintings and sculptures
galleries and studios
rows and rows of shops selling
the fruits of genius
and I crave the simple faith of the genius life.
How can this be? How ever can this be?

Courage. Not talent or material; not patronage or support, really; there are visions and ideas aplenty here.
What is needed is simple, raw, native courage.

Listen

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A Crisis of Confidence

I woke up in a panic… I don’t know what the f%#^ I’m doing!

I can write the music – I know exactly how I want it to be. I can rehearse and conduct the music – I know exactly how it should sound. But I can’t produce a recording. I don’t know who can – though there must be plenty of producers and recording techs around who can do this. I don’t have any money to front a project like this. I’ve got this great vocal ensemble whose good will and talent I’ve been taking advantage of for a couple of months now, and they’re starting to slip away from me. It’s a stretch to ask them to show up week after week, without a plan or a schedule or any discernable progress.

So I resort to writing more music, more arrangements – just to keep them entertained and interested?

This is good stuff. I know it. And they know it.
But is it great? Will anybody want to hear it? Will it sell? ... It’s pretty square stuff. It is not slick. And then I start to really doubt …

Okay – so, I step back and take a look at this:

Am I doing what I know how to do? Yes – I wrote the music

What don’t I know how to do? Um… the next step? Production? Funding? Recording? All the stuff beyond the chorus- vocals – guitar tracks, keyboard tracks, hand bells (for God’s sake!), children’s choir? Editing? Post-production and? Marketing? Promoting?

How many people do this in their little home studios? (I think of Les Paul in the hall of a flea-bag motel with his portable reel-to-reel and a couple of mikes, looking for the perfect sound space…)

And am I doing this to make a million bucks? To market it world-wide? To get my tracks up on iTunes and Amazon.com?

I believe that in a perfect world, everybody sings.

I believe the next paradigm for music is ethereal: I believe that after live concerts and performances, after radio and records and 8-tracks and cassettes and CDs, comes the internet and downloads and streaming digital sound-files and podcasts and shared music worldwide. I believe in music to be made, to be sung, to be listened to, to be lived in.

But I still don’t know how.

My Dancing Day

Something to Gripe About

As long as I'm blogging....

The real problem with online music (and believe me that's the next thing and it's irrevocable) whether you get yours from iTunes or Amazon or a buddy in Indonesia or eBay, is NO LINER NOTEs! No texts, no translations, no bios, no orchestra personnel lists or production info or program notes or dates. This may ok for the latest, up-and-coming rock band - but it is NOT okay for the latest, downloaded, bought-and-paid-for track of the J. S. Bach motet "O Jesu Christ, meins lebens licht" BWV 118.

What's a girl to do??? Translate the text myself? Go to the library and look it up? Spend hours of fruitless Googling or Wikipedia-ing? Scholars and musicologists, it's time to band together and do something about this! Fix it!

Meanwhile.... I'm going to Hawaii...