F R I D A Y , M A Y 9 , 2 0 0 8 .
It's been several days since I've updated this: sorry! Here are the happenings so far.
On Sunday, the 27th, I went back to one of the places I'd visited Friday, to talk with the people there and play a bit. I'd invited a couple of musicians to join me as well. We played, and were liked quite a lot. There were tons of details to work out, though, and in fact those details still hadn't been worked out as of this last Wednesday, when our friend there had asked us to come play again. I still hadn't had word, but got dressed and headed out anyway; sure enough, on our subway ride (it's an hour commute into downtown!) he called and said we were on. I then texted everyone and they texted back with "OK" and there you have it.
This particular club is very nicely done: beautifully decorated, and well-placed in the heart of town. It also has a grand piano, which will be fantastic once it's tuned properly (and I have much reason to believe it will be; these people believe in quality). Looks like it's going to be a regular thing.
Meanwhile, another gig fell right into my lap. I have now edited an entire brochure for the Beijing Olympic Committee, taking it from comically outrageous to slick.
Sorry, everyone. I know we prefer it comically outrageous. (There really is a sign that says "PLEASE DON'T CROSS ANY RAILINGS LEST SUDDENNESS HAPPENS," and just yesterday at one of the malls they had a sign up that warned against "ground injustice." Construction going on.) Anyway, this translation service has discovered the fine art of "polishing": after something's been translated, I then go over it and make it say what they mean it to say.
It's been really interesting taking stuff that's already been expressed in such a distant language and trying to make it flow. I find that the real challenge is in keeping my own sense of English. Bombarded with these gargantuan monstrosities of language ("Let Beijing More Wonderful, And Make The Olympics More Brilliant"), it's hard to remember what does indeed sound right. Sometimes it's hard to know what the original is trying to say: "The Integrally Sliding Construction Technology of Steel Construction: construct synchronously, and complete high-effectively."
So, that looks like it's going to be a good source of problem-solving entertainment. I've been known to walk into the living rooms of perfect strangers and start straightening their paintings; finally, a productive outlet for that impulse!
One of the chief pleasures of Beijing, as I experienced in my first trip here, is the opportunity for getting clothes tailor-made. Catherine and I have been frugal and systematic in our 6-month sartorial plot; the first stage of it is just now coming to a close. We found a tailoring shop that came highly recommended, and ordered a beautiful olive-green suit for me: a trim, Savile Row kind of thing, double-vented in back, with a classic look that will hopefully look good for several seasons.
When I was here in 01, I had three suits made, two of which I designed myself. My hope then was that, since they never were in style to begin with, they'd never go out. Unfortunately, what's invisible to us in one season becomes starkly visible the next, and now all three of them have a distinct turn-of-the-century look to them. Ach! Well, I'm keeping them around anyway.
We've also done some less monumental shopping: I got a pair of decent sneakers for all the walking and hiking we'll be doing, and Catherine has gotten a little load of socks. We'd vowed that we would only bring a bag apiece for the six-month trip, but as the date approached we gave in to reality and checked a bag apiece as well. Nonetheless, I think, we did an admirable job of not kitchen-sinking it. But that does mean that we'll be buying these little necessities for ourselves here. My guess is that we'll keep some of it, but unload most on some charity or other when it's time to go.
Also bought along the way: a couple of belts for me, a lovely silver pendant for Catherine, a dirt-cheap shirt and tie for me, a perfectly Catherine-ish pair of green shoes, hybrid sneaker-Mary-Janes in bright lime green, for Catherine.
I absolutely love doing all that shopping and haggling; Catherine has a hard time with it. The sellers here are extremely aggressive. As in the old days, nothing has a price tag. So you bargain for every single gosh darn thing you buy. Really, it's been fairly recently that things began having a set price — it happened with Marshall Field and Sears Roebuck — and of course you still have to haggle with car dealers. So, if you're one of those people who detest shopping, just remind yourself that you could be in the land where getting a new pair of shoes is like buying a car. Sheeeee!
We haven't done a lick of sightseeing. We keep telling ourselves that we should do it soon before the heat of summer and the onrush of tourists. Today, in fact, our utopian dream was to get to the Temple of Heaven. We decided to take care of business first, though. We'd set up an account with the Bank of China on our first day here, as a good way of taking care of our money, making ATMs usable (they don't often take Visa, even now), and getting what's left of a decent exchange rate as the dollar continues falling faintly through the universe.
Unfortunately, we got into a distracting conversation while wrapping up an ATM session the other day, and the machine timed out and ate our card. We're thankful for the safety feature, which prevents folks from just strolling up and taking a forgotten card, but still it's a hassle. The bank today took a full two hours, and we ended up just taking all the money out of our account and starting a new one, which is actually easier than getting a new card on the old account. Catherine passed the time by being delighted at the security guard's cattle-prod. Instead of a typical billyclub, he had an electric one. What on earth would he ever use it for? Could that come in handy if there were ever a bank robbery? Maybe if the bank robbers were pledges.
After that, we took a nice stroll through the Wangfujing area, a slightly overcommercialized district near the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square. Then I wanted to find one of my favorite streets off the square, but either it isn't there or I'm not remembering correctly. At any rate, right around dinnertime we found ourselves in an area with lots of extant hutongs. So we ventured down one crowded, brightly lit, crooked alleyway, figuring that might be a great place to get some fantastic local thing or other.
Bingo! We found a suitable-looking place, sat down amid stares, and began trying to communicate with the waiter, using our several resources. By the time we were finished ordering, our table was surrounded by — count 'em — twelve people. Twelve people were just pressing all around us, observing as we tried and tried and tried to find out what it was we were ordering. We never did find out: we just hoped it wasn't entrails.
As we were waiting for the food, we noticed a table of old men near us, eating some delicious-looking flatbread, sort of like nan. We called the waiter over, I pointed to the word "bread" in the book, and he shook his head and started explaining something in fluent Chinese. There is no doubt that his Chinese is spectacular.
This sort of thing is of course common: it's just hard to conceptualize communication other than in your own language, even if you know the other person doesn't speak it. A few days ago, a street cop tried saying something to us, and, on our indication that we didn't understand a word of what he said, pointed to a sign. The sign was in Chinese.
Anyway, we did manage to indicate to the waiter that we wanted what the old men were having — a harder feat than it sounds like. He brought us some of it, and we were transported. Delicious, delicious stuff, very much like nan, the flatbread staple of Indian food. We were able to find out what it was called later (it translates to something like "springtime onion pancake") and so now we'll be able to ask if other places have it.
Then the rest of the meal came: delicious, delicious stuff! It was a pile of something like empanadas, stuffed with a concoction of spinach, chives, and garlic, perfectly spiced and piping hot. Man, oh, man. This meal definitely fell under the heading of Traveling Mercies.
I'd been decanting my beer from its giant bottle to a tiny drinking glass, as is the custom. When I realized that I wouldn't be able to finish it, I offered it to a couple of guys across from us. I didn't even try communicating verbally this time: a simple gesture was all that was needed. They reciprocated with an offer of whatever it was they were drinking, a clear spirit that seems to be the national drink of China. From the looks of it, it's called White Something. (I recognized the "white" as "bai," the character that is also my surname in Chinese, and which you see on this page.) May I suggest "White Lightning." It was awfully strong, but quite satisfying. In tasting it, and in persuading Catherine to taste it, perhaps more theatrically than strictly necessary seeing as she does speak my language, I was able to acquire a greater audience than we'd had previously. All were entertained, even us.
Just as our meal was coming to a delicious close, several police cycles came charging in, which set the whole street in a flurry; suddenly, the outdoor cookery at our place was whisked inside, and just as suddenly our own table was whisked as well. All up and down the street, people were talking and gesturing, and police lights were flashing. Hm. What to think?
We called Cathryn to see if she could talk to one of the drinking buddies and find out what was going on. As we were handing the phone over, the proprietor (who was also our waiter) intercepted it and spoke to Cathryn, telling her it was a routine neighborhood security thing. We then took advantage of our long-distance translator to communicate more eloquently our appreciation of the meal; the proprietor graciously accepted. Catherine then chatted with Cathryn while I asked the only other foreign-looking guy on the street what was really going on. He said, in a broad Australian accent, that it was a raid on unlicensed vendors: you can't sell stuff on the street without proper papers. So several of these places had been expanding their square footage by leaking out into the street. Charming, as far as we were concerned, but apparently not entirely legal. We actually saw cops breaking a prep table! What a display of force for such a misdemeanor!
The Australian guy had been in Beijing a few days, and was leaving tomorrow; he asked about us, and was flabbergasted when we told him about our six-month visas. How could it be? It's just not done! How? Where? I told him we just waltzed into the consulate in Houston and waltzed out; he just couldn't believe it. He said that only happens when you have friends in high places.
As it happens, we do.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
S A T U R D A Y , A P R I L 2 6 , 2 0 0 8 .
We're here and loving China! Monday, we left San Antonio for Newark (at five in the evening, twelve hours after our usual departure times of late. Nice!); after an overnight stay in Newark, we left at noon (again, nice!) for China.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23: I'd been thinking that Newark was an awfully weird place to leave from, but of course these airlines have hubs that sometimes take them out of the way, and this is the first time we've flown Continental, so I chalked it up to that, figuring we'd take the same Great-Circle route I'd taken last time, through Seattle or something and up around Alaska and Bering Strait and so forth, right down to China. So imagine my surprise to see our flight path heading straight North.
Yep, friends, we flew right over the North Pole! The sheer poetry of the idea had me in the clouds. Of course, I was in the clouds anyway, literally, or at least over the clouds, which is why the view out the window was simply solid white-white. Of course, even without the cloud cover it would have been solid white-white-white.
Anyway, the North Pole!
The three of us — Catherine and I and Amber Best, one of Catherine's dearest friends, who has been triply and quadruply wonderful to us this trip! — hit the ground to immediately see a welcome sight: the friendly face of another of Catherine's dearest friends, Cathryn Fine Yang. I've mentioned Cathryn before. She's a linguist who has discovered some new cool stuff, and she visited us for a few days of our six-week honeymoon in northern Thailand, hopping over from where she lives and works in Khunming. That trip was closer than this one for her. Going from her place in southwest China to ours in the northeast is roughly like going from Acapulco to Toronto.
So the four of us taxied through the giant city to where our friends Brian and Cathy had agreed to host us for a bit. Here are Catherine's first impressions of Beijing, by way of her Facebook notes:
It is hard to describe the enormousness of this city. It is like being on another planet, or in the future. It has no comparison to anything I have ever experienced before.
The city is not just like ten San Antonios. That would be large. But it is large on another scale. For instance, let's just take the apartment complex we are staying in. How many people do you think a very large complex would house? Get a picture in your mind of a LARGE apartment complex. Do you have one pictured?
Now double that. Do you have that pictured in your mind?
You are not even close yet. There are 800,000 people in this complex. Eight hundred thousand!! There are three subway stops just for this complex. When we were driving on Wednesday in a Taxi I asked if we had finally reached downtown (when we had really just reached this apartment complex). The area was larger than any downtown I had ever seen. The buildings were huge and there were SO MANY of them. I didn't just feel small in comparison. I felt like I was in a movie about life in the future on another planet. Nothing here is on a human scale. And this is just where we are living at the moment. It is a very small part of Beijing.
Interesting! Maybe that's because our iconography of dystopian futures takes a huge page from 20th-century Russia and China: those huge huge avenues, flanked by huge huge buildings that house huge huge numbers of people. I remember seeing in Moscow a place where it would be possible to live your whole life — college, work, shopping, everything — without ever going outside. One of the many great ironies of these movements that do everything in the name of the People is that people are often dwarfed.
Brian and Cathy took us out to a delightful meal of traditional northern Chinese cuisine: plates and plates and bowls and bowls of delicious noodles, spiced green beans, and — ah! a flood of memories! — jiaozi. You pronounce that "jiowt-sa." Think of giant Chinese tortellini. They're addictively delicious in all of their variations. Wednesday night's jiaozi were mutton-and-carrot and chicken-and-cabbage, both spiced to perfection. I love those things. The whole meal was a perfect welcome to our new home.
THURSDAY, APRIL 24: Amber only stayed for one day (though we're awfully glad she did that, because she'd been considering just flying over! Madness!), and so we thought we'd get her a little taste of the city before she had to go. First, though, Brian took us to the local constabulary, where we had to register within twenty-four hours of arriving. Everyone has to do it. Catherine mentioned that this was required in Austria too: man, we sometimes just don't realize what freedom of movement we have till we go somewhere else!
We subwayed down to the center of town. Beijing is arrayed like a target on a chessboard. Very strict north-south lines, with concentric rings that go all the way from the giant Fifth Ring, a highway loop that once encircled the town (though I have to imagine the Sixth is on its way) in to the First Ring that once was the ancient city wall, to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, the vast royal palace, all the way right down to a single house in the Forbidden City's center that once belonged to the emperor. We stopped at Snack Street to have something a bit more than a snack, and then strolled through the sunny spring morning, soaking up our first real day in the city. We passed through a delightful garden district, through the clutter of small shops and eateries that surround the Forbidden City, and then in through the East Gate and through a few of those concentric courtyards, marvelling at the scale and beauty of this ancient masterpiece of architecture and group psychology. Finally, we emerged from the South Gate onto the impossibly huge Tiananmen Square, where you can gather a million people: it's the largest public square in the world.
That's where we said goodbye (for now) to Amber, and sent her taxiing to the airport. We continued to walk around, exploring the city, enjoying the day, and trying in vain to get a taxibook. Taxibooks are the best invention in the history of all inventions. It's simply a spiral-bound flipbook with a card for every single place you'd ever want to go: restaurants, hotels, athletic clubs, parks, museums, concert halls, bars, dance clubs, everything. And each card has pictures, maps, descriptions, and detailed instructions in both English and Chinese. Invaluable! You just find the place you want to go, and show it to your taxi driver. I don't know how I'd have survived without it on my previous trip here; we've got to find one. But no one seems to know what we're talking about when we inquire. Ah, the irony! If only we had a spiral-bound flipbook that described all the maps and reference-books we might need! We could turn right to it.
After a day of walking all over the center of town, we searched and searched for the place I'd had a beautiful formal Chinese tea ceremony back in 01. I couldn't quite remember where it had been, so it was a bit trial-and-error. But we finally found it by the West Gate, and — NO! — it's been shut down for a couple of years now. What a loss. The place was beautiful, without any piped-in music or televisions or anything that might distract you from the ancient ceremonies that take place among century-old screens, live musicians performing on the Chinese zither, and beautiful sunken chambers where people reclined and relaxed and drank the delicious stuff that changed the world. Now it's gone. There was another similar one across the alley, but it wasn't quite as cool, and it was way overpriced. So we just went to the place next door where they served us pot after pot after pot of flower tea and a huge pile of buttery rice, all for about two bucks.
We took the nearly-hour-long journey back to Brian and Cathy's, where we thought we'd take a disco nap before getting out into the night to check out the jazz scene. Ha. I awoke at about 1am, noted that we probably wouldn't be going out, and then awoke again at about six, after a long nap that restored my aching feet and bones.
FRIDAY, APRIL 25: Friday was jazz day. I'd managed to find a bass player by the name of Billy Chan, who invited us over for lunch and a jam. He lives in a gorgeous, spacious apartment in one of the loveliest districts, up on about the 30th floor, with a splendid view of the city. And he has a seven-foot grand. And he served us some really good pizza. We discussed the jazz scene in Beijing, then played a few tunes for Catherine's and Cathryn's enjoyment.
Then the three of us checked out some of the places that might have jazz on nights and weekends, with very good fortune. I was especially delighted that there were so many real pianos around. What a pleasure, to be in a place where pianos are taken seriously, and where clubs and restaurants have them, and in good condition, too. This is going to be fun.
After a stupendous dinner at home, this time traditional Northwestern cuisine, we got spiffed up and went back downtown, where we hit a couple of jazz clubs: the CD Jazz Cafe, and Lan. CD was a delightful experience, with a good band fronted by a sax player. They mainly did straight-ahead, with some 70s-ish trips into funk-jazz. The funk-jazz stuff was slightly cheesy, but well-played; the straight-ahead was great. The piano player (who literally turned his back on a gorgeous grand piano to play on his electric keyboard: unforgivable!) was nonetheless a fine musician, with a laid-back swing and impeccable chops. Really nice to listen to.
I talked to the pianist over the break. He filled me in on the scene, and seemed to pretty much agree with Billy (our lunch friend) that there weren't all that many places in Beijing for jazz. But I'd done some poking around and had already discovered that Beijing is similar in a way to San Antonio, in that although there are only a couple of real, full-out jazz clubs for true believers, there are then many many places to go to get jazz, if only you know where they are. For instance, neither Dolores Del Rio nor Stefania's get mentioned in anyone's list of "jazz clubs" in SA, and yet each one has jazz seven nights a week, and, depending on when you go, you'll get some of the city's best players. I recently showed up for a gig at Stefania's and found out I was set up to play with trumpeter Adrian Ruiz, drummer Moses Olivo, and bassist Brandon Rivas: that's about as good as you can stumble into! So, it looks like things will be about like that here. I'm looking forward to hearing some satisfying musicians.
I'm certainly encouraged that, within a few days of hitting the ground, I'm finding a scene.
After CD Jazz, we visited one other place, where there was a band of younger players of uneven quality. Some were very obviously just getting into jazz, and others were really good and swung well. It's so interesting to see the generations and how their tastes so differ. I'll touch on that more later. Meanwhile, that's an update for you. We're having a wonderful time with friends old and new. Catherine is drinking in her time with Cathryn. They love each other so much, and are stranded on opposite sides of the globe. So these few days before Cathryn returns to Khunming are precious. Thanks for all your prayers. They seem to be working!
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
M O N D A Y , A P R I L 1 4 , 2 0 0 8 .
Catherine and I have received our Chinese names. We asked our friends Cathryn and Nicholas to come up with names for us that resembled "Barry" and "Catherine," but were viable Chinese names.
So, here they are. Bai Lei is my name. Bai serves as the last name, and it means "White." Lei means "Thunder." Very fitting for an American musician, yes? Catherine's name is Kai Lin, which translates to "Victorious Jade." She'll also take the Bai as her surname, so that she has a three-part name.
We're getting excited.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
S U N D A Y , A P R I L 1 3 , 2 0 0 8 .
My brother Richard always seems to be in horrible places right when the world is paying attention. This is by design. He's the director of the Star Program, an outfit that deals with Baptist Children's Home Ministries and Children's Emergency Relief International.
Four years ago, while we were all reeling from news of a giant tsunami across the ocean, Rich was flying: he'd been called to go over there with his team of counselors and help with the psychological clean-up.
He's spent the past week a little bit north of here, dealing with a psychological tidal wave of a different kind. He and his team are counseling the 400ish kids from that compound, about which we're finding out more and more, none of it very good.
As soon as he gives me the go-ahead, I'll share what news he's allowed to share from ground zero.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
W E D N E S D A Y , A P R I L 2 , 2 0 0 8 .
It's always fun to sit back and wait for the responses to come in from my annual dispatch of the things I did in the previous year. People I rarely stay in touch with write back and fill me in; people I see every day say "I had no idea!" about this or that; trends sometimes emerge in what people latch on to, what things stick out in readers' minds.
Harry Potter fans gushed about their experiences of the finale. Sacred Harp wonks wrote of their love for this rich art form.
But, overwhelmingly, the thing that people far and near most responded to was the situation at church, in which my unwise words were the beginning of a firestorm that never should have happened.
The large majority of responses were from people who didn't think that what I'd said was bad at all, but all of the responses commiserated with me at the news of people's reactions. People were disgusted, surprised, unsurprised, and all-around angry that, in need of serious correction as I was, serious correction was exactly what I didn't get.
I'd mentioned that to this day I still didn't know who these Mystery Complainers were; not one person who had been so vocal with everyone else had gotten in touch with me at any time in the year that's passed, not to mention before the blowup when it would have done some good (and when we're commanded to address our problems with each other.)
Well, that's changed. A good friend wrote to me the other day and confessed that he'd been one of the ones who had complained. He phrased it as a confession, and specifically asked for forgiveness.
What a hard thing to do! It really takes guts to own up to stuff like that with someone. But in doing so he enabled me to do something I've been prevented from doing for a year: I was able to ask him for forgiveness as well. If you haven't read my thoughts and conclusions about this situation, I invite you to, because I think I did a pretty good job of summarizing what's so wrong with how it happened (and so often does happen in families, offices, organizations, schools), and with what's so so so right about doing it the right way.
Can it be that we're entering a new chapter in this little corner of the world?
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
T H U R S D A Y , M A R C H 2 7 , 2 0 0 8 .
Ever heard of Patty Smith Hill? It's her birthday today.
She's one of the most performed composers of the twentieth century, though her most famous composition is a 19th-century piece, first published in conjunction with the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, when she was just twenty-five years old.
Interestingly, because of a strange copyright twist, the song will be protected till 2010; it still brings in two million dollars a year in royalties.
And it's a great day to perform the song in her honor (royalty-free if you sing it privately): "Happy Birthday To You."
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
W E D N E S D A Y , M A R C H 2 6 , 2 0 0 8 .
On Valentine's Day weekend, 1998, I sent to my friends an email titled "things i did in 97." It was a summary of my year, recollected in tranquillity.
Since then, I've done one every year, though recently it's been getting later and later than the Valentine's deadline. Next year, I'll have to get back on track.
Meanwhile, check out the things I did in 07.
(And most of you never got to see the things I did in 06, though I did write it.
So. What did you do?
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
S A T U R D A Y , M A R C H 2 2 , 2 0 0 8 .
THE BAYLOR QUIZ:
1. Which two of the following now occupy large buildings on Baylor's campus?
- a] The Center for Biblical Scholarship
- b] The Performing and Visual Arts Center
- c] The Humanities Center
- d] The Discovery Center
- e] The Success Center
2. Which article recently appeared in Baylor magazine?
- a] Encouraging Students to Visualize Change
- b] Impacting Students to Value Change
- c] Engaging Students to Impact Change
- d] Forcing Students to Engage Change
- e] Visualizing Students to Force Change
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
W E D N E S D A Y , M A R C H 1 2 , 2 0 0 8 .
Wow! It's been a long time since I updated this. I've got to get on the stick.
I've been filling in at KPAC for the recently departed Kathy Couser, while they find a new person to do the afternoon hours. It's been a blast.
The other day, I invited the string bassist Douglas Balliett to come into the studio with his chamber group and play some music live for us. That's just not done often enough on radio! He agreed, and came in and played some really remarkable music. (Another thing that's not done often enough is string bass solos.)
One thing he played was a favorite of mine, the Homage to the Eternity of Jesus Christ from Olivier Messaien's "Quartet for the End of Time," which he wrote for musicians in a prison camp. It's simple and beautiful — and well-adapted here for string bass and piano. That's Vivienne Spy accompanying.
Take a listen.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
F R I D A Y , F E B R U A R Y 1 , 2 0 0 8 .
I recently guest-hosted Texas Public Radio's Classical Spotlight. I've been a guest on it twice before as a composer, in connection with film scores I've written.
Anyway, I was playing some pieces that I've composed based on material from the Sacred Harp -- that hymnal, first published in 1844, that has been seminal in American life, and is enjoying a huge resurgence of popularity and interest these days.
I've always been interested in folk culture and how in every era, the music of the commonfolk refreshes the high culture and keeps it from stuffiness; in every era, the high culture ennobles the low by honoring its genius, bringing out unseen fineness the way that oil and stain and sandpaper and polish can bring out the deeply grained beauty of good wood.
Take a listen.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
T U E S D A Y , J A N U A R Y 1 5 , 2 0 0 8 .
The fun thing about jazz musicians is that they're often so versatile. They can read charts like maniacs, often don't need much rehearsal, can transpose easily, can respond quickly to a good leader. Whenever I have the budget, I always hire jazz musicians, even if the music isn't strictly (or remotely) jazz.
The Jazz Protagonists are sometimes called on to do recording projects. We've been the backup band for pros like Maggie Worsdale, we've done one-shot projects for amateur vocalists who just want to record an album, we've done an award-winning children's album (Owen Duggan's An Elephant Never Forgets), a folk-rock-blues album for a Randy Newman-ish singer-songwriter, a contest entry for a talented young trumpeter.
And a while back we were the band for a countryish folk-rock singer named Jamie Blythe.
Check it out: The Girl Who Used To Be (That's Grammy-winning Bobby Flores on electric guitar, by the way.)
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
T H U R S D A Y , J A N U A R Y 3 , 2 0 0 8 .
I'm the worship leader for a church that does a traditional liturgy, but in a contemporary context. So they do the typical recited prayers, but they're on powerpoint, and the music is a blend of old traditional stuff and contemporary stuff, but all done in a contemporary style.
And the band is in the back.
Some of the prayers (like the Gloria and the Sanctus) are traditionally set to music; and often you switch settings from season to season. Most of the great composers have written settings to these classic texts, handed down for centuries, always breathing new life into the deathless Gospel.
So, for the first Sunday of the new year, I wrote a new Gloria for this Hill Country church.
Hear it - - See it
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
F R I D A Y , D E C E M B E R 2 1 , 2 0 0 7 .
From David Brooks' superb Times column:
The presidency is a bacterium. It finds the open wounds in the people who hold it.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
S U N D A Y , D E C E M B E R 1 6 , 2 0 0 7 .
Few things are less comfortable
than a mountaintop;
few things are more comfortable
than a coffin.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
T H U R S D A Y , D E C E M B E R 1 3 , 2 0 0 7 .
Some guys feel like penguins when they wear black tie and dinner jacket, but I've always enjoyed it. Maybe it's because I always pick out really nice comfortable ones. (My current one is great but it's getting a bit old. Hellooooo, China.)
The other day I played a tux gig, then hung the tux back up, on the end of the row of suits. That's where I usually have my navy-blue blazer. Yesterday I had a Protag gig at Luna; usually I wear suits for these, but last night I decided to go a bit casual, with the blazer and slacks. So, I grabbed it and put it on, and only several minutes later felt that silk lapel and realized I'd put on the wrong thing.
I said, "Hey!" Catherine wondered what was wrong. I said, "I thought I'd put on my blazer, but got my dinner jacket instead."
She couldn't stop laughing. I thought, hey, that's valid, that's not ridiculous. In retrospect, though, I now realize that was a fairly Thurston-Howell-the-Third-ish thing to say.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
S A T U R D A Y , D E C E M B E R 8 , 2 0 0 7 .
Just got my face waxed last night.
Facial hair is a weird thing, no? Hair in general is weird. The other day I looked over at a friend, and it struck me that he would look particularly good in a powdered wig. When I said so, he was absolutely flummoxed, as well he should be, because that's an odd thing to say.
You can get a good history of hair in America by looking at all the Presidents in order. Powdered wigs from Washington through Madison. Then Monroe shows up with dark, slightly receding, slightly long hair, and that's that. The powdered wig probably started dying out long before 1817, but it was dead enough for a President not to have one by then.
And everyone's clean-shaven. Who's the first bearded President? Lincoln. The second? Ulysses S. Grant. Then, from there out, it's an unbroken line of beards, mustaches, and bushy faces till William McKinley took us into the twentieth century. TR and Taft immediately follow, both with walrus mustaches, but they're the last gasp. No president ever since has had any facial hair.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
M O N D A Y , D E C E M B E R 3 , 2 0 0 7 .
Janet, the wife of the pastor of the church I play for on Sundays, mentioned to me that they'd lived in Montana for years. My mind leapt to a song I only think about once a decade. The first time I heard it was right when it had come out; the second was when I thought of it again and suggested that Duane Cottrell sing it; the third was just a few weeks ago.
It's a haunting and quite beautiful song, especially when liberated from its original orchestration, now dated. The next week I sang it as the offertory.
Montana Sky
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
S A T U R D A Y , N O V E M B E R 2 4 , 2 0 0 7 .
Well, forget it.
I switched host servers early in October, and still haven't figured out how to transfer my blog over, so I'd left off posting. But I've had so many complaints that I'm just going to post here and we'll figure everything out later.
Here's a song for you. I've been occasionally playing piano and singing at a new place called Stefania's (owned by Stefania of Dolores Del Rio fame). A while back — a month ago! — my parents came in with some friends and sat close.
I always try to tailor my set to who's listening, so I picked out some tunes they'd appreciate. (Later, my brother and his wife came in and we did a bossa version of the Bellamy Brothers' "Let Your Love Flow," which actually worked quite well. Gotta remember that one.) For whatever reason, I decided we should do "If Ever I Would Leave You," from Camelot. I don't remember Dad ever singing that. I know we have the soundtrack somewhere, but I didn't gravitate to it as much as to the Rodgers and Hammerstein stuff. For whatever reason, though, I always associate it with my parents, perhaps because the musical happened right when they got married, and perhaps because I think of their love affair as one for all seasons. So I called the tune, and we played it, rather loosely but with brio.
Catherine likes how I sing this song. She says my voice "shines" in it, and I can tell exactly which parts she's thinking of. Lerner and Loewe are mainly to be thanked here: they're the ones who used that wonderful secondary dominant to such good effect.
You may remember that a dominant chord is the five chord, or V chord in standard notation, that "dominates" because it leads so strongly to the one chord — the home base of any tonic song. Anyone who plays decent piano can show you easily how you can make any major chord into a secondary dominant by simply adding a dominant seven in there, and then going to a chord a fourth above. So, if you're in the key of Bb, the dominant seven chord is F7, but you could play a Bb7 and go to Eb, creating a momentary shift in the tonality.
That's exactly what L&L do in this song. It happens three times in the form: "your hair streaked with sunlight," "I've seen how you sparkle," and "Oh, no, not in springtime." Each time, the song revs up to a cadence, but it's not the real cadence at the end of the musical thought; it's like the semi-resolution at the end of a television episode, in that you know there's more coming. Lerner and Lowe make these cadences the highlights of the song by placing the highest peak of the melody right there. Nice place for it. It happens at the volta of each line, telling us why the singer can't leave his lover at the various times of year.
This is why it's good for a singer to know a bit of musical theory. When you're aware of what the composer is doing, you can milk those moments. So, when Catherine says I "shine" there, it's partially because I'm just giving the music what it asks for.
So here you have it, dedicated to Joe and Marjorie Brake. I'd figured I would post it on their anniversary date, but, you know, server trouble.
If Ever I Would Leave You
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
M O N D A Y , O C T O B E R 1
, 2 0 0 7 .
I wrote to a friend today who is a Catholic but works in a large evangelical Protestant church. Here's what I said:
I was just thinking about you, and about what it must be like for someone raised Catholic to experience something like your church.
I was actually thinking about church architecture, and how it mirrors our thoughts on worship: the great old Catholic churches have an altar front and center — a place for holy rituals and communion. But then the Protestant churches came along and replaced the altar with the pulpit — a place for preaching about the Word.
Wow, that's a really important shift, no? And that seems to sum it up completely. Protestants have tended to want to verbalize everything, and have gotten really good at talking about the faith and putting it into bullet points — and also downgrading everything that can't be put into bullet points. This is why Evangelical churches don't have a big satisfying Eucharist. (They're like the smart kid in school who's so good at math and spelling but then scoffs at all that other stuff like social skills and emotions.)
That got me to thinking about modern churches and how we've even gotten rid of the pulpit, replacing it with... the stage.
What does that say about us and what we think about worship? Not that either way is good or evil, but it can't be meaningless, right? I think the average person at your church would say that we're on a stage performing an act of worship for our Divine Audience, who looks on us with pride and joy and pleasure, whereas a hundred and fifty years ago an Evangelical person would hear that and be puzzled: who cares about us? Let's hear the Bible the Bible and only the Bible! Meanwhile, a Catholic would look at the whole thing and say, "Nice, but where's the sacred ritual, the sacrament, the communion with the Almighty?"
Hm. So my thought is that someone like you from a Catholic background might be energized by all the dynamic thoughts on spiritual things that you might not have gotten in the past, but at the same time feeling like the worship service isn't really real. And maybe frustrated that all these people who are constantly talking about the Eleven-and-a-half Principles of Success In Faith never get to the meat of the issue — our contact with inexpressible, deep mysteries of sin and sacrifice and redemption and eternity — stuff you can never really fit into any verbal form, and is maybe better expressed by rituals and symbols.
But that's just my guess. What are your thoughts?
And in the meantime, I suspect that in our computer lives we've all become Catholics. A generation ago, as Umberto Eco pointed out, you had the DOS Protestants with their emphasis on knowledge and entering verbal strings to get results, and the Mac Catholics with — literally — icons! — things that you have no understanding of but that you can interface with and embrace and enjoy and use. And the DOS people tended, just like Protestants and Evangelicals do, to think the Catholics aren't really real and don't really get it, with their images and pictures and eye-candy and the fact that they don't have to study to be a computer user. But now the battle is over, yes? Those Catholics with their computer version of stained-glass windows for the illiterate, will win every time!
This is also why the Catholic Church is so great at iconography. It's no coincidence at all that when the makers of The Matrix wanted Keanu Reeves to look bad to the bone, they dressed him as a Monsignior. (Also, has anybody's wife ever dressed up as a Lutheran schoolgirl? I think not.) Catholics have been manufacturing powerful images for centuries, precisely because of their theological thoughts on where meaning resides and how we get to it.
Anyway, back to the topic, have you ever run into a frustration or misunderstanding at your church, being a person used to the unspeakable mysteries of Catholicism, confronted with someone who expects you to verbalize stuff you may never have verbalized or may even consider impossible to?
His response was that he didn't grow up Catholic at all, but only is now to accommodate his wife and her family.
Ah well. Never mind.
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
M O R E
