A Short Film Career

    My film career went as soon as it came. Antonio and I will continue to talk about his magnum opus, but my little part, small as it was to be, is still too big for a music methods researcher not quite into the full swing of being able to demonstrate his findings. The final patterns are substantially in place, but my fingers are too far from being able to rattle them off as I know I must for the skeptics. Our culture is by no means rich with philosophers. As Maritain said long ago, few have the mental talons to be able to seize an idea. And besides: this is Nelson, and there are a number of actors around here who can play the part as well as I can, and none of them in danger of being distracted by my pressures of the moment.
    I'm glad I know something about Christopher Columbus. Over and over again, as I've come up with yet again a brilliant bit of structural understanding I cannot find in theory books, because they have forgotten that music is a child of mathematics, I remember that he really was a nut case, according to all the known facts of ocean navigation and the real distance between known continents. History in the hands of some has inclined to abuse the Dominican experts at the court of Spain, preferring to forget that they really did know what they were talking about: India was simply too far for the navigational abilities of 1492. But the sea dog from Genoa had an intuition, something that always, eventually, defeats an only apparent science.
    Unlike Columbus, I have not kept two logs, one of which is a false journal, conceived to deceive his restless crews  and save him from mutiny. But I have constantly failed to see all the complications of my process of discovery, simply because, like South America, what was there was hitherto unknown. Thus, I could agree to take a part in the film and devote a fair amount of time to dealing with the role and the process.
    The role was tempting because it would have given me a chance, as designed by Antonio once he saw the inside of the cathedral, to swank out a little on Gregorian chant, that poor aborted foetus of the vast majority of modern bishops, traitors to the plain stipulations of Vatican Two and facilitators for possibly the ugliest worship music the Church as ever known. Just a little chant, mind you. This was a cameo of cameo appearances, possibly a portent of greater things to come, but for the moment only a taste.
    But I was becoming a man divided, wanting to be helpful with film and seeing a small window on behalf of real liturgy, yet at the same time racking up other film and media contacts who just might facilitate the more foundational opportunities of what I must insist is the most intelligent and genuinely musical set of studies ever offered to student of the piano and organ. And still, of course, not myself caught up in the deftness that would make the pros take notice.
    And speaking of pros, Shawn and I yesterday ran into Antonio downtown, I think just going home from the gym at the Civic complex. The film goes forward. He takes it all in his stride.
    And this weekend the Alberta Three do my Bluebell song at the Fort Edmonton Storytelling Festival's Twenty-fifth Anniversary. The universe continues to unfold.