About this time a week ago, my beloved and I were strolling up Nelson's very own Ward Street, heading for home and supper, and ruminating over the just passed whoop up, in the main gallery of the new museum, concerned with her retirement as archivist and collections manager of the Nelson Museum, Art Gallery, and Archives Association. It had, of course, been nothing but a love-in, with lots of appropriate tears and laughter, the sort of thing that has to happen when you sort-of put out to pasture one of the greatest combinations of heart and brains you've ever seen and heard saunter through the universe at hand on a daily basis. This clambake, she hoped fervently, had finally brought to an end literally weeks of notice from the local news outlets, city council, and anyone else who could get into the act. It's one of the things we do in organized society - honour the souls who have served us well - but it's also a bit of strain on those who truly understand what it is to be useful. It's the job that counts and challenges and consoles, not the foofoorah that comes afterward.
Earlier than that, she had announced that we should attend the Nelson Choral Society's performance of Handel's Messiah, and I had bought tickets. This was before she realized, having her head down in the closing days of her work, that as she had two weeks of holidays coming to her, her first official day of retirement would be the Sunday of the Messiah performance. To tell the whole truth, it was not she that understood this simple principle of the ordinary work year, but her successor at the helm of the good ship Touchstones, who is very particular on all the management stuff, having a considerable bigger staff than Shawn used to have - except when Shawn had provincial and/or federal grants fueling activity at the old site - and also just super-efficient anyway, brought this particular revelation down to the archives basement.
Thus, 60 jubilant voices, four fine soloists, the twenty assembled musicians of the Selkirk Chamber Orchestra - containing two former members of the Vancouver Symphony - and a thunderously appreciative capacity audience were all on hand on the Sunday that marked her first official day of retirement. I didn't realize this myself until half-way through the first half of the performance, but when it did occur to me I was pleasantly struck by the auspiciousness of it all. God was not only good, but significant.
Later on, I realized that with the possibility of my wife being around the house a lot more, I was reminded of when we very first met, and felt as if I were twenty-two all over again, although happily a lot wiser. I hope.
And now I have just emailed the Columbia Basin Trust about its possible interest in the music publication aspect of the recent research. Some years ago, talking with a different government organization drew the most amazingly unintelligent response. It will be interesting to see if this group is more capable of actually thinking, especially with Herself around to help shed the light.
"And the government shall be upon their shoulders."
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Capuchin Town Hall
Because I grew up loving anniversaries as much as I loved good old Mother Nature, when I discovered Catholicism I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Yet again. Being a mystic from three on means continual death and rebirth. Hollywood and even the Brits and the wise filmers of Europe remain light years behind my take on life. But maybe they'll get their sorry butts into gear. I read that Benedict invited the artists in for a chat. Like tea with the headmaster at Eton. (I'm currently, finally, getting into John le Carre and reading his book two, set in the environs of a "public" school in Dorset. Very upper middle class and full of British caste effeminacy, but a jolly good read from a very crafty pen.)
Not that Benedict is Eton, even thought Eton, given the current climate between some Anglicans and Rome, might become Benedictine. (Clever, right? But there is a hallowed community between artists and the debts they owe each other. I could never have pulled this off without Le Carre.)
Where were we?
Ah yes. A couple of nights ago our excellent bishop threw his second annual town hall meeting, looking for feedback on his proposals for livening up the faith in the diocese. In the spirit of the ex-troubadour who, along with Saint Dominic, saved Europe from going to hell for its attachments to the new prosperity, our newish ordinary is extraordinarily democratic. He is the boss, because he explodes in favour of decency, integrity, common sense, justice for all, in the manner which only bosses can do, given how the Almighty deals out the grace in organized societies, but he always does it in such a way that anyone with two real thoughts to rub together is confident of getting a good ear.
In my experience, he is profoundly unusual among Canadian bishops, which means that the diocese of Nelson, after decades of lumbering along with all the grace of a mountain troll (J.K. Rowling) might finally be able to spell PERFECTION. Remember the gospels? "Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect."?
Unbeknownst to me, as I have as yet never had any good reason in recent years to try to share Saint Thomas, John of the Cross, and the real Scriptures with diocesan organizations, and do not thus belong to the local think tanks, Bishop John's researchers have actually come up with a useful and interesting plan, by way of relating young and old in one viable faith community.
All this popped out on Tuesday night. So, naturally, as my studies of the modes are now at the stage where I know how to deal with the four voice keyboard parts of the old Saint Basil's hymnals without getting the headaches of frustration that come from inadequate technique, there would seem to be an opening for a youth choir that would be adequately trained in the principles of these skills. How these youngsters would overcome the appetite for slop - John Paul's words - that has built up over the decades remains to be seen, of course. Dogs do return to their vomit. But it's worth a try. And there have been signs of it working already.
Not that Benedict is Eton, even thought Eton, given the current climate between some Anglicans and Rome, might become Benedictine. (Clever, right? But there is a hallowed community between artists and the debts they owe each other. I could never have pulled this off without Le Carre.)
Where were we?
Ah yes. A couple of nights ago our excellent bishop threw his second annual town hall meeting, looking for feedback on his proposals for livening up the faith in the diocese. In the spirit of the ex-troubadour who, along with Saint Dominic, saved Europe from going to hell for its attachments to the new prosperity, our newish ordinary is extraordinarily democratic. He is the boss, because he explodes in favour of decency, integrity, common sense, justice for all, in the manner which only bosses can do, given how the Almighty deals out the grace in organized societies, but he always does it in such a way that anyone with two real thoughts to rub together is confident of getting a good ear.
In my experience, he is profoundly unusual among Canadian bishops, which means that the diocese of Nelson, after decades of lumbering along with all the grace of a mountain troll (J.K. Rowling) might finally be able to spell PERFECTION. Remember the gospels? "Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect."?
Unbeknownst to me, as I have as yet never had any good reason in recent years to try to share Saint Thomas, John of the Cross, and the real Scriptures with diocesan organizations, and do not thus belong to the local think tanks, Bishop John's researchers have actually come up with a useful and interesting plan, by way of relating young and old in one viable faith community.
All this popped out on Tuesday night. So, naturally, as my studies of the modes are now at the stage where I know how to deal with the four voice keyboard parts of the old Saint Basil's hymnals without getting the headaches of frustration that come from inadequate technique, there would seem to be an opening for a youth choir that would be adequately trained in the principles of these skills. How these youngsters would overcome the appetite for slop - John Paul's words - that has built up over the decades remains to be seen, of course. Dogs do return to their vomit. But it's worth a try. And there have been signs of it working already.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
The Blogging Business
For some time now I have been ruminating on a comparison, turning over in my mind what precisely it is that this lovely new blogging process is similar to, at least in spirit if not in fact. There really is nothing new under the sun, as Hemingway said, following Ecclesiastes. The Greeks, the Hebrews, the Christians, really did get it all organized long ago, and the best we can ever do for ourselves is to figure out just how they accomplished it, then apply their rules to kicking the crap out of the distractions and deceits of our own time.
Science makes scientific advances, of course. Technology opens up wonderful new opportunities. Nobody knows this, for the moment, better than myself, who after decades of puzzled brooding over the fate of my novel, undeniably the first of its kind, yet much neglected or abused from a broad variety of publishers, not excluding certain tedious intellects in the Eternal City itself - as far as I can see - can now via the excellent and incredibly democratic services of Blogger.com, lecture, even totally trash, certain sinecures of pharisaical thinking.
From my own experience, we learn best how to do this at university, and this is what these early phases of blogging remind me of.
A university, of course, is a great collection of subjects, professors, students, and certain characters among the student body setting themselves up as authorities. Or, at least interesting characters. The very experience of the place simply boggles the mind, and with any luck at all, quite upsets the baggage of sociological, philosophical, and artistic preconceptions that a freshman bring to the campus. This does not mean that the much tumbled valises will not return in some recognizable way to their original positions on the great train platform of life, but they will at least have experienced a new depth of appreciation, and their contents, hopefully containing a classic or two, will be spirited aboard the train with deepened appreciation and gratitude.
Writers are exploding all over the place, on Blogger, just as new faces came at me in droves in my first weeks on the UBC campus. There were ten thousand students then, certainly enough to jostle the mind, with all their manifold passions and concerns, and that meant at least twenty thousand angels as well. Half of them good, half of them not.
In high school it was not quite the same free-for-all, because we were all much more subject in our will to our teachers and the ever looming presence of the principal. This was by no means a bad thing, but it was not the same thing as the great freedom of a university, with its lovely option of cutting classes for the sake of even more profound experiences than a lecturer droning on about elements of fact that any soul that could actually read could pick up for himself.
It was then, I would say, that I learned how to deal with the other blogs that now swirl around this terminal, actually more for Marianne's attention than my own, unless she calls me to one. There are a lot of them out there, and that is good. But I am reminded of the flash characters that showed up to dazzle freshmen, and, not infrequently, freshettes. As they laboured through their subsequent years on campus, they became identified as characters who could only survive because there was a new crop of freshmen - or freshettes - each year.
Out in Bloggerville, it is rather similar, and when some of the people you met at university announced themselves as poets, or novelists, you had to wonder if they really knew what they were about, or if writing in any of these or the other genres were just a temporary interest, something to try on like a new coat. Sometimes they even got themselves published, in the campus literary magazine, which was a way to find out how much they really had to say.
The problem with young 'literary' types, of course, is just how much they want to talk about themselves as opposed to how much interest they have in the world and its citizens in their immediate neighbourhood. Chances are that the more actual talent they have the more likely they are to be struck dumb by all the other talent they find around them. Certainly this happened to me, so much so that although I knew was living a very full life amongst my fellow students, I found it so full of inspiration that I was entirely lost over the possibility of finding a plot through which to detail my experiences.
But significant as this situation was, it was not the major problem. My greatest difficulty was that although I lived by a visible light, I had neither inspiration nor permission to use it as a factor in story-telling. When it came time to start pounding out the text of a novel, a few weeks after I had settled into my first year routine, I fled the campus entirely and set the beginning of the tale four hundred miles to the north, in a town I'd never seen, and quickly moved my cast to a boat. My one concession to a college ambience was a brief discussion of Milton among the three young men. I think that was it for purely intellectual give and take. The rest relied on the usual fodder of adventure tales, so I got my principal satisfactions writing about the outdoors and the water, which I genuinely loved and always had satisfaction from. And, as I have said earlier, I discovered that I could write dialogue quite easily. This was a hugely pleasant shock for someone who generally hated writing high school essays. It also took away any serious doubts that I had a genuine relationship with the Muse, although it was also plain that there were other elements of good prose I would have to work hard at to make that friendship stick around.
And this was the beauty of the university tri-weekly, the "Ubyssey". It was the perfect place for a student writer to learn how to work with words, and work objectively, as any real writer must do, by describing what other people are doing. Furthermore, I got to watch my fellow students, male and female, doing the same thing, although I can't remember much talk about their becoming novelists or even playwrights. If they were not moving on to academic or professional careers, they intended to be journalists, not a few of them eventually some of the best known in the country. I felt myself very lucky to be among them.
But I also learned very quickly, in no more than a fortnight, that most of the first years students who had initially shown an interest in the paper didn't have it to keep it up.
I remember vividly the first meeting of all the hopeful, the gathering in the dingy basement of the North Brock of those who had read in the first 1953 edition of the "Ubyssey" the call for new blood. The rooms were packed, and for a list of reasons I will explain in the next post or so, I beheld, coming in a bit late, the light of the angels telling me I belonged in this arena, mundane as it might seem to the uninstructed eye.
Good Lord, I thought, what a mob! Will anyone notice that I exist?
Within a fortnight, that mob had dwindled to a handful, of which, of course, I was one. Had the rest of them felt the threat of time against their studies? The scrutiny of editors destined for the hard-edged world of journalism? Or simply the stark ugliness of the basement rooms themselves, probably even more Spartan than any newsroom I have seen since, although the Nelson Daily News runs a very close second.
I stayed. I was accepted. I finished my assignments. I was quite quickly promoted to a minor editorial post that enable me to study the spirit of every university in the country, and some American campuses as well.
If this blog works on the world stage, much of the debt is owed to those most fortunate days. The more I see of the competition, the less I apprehend of that kind of experience.
Science makes scientific advances, of course. Technology opens up wonderful new opportunities. Nobody knows this, for the moment, better than myself, who after decades of puzzled brooding over the fate of my novel, undeniably the first of its kind, yet much neglected or abused from a broad variety of publishers, not excluding certain tedious intellects in the Eternal City itself - as far as I can see - can now via the excellent and incredibly democratic services of Blogger.com, lecture, even totally trash, certain sinecures of pharisaical thinking.
From my own experience, we learn best how to do this at university, and this is what these early phases of blogging remind me of.
A university, of course, is a great collection of subjects, professors, students, and certain characters among the student body setting themselves up as authorities. Or, at least interesting characters. The very experience of the place simply boggles the mind, and with any luck at all, quite upsets the baggage of sociological, philosophical, and artistic preconceptions that a freshman bring to the campus. This does not mean that the much tumbled valises will not return in some recognizable way to their original positions on the great train platform of life, but they will at least have experienced a new depth of appreciation, and their contents, hopefully containing a classic or two, will be spirited aboard the train with deepened appreciation and gratitude.
Writers are exploding all over the place, on Blogger, just as new faces came at me in droves in my first weeks on the UBC campus. There were ten thousand students then, certainly enough to jostle the mind, with all their manifold passions and concerns, and that meant at least twenty thousand angels as well. Half of them good, half of them not.
In high school it was not quite the same free-for-all, because we were all much more subject in our will to our teachers and the ever looming presence of the principal. This was by no means a bad thing, but it was not the same thing as the great freedom of a university, with its lovely option of cutting classes for the sake of even more profound experiences than a lecturer droning on about elements of fact that any soul that could actually read could pick up for himself.
It was then, I would say, that I learned how to deal with the other blogs that now swirl around this terminal, actually more for Marianne's attention than my own, unless she calls me to one. There are a lot of them out there, and that is good. But I am reminded of the flash characters that showed up to dazzle freshmen, and, not infrequently, freshettes. As they laboured through their subsequent years on campus, they became identified as characters who could only survive because there was a new crop of freshmen - or freshettes - each year.
Out in Bloggerville, it is rather similar, and when some of the people you met at university announced themselves as poets, or novelists, you had to wonder if they really knew what they were about, or if writing in any of these or the other genres were just a temporary interest, something to try on like a new coat. Sometimes they even got themselves published, in the campus literary magazine, which was a way to find out how much they really had to say.
The problem with young 'literary' types, of course, is just how much they want to talk about themselves as opposed to how much interest they have in the world and its citizens in their immediate neighbourhood. Chances are that the more actual talent they have the more likely they are to be struck dumb by all the other talent they find around them. Certainly this happened to me, so much so that although I knew was living a very full life amongst my fellow students, I found it so full of inspiration that I was entirely lost over the possibility of finding a plot through which to detail my experiences.
But significant as this situation was, it was not the major problem. My greatest difficulty was that although I lived by a visible light, I had neither inspiration nor permission to use it as a factor in story-telling. When it came time to start pounding out the text of a novel, a few weeks after I had settled into my first year routine, I fled the campus entirely and set the beginning of the tale four hundred miles to the north, in a town I'd never seen, and quickly moved my cast to a boat. My one concession to a college ambience was a brief discussion of Milton among the three young men. I think that was it for purely intellectual give and take. The rest relied on the usual fodder of adventure tales, so I got my principal satisfactions writing about the outdoors and the water, which I genuinely loved and always had satisfaction from. And, as I have said earlier, I discovered that I could write dialogue quite easily. This was a hugely pleasant shock for someone who generally hated writing high school essays. It also took away any serious doubts that I had a genuine relationship with the Muse, although it was also plain that there were other elements of good prose I would have to work hard at to make that friendship stick around.
And this was the beauty of the university tri-weekly, the "Ubyssey". It was the perfect place for a student writer to learn how to work with words, and work objectively, as any real writer must do, by describing what other people are doing. Furthermore, I got to watch my fellow students, male and female, doing the same thing, although I can't remember much talk about their becoming novelists or even playwrights. If they were not moving on to academic or professional careers, they intended to be journalists, not a few of them eventually some of the best known in the country. I felt myself very lucky to be among them.
But I also learned very quickly, in no more than a fortnight, that most of the first years students who had initially shown an interest in the paper didn't have it to keep it up.
I remember vividly the first meeting of all the hopeful, the gathering in the dingy basement of the North Brock of those who had read in the first 1953 edition of the "Ubyssey" the call for new blood. The rooms were packed, and for a list of reasons I will explain in the next post or so, I beheld, coming in a bit late, the light of the angels telling me I belonged in this arena, mundane as it might seem to the uninstructed eye.
Good Lord, I thought, what a mob! Will anyone notice that I exist?
Within a fortnight, that mob had dwindled to a handful, of which, of course, I was one. Had the rest of them felt the threat of time against their studies? The scrutiny of editors destined for the hard-edged world of journalism? Or simply the stark ugliness of the basement rooms themselves, probably even more Spartan than any newsroom I have seen since, although the Nelson Daily News runs a very close second.
I stayed. I was accepted. I finished my assignments. I was quite quickly promoted to a minor editorial post that enable me to study the spirit of every university in the country, and some American campuses as well.
If this blog works on the world stage, much of the debt is owed to those most fortunate days. The more I see of the competition, the less I apprehend of that kind of experience.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Testing Hogtown, Testing the Kootenays
I reminded of my days as a journalist, learning how to write a news story so that in case of a sudden need to redesign the news pages, the story could be cut from the bottom up, leaving only the first paragraph or two and still presenting the essence of the tale.
Thus: A Kootenay-based writer and researcher into the modern history and problems of music education waits to hear results from his two most recent attempts to find intelligent readership in opposite ends of the country. On Wednesday of this week, K.B. Lamb contacted a major text book publisher in Toronto, and two days later he had provocative letter published in the very popular and much read New Denver "Valley Voice".Both contacts provoked a great deal of healthy spirit, Lamb said, and he awaits further developments, albeit with an eye on the parable of the sower. He also said that he felt enough encouragement from these contacts to be inspired to scrub two unfinished posts, which if published at this point, might have been confusing. Furthermore, he felt moved to add, he had recently been receiving some most interesting hits on his blog from Asia and Europe.
Meanwhile, Lamb spends his writing time most happily with his most recent blog, as it allows him to catch up with fifty years of backlogged adventures.
Thus: A Kootenay-based writer and researcher into the modern history and problems of music education waits to hear results from his two most recent attempts to find intelligent readership in opposite ends of the country. On Wednesday of this week, K.B. Lamb contacted a major text book publisher in Toronto, and two days later he had provocative letter published in the very popular and much read New Denver "Valley Voice".Both contacts provoked a great deal of healthy spirit, Lamb said, and he awaits further developments, albeit with an eye on the parable of the sower. He also said that he felt enough encouragement from these contacts to be inspired to scrub two unfinished posts, which if published at this point, might have been confusing. Furthermore, he felt moved to add, he had recently been receiving some most interesting hits on his blog from Asia and Europe.
Meanwhile, Lamb spends his writing time most happily with his most recent blog, as it allows him to catch up with fifty years of backlogged adventures.
Friday, November 6, 2009
Thinking Outside the Box
One of the greatest mysteries in my life as a music student, which has been mostly in class with myself as the teacher, is the contrast between the initial inspiration and expectations I had in purchasing the complete Hanon. The "infamous" Hanon, as at least one teacher and writer has called him. I cannot say that he was totally useless, for I did get some good rattles on the Veritas School upright grand with his text, and learned that he had a theory for strengthening the fourth and fifth fingers on the pianist's hands, but neither did I find his doctrines sustainable. So why so much confidence in the first place?
Not long after Hanon I acquired the first of many copies of the Frederick Harris "Brown Book of Scales" and made better use of that, learning to do the crossing over of the middle finger and passing under of the thumb, with both hands together, over the course of two octaves, in a number of major keys. Initially I was quite proud of myself, and then puzzled when I realized none of this was any use at all when it came to studying anything more complicated than a melody line, and even then it was confusing, and in retrospect, profoundly damaging to the settling in of the necessary arithmetical relationships that lead to effortless and tuneful reading of the classics, or indeed anything else worth playing. I have not returned to Hanon very often, although I've kept the text, probably hoping that eventually it would make sense to me and I could not only use it myself, but show a student or two how to make it work.
But the Brown book I go back to regularly, not because I am afraid of being sued by Harris company for my contumely, but because ever since I took up the study of voice very clinically, thirty years ago, I've been fascinated by the process of solving technical and motivational problems in aspiring students, so I want to know the history of the decline in musical intelligence, whether for singers or instrumental musicians. And, in these days of economic recession, it is not a good time to waste or spend money replacing anything that can be made use of. Most family budgets need all the help they can get. And further, because I have a lot of other work to do, when I am not shackled to the demands of passive prayer, my own time for labouriously writing out my own scales designs is gravely limited. It only makes practical sense for everyone to find a way, if possible, to incorporate the literature in place, to the degree that it is possible. Building on sand, of course, is not the perfect answer, but even those who live by moving around in the desert know the virtues of temporary shelter.
It's interesting that the brown book ignores the study of fourths as an entity unto themselves. They do turn up in triad and four note studies, but only in part. Thirds get a treatment unto themselves, and sixths, and octaves in those puzzling escalator passages that introduce every second page. But the escalator passages are neatly laid out, so after you've simply gone up and down, one scale at a time, and then both together if you like, with one finger - it doesn't really matter which one, but I like to start with the third - then move on to using the ring finger in the right hand, and the thumb on the fourth note down, and plunk away. Thus you play G below the C, A below the D, and so on. As you doodle away, meditate on the facts that C is also doh, and one in the C scale. G is so and five, etcetera.
(The one finger thing is for studies in nomenclature. You have to know all the names of each note: letter, number, solfa. Thus, C is one and doh. D is two and re. But this is as long as you're in C. When you get to the D scale, either major or minor or modal, D is one. Some idiot nuns and others called it two, decades ago, and thus began the collapse of intelligence.)
Then do the same for the left, using the thumb on the C and the ring, or fourth finger, on the G. C is always doh, no matter what octave on the keyboard. The numbers, bless them, fly all over the place, as numbers were meant to do, but the letters and the solfa - in sane cultures - are constant.
Totally ignore the fingering set down in the brown book. The exercise those numbers dictate is not totally useless, but it is much less use than its publishers would like to think of, and any conservatory thinking them significant, or worthy of examination, takes a ridiculous position.
On some of these issues, I have finally written a letter, hopefully, for publication, to a local editor, to see what intelligence I live amongst in the general community. It is backed by some recent discoveries much more complicated than listed above, having to do with chord progressions on the scale of ritual enchantments such as the much too worshiped Eastern religions never dreamed of.
And probably no great rock guitarists either, although I would dearly love to be proved wrong.
Not long after Hanon I acquired the first of many copies of the Frederick Harris "Brown Book of Scales" and made better use of that, learning to do the crossing over of the middle finger and passing under of the thumb, with both hands together, over the course of two octaves, in a number of major keys. Initially I was quite proud of myself, and then puzzled when I realized none of this was any use at all when it came to studying anything more complicated than a melody line, and even then it was confusing, and in retrospect, profoundly damaging to the settling in of the necessary arithmetical relationships that lead to effortless and tuneful reading of the classics, or indeed anything else worth playing. I have not returned to Hanon very often, although I've kept the text, probably hoping that eventually it would make sense to me and I could not only use it myself, but show a student or two how to make it work.
But the Brown book I go back to regularly, not because I am afraid of being sued by Harris company for my contumely, but because ever since I took up the study of voice very clinically, thirty years ago, I've been fascinated by the process of solving technical and motivational problems in aspiring students, so I want to know the history of the decline in musical intelligence, whether for singers or instrumental musicians. And, in these days of economic recession, it is not a good time to waste or spend money replacing anything that can be made use of. Most family budgets need all the help they can get. And further, because I have a lot of other work to do, when I am not shackled to the demands of passive prayer, my own time for labouriously writing out my own scales designs is gravely limited. It only makes practical sense for everyone to find a way, if possible, to incorporate the literature in place, to the degree that it is possible. Building on sand, of course, is not the perfect answer, but even those who live by moving around in the desert know the virtues of temporary shelter.
It's interesting that the brown book ignores the study of fourths as an entity unto themselves. They do turn up in triad and four note studies, but only in part. Thirds get a treatment unto themselves, and sixths, and octaves in those puzzling escalator passages that introduce every second page. But the escalator passages are neatly laid out, so after you've simply gone up and down, one scale at a time, and then both together if you like, with one finger - it doesn't really matter which one, but I like to start with the third - then move on to using the ring finger in the right hand, and the thumb on the fourth note down, and plunk away. Thus you play G below the C, A below the D, and so on. As you doodle away, meditate on the facts that C is also doh, and one in the C scale. G is so and five, etcetera.
(The one finger thing is for studies in nomenclature. You have to know all the names of each note: letter, number, solfa. Thus, C is one and doh. D is two and re. But this is as long as you're in C. When you get to the D scale, either major or minor or modal, D is one. Some idiot nuns and others called it two, decades ago, and thus began the collapse of intelligence.)
Then do the same for the left, using the thumb on the C and the ring, or fourth finger, on the G. C is always doh, no matter what octave on the keyboard. The numbers, bless them, fly all over the place, as numbers were meant to do, but the letters and the solfa - in sane cultures - are constant.
Totally ignore the fingering set down in the brown book. The exercise those numbers dictate is not totally useless, but it is much less use than its publishers would like to think of, and any conservatory thinking them significant, or worthy of examination, takes a ridiculous position.
On some of these issues, I have finally written a letter, hopefully, for publication, to a local editor, to see what intelligence I live amongst in the general community. It is backed by some recent discoveries much more complicated than listed above, having to do with chord progressions on the scale of ritual enchantments such as the much too worshiped Eastern religions never dreamed of.
And probably no great rock guitarists either, although I would dearly love to be proved wrong.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
The Month of the Dead
No man, no matter how talented or learned, can fully appreciate genuine leisure unless he understands the after life. In heaven, we will have perfect leisure, and we need to know this in order to understand how to use our time here; and in purgatory we will have a kind of imperfect leisure, and in that we will realize how we failed to use our time on this earth.
Both in heaven, until after the general judgement, and in purgatory throughout, we will not have bodies. No senses. No eyes, no ears, no tongues, no skin. No imagination, either. In a sense, we get to be like the angels, finally: living, knowing, understanding, only through our intellects and wills.
Such a supposedly rarified modus operandi should be a cause for celebration. I mean, can we really be equal to all those spirits who have been around almost forever, nearly as omniscient as their Maker, and who, above all, have never been utterly stupid, wretchedly embarrassed, and in no need of the confessional? Nice work, if you can get it, that's for sure.
Well, nice work in heaven. Damned uncomfortable in purgatory, and unthinkable in hell, where, let me remind you, God once put my sorry ass, along with the rest of me.
Actually, he's done it more than once, although the subsequent immersions were brief, as I was by than no longer in mortal sin and the strict logic of His own thinking allowed Him to inflict only a brief participatory reflection on Protestant theology. (Brief, but still bloody uncomfortable) I was reading some Ralph Connor on of these occasion. Ralph Connor,although an entertaining novelist, and much featured on my grandparents' bookshelves, was a victim of the ridiculous excesses of Luther and Calvin and thus little qualified to be discussing the judgements of Christ. But the less theology men actually know, the quicker they rush to declarations more "infallible" than any successor of Saint Peter would dare to make.
This is the condition of living among the world, the flesh, and the devil that make novelists so useful, simply because no story can ever proceed well unless, through the dialogue among its characters, it reflects the reality of the human situation, caught between heaven and hell, limited day by day, even hour by hour, by the vicissitudes of life on earth, and reflecting on the passing of time and events with a depth neither historian, journalist, or film-maker/playwright can hope to equal. Each of the talents, or charisms, has its own special contribution, and the novelist's contribution is depth in its most profound sense, because only the novelist, being also a theologian if he is really up to the mark, has a full hold on silence. Journalism and film, for all their uses, are full of noise, and not even Henri Daniel Rops, and most readable and lovable historian of the Faith, can devote a full forty pages to the significance of a single Sunday afternoon in the household of a saint.
From the summer of 1959, in the weeks after my incredibly literate beloved and I were married, I mostly remember two writers: John of the Cross, from the copy of "The Ascent of Mount Carmel" she had given me as a wedding present, and Malcolm Lowery, author of a novel then getting a lot of notice from the academic community, "Under the Volcano". I actually never read the book in its entirety, although much later I did see the movie starring Anthony Andrews and company, and also the documentary of Lowery's troubled life. Like my late brother, he was an alcoholic.
But I did register great respect within myself for Lowery's opening lines, which were wonderfully simple, completely satisfactory according to the requirements of exposition, and referred to the Mexican way of celebrating November 2, the feast of the souls of the dead. Oh God in Heaven, I wondered, when will I ever get to write something so significant?
Twenty-one years later the answer came, and my author's field of observation had most definitely been moved up a notch or two: I opened my perambulatory narrative not by talking about souls headed for punishment, but about those in the short route to glory, those who knew perfection as well fitted as a pair of handcrafted boots, even up to possession of the Transformation in Christ, as the mystics know it.
And this time around, I am moved to get on with some pertinent studies of the angels and how they affect the life of individuals, especially individuals fortunate enough to be aware of the presence of these most interesting companions, counselors, rescuers.
This morning at the mass for all saints, I was particularly aware of how the angels are included in the reference to the holy men and women. I have never been more aware. This being the month it is, dedicated to the holy souls and their relief in, or relief from, the halls of purgation, I had been intending to concentrate on them. But the angels seem determined to insert themselves as well into my daily considerations of the parish, the town, the world, and the universal Church. The chapters of the latest blog are part of their reasoning for this richer than usual manifestation of the winged ones, but I suspect they have other reasons, perhaps even more concrete, for showing themselves so much.
All this confirmed, I think, by the Transformation coming for a lengthy visit at the end of Mass, although none of it was inspired by the external manifestations of liturgical music or clerical spirit.
Both in heaven, until after the general judgement, and in purgatory throughout, we will not have bodies. No senses. No eyes, no ears, no tongues, no skin. No imagination, either. In a sense, we get to be like the angels, finally: living, knowing, understanding, only through our intellects and wills.
Such a supposedly rarified modus operandi should be a cause for celebration. I mean, can we really be equal to all those spirits who have been around almost forever, nearly as omniscient as their Maker, and who, above all, have never been utterly stupid, wretchedly embarrassed, and in no need of the confessional? Nice work, if you can get it, that's for sure.
Well, nice work in heaven. Damned uncomfortable in purgatory, and unthinkable in hell, where, let me remind you, God once put my sorry ass, along with the rest of me.
Actually, he's done it more than once, although the subsequent immersions were brief, as I was by than no longer in mortal sin and the strict logic of His own thinking allowed Him to inflict only a brief participatory reflection on Protestant theology. (Brief, but still bloody uncomfortable) I was reading some Ralph Connor on of these occasion. Ralph Connor,although an entertaining novelist, and much featured on my grandparents' bookshelves, was a victim of the ridiculous excesses of Luther and Calvin and thus little qualified to be discussing the judgements of Christ. But the less theology men actually know, the quicker they rush to declarations more "infallible" than any successor of Saint Peter would dare to make.
This is the condition of living among the world, the flesh, and the devil that make novelists so useful, simply because no story can ever proceed well unless, through the dialogue among its characters, it reflects the reality of the human situation, caught between heaven and hell, limited day by day, even hour by hour, by the vicissitudes of life on earth, and reflecting on the passing of time and events with a depth neither historian, journalist, or film-maker/playwright can hope to equal. Each of the talents, or charisms, has its own special contribution, and the novelist's contribution is depth in its most profound sense, because only the novelist, being also a theologian if he is really up to the mark, has a full hold on silence. Journalism and film, for all their uses, are full of noise, and not even Henri Daniel Rops, and most readable and lovable historian of the Faith, can devote a full forty pages to the significance of a single Sunday afternoon in the household of a saint.
From the summer of 1959, in the weeks after my incredibly literate beloved and I were married, I mostly remember two writers: John of the Cross, from the copy of "The Ascent of Mount Carmel" she had given me as a wedding present, and Malcolm Lowery, author of a novel then getting a lot of notice from the academic community, "Under the Volcano". I actually never read the book in its entirety, although much later I did see the movie starring Anthony Andrews and company, and also the documentary of Lowery's troubled life. Like my late brother, he was an alcoholic.
But I did register great respect within myself for Lowery's opening lines, which were wonderfully simple, completely satisfactory according to the requirements of exposition, and referred to the Mexican way of celebrating November 2, the feast of the souls of the dead. Oh God in Heaven, I wondered, when will I ever get to write something so significant?
Twenty-one years later the answer came, and my author's field of observation had most definitely been moved up a notch or two: I opened my perambulatory narrative not by talking about souls headed for punishment, but about those in the short route to glory, those who knew perfection as well fitted as a pair of handcrafted boots, even up to possession of the Transformation in Christ, as the mystics know it.
And this time around, I am moved to get on with some pertinent studies of the angels and how they affect the life of individuals, especially individuals fortunate enough to be aware of the presence of these most interesting companions, counselors, rescuers.
This morning at the mass for all saints, I was particularly aware of how the angels are included in the reference to the holy men and women. I have never been more aware. This being the month it is, dedicated to the holy souls and their relief in, or relief from, the halls of purgation, I had been intending to concentrate on them. But the angels seem determined to insert themselves as well into my daily considerations of the parish, the town, the world, and the universal Church. The chapters of the latest blog are part of their reasoning for this richer than usual manifestation of the winged ones, but I suspect they have other reasons, perhaps even more concrete, for showing themselves so much.
All this confirmed, I think, by the Transformation coming for a lengthy visit at the end of Mass, although none of it was inspired by the external manifestations of liturgical music or clerical spirit.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
New Blog on Blogger
One of the principal narrative problems of the spiritual life is the fact of each significant moment seeming so much more significant than the last significant moment. After all, in this age of the lean style, certainly not without its merits - like the Gospel of Saint Mark - too much unrolling of the thick red carpet of superlatives can seem tedious, like the Blockbuster claims of Hollywood, leaving us titillated for the moment, but in the end as disturbed, and eventually flattened, as the child who's been fed too many sweets.
Yet, it does happen precisely and without the least real suspicion of exaggeration that the infinitely generous Lover of mankind insists on outdoing himself, so that as grace piles upon grace, the receiver cannot help but feel that no matter how awesome the then, the now is even greater.
I speak of a new novel and a new blog to facilitate its distribution.
Not Without the Angels started its haunting of my creative imagination two or three weeks ago and I think it fair to say that for all the angels had necessarily to do with all my literary inspirations from my teens on, never have they had so much to do so manifestly. I don't go into these things lightly. After the rigours of the dark night, I'd say that writing good fiction is the hardest bloody work I've ever known, and I have not been inexperienced in the ordinary trials of physical labour, especially with a questionable lower back to bring to the fray. There is only one kind of work I've never been able to do when exhausted, or even tired, and that is: write readable fiction. To go to the typewriter or, now, my lovely computer keyboard, in any other condition than the pink, is to go to fail. I have to be at my best, my absolute best, because the spiritual novelist's brink of observation, his field marshal's command of the field, is so filled with the original battle of the good angels versus the bad ones, that he cannot afford to be anything but on the complete top of his game.
I wrestle with the Almighty over this situation, scared crapless of getting there too late, equally terrified of coming up to the study too soon. The pen is now, always has been, and forever will, be mightier than the sword, and writers work under conditions generals would be most fortunate to understand. It is the words that send out the armies, not the other way around. Lincoln and Churchill had made this plain. I was, after all, in the army. I left it for the word.
Well, words and music. And the blackboard. All of which is being put together nicely by Providence for the sake of some form of comeback, now that the Pope is moving heaven and earth to restore chant to the ordinary practice of the liturgy of the parishes.
But there has also been another mighty restoration project, closer to home. This is our Capuchin bishop's decision to refit the cathedral rectory, not so much for himself as for the ordinary parish personnel and the return of the rectory chapel. Because of population changes since the 30s founding of the diocese of Nelson, most of the bishop's clergy live in the Okanagan, two hundred miles west, leaving him pretty much obligated to spend at least two-thirds of his time in and around Kelowna rather than Nelson, which was the major interior city at the time the cathedral church was built, with a view to the obvious future. Nelson was then at the heart of the biggest mining centre of the world, after the diamond mines of the Transvaal. But the mines died in a matter of decades, at least in terms of the initial volume of ore taken out of the ground, while the Okanagan boomed first in the orchard industry once irrigation was introduced and then in tourism with its summers so little discomfitted with rain.
There was a chapel in the ample quarters of the cathedral rectory, when and quite a while after the bishops of the time resided in the building, but in the latter years of Emmett Doyle it was removed, apparently for the sake of office space. Apparently, where there is neither love nor faith, put administration. It covers up a multitude of negligence and chicanery. Also, at that time, we had a nun for a chancellor. Thank Christ I was by then able to relate to the Vatican on a professional basis. As MT has said more than once, in those days the only parish or diocesan post we could have filled in good conscience was assassin, and as we all know, this is not a job description the Church endorses.
But all that has been swept away at the top, for almost two years now, and lower down the mopping up moves along at a leisurely but inexorable pace. Sooner or later, the truth will out, and Christ comes to judge the living, a little, before he has to deal with them dead.
It was in that gruesome time, the last days of WED, that a humble little widower named Paul Dixon was inspired to persuade the cathedral rector of the day to institute a weekly exposition of the Host. The rector thought Exposition a good idea, but was not confident the faithful could man the past more than once a month, even for a simple eight-hour shift of one hour per man, or more accurately, per woman. But Paul stuck to his guns, and a weekly business it became, and has been in place now all but twenty years. Perhaps it was simply this operation which influenced Christ to inspire Benedict to send to the armpit of the universe such a wonderful catch as Bishop John.
I got to know Paul through my elder son, found he had a taste for good writing, and lent him Cardinal Newman's autobiography. In return, he tried to insist that I had to show up every week at Exposition. I retaliated that I could very easily cover all that ground in my own house, being a mystic, and, furthermore, that God had for some time put the ban on our belonging to any special groups. He was not immediately buying my excuses - having been sucked in by Medjugorje he played with a shrunk deck - so I was forced to tell him that God had also made me a spiritual director to John Paul II and finally quietened him. We also had a great meeting of minds over Padre Pio, and that may have done even more to help him see my point of view. He's long gone from Nelson, but now, just about as long as it took Ulysses to get his wandering butt back to Ithica, we are, in a sense, responding to his initial inspiration. This is not because I'm a slow learner, but the recent unfolding of the universe makes our hour at Exposition an efficient use of time.
But it took until this recent Thursday for the Host itself to settle down to an exchange of ideas. Up till now the Man has been awfully busy either complaining about the sins of this and all parishes, or reminding me of all the old devotions I used to exercise in the various churches of my history with the Church. Mary, the Crucifix, the Sacred Heart, the Little Flower, and so on, and the Stations of the Cross, which remind me so vehemently of my days as a school teacher.
And there are always various publications to thumb through, as recently referred to regarding Our Lady of Kibeho. It's been a ripping good time, actually, quite putting the Stanley Cup or the Super Bowl in their places. But not the simple stare at the Host that has been axiomatic in so many other circumstances for so long.
And this is merely in the cathedral.
It will be even more interesting to see what the Host gets up to in the new chapel, especially now that the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has been confronted, in his own quiet way, with our new bishop, a Capuchin, at the annual meeting of these worthies. And just at the time, as well, when my guardian angel, and the guardian angels of literature and spiritual writing, have conspired to bring about The Third Blog. Contemplatives is about a diocese that might have been. It was constructing and writing this which kept me sane. Not Without the Angels is about the diocese that was. That is what, without the angels, that would have driven me insane.
Graham Greene should be chuckling in his grave.
Yet, it does happen precisely and without the least real suspicion of exaggeration that the infinitely generous Lover of mankind insists on outdoing himself, so that as grace piles upon grace, the receiver cannot help but feel that no matter how awesome the then, the now is even greater.
I speak of a new novel and a new blog to facilitate its distribution.
Not Without the Angels started its haunting of my creative imagination two or three weeks ago and I think it fair to say that for all the angels had necessarily to do with all my literary inspirations from my teens on, never have they had so much to do so manifestly. I don't go into these things lightly. After the rigours of the dark night, I'd say that writing good fiction is the hardest bloody work I've ever known, and I have not been inexperienced in the ordinary trials of physical labour, especially with a questionable lower back to bring to the fray. There is only one kind of work I've never been able to do when exhausted, or even tired, and that is: write readable fiction. To go to the typewriter or, now, my lovely computer keyboard, in any other condition than the pink, is to go to fail. I have to be at my best, my absolute best, because the spiritual novelist's brink of observation, his field marshal's command of the field, is so filled with the original battle of the good angels versus the bad ones, that he cannot afford to be anything but on the complete top of his game.
I wrestle with the Almighty over this situation, scared crapless of getting there too late, equally terrified of coming up to the study too soon. The pen is now, always has been, and forever will, be mightier than the sword, and writers work under conditions generals would be most fortunate to understand. It is the words that send out the armies, not the other way around. Lincoln and Churchill had made this plain. I was, after all, in the army. I left it for the word.
Well, words and music. And the blackboard. All of which is being put together nicely by Providence for the sake of some form of comeback, now that the Pope is moving heaven and earth to restore chant to the ordinary practice of the liturgy of the parishes.
But there has also been another mighty restoration project, closer to home. This is our Capuchin bishop's decision to refit the cathedral rectory, not so much for himself as for the ordinary parish personnel and the return of the rectory chapel. Because of population changes since the 30s founding of the diocese of Nelson, most of the bishop's clergy live in the Okanagan, two hundred miles west, leaving him pretty much obligated to spend at least two-thirds of his time in and around Kelowna rather than Nelson, which was the major interior city at the time the cathedral church was built, with a view to the obvious future. Nelson was then at the heart of the biggest mining centre of the world, after the diamond mines of the Transvaal. But the mines died in a matter of decades, at least in terms of the initial volume of ore taken out of the ground, while the Okanagan boomed first in the orchard industry once irrigation was introduced and then in tourism with its summers so little discomfitted with rain.
There was a chapel in the ample quarters of the cathedral rectory, when and quite a while after the bishops of the time resided in the building, but in the latter years of Emmett Doyle it was removed, apparently for the sake of office space. Apparently, where there is neither love nor faith, put administration. It covers up a multitude of negligence and chicanery. Also, at that time, we had a nun for a chancellor. Thank Christ I was by then able to relate to the Vatican on a professional basis. As MT has said more than once, in those days the only parish or diocesan post we could have filled in good conscience was assassin, and as we all know, this is not a job description the Church endorses.
But all that has been swept away at the top, for almost two years now, and lower down the mopping up moves along at a leisurely but inexorable pace. Sooner or later, the truth will out, and Christ comes to judge the living, a little, before he has to deal with them dead.
It was in that gruesome time, the last days of WED, that a humble little widower named Paul Dixon was inspired to persuade the cathedral rector of the day to institute a weekly exposition of the Host. The rector thought Exposition a good idea, but was not confident the faithful could man the past more than once a month, even for a simple eight-hour shift of one hour per man, or more accurately, per woman. But Paul stuck to his guns, and a weekly business it became, and has been in place now all but twenty years. Perhaps it was simply this operation which influenced Christ to inspire Benedict to send to the armpit of the universe such a wonderful catch as Bishop John.
I got to know Paul through my elder son, found he had a taste for good writing, and lent him Cardinal Newman's autobiography. In return, he tried to insist that I had to show up every week at Exposition. I retaliated that I could very easily cover all that ground in my own house, being a mystic, and, furthermore, that God had for some time put the ban on our belonging to any special groups. He was not immediately buying my excuses - having been sucked in by Medjugorje he played with a shrunk deck - so I was forced to tell him that God had also made me a spiritual director to John Paul II and finally quietened him. We also had a great meeting of minds over Padre Pio, and that may have done even more to help him see my point of view. He's long gone from Nelson, but now, just about as long as it took Ulysses to get his wandering butt back to Ithica, we are, in a sense, responding to his initial inspiration. This is not because I'm a slow learner, but the recent unfolding of the universe makes our hour at Exposition an efficient use of time.
But it took until this recent Thursday for the Host itself to settle down to an exchange of ideas. Up till now the Man has been awfully busy either complaining about the sins of this and all parishes, or reminding me of all the old devotions I used to exercise in the various churches of my history with the Church. Mary, the Crucifix, the Sacred Heart, the Little Flower, and so on, and the Stations of the Cross, which remind me so vehemently of my days as a school teacher.
And there are always various publications to thumb through, as recently referred to regarding Our Lady of Kibeho. It's been a ripping good time, actually, quite putting the Stanley Cup or the Super Bowl in their places. But not the simple stare at the Host that has been axiomatic in so many other circumstances for so long.
And this is merely in the cathedral.
It will be even more interesting to see what the Host gets up to in the new chapel, especially now that the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has been confronted, in his own quiet way, with our new bishop, a Capuchin, at the annual meeting of these worthies. And just at the time, as well, when my guardian angel, and the guardian angels of literature and spiritual writing, have conspired to bring about The Third Blog. Contemplatives is about a diocese that might have been. It was constructing and writing this which kept me sane. Not Without the Angels is about the diocese that was. That is what, without the angels, that would have driven me insane.
Graham Greene should be chuckling in his grave.
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