No doubt it's time I said something about the tiger. I should mention, perhaps before I recount the particulars of how it escaped and how its escaped prefigured the momentary tragedies and enduring triumphs of our silent March, that several anniversaries ago R and I were able to travel, slowly, up to Philadelphia by way of Baltimore to cath a remarkable exhibition of maps at the Walter's Art Gallery. At least one of the maps contained a tiger, but I can't recall itf it is the map I've ben proccupied with lately.

The exhibition was so transporting we spent at least an hour wandering through the meandering narrative of what humans have made of maps for centuries upon centuries. It contained everything from the stylized graphic art of a London Underground map made in the early 1900s to a craggy lenght of polished wood which an Eskimo would run his hands along while kayaking along the shoreline in the dartk, navigating by sense and counting outcroppings and inlets.

One map from Edo period Japan though traced a pisirutal pilgrimage. Rather than being strictly representative of taking this road or that road to and from a holy city it stressed spiritual exercises at particular points and was illustrated with drawings to aid the pilgrim in achieving the full measure of his pilgrimage. Well, I've been doing something which can be considered some fashion of pilgrimage, but doing it without benefit of a map. I realized recently, and with a healthy measure of shame, that I had never read LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding. It is one of several conspicuous and surprising gaps in my literary education,m suprising especially for a student of English literature. Well, as a remedy to this problem I've been reading my way through everything that Golding published, finishing of course and in true pilgrim's fashion, wirth the object which precipitated the journey in the first place, Golding's first published work, LORD OF THE FLIES.

Well, I mention this I suppose not because it is particular to the focus of this month, but because it isn't. I have been reading through Golding's books on the train for two months or so, and am happy to report I am most of the way completed with them. no, I mention it because it is an area of interesting accomplishment I have focused on in the last week.

But this last week has, apart from my adventures in Golding been notable for its deviations, actually. R and I listened to two British radio shows, and I should like to add that British radio is simply better than our American radio. Say what you want about whether the federal government should be funding NPR, but recognize simlutaneously that it is the only thing we have that approximates worthwhile radio in America. I don't really want to debate that, not here anyway. But I will say that we listened to two episodes of THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH, which is possibly the funniest and smartest radio show going st the moment. It is currently in its 7th season and I am enjoying listening through it a great deal.

We also notably broke our strict fast this week to draw the blinds and enjoy an episode of the new PBS UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS. Don't judge us too harshly, we had a long day in the car with all three kids before hand and when evening came around we were rsather downtrodden and a little desperate.

That;'s all for this week though, which the exception of the tiger story, which, sadly, will have to wait. My sincewrest apologies.

April 11th...2011

Later on we'll explain and apologize appropriately for whatever it was that happened or didn't happen here on this blog in the month of March. I'll just tell you up front that it was a totally justified silence, and involved an escaped circus tiger, a missing suitcase and a hidden message detected in the hem of a ball gown for an understudy in the New York Ballet. Like I said, we'll get to it, and it's not a very interesting story anyway.

We're here to talk about this month. This April. This cruelest month as what's his name described it in Thanatopsis WRONG WRONG WRONG it was Eliot in THE WASTELAND and fie on me for my faulty memory of lines which have tumbled in my head for a decade (wet blanket that he was.)This remains true...Eliot was a wet blanket...though he did like the Groucho Marx a lot...apparently. Not in the way he meant it, April is turning out to be a cruel month indeed though. We've altered our schedule a bit for a couple reasons, chief among them that we really coudn't manage without alcohol this month. More on that later.

This month we are doing without digital media. Sort of. Well, it's our media ecology month anyway, an experiment in decreasing the amount of time we spend in our lives gazing into the flickering firelight of a computer screen. Our distant ancestors who spent their lives pitched in ceaseless combat against the whips and scorns of outrageous nature (see escaped circus tiger above) knew better than we do that it is simply a bad survival tactic to stare INTO the fire. It ruins the eyes for night work, Likewise, staring into these screens that have become in so many ways principle arbiters of the world seems like it must be a bad survival tactic. At any rate it is good to acknowledge their power over us and take a closer look...away from them.

The other day I was at a research panel review meeting, where diffierent institutions were highlighting their work in a number of fields (chiefly blowing things up and measuring the effects of this or that modelling software in predicting what blows up and how). The man running the show spoke late in the afternoon on the final day of the conference and announced that the results would be made available in an online tool because, as he put it blatantly, nothing is real until it's on the internet. He paused after he said it, so I think it was a joke, but no one laughed.

There's been enough diatribe and doomsay against the internet, and we're not about that here. I'm not anyway. Anyway, I'll let R write about it more since she's read THE SHALLOWS and Neill Postman with more assiduity than I. But on the other hand, I've read Verner Vinge's wonderful book RAINBOWS END, which I highly recommend and will excerpt and write about later.

Essentially that's all I can report today, that I will write more about some other stuff later (see escaped circus tiger above). Well, that's not entirely true. I can tell you about the rocky start we had to this month, which began with the difficult admission of just what this month meant. Drastic reductions in internet and no watching movies or television shows. There are essentially four websites i ever visit, so I didn't anticipate the first being difficult or feeling drastic (http://google.com , http://forum.dansimmons.com , htto://www.audiotool.com , http://facebook.com ). Well, for the first week or so it's been more of an exercise in undoing habitude. I have consciously checked myself quite a bit, stopping myself from checking my email more than once or twice a day, from looking at facebook....at all....which isn't a great loss...I still hate facebook...and from weighing in on political discussions etc. But I have been a bit intentional about it and not Draconian. I still research on google books, I still check my email, but the intent has been to decrease and examine and it's been interesting.

The movies are brutal though.

I realized that I tend to come home from work, having already read on the train for at least an hour, having cudgeled my brain all day in the office, having sat through or run meetings, having jostled and bumped against people on trains heading this way or that way through the city, and the thought of doing anything other than cooking, getting the kids to bed and then having a thoughtful or provacative or funny or interesting story told to me, while I sit and enjoy it...is overwhelming.

I'll say this much, after the first few days of it, I got more into the groove of writing in evenings, and I've written more consistenty in the last week, adding several pages a night almost to my novel (which is totally at sea and I'm not feeling all that great about it and don't want to talk about it). That's been good. But not watching films really feels like a fast, feels privative. I think in terms of really examining how we spend our days and nights, I am feeling the impact of not watching films more than anything else. It hasn't been terribly pleasant, but a little unpleasantness was I think, part of the purpose of this week, to understand, appreciate and be aware of each thing we do in our lives.

Now, about the circus tiger....

Not content to be simply called a great recorder...ist...Piers Adams is, according to the playbill from our evening of Vivaldi, "heralded" (heralded, mind you) a "the reigning recorder virtuoso in the world." I'll admit that this was the first sentence that I read in the leaflet and for some reason it stuck with me as I read the rest and listened to Red Priest, bring forth an evening of baroque music.

What, I wondered, is the reigning recorder virtuoso like? I imagined the curious company one must doubtless keep to hold such a title. Who are the runners up? I had, and still do have, a difficult time imagining that the International Consortium of Professional Recorder Virtuosos (ICPRV...pronounced phonetically, hard c) were a great deal of fun. Their numbers probably consist of folks who've spent the better part of their lives being hit over the shins for one reason or another.

So I was confused and curious, reading about the bold, mustache twirling irreverence of Red Priest, a group that has been compared (and no doubt heralded as well) to Cirque du Soleil and the Marx Brothers. Well. Such company.

All of this comes from a difficult relationship I have with Renaissance music. Basically, I have always had a hard time imagining humans listening to it. In fact, being somewhat musical myself (and also having a kind of extravagant brain that conceives of ancient cultures weirdly sometimes), it damaged my opinion of the Renaissance in general. I imagined Leonardo Bruni slamming the shutters closed and wishing the dreary droning quartet of sackbuts lutes and those weird sprouting stringed thingies would stop being so persnickety and mournful while he was trying to conceive of a theory of humanistic liberal arts.

That's what I thought of Renaissance music. Fusting old twangy stuff that threatened to veer over the guardrail of the bridge of my....overextended metaphor. Anyway, I didn't like it.

Then, the year our twins were born I listened on New Years eve, while R was in the hospital to this fantastic recording by Rolf Lislevand. Now, before finishing reading this, you should go buy that CD. I'll wait. There, now you can listen to it while you read. Well, Rolff recognized a kind of jazzy improvisational spirit in this music, variations on themes, arpeggiation, diminution, exploration and solo virtuosity. The recording reflects this. It sounds like something I could rock out to if I lived in the 17th century. Moreover, it sounds like something Leonardo Bruni could rock out to. That's too flippant. It's emotional. It's human. It has the kind of life to it that I expect from music, which must in so often serve as the expression of emotions, desires and wants that are too essential for words.

So, back to Piers, the lord of all recorder virtuosos. They leapt onto the stage in masks and cloaks as R already mentioned, Piers at the forefront, elbows pumping, dancing around one another and leaping forward. I have to say, I think Piers might have stolen his stance at one point Jethro Tull but the point was the spirit.

I had the joy of watching the first half of the show with G next to me, leaning around the pillar to get a better look at these dancing players. They were wild. The music was wild. G was entranced. R has already mentioned the fact that G came to the concert as a Vivaldi lover, so I won't belabor that except to say it made it much better for me, who has only recently awakened to a love of this music.

It was a show in every sense of the word. These folks danced, they came out into the garden, the harpsichordist (the dashing and largely self taught David Wright) grasping a fiddle and wandering around the fountain at one point, barking mysteriously on the violin, playing a dog roaming the fields in THE FOUR SEASONS, but still taking time to confess to us as he walked by "I don't even play violin, sorry."

Anyway it was a great and lively reminder of how human this music is. G's response to it only reinforced this. We were able to go and meet the musicians, which was fun G as well, the youngest person in the room by at least two decades. But I have to echo R's point that these were not clowns. They were playing it right, and I think that's important. They do appear sort of wild and clownish from their website, but it's not silly. It's right. The music is everything they play it with (even the occasional pop music strain in the middle of a solo, or musical joke).

Frankly, I'd expect nothing less from the reigning recorder virtuoso in the world today.

Taming the Savages, or Why it Had to be Jane Who Taught Tarzan How to Speak

On to Vivaldi....

Following Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, we all gathered at the National Gallery of Art to listen to a free concert of Red Priest performing Vivaldi and other selections of pre- and early Baroque music. Along with us this time where my Mom (it was her birthday) and Spoon (our 4 year old).


None of us knew what we were getting in to. I thought we would go and enjoy some time sitting amongst marble columns and a lot of gray hairs listening to the lovely and uncomplicated strains of The Four Seasons. Boy was I wrong. Despite what you may see on the link for Red Priest, they were not dressed as pirates (though they were in black and red, and did enter wearing Carnival masks and capes) and were infectiously engaged with serious music. However, like a lot of total music nerds, all the flamboyance turns out to be a chimera, hiding the fact that otherwise you might think they were too stuffy and academic about originality and context to enjoy hearing them play. I'll leave it to the others to recapture more of the evening for you, as I want to focus on a couple of specifics.


I have 15 month old twins. And a four year old. I spend all day with them as my husband so aptly put it the other day, very much like the crew following horses in parades. I was reminded though, sitting in the midst of the dimly lit potted green palms and smooth marble columns, with others surrounding me who were not micturating in their own pants, that the whole aim of my business with the children is precisely not just scraping up filth and responding to constant need. It is in fact to lead these savages to not only engage in order and loveliness, but to seek it out. To rule their intensely real emotions, whims, and needs by self-control--being convinced of what it true, beautiful, and good. And because of this to revel even more fully in the wild tumults of creation, creativity, and passion.


Red Priest's front man Piers Adams explained, after the introductory Vivaldi piece, that the rest of the first half of the concert would be devoted to other musicians who were instrumental in developing the Baroque style, in chronological order leading to Vivaldi. The musicians proceeded to educate us through playing through the music how the Baroque style developed, and why Vivaldi was so extraordinary. The concert jarringly reminded me of the one that we had just enjoyed culminating in Gershwin. ...the uneasy first diversions from form, the seeming rough transitions into flights of fancy and spontaneity. Adams described the Baroque style as being "extravagant, rough edged, wild, raucous" music without "rigid form or structure, prone to eccentricities or flights of fancy and often requiring unprecedented virtuosity to perform". The way that Red Priest played the music made complete sense of what Adams had been describing. Furthermore, when it came to listening to Vivaldi's four seasons it was as though our ears had been opened up, that we were not listening to the stayed recognizable flattened down Vivaldi, but the true maturation of getting Baroque right. Unlike Gershwin's fiercely combative combination of forms, Vivaldi had listened to Bassano, Cima, Castello, Cazzati, Gabrielli, and Corelli and had the vision to bring it into a whole round form of its own. I can only describe it in terms of food. It was like a red wine butter emulsion sauce. The delicate tang of the wine riding atop of the depth and richness of the butter, completely transforming both beyond themselves into something altogether more and different. 


The delight though, for me, was something beyond just hearing afresh the overplayed, under-attended music of Vivaldi. The Baroque seems to easily signify the heights of civilization that I am striving for in raising our children. In all it's force and beauty--the struggle of bombast and storm against the exquisite limitations of an instrument played by a man. Encapsulated by the sheer delight of the musicians with each other (community), their shared endeavor (politics), they produced music that delighted their audience (articulate communication)--producing both wild flights of imagination, the exultation in the sheer capacities of man, and the pathos of the storm, the struggle with nature, drunkenness, and the hunt. 


The tensions between fancy and storm were not merely competing experientially, but rather made coherent a whole experience of life, and this only made possible by the devoted study of music and practiced skill of the players. 


What could be a better view of our lively engagement with the world as God has given it to us to pursue?


Jack was recounting to Spoon this week how Tarzan had taught himself to read, but could not speak the words that he could read. Jane taught him to speak. Parents have a lot to accomplish, and thankfully God has given us each other to encourage and lean on--but I think it is particularly the gift of God to women to be the early caregivers. God has specially called us to do this work, but more over--has specially equipped us to do it. If we lose sight of the delights and struggles of leading our children, and instead tire and merely follow them in their unformed and uninformed whims it is a drudgery and constant conflict. That's where I have been for four weeks. Jack graciously has given me two days to refresh myself (with sleep and quiet)--a much needed break. But I pray that God's gift of a loving husband and a civilizing concert--will bring forward in my thoughts the real, fantastic, scintillating work to be done. 


I was able to be encouraged that evening when Spoon stood enraptured by the music for two and a half hours. I sat there with my mom and thought of the gratification she must (hopefully!) feel sitting with me and my daughter--gratitude forcing some perspective on my own work. Spoon has been listening to Susan Hammond's Classical Kids Vivaldi's Ring of Mystery for the past two years. And as we listened to the music she would whisper, "Now they are going to the Isle of the Dead," "This is when she breaks the violin," and so on, referencing the story she had heard. As we told her the story of the seasons as we progressed through them--she was able to start identifying key themes, such as the storm, the birds, etc. But the best part of all was that I was able to glimpse (in the midst of a very trying four weeks), the pursuit of these things that we would be able to enjoy together with our children as we grow, discover, and create as civilized creatures. 

So, Lord, grant me fortitude to carry on the work that you have set out for me, and energy to communicate delight to those that I love. 

Rhapsody

Part of my desire for wanting to spend more time thinking, listening to, and reading about music this month is because I think that music is a weak spot in my education. I took an independent study course in college on Romantic music to try and address this, and learned how to follow a score, listen to a symphony, and explore the relationships between musicians and other artists of their age. However, I have not since then kept up the exercise very well of sitting down and listening to a piece of music exclusively and trying hard to understand it without any other distractions or diversions. 

So far this month, although it has been disjointed, I have really enjoyed getting the chance to do this more, and I hope to do it at least once a month. We'll see how that goes! 

So Rhapsody. 

I didn't know what rhapsody actually meant, and after Mahler's Lied/symphony, I thought it may be important to know why Gershwin called it a Rhapsody.

Here is Merriam-Webster's definition:

1  a portion of an epic poem adapted for recitation

2

archaic : a miscellaneous collection

3

(1) : a highly emotional utterance (2) : a highly emotional literary work (3) : effusively rapturous or extravagant discourse

4

: a musical composition of irregular form having an improvisatory character

I have to admit while everyone else was totally enthusing after the final notes of the Rhapsody had faded, I was sitting in some confusion. I think hearing the full concert in which the Rhapsody was played  was extremely helpful. Listening to the "crudest" forms of jazz, and their development out of the dance halls to a more sophisticated engagement with a looser form--rather than just songs helped to prepare me for the striking Rhapsody. 

However the Rhapsody sounded to me just as Jack mentioned--like a battle. It sounded really disjointed to me--here a symphonic sweep, truncated, with a twang of a banjo competing. And while altogether fascinating to really be experiencing what the musicians and culture was at that very moment in history--whether jazz would become mainstream, or at the very least, how it would affect the mainstream... I found myself agreeing with the reviewer--and wondering what Gershwin would have come up with had he developed his style more. 

It really seemed to me like Gershwin was saying to the audience, "Here we are: at the cross-roads. What's next?!"

I found it to be altogether stimulating, and fascinating academically, but I really doubt that I would find myself leaning over to put the Rhapsody in Blue on to just jam to. To me, the above definition seems entirely appropriate for what we heard--a miscellaneous, effusively rapturous and extravagant discourse of irregular form, having an improvisatory character. 

P.S. I would love to hear Margaret's discussion of what she saw as the relationship between Whistler's painting and the Rhapsody now that we have heard it. wink wink.