Sunday, January 28th
Sunday?
Why do they call it Sunday? This morning it was unmitigatedly gray, with no sun in sight. The best today ever did was to have a small bright spot in the sky this afternoon where the clouds were a little thinner.
I barely noticed because dad was on my mind. We visited him yesterday and it was very discouraging. Mom had brought him home from the nursing facility and it seemed as though that little trip wiped him out. Today was better. We saw him in the home and he talked with us for over 5 minutes, up considerably from the minute and a half from the day before.
My mom and my brother Matt came over after visiting dad and we all had dinner together and talked. It was a good, healthy talk. Mom has realized that bringing dad home to live is not a realistic possibility. She is now looking at assisted living. We talked quite a lot about the funeral, realizing that it won't be terribly far away. Everybody is hoping that dad can hold on until his 50th wedding anniversary in April.
Meanwhile I have lost my taste for music, barely listening to anything and only picking up the mandolin very occasionally to strum a few chords. Instead I've taken up Nintendo again, using an NES emulator to play the old Mario games and a few others. Nancy is frustrated. "What are you, twelve?" she keeps saying.
No, I'm not twelve but I wish I was. Back in 1970 when I turned twelve, dad was younger than I am now. That just seems so unreal now, like a dream I had years ago and now can barely remember. He was my American Idol, the man who had everything under control. He maintained that position until my mid teens. So it goes for the typical human male.
All human males have the biological imperative to slay the dragon. At a certain point between twelve and nineteen years of age I realized that dad wasn't able to slay all the dragons, and I might have to slay some dragons myself. That is a very scary thought, but since the males of our species aren't allowed to show fear it comes out as anger. This is the archetypal origin of the stereotypical teenage male.
I sure hope that life is like Super Mario. The Mario games mirror life, with it getting tougher and tougher to slay the enemies as you progress through the game. At the end you meet the dragon, slay him, and are rewarded with the eternal gratitude of the beautiful princess. Mario is fun. I slew the dragon twice last night. But I'm afraid life is like Tetris. Nobody wins Tetris. The blocks keep coming faster and faster until they bury you. The game always ends in death- your death.
Well, Nancy reminds me on her blog that it isn't healthy to dwell on the negative. My foot is better, although the pain is still there. Nancy says I'm allowed to complain now since I have scheduled a doctor's appointment. The computer is running much better since we have gone down to only one user profile. I don't know why this should be, but I suspect it has something to do with the way either itunes for windows or Norton for windows handles multiple profiles. I successfully upgraded my blogging software to the latest version of Greymatter but I am thinking of switching to Wordpress. My webhoster has offered an interface to install it, but when I try I get the message that my mysql database has failed to initialize. Someday I'll figure out what the hell causes this and fix it and, maybe, switch to Wordpress if I can maintain my site's appearance and transfer my previous posts over without a huge amount of work.
I also have a plan to record some music- just don't have the emotional energy to do it right now.
Tuesday, January 23rd
Health and Welfare
I played the piano in the restaurant both last Friday and Saturday night. This is not good news. Not because I play badly or because I don't enjoy playing- but because it meant that my son-in-law Michael was not able to play. This in itself is not bad news- but it is bad because Michael was unable to play because he was sick.
And that in itself is not terrible- except that the sickness Michael has is cancer. He has been having increasing distress and when the doctors check him out they can find no cause for the distress other than the cancer.
Nancy has been talking more about this on her blog. The reason I don't talk about it so much is not because I don't think about it- I do- a lot. I also think about my dad's various medical conditions a lot. He is becoming more and more unsteady on his feet and it seems a wheelchair is very much in his future. There is a lot of talk about all the modifications that will have to be done to mom and dad's house if he is going to be able to stay there. And then there is his hands. He was very distressed to find that he no longer had the coodination to play the penny whistle.
Last time I visited him I brought him a harmonica. And it seems that he is able to play it. I'm very thankful for that.
I have a health issue I'm dealing with also- a persistent pain in my foot. Nancy has made it quite clear that I'm not allowed to complain about it until I have a doctor check it out. So I'm not complaining- I'm just saying. I have however scheduled a doctor's appointment in February so that I will be able to complain.
On our weekend getaway we had a spa foot treatment done (which was wonderful). I talked a bit with the spa guy, and he suggested that my pain could well be a bone spur, which seems like the best guess so far. He also suggested that drinking apple cider vinegar could eventually dissolve the spur and bring relief.
It's been a while since I studied anatomy, but I'm not sure how this would work. Is the foot a part of the digestive system? Nevertheless I've been faithfully drinking a daily cocktail of water and vinegar.
Friday, January 19th
My Worst Nightmare on the cover of Paste Magazine
music: The Shins
mood: Anxious
One nice thing about being a mailman is that I get to see what people are talking about. At least, I get to see what is making the covers of various magazines that people talk about. Much to my surprise The Shins made the cover of Paste Magazine. Surprised I was because not more than a couple of weeks ago I had a dream which referenced this band. I dreamed that I and some other people were at the home of a man who had recently died. We were apparently there to go through his stuff and decide how to dispose of it. My attention was drawn to a built in bookshelf to left of an elegant fireplace. There were two shelves in this bookshelf: the upper shelf was filled with books on theology and religion. They were very normal and standard: I think I even recognized some of the titles. On the other hand, the lower shelf was filled with titles I had never heard of. They were very intriguing to me, and it was obvious to me that these books dealt with unorthodox religious and theological ideas. The last thing that I noticed before I woke up was that all of these books had been written by two men: Les Shin and Isaac Shin.
I surmised that the reason I had this dream was because I had recently read something about The Shins on the internet and thought to myself that I really should know what that band sounds like. Why should I know what that band sounds like? That is the interesting question. The Shins is an alternative band (I know this because I looked it up on the internet) and, although I enjoy alternative when I hear it, it's certainly not a big thing in my life. It's kind of like red wine. I enjoy red wine when I drink it, and if you happen to tell me that a particular wine is a merlot or a cabernet, I will take note of the fact. But I certainly won't go out of my way to learn all the nuanced differences between the scads and scads of red wines out there.
Alternative music is the same way for me. Certainly I will listen to it, and I do enjoy it. But to my untrained ears it all follows the same basic recipe: a collection of drums and cymbals played by one percussionist (popularly called a "drummer"), an electric bass played by one bassist, and a collection of guitars and keyboards in various proportions played by varying numbers of musicians. Top it all off with one angst filled vocalist and serve immediately: for me this is a dish that gets stale quickly.
So why is this a problem? Why would the name of just another alternative band in a sea of alternative bands make an appearance in my dream? I don't know for sure, but I suspect it has something to do with my basic insecurities. I feel that lots of folks in my peer group are really "in" to this kind of music whereas I am not. Thus I further feel that my peers look on me as rather stupid about music. ("Fred doesn't even know what The Shins sounds like.") Nobody likes to hang around stupid people, thus my peers are all eventually going to abandon me and I will have no friends.
Totally irrational of course- but that is the stuff nightmares are made of.
Tuesday, January 16th
what I did for MLK vacation
Last night I dreamed that I was standing behind a picturesque house. There were two men in front of the house having an animated conversation. From this conversation I learned that the house was a fraternity house of a small college. The famous artist Tolouse-Lautrec had attended this college, lived in this particular house, and made history of a sort by jumping a sled over the top of it. The younger man of the two was going to attempt to duplicate this feat, and the older man was trying to talk him out of it. I gathered that the older man was the dean of the college, although I don't think he said so. He pointed out that since the time Tolouse-Lautrec made his famous sled jump, they had put two chimneys in the roof. The younger man replied that he knew this, but the chimneys folded back so that they wouldn't impede the jump. Then the older man pointed out that the shingles had been replaced, and that the new shingles were much rougher than the old shingles, and they would impede the sled's progress.
At this point I dreamed that I woke up and decided to blog about this interesting dream. But I wanted to find out whether the story was true or not (obviously I was still dreaming) so I googled Toulouse-Lautrec sled. It turned out from the results that somebody else knew of the story, but I couldn't tell from her website whether the story was true or whether it was just an urban legend. But I also found another page- a file actually- an mp3 of Sleigh Ride which turned out to be a really excellent arrangement. There was an extended intro that sounded like Jingle Bells, but then the music suddenly turned into Sleigh Ride in such an ingenious and natural manner that you were amazed that you ever thought the song was Jingle Bells.
I suppose that the picturesque house in the dream was suggested by the weekend getaway Nancy and I had. We took a couple of days and went due east, first to Roscoe Village (very close to Coshocton) and then Cherry Valley Lodge- about 5 minutes east of Granville. The first night we stayed at a bed and breakfast very close to Roscoe Village which itself was a very picturesque house.
Besides romping through Roscoe village, Nancy and I also dined at the Ravensglen winery and did a couple of rounds of wine tasting. We also dined at the Buxton Inn. I'm afraid I unintentionally insulted the cashier there when asking about the music we were listening to. She didn't know anything about it, so she pulled the disk out of the CD player. I commented that CD label was one that I recognized as rereleasing classical recordings at inexpensive prices. I think that she thought I was calling the place cheap, which wasn't my intention at all. The recording was of Bach's Das Wohltempierte Klavier which the CD label had mistranslated The Well-Tempered Piano. What I was really looking for was what instrument in the recording, because I thought that it might have actually been a recording of a clavichord. The CD label reported that the music was played on the harpsichord and cembalo. I didn't actually know what a cembalo was, but when I googled it I found that cembalo and harpsichord are synonyms. So much for finding out what I wanted to know.
All in all it was a low-key, relaxing weekend. Sometimes vacations can be so full of activities that you come home more tired than when you left.
Thursday, January 4th
Sittin' on top of a ball
Well, our computer chair was literally on its last leg, so Nancy ordered a new one. Although I find the new chair a bit unconventional, now that I'm used to it I'm having a ball. We missed the new year's service at the Mennonite church, despite a couple of things that really made me want to go. One was a "dance for peace" session. The other was the saying of the Lord's prayer in Aramaic. We decided not to go, in part because it was reported that the saying of the Lord's prayer portion of the service would take over an hour.
This really explains some things for me, like why the Aramaic speaking Jews were always getting their asses kicked by foreign armies. If your language is so cumbersome that it takes over an hour to say the Lord's prayer, can you imagine how difficult it would be to organize any military action? By the time you say "The Romans are coming," they're already there.
Another day off has resulted in another trip to the used record store. Unexpectedly I found myself rummaging through the old classical records, perhaps searching for a cheap recording of The Pines of Rome. I've found myself wanting to hear again the clarinet solo with the bird calls. I didn't find it, but instead found a recording of Hindemith's Ludus Tonalis. This took me back, especially when I saw that the liner notes were written by a certain Alexander Main. I took a couple of classes with the man at O. S. U. a while back.
The thing I remember about Hindemuth was that he wrote a treatise on music theory in the early part of the 20th century that I took some interest in during my student years. When I was at O. S. U., the big thing in the composition department was how wonderful serialism was as a compositional technique. Serialism was the brainchild of Arnold Shonberg, and it was and is fashionable to remark on what a brilliant composer he was.
Now one thing that is intersting about Shonberg is that though undeniably brilliant, his main musical output is what a kind person would call "inaccesable." A mean person would say it "sucked." Hindemuth on the other hand produced music that actually played and listened to far more frequently than Shonberg's.
The reason I'm bringing up Shonberg in the context of Hindemith's Ludus Tonalis is that the two men had virtually opposite ideas about music theory. Shonberg theorized that the human ear is a very discerning instrument musically and is able to attach meaning to very small musical intervals, even those smaller than the minor 2nd (the smallest interval in western music theory.) Hindemith took the opposite position, that the human ear is relatively insensitive musically and doesn't attach much meaning to intervals smaller than a perfect 5th.
Now, if you are a musical muckity-muck, you are going to be far more inclined to sing the praises of Shonberg rather than a guy who says your ears are pretty insensitive- even if he also says everybody else's is, too. This is I suspect the main reason that Hindemith's theories aren't given much attention. Now the Ludus Tonalis is the one work that Hindemith wrote to demonstrate his theories in action. Particulary with a title like that, one would expect it to be a dry academic kind of exercise, not particulary musical. But in fact I'm really enjoying sitting here listening to it. It really puts me on the ball.
So while Shonberg's theories are more attractive intellectually, I have to wonder whether Hindemith was the one that had it right.
Tuesday, January 2nd
Day of Mourning
Today is the official U. S. Government Day of Mourning for the passing of former president Gerald Ford. This is the third Day of Mourning I have experienced in the Post Office: the first being for Richard Nixon and the second for Ronald Reagan. I supposed I should have mourned today. I certainly didn't feel glad at the past president's death, but I have trouble making an emotional connection to him.
So I looked forward to spending my day off diddling with my keyboard. And I actually was doing something kind of creative (at least it felt creative) when the digital output on my keyboard went kablooey. This isn't a total catastrophe as the analog outputs still work fine, but it really put a crimp in my day. I took a couple trips to Radio Shack- one to buy an outrageously overpriced digital cable just in case it was the cable that was bad.
No such luck.
What does it say about me that I feel more down about the death of a digital output than the death of a man? At least it's not something I'm proud of.
So that put the brakes on my creative output. I have put the other high end sound card I have in my recording computer- the card with additional inputs so that I can hook up my keyboard- but I have to totally rewire everything and I just don't have the time or emotional capital to complete it today.
About the time I realized that I had better stop messing with the computer and get dinner started, I noticed a commotion outside. There were about 5 cop cars outside my door- many of them K-9 units. No wonder our dog was going nuts. I thought she just had to pee! When I got her back inside I went back out because I noticed that one of the officers was a resident on my former mail route. Mr. Rodgers (this really is his name) informed me that they were doing a training exercise (whew!). We chatted a while which was fun. It seems Mr. Rodgers doesn't live on my former route any more. It seems he was having some problems with the neighbors.
I guess I'm glad I don't carry that route anymore.
Monday, January 1st
The yearly routine
Christmastime/Newyearstime is here, and I find myself in the same routine as I do every year. I go through my stuff, throw lots of things away, decide what I'm going to keep and reorganize it, check out my web presence to see if it is in order, reorganize my music collection(s), etc.
I think that the Church Fathers were not so terribly unwise in designating the winter's solstice as the appropriate time to celebrate Christ's birth. Both holidays are about the mystery of death and rebirth; and it seems that in my various Christmastime routines I am upholding this. I seem to have this burning desire in the week between Christmas and New Year's day to set things in order: to rid myself of the (as it were) dying clutter of my life and set things in order for the new things that lie ahead.
Dad has been moved from the hospital to a nursing home. He has lost some strength in his left leg and a lot of ability to use his hands. His hands tingle all the time and he cannot play music any more. He seems to be more in distress about his hands than his leg. The doctors think that this loss is due to some impingement on some nerves in his spinal column. This can be corrected with surgery but the docs are weighing the possible benefits vs the risks of such a surgery on an 86 year old.
For Christmas I bought myself a RAM card for my aging Alesis synth. The preloaded banks don't sound that great, but I discovered that the Alesis website has a bunch of "Xpando" banks that can be loaded onto RAM cards. These banks sound pretty good, much better than the name "Xpando" might lead one to believe.
So perhaps I will try to do the whole midi recording again. I have some misgivings about the whole thing. There are gobs of people making keyboard based albums of the ambient/techno/drone/etc type, and I've always had the vague feeling that there is less musicality involved in the process than technicality. Echoing in my head are phrases like "a laptop is not a musical instrument."
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