Wednesday, December 12th
Two Storms- Two Services
I have had this not so rational fear that this winter is going to be over the top hard for me in my role as a mailman. I know that some of this has to do with the health problems I've had with my foot this year, but some of it has to do I think with my father's death. It's just harder for me to face things in general since his passing. These past few months I have tortured myself by imagining how hard my new routes will be with snow on the ground. So I was happy that I was able to make it through the first winter storm with only the relatively minor problems that I've had the past 22 winters when I have also worked as a mailman.
The second storm was much tougher to deal with, which was the death of Noelle Simone Gordon. Matt and Quenetta Gordon have been good friends to us now for over three years, and to see them suffer such a loss is terrible indeed. The service last Saturday was beautiful, if difficult. Matt did a great job of speaking. It was much better than the second service that I attended last weekend- at the Unitarian Universalist church. I attended hoping that I could find a church where I felt some peace and sense of purpose. It didn't work- I found myself crying- for different reasons than I cried at Noelle Simon's funeral. Church of all kinds just seems purposeless to me now- and I miss the years when it had purpose for me.
It seems unlikely that Nancy and I will be attending any church regularly any time soon.
Friday, December 7th
Kliklakophonie
My ambient music e-mail list made me aware of the existence of a unique musical work consisting of a collage of ten electronic works. The way it works is you go to the site and ten music players start up at different times to give you a unique "performance" which the intention is that you record. The Kliklakofonie site explains it this way:
An always varying delay occurs on startup of every individual player – depending on your computer setup, internet provider & other unpredictable net-wide connectivity issues – the overall amount of randomisation is sufficient for you to cut yourself a unique recording from this now.
They recommend that you turn your speakers down to about half before going to the page because it's gonna get rather loud.
This is what I recorded from the Kliklakofonie site using Audacity, a really cool free recording program. Incidentally, Audacity can be used to record songs on myspace that the artist hasn't made available for download. I used this trick to record Coffee Shop for my wife because I couldn't find the song available anywhere other than Landon Pigg's myspace. Audacity can also be used to record protected mp3's and export them as unprotected mp3's.
Not that I would do that, of course. 
Sunday, December 2nd
I had a dream today
Last night I had a church dream. These seem to be regularly occurring Saturday night happenings prior to Sundays I have decided to go to church. I'll bet this dream was my unconscious psyche preparing my conscious psyche for the ordeal that is soon to follow. I made a decision that today I would visit the Unitarian Universalist church to see what it was like.
I don't remember the church part of the dream but I do remember that it morphed into my observing groups of birds flying. They were all flying in the well known V shape, but with different mathematical patterns. I remember two in particular. The first was a group of skinny male birds that were flying in rows. The first row had one bird, second row had thee birds, and the last row had five. This group of birds was overtaken and passed by a group of robust female birds in only two rows: the first row had five birds, and the last row had seven.
The dream morphed again and I found myself falling in the sky from a great height. With either hand I was holding onto the hands of two women who were fundamentalist Christians. We were talking about our predicament and how we might be saved. As we spoke there were times in our conversation that it seemed to me that we started to fall much less slowly. I thought that this was very significant and tried to talk to the two women about it, but they wouldn't listen. Then I realized that we weren't actually falling more slowly, it was just that my perspective had changed at certain times in the conversation and I was able to observe our fall as someone at a great distance might see it. This is why it seemed slower at those times.
Then I realized that we were attached to a pyramid of very heavy objects, perhaps made of stone, that were arranged in a V shape. The first row had one stone, the next two, the next three, and so forth. Each stone was labeled. I could only read the label on the top stone, which was "lesbian." I told this all to the two women. They were of the opinion that these stones were sins which were causing us to fall faster, and I should reach down and take the stone labeled "lesbian" and throw it away. I didn't agree with them: I didn't think "lesbian" was a sin and told them so. Nevertheless I did what they said because it made sense that it would make us fall less quickly.
Then the two women said that we should read the Thomas story in the gospels because there was a clue in there that would save us. I asked them if perhaps we were supposed to read the Gospel of Thomas and they said that no, that was a heretical book. I didn't agree with them, nevertheless I turned to the Gospel of John to find the story about Thomas. It said this:
The Savior said: Grab hold of a bunch of grapes with either hand. Each bunch of grapes shall in turn hold onto an umbrella, and each umbrella shall hold a sausage.
As I read this I got the visual image of a bunch of grapes in the center of a V shape, with umbrellas on either side of it and sausages on the outside...
I told this dream to Nancy and of course she thought it was pretty out there. But it had meaning to me. I think the grapes are symbolic of the human race: each grape represents a person. "Lesbian" of course is not a sin: she is a person. We tend to hang labels on people to define them as sinners so we can rationalize separating ourselves from them. When we do this, we only fall faster.
The umbrellas obviously help to slow a fall. But I have no idea what the sausages mean.
Saturday, December 1st
December music
Today is the first of December so it seems appropriate to break out the Christmas music. I went through the vinyl today, and found that I actually have two copies of George Winston's December. One of them is going into a box in the basement. My record collection has gotten to the point where they will not all fit in the limited space we have upstairs in our living space, so a certain number will have to be housed in the basement.
One thing that caught my attention in the George Winston record was the ending of the Bell Carol. It sounds strikingly like the ending of a composite piece we are doing for the Clintonville Choir concert tomorrow. This piece is a mixture of the Bell Carol and We Three Kings. It is copyright 1990, and Winston recorded his version in 1982. I have to wonder if it is all coincidence or whether the arranger of the choir piece consciously or unconsciously copied Winston. I suppose that this will be one of life's many unanswered questions.
Another record that caught my attention as I was rearranging vinyl was the children's suite by geoff tyus (all lowercase letters on the record jacket). This was a record that caught my attention in one of the local thrift stores and, although I picked it up at least many months ago, I had yet to listen to it. As it turns out, it is an excellent solo piano record, so I thought I would look up on the 'net exactly who this geoff tyus person was. Imagine my surprise when I found out that this very day they are doing a memorial concert for him at Weigel Hall.
Originally when I found the need to arrange my records I decided I would do it in the same way that my itunes collection is organized: alphabetically by artist. I quickly found out that this didn't work particularly well. Of course I was too lazy to put records back exactly where they were supposed to go. Now I have decided that I will divide the collection up into four sections: jazz, classical, rock, misc. I will only loosely try to keep things in order by artist. That way, I will only have to fish through one fourth of my records to find that one record I want to listen to today.
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