restingmotion

Wishing you the Merriest of Holidays.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

 

This advent season has seemed to me to be a time of recalibration, and I have decided to try navigating the season of darkness and light without overthinking and simply allowing myself to go with the flow. 

 

I, and my many words, will return in 2017.

A Few Bright Spots in the December Garden

We had over 5 inches of rain at my house the last two days of November.  It has rained since, and heavily yesterday, but I don't have rainfall information, as I rely on my neighbor down the street for the specifics, but I do know that the direct Knoxville area received between 3 and 6 inches of rain the last two days of November, which is a good start considering the extreme drought we have been experiencing.  I know it is nothing like the 5-year drought that ended recently where my mom lives in Texas, or California droughts, but Tennessee is not an area familiar with drought and it has been a rather shocking experience.

The good news, from my immediate perspective is that the drain I put in the back of the yard in the late summer worked well during the downpours, both last week and yesterday, and the back half of my lawn and flower beds are no longer a swamp.  This is a good thing.  The hill behind my house also held.  It could use some more attractive vegetation but I am happy as long as it is not washing down into my yard.   There is an area that is still washing out, but as it is common area, the HOA is collecting proposals on how to address that particular problem.  For the first time since moving here, I do not have a sea of mud following a major rain, and I am able to enjoy the patio and walkway.  Well, I will be able to enjoy it once it gets a little warmer and I remove some wet leaves.

The garden has not completely gone dormant either.  There are a few small blooms here and there, an occasional rose in the side yard, although the knockout roses in the front may be done for the season, and the camellias are blooming steadily now.  I also, surprisingly, got a second batch of habaneros and another batch of jam was promptly dispatched.  There are more habanero peppers on the plant, and despite a few nights in the 20s the plant is still going strong.  I however, may be done with summer fruits and ready to put out holiday decorations.

 

Three Decembers: A Journey

Saturday evening I attended a performance of Jake Heggie's Three Decembers produced by Opera Fayetteville.  Although I have heard of Heggie, I am familiar with his work in name only.  I have not been to any performances or sought out any recordings, and I intentionally went into this performance blind.  I must say that although I cannot say the work is beautiful, the performance was powerful and touching.  There is an easy lyricism to the music, and it was beautifully sung and acted. The performance perfectly captured the sadness of the characters and the frustrations and loss of this family, bound up in their own stories, and unable to express their love for each other. 

 

 

Three Decembers is based on Terrence McNally's play Some Christmas Letters with some inspiration from Ibsen as well. The set was minimalist, befitting an opera that revolves primarily around the interior world of the three characters: famous actress Madeline Mitchell, and her two grown children.  Set as a series of letters and interactions between the children and their mother, the story is really about the often tenuous nature of relationships and the way the stories we build around ourselves define us and enslave us.  In the opera we hear and feel the yearning of the characters, but also their bitterness and we feel the constraints of the walls they build around themselves, walls they are unable to cross.  When some of those walls are shattered, they must rebuild, but they don't necessarily cross through the rubble to the other side.

 

Opera Fayetteville is a young opera company in Fayetteville Arkansas with a two-fold focus:  on providing performance opportunities for young opera singers in the early stages of their careers,  and performing contemporary operas in English.  I am happy to learn about this organization, and I was happy to have attended a performance.  I am sure there are other interesting companies doing interesting work across the country, but this is where I happened to be.

 

Yes, I went to Arkansas. I went to Arkansas to hear an opera I knew nothing about, in a production by an company I also knew nothing about.  And I had a marvelous time.  I went on a lark.  I heard about the opera because George's first cousin twice-removed, Jacob Scharfman was performing in the role of Charlie.  I went because I like contemporary opera.  I went because I've always been interested in going places to see and hear new things.  I went because I had a free weekend.  I went because, although I don't know Jacob well, his late father was someone I counted as a close friend in our youth, and although our lives had drifted, I still wanted to support Jacob in this endeavor.

 

I went, and I didn't tell Jacob I was going.  Partly this was just because I've been struggling through the shallows in the last 5 or 6 months, and am only just beginning to find my way back into the deep waters.  Partly this was because I was distracted and I forgot until it was too late, the timing was too close. This was precisely because I don't know Jacob well, and I would only be there in the middle of production when the would be working, and I did not want to impose a sense of obligation, a sense that something extra was needed to meet with some distant relative through marriage that he didn't even know. Maybe this was the right choice, maybe it was wrong; I simply don't know. 

 

I do know that Jacob is a good actor as well as an excellent singer.  I do know that the audience felt the raw power of emotion when his character, Charlie, was cradling one of the shirts belonging to Burt, his partner, who had recently died of AIDS.  I recalled that same feeling, known to all who have suffered a profound loss, of doing the same with George's sweatshirt.  It brought tears to my eyes, and not only mine. But I also saw a young Jacob, only a senior in college when his father died almost four years ago, loss and pain etched on his face.  It takes talent and guts to channel that pain and turn it into art. 

 

Perhaps that was a bit voyeuristic, that hidden knowledge.  But it was a joy to see this young man shine, to see this moving story told by three marvelous young talents.  It was good to simply be there, to see and hear this performance, to see good work being done by good people in diverse places.  It was good.

A Concert of American Music

Two weeks ago I attended the November concert of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra.   It was the second concert conducted by our new music director, Aram Demirjian, and my second concert of the season as I had missed in October due to travel plans.  Generally, I was impressed with this performance and attending the concert made for a lovely evening.  Demirjian and the orchestra seem to be growing into each other and the evening's performance was for the most part smooth with a good sense flow and pacing.  It was a happy and satisfying evening, and although there were perhaps a few places where I disagreed with the interpretation of the music, I felt the performance was perfectly suited to this time and this place, and was able to relax and let my more intellectual neurons be lulled by happy sounds.

 

The concert opened with Charles Ives' "Variations on America", which is often whimsical, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes angry, and definitely the work of a brash young man with all of that combination of bitterness, hope, innocence and joy that is the purview of our teenage selves.   It was a fun piece and I enjoyed the performance although I felt that some of the snarkier bits had been muffled, but that is not such a bad thing, and the lighthearted music reminded me at least that we all too often take ourselves far too seriously.  In short it was a good introduction to an evening of American music.

 

The Ives was followed by William Grant Still's Symphony #1 (Afro-American Symphony).  It is a beautiful work, very American with its strong blues influences and jazz rhythms, and it was also very texturally interesting and engaging.  It is at times rather cinematic, and this from a listener who generally is not fond of the majority of composers who fuse cinematic with classical elements.  Most of these pieces simply sound shallow and boring to me, but this could not really be said of anything I have heard by Ives, and not by the Still piece as well.

 

In the second half of the concert we heard Jeff Midkiff's Mandolin Concerto: From the Blue Ridge.  I had been fortunate to attend a luncheon at which Midkiff and his wife were guests of honor and enjoyed speaking with them as well as hearing Aram Demirjian's thoughts on the programming, which he also repeated at the concert.  And the mandolin concert was a very easy to listen to piece, filled with familiar bluegrass inspired and "Appalachian" sounds but it wasn't at dynamic and interesting as the previous two pieces.  Midkiff plays an American mandolin, which is shallower and although wonderful in bluegrass music, has a flatter sound than its older historical cousins.  I suppose I could wish that the Midkiff was less a clichéd piece of Appalachian-inspired music, and although lovely, it seemed out of place among the other three pieces performed in the concert, all of which were more complexly interesting, and none of which succumbed to expected platitudes.  That said, it was enjoyable, and the piece received a standing ovation.

 

I believe the generous applause was primarily due to the music's familiarity and therefore high comfort level.  It has been my observation that the biggest applause at many a symphony performance seems to routinely awarded to those pieces that are, to my mind, the least deserving in terms of their merits in terms of music and performance, and yet are the pieces dearest to the audience's heart.  I have learned to accept this, although some inner part of me still clenches, thinking of one of the worst Beethoven performances I have ever heard, conducted by our former music director, which was rewarded with ovations and cheering and foot stamping galore.  I recognized, after talking to other members of the cheering audience, that most had relaxed into easy familiarity with a favorite piece, and this too is an important aspect of performance and audience building.  It is something I have done myself, especially in my youth, before George ruined me, and taught me to pay more attention.  But I have increasingly learned to lock my more analytical intellectual side in a closet when listening to a concert in order to simply enjoy the time and the experience.  She still gets out, and I cannot silence my inner critic, but at the same time, I also accept that an excess of criticism does nothing to aide in pure and simple enjoyment of life.  Increasingly, stepping back, and allowing enjoyment rule, seems more rewarding. 

 

The final work of that Friday, two weeks ago, was the orchestral suite from Aaron Copeland's ballet, "Appalachian Spring".  In keeping with the rest of the program, Demirjian emphasized this sense of stereotypical Americana and "Appalachian" spirit, which I frankly do not see as the dominant theme in this work, which is incredibly complex.  I enjoyed the performance nonetheless and I also recognize that it was the right performance in the right place and at the right time, less than two weeks after an election that has polarized many.   Besides I recognize that a symphony needs its audience, and a symphony that played exclusively to my taste might be hard pressed to survive.   I could listen to music as I think it should be performed in the sanctuary of my own home, on excellent recordings, but I would lose the frisson of live performance and I continue to enjoy and learn and grow from each performance I attend.  Life locked up in a stuffy tower, living in one's own head, is no one's path to wisdom or humanity.

 

 

 

A Few Notes on Recent Reading

It is December 1st. Project painting continues and I grow weary of the disruption to my routines, to my thoughts, to my ability to find a quiet space to write, think, dream...

 

The post I have been planning to write for a week now is still fragmentary, scattered in bits throughout corners of the house and odd meandering pathways of my mind.  Instead I shall catch you up with a few of the books I've been reading.

 

I was looking forward to reading Thomas Keneally's new novel Napoleon's Last Island but in the end I did not finish it before it was due back at the library.  I have no regrets.  Keneally is an excellent writer, the prose was beautiful, the story well thought out and well managed, but as the novel progressed I became increasingly bored.  It was a shame, as the conceit was fabulous and full of potential:  Napoleon's exile through the eyes of a child who befriended him.  But in the end I felt the narrator was not herself interesting enough of a character to maintain the story.  The writing was elegant but elegantly boring, a pedantic accounting of what, where, and when without spark.

 

 

I started reading Francine Prose's Mr. Monkey immediately after picking it up from the library, and was smitten.  I put it aside however as I could see that as much as it was an engaging fast paced story, and much as I wanted to crawl into a corner with a blanket and a cup of coffee and engorge myself in the tale, I forced myself to slow down. It is a book that rewards all the attention one is willing to give it.  Passing itself off as a light-hearted romp through the production of an off- off-Broadway production of a children's musical, it is really a satire of modern life, both tragic and comic.  It is an at times grim depiction of despair and the toll taken by a lifetime of failed expectations and also a celebration of life.  The author accomplishes all of this through the sympathy and gentleness behind the development of her characters.  The story is deftly told from multiple perspectives, and it is a told in a way that adds humanity to the story itself as we see each character as they see themselves, as they wish to be seen by others, and as they are actually seen.  But that seeing, which could be brutal, is not.  The book is lighthearted and funny, but it is also kind and humane and deceptively deep.  It has crept under my skin.

 

I'll end with a few thoughts that have been swirling around in my head since recently rereading Wendy Mogel's The Blessing of a Skinned Knee.   I like, and have kept, this book primarily because of its focus on achieving a balanced life through moderation, celebration, and sanctification, principles I feel are essential to happiness in life.  I've been thinking about this a lot lately, that we each have been given a gift, the gift of life, and our purpose in life is to use this gift well and not squander it.  In the process we sometimes forget about the principles above, especially sanctification.  We get overwhelmed by big issues, we grow comfortable and complacent in our lives, and we forget that there is a holiness or a sanctity in every day actions.  Our lives are our sanctuary, our homes are our sanctuary, and everything we do, even the most mundane tasks, can be a lifting up, an opportunity to connect with the holiness of life.  Yes, often we feel like much of life is a burden,  I am as prone to this as anyone (see opening paragraph) but instead I'd like to suggest that when we allow the weight of the world to oppress us, even in incredibly tiny ways, we are relinquishing some part of our gift.  This is the season of advent in the Christian tradition, a season of preparation and waiting, and perhaps a season to cultivate gratitude and the sanctity of caring for ourselves, our homes, and our neighbors.