restingmotion

Speeding up and slowing down, Autumn arrives.

Sunday evening was our neighborhood picnic.  The air felt distinctly autumnal on this early fall evening, the prelude to Yom Kippur, not that the two events were at all related, or that our feasting on shared dishes bore any relation to the impending fast, if indeed knowledge of that fast even registered.  Yet I couldn't help but be reflective, as I flitted in and out of the crowd, occasionally intentionally on the sidelines, watching neighbors group and regroup, thinking about community and coming together -- little bubbles of contact in a world that is both overcrowded with both people and things to do, and yet at the same time strangely solitary and isolating.

 

This year in particular the contrast between the physical season and the cultural season occupies my mind, the almost yin and yang of it, the way that we humans grow busy, filling our evenings particularly, with cultural events, as the earth itself is winding down into a time of rest.  When the earth is full verdancy we are off celebrating our individual pursuits; as the light grows dim we band together, partly for comfort, but also I wonder, if partly to distract ourselves from the reminder of the inevitability of the impending darkness.  We seem to forget that rest, even death, is part of the necessary cycle of life, as if, by keeping ourselves busy we can forestall its arrival.  

 

If we keep running from event to event, from achievement to achievement, from high to high, can we outrun death?  What about the necessity of repose.  Nature must rest.  The earth must rest.  Our bodies must rest.  But I am an introspective soul living in a world where external distractions are the dominant mode.

 

Autumn is my favorite season.  But it is also the season in which I feel pulled in many directions.  The arts and music scenes have geared up again, and I am happy to reconnect with friends.  I could allow myself to become frenetically busy, even as my soul is yearning for and remembering rest and renewal.

 

Within the social whirl, I seek islands of repose.  Yesterday was one such day, a day where I could spend time in the garden, hands in the earth, putting some areas to bed for the coming winter, seeding garden beds with cover crops, or perhaps with luck, a small winter garden of frost-tolerant plants.  As I putter, my mind wanders and I reflect on the activities of the past week.

 

Although my weekend ended with the fall picnic, it began with the opening concert of the symphony season -- Pictures at an Exhibition.  Mussorgsky's work, as orchestrated by Maurice Ravel was the titular attraction, and the closing piece: well-performed, familiar, exciting, rousing the audience into a sense of communal high spirits.  It was a good concert, well planned and well played, from the opening trumpets on the balcony as concert-goers entered the theater, a festive glass of champagne in hand.  The concert opened with Adam Schoenberg's Picture Studies, based on the same structural scaffolding as Mussorgsky's work.  This modern work, inspired by works in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City was a good opening choice, both thematically, but also temperamentally with its very American sense of movement and lyricism.  I find Schoenberg's works to be accessible and likable, easy on ears and sentiments. This piece was no exception. and the performance was engaging and quite satisfying.  A projection screen was mounted behind the orchestra, and the referenced works were featured for nine of the ten sections of the piece.  I personally find that my eyes are drawn to the screen, which distracts my mind from fully attending to the music, but I suspect I am in the minority on this, and eyes can be closed, allowing the music itself full expression.  Picture Studies is also a feast for the percussion section, which sustained the excited air of enthusiasm that had begun with the trumpet fanfare, would continue through the second piece, Alexander Arutiunian's Trumpet Concerto, performed by brilliant young trumpeter William Leathers, and,  of course, ending with the triumphant ending of the Mussorgsky.  All in all it was a rich, brightly enlivening celebration of the arts, of music, of lighting up the impending darkness, of the power of music and the gathering of community.

 

But that was only the denouement to my week.  A couple of other events preceded the concert, of which I will only focus on one now.

 

On Wednesday evening I attended a performance of Cato, Joseph Addison's play, first performed in 1713, about the last days of Cato the younger.  This performance was staged through a historical lens, based on a performance for George Washington's troops in 1778,  a joint endeavor through several departments and UT, intended, at least in part, to further discussion on the ideas of liberty and responsibilities to community.  

 

Admittedly I attended as much for the drama itself, for the language and ideas as much as for the idea behind the performance, the continuing discussion of the meaning of liberty.  I am a bit of a restoration literature fan, and I reveled in the wonderful eighteenth century dialogue.  I sometimes miss this use of language, here so artfully rendered by the actors; a play that eloquently explores ideas and responsibilities in a way that is both thought-provoking and entertaining.  The play is a tragedy, and yet oftentimes comic, as are all human endeavors.  I had read the play but never seen it performed, and of course we all know lines from the play, lines that have become part of our American History -- "Give me liberty, or give me death" among them.   I loved the expository passages, the explorations of individual liberty versus governmental tyranny, but also the explorations of the dangers of individual liberty, both covered in an abstract sense in the debates between the characters, but also quite realistically in the action of the drama itself.  Logic versus emotion; republicanism vs monarchism; we still debate these same ideas today, they show up in our debates, our marches, our literature our movies.... What are our rights? And our responsibilities? And with rights do not also come responsibilities?  Joseph Addison obviously thought so, as did the founding fathers of this country.  And even as their understandings of liberty and even the "rights of all men" may feel narrow minded compared to our views today, they still have much to teach us.  The forest remains.  

 

And so my thoughts continue to swirl.  Autumn is here.  Darkness is inescapable.  But the darkness itself, and our own struggle with life, the meaning of existence, the very things that make us human, is it not this very thing that drives us to make art?  Is art the embodiment of this very battle with darkness, with rest, and death?  Would there be art if we never knew repose?  If we never fought for meaning? If we never sought the light?

 

 

  

 

 

Four: A reentry

I'm back!

 

Am I? For real this time?  The difference between saying I will write and actually writing is like a giant chasm, a chasm that must be bridged, that can only be bridged by actually writing. I realize my priorities have shifted. I am not at all certain how that shift will manifest itself.  And yet I can spend time trying to figure it out but not writing, or I can simply hope for the best and toss my words into the void. I'll never start unless I start, as messy as that might prove to be. 

 

Let's begin with three weekends and four events:

 

First there was the Knoxville Symphony's April performance of the Mozart Requiem with the Knoxville Choral Society.  Most of the audience was there for the requiem, and it was indeed beautifully performed, even one of the more enjoyable performances I have heard.  The highlight of the evening, however, for me at least, was a contemporary piece by young American composer T. J. Cole, Death of the Poet.  Cole had been inspired by a painting by Conrad Felixmüller titled Death of the Poet Walter Reiner, which she had seen at the Art Institute of Chicago.   The painting was created as a kind of a requiem of its own, an obituary or memorial for a friend, the expressionist poet, who died of a drug overdose.  The painting is shown below:

 

 

When I looked up the painting after the concert, I felt strongly that I've seen it before, although I don't believe I've ever blogged about it.  Perhaps I should seek the painting out and take another look.  Of course, if I do that I will also want to listen to the music again.  At least there are recordings online, and I will link to one below.  

 

Both pieces, music and painting, seem filled a sense of loss and ascendance, suitable requiem material, as well as confusion and a sense of worlds on the cusp, of one world fading away and a new one being born.  Perhaps it is this overlapping sense of grief and hope, entangled together that has settled into my mind.    The music and the painting seem very dreamlike to me.  In the painting one doesn't really know if the artist is falling or perhaps flying, and I do think that is part of the point, as well as the use of intense colors and cubist images, of a world turned topsy turvy, despair intermingled with homey windows filled with pots of flowers.  The music was very lush and poignant and yet also unsettling. I find it interesting that both works were created by artists in their 20s; both also created at times of political and social upheaval.  I suspect this will be haunting my thoughts for a while.

 

https://soundcloud.com/tjcole/death-of-the-poet?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

 

The following weekend I went on a knitting retreat.  It was small, we ended up with 14 women, and the focus was on brioche knitting, although I would have gone whatever the focus, as I was mostly just interested in the idea of knitting community.   But I was game to up my brioche knitting skills.  Now I am smitten.  Prior to the retreat I was in a fairly monogamous knitting stage, with 1 project on the needles, 1 project in hibernation, and 1 project waiting to be seamed.  At the end of the weekend, I had four active projects on needles.    Needless to say I've been knitting a lot but nothing has yet been finished.  As I write this I have three projects on the needles and two awaiting finishing.  There will be finished knitting to share soon.

 

The time at the retreat helped me rekindle my focus and refine my priorities, both in terms of giving myself permission to allow hours to be spent exploring process without worrying about having something specific to show for any particular stretch of time, as well as giving myself permission to claim time for solitude.  Yes, I was exhausted after a weekend of music at Big Ears.  I was exhausted after Holy Week, and those all involved too much time spent in public spaces where I was overwhelmed with constant stimulation.  But I was also exhausted by a quiet weekend with 13 other women.  Before the retreat, I did not realize that even in this quiet setting, I would still require significant solitary decompression time.  Although I can, in fact, tune out much of what is going on around me, I cannot block it completely.  Some part of my brain is always watching, feeling, observing the minute changes in energy around me, and I need time to decompress.  Without that time I have no energy for either the social or the creative.  If anything, this retreat was the final seal of approval on accepting the need for not just silence but solitude.

 

After a calming weekend and a few days rest, I was prepared for another weekend feast for the senses.

 

On Friday evening I attended the opening night performance of  Knoxville Opera's The Marriage of Figaro, which I felt was a complete and stunning success.  A friend called it "world class" and I agree if one thinks of the production as a whole.  The company pulled off that almost magical feat of creating a cohesive, emotionally rich, enveloping world within the theater.  The singers were very good, some excellent.  The musicians were good, the acting excellent, but mostly it all just came together in a sparkling and satisfying experience.  Nothing jarred, nothing triggered that critical, comparative part of my brain. That, to my mind is always the difficult part.  The best performances somehow always come together from the heart. The finest orchestra, truly world-class voices, none of this matters if everything doesn't mesh together, and I've attended far to many operas that should have been great, but which have left me bored or disappointed.  Figaro has sometimes become such a part of the common experience that it fails to rise above its own history.  This production rose, it danced and sparkled -- Figaro reborn. I think I would call it a stunning production and one that has me yearning for more.  

 

Then on Sunday I went to the Clarence Brown Theater's production of Hair, which I also thoroughly loved.  I was too young when Hair first came out on Broadway, but I did see an amateur production of it in the mid-seventies, after we had abolished the draft, after we had finally pulled out of Vietnam, after I too had my turn shouting "Hell, no! We won't go!".   Even now I look at how those changes were shaping the world, shaping my own youth, and also the world the youth of today live in and experience.  The youth of  1968, the ones portrayed in this play, are the grandparents of the youth of today, the students who were performing in this play.  But that sense of both harmony and communal safety, as well as connection across generations was infectious.  It seemed to me like this was an apt time to reintroduce this musical to a new generation, even as I am reminded that as much as the linearity of time is a foundational principle of western culture, there is also a cyclical aspect to time and growth and human evolution.  

 

I always want to be enchanted, to be carried away, to be connected to some essential part of human nature; all of these events enchanted me in some sense or another.  In the three performances, there is a common thread, of youth, of age, of love, of loss and hope, or hope and loss (not quite the same but inextricably tied together).  Even in my retreat, in the experience of coming together and later of rest is connected to this cycle.  As the body needs sleep however, so to the heart, the head, the creative and intellectual spirit.   It seems my weekends are not time of rest but of massive input, and when the working world returns to its tasks, I need time to slow down and take it all in. 

 

Perhaps retirement is also a period of turning the world topsy turvy, of the hero coming home from the wars of work and success and rediscovering the simple acts of breath and life which are essential to us all. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Little bits of Life

A spice order arrived from World Spice yesterday and as I unpacked the box and then filled jars and grinders, the entire kitchen was filled with the aroma of spices.  I felt like I was in some exotic spice market and the experience followed me throughout the day, the aroma of spice a part of my skin.  Appropriate then that I was reading Elif Shafak's 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, where memories often begin with recollections of evocative scents or tastes. Shafak's prose often captures an almost poetically sensory sense of place and time that can feel palpable to the reader.  

I really only filled the tall salt grinder, the matching pepper grinder had already been filled as Tellicherry peppercorns were one of the very few spices I replaced before moving.  In fact, I should have ordered spices earlier,  and it was only as I was setting the table for a dinner party that I realized I did not have salt for the table.   I managed to put out small cellars with Maldon flakes but although I am happy with fingers in bowls of salt, not everyone shares this predilection.  But now the grinder is filled with chunks of Himalayan pink salt, oh I know, how trendy of me, and I concocted a blend of six peppers for the smaller funky-looking grinder.

 

I actually bought that grinder just so I could fill it with mixed peppers.  I didn't need it but somehow its weird almost alien looks drew me in. I can't say it is beautiful and yet it is in an odd beautiful-ugly sort of way.  I like that It is made of local seed pods.  I actually like that its strangeness draws attention to itself.  Perhaps I just like it because it is unexpected.

 

And while I am thinking about scent and sensory stimuli, I am reminded that the scent in the air changed a couple of weeks ago.  It is still hot, too hot to plant in my yard, and I don't think the sprinkler system is fully in yet, or if it is, no one has told me how to use it.  But the air now has a subtle scent of autumn about it, a whiff of dust and decay, most apparent in the hours around dusk and dawn.  This morning also, my toes were cold.  That is probably more about me than the actual weather.  The house is the same temperature it has been, but somehow my body is sensing the shift, and whereas a cold floor was deliciously soothing in the summer, it is now becoming chill.  I needed new slippers in the spring but delayed purchasing them until after the move.  It is now time and so slipper-buying will be added to today's list.

 

I can't say that I am really settled yet.  I still feel like I am in a somewhat transitional space although I admit that this may be primarily because the yard remains so unfinished.  I don't expel it to feel finished anytime soon as I have deliberately decided to only put in certain areas or larger items now.  I want the garden to evolve over time, and yet at the moment perhaps it remains a little too bare. Or perhaps it is all just in my head.  I am unpacked but I feel like I am standing on an empty set.

Not a set like the set for Million Dollar Quartet, which I saw at the Clarence Brown Theater last week.  It was a fabulous show and a fun evening.  The actors were incredibly talented and good, but I felt the show worked better as an event, something like musical entertainment, than it worked as an actual play exploring that particular moment in the development of Sun Records. But that may just be me -- I always want something to think about, I always want discovery and meaning.  It is likely that my brain looks for it, refuses to take the passive, easy, way out.  I felt there could have been, perhaps should have been, more of a story to be told even thought the characters themselves, the relationships between them and the music was fabulous. 

 

Perhaps it is just a symptom of my own pensive state of mind, but this exploration of the early days of rock reminds me of the cultural shift that had started over a decade previously, a shift sparked by the horrors of WWII and the changing of the American cultural landscape that it sparked.  Rock wasn't really something radically new, but merely a specific symbol of a change already well under way, even though it may not have been visible as such at that particular time.

 

I wonder if we are  in the midst of another shift....

 

 

Pulled in Many Directions

 

it seems there never really is a good time for a week of rest, although it is possible that my own inclination toward too-muchness hinders the process somewhat.  I am still sorting it all out --- my reading time, and by extension my writing time, remains somewhat constrained -- and more often than not I feel simultaneously still and yet fragmented and pulled in many directions.  I feel, in short, much the way I imagine the woman in this painting by Pablo Picasso feels.   I saw this painting, Crouching Woman, at the McNay during my last visit to San Antonio, and it came to mind this morning as I try to juggle the things I want to do, the things I need to do, and the realities of negotiating a path through the competing demands on my time and my energy levels.  I am not sure what Picasso actually intended, but I see a brilliant portrayal of the multi-faceted roles and demands placed on women, and the complex angles and folds created by the push-pull of intelligence and emotion, time and space, expectation and desire.

 

Perhaps I am reading too much into this.  But that just tells you where I am coming from on this particular morning.

 

I am reading again, although only in short bursts, and the amount of time in which I can read varies significantly with the light and the size of the type.  How much running around I have been doing also seems to have an effect on my vision.  I never realized that driving itself was so hard on the eyes.  Rain doesn't help, of course. Rather than writing I have focused on tasks that may be less appealing, but more important perhaps.  Tasks which can be divided into short bursts of activity are doable:  taxes, budget revisions, filling out paperwork for an appointment with a new doctor.  Spending time in the kitchen is easier than sewing, or doing any kind of needlework.  I can knit, as my current project is simple, but all too often my eyes are too tired by the time I sit, and I fall asleep. This struggle between energy and exhaustion, visual acuity and blurriness, has also upended my sleep patterns, which is not helping me balance my path through the push-pull of obligations, but I assume it will all sort itself out in time.

 

Despite all of this I have been out and about.  I attended two fabulous concerts which I hope to write about while they remain fresh in my memory.  There was one evening when there were three concerts I wanted to attend, and alas, it was also raining and I attended none of them.  I've had a few lunches with friends. Last night I went off to the Clarence Brown Theater to see King Charles III, which I enjoyed to a point. I think the play itself is brilliant but although all the performances were good, and some were excellent, I felt there was an excess of earnestness and a certain lack of wit that would have elevated the production. There were also more than a few instances where the cadence of the iambic pentameter felt strained and my inner grump threatened to surface.  But overall it was good and an enjoyable evening.

 

It strikes me as interesting that this, the most seriously dramatic performance I have seen at the theater, has been my least favorite production.  It is odd because I have always been more of a fan of serious drama than of lighthearted fun on stage.  Perhaps friends and colleagues who claimed I was too serious for my own good, were right.  Perhaps I just needed to learn to let go.  But this year, it has been the light stuff that has truly appealed to me, which I have most enjoyed.  I saw Candide twice, even though I once despised the work, and loved it.  I laughed so hard throughout The SantaLand Diaries that I could hardly contain myself, and I could have seen A Christmas Carol happily more than once.   The same was true last year, and I still smile at the thought of a couple of contemporary light operas, and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.. Perhaps it is not so much that I am changing, as I always had this sappy happy inner core, but that I no longer care if my sappy side is good enough and think that my inner grumpy-pants has had more than her share of time in the sun.  

 

But now my eyes hurt and I have spent too much time here while other tasks are calling my name. I shall return when I can.

 

Thursday morning musings: A review of sorts

It seems I spent a fair amount of time last week listening to Haydn.  Now I like Haydn and can usually identify a piece of music as having been written by Haydn, but truthfully I never thought about Haydn much, or listened, actually listened to the music that much, well perhaps with the exception of the oboe concerto.  But I've always had a thing for the sound of the oboe.

 

Anyway, last week, following a conversation with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra's Music Director, Aram Demirjian, I found myself scrolling through youtube, listening to Haydn symphonies.  Initially I was seeking out performances conducted by Roger Norrington, but eventually I expanded my search only to return once again to Norrington.  I had forgotten about Haydn's sense of humor, the way the music plays with the listener, occasionally surprising, almost always sparking a smile.

 

I knew that the KSO's chamber concert this past Sunday would include Haydn, specifically the symphony # 82, but I did not listen to that particular symphony prior to the performance.  I did not want to add a layer of expectation to my enjoyment of the performance, rather just reacquaint myself with the composer.  And it is true, that by Sunday afternoon I was eager to hear the performance, a performance I enjoyed immensely.  The Haydn was almost raucously joyful, especially in the last movement where the music imitates the sounds of bagpipes, intended to remind listeners of village fairs with their bagpipes and dancing bears.  It is a happy, joyful sound, music that left this listener grinning from ear to ear.

 

In fact the entire concert was stunning. The Haydn was followed by an earlier work by Joseph Boulogne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a work I was not really at all familiar with, but which I also enjoyed.  The incredible balance in the music, and in soloist Gordon Tsai's performance, between artfully placed arcs of dramatic tension and flowing lyricism, once again left me with soaring heart.

 

Following the intermission, the symphony performed the one contemporary work on the program, and it was a piece perfectly chosen to complement the performance and expand listener's horizons.  Carolyn Shaw's Entr'acte for String Quartet or String Orchestra was written in 2011, and there are strong echoes of Haydn, although the work is quite modern as well, bridging that debt to history, but acknowledging the present.  In fact as I listened to the work I was reminded of the Brentano Quartet playing Haydn, a group I have hear on more than one occasion (and whose recoding of the Haydn Quartets I also own).  I never read the notes before the performance, but was then not surprised to find that not only had the work been inspired by a performance of Haydn's Quartet #2, played by the Brentano, but that the Brentano played in the first performance of this work, in its quartet form.    Anyway I found the music mesmerizing, especially  in the way the classical theme appeared and then evolved into something more modern, doing so without really jarring, reminding me more of memory and understanding the way one lives in the present, but the past is still there, always coloring and influencing our choices.

 

The concert ended, as it should with Mozart's Symphony 31 in D Major, with its grand, swooping, and almost swaggering sound, probably the grandest opening I can recall in Mozart.  an opening that is almost mocking in its extravagance.  And yet, I increasingly think that is the genius of Mozart, that he can bring the music right to the razor's edge of parody without crossing that line, creating something incredibly beautiful, so beautiful that we might not even see (or hear) how close perfection is to mockery.

 

Anyway, it was a lovely performance, marred by the interruption of bouts of applause from the audience.  I do, generally, think that moving away from the formality and imposed seriousness of classical music concerts is a good thing, and sometimes intermittent applause does not bother me, at least in moderation, but this time it did, and I left a little a wee tad disgruntled.

 

Not for long however.  It has been a busy week in terms of performance, and I have had little time to mull over my discontent.  Sunday evening I returned downtown to hear Alison Krause at the Tennessee theater, and frayed sensibilities were suitably soothed and enchanted.  I had worried about the concert somewhat, much as I love music, most music, I often struggle with popular bluegrass/folk/country/pop concerts as too often they are a uniform mix of new work and crowd favorites that to my peripatetic brain waves all start to sound the same, whereas I really want a little dynamic programing and variation.  Krause has a varied repertoire however; I hoped for the best and was not disappointed.

 

Tuesday night I went to an organ recital by the wonderful local organist James Garvey.  I was awed by the music, by the skill and mastery not only in the performance but in the program organization as well, complex, balanced, thrilling.  The concert opened with Bach and progressed through a remarkable balancing of music, with Distler, Franck, Leguay and Dupre.  George would have loved the Franck, and I sat happily with his presence in my heart as I listened to the music.  Everything was grand, but I soared with the Bach, and my heart danced with the Lequay, sometimes shocked alert, at other times peering through the clouds.  There is something about atonal music that always alerts my brain, makes every cell vibrate, and I continue to think, when done well, clears away the fog and shadows that shape our perception of reality, showing us something of the universe beyond.

 

Last night I was downtown again, at the university, where I had tickets to Alias Grace, a marvelous and challenging play that addresses so many issues that affect society, and yet does so in a beautiful and compelling manner.  Although many issues are addressed, this is really a play about memory and truth, and it asks more questions than it answers.  Yet this member of the audience felt that the performance was graceful and sensitive, and that the conclusion was satisfyingly humane and complex, neither pandering to easy answers nor burdened with excess questions, only thoughts, and perhaps insight, or at least hope for insight.