Luybens Music
Postclassic Radio! - Kyle Gann's internet radio station that accompanies the blog; see the playlist at kylegann.com
American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)
Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects
Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station
New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking
The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross
William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer
Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation
Eve Beglarian's Home Page - great Downtown composer
Just Intonation Network - a meeting place for people interested in alternative tunings
Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site
The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer
Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues
Apologies that I am a day late, Monday is a rough day and it ran away with me chasing desperately after this week.
Sunday morning was our first performance for the fall with the Carilloners Handbell Choir, and I'll say that I'm quite pleased with how things turned out. My deepest gratitude to Galen Postier for stepping in for our friend Bill Davis, working very hard, and doing some great work! "Trust and Obey" seemed to go much deeper than the music we played this week, it's really a wonderful state of being in communion with the Creator if we can do both of these things. I don't know about the rest of us, but I find the Trust part comes really easily. I Trust that the shaper of the fabric of the universe will absolutely reach out and save me from whatever absurd situation I put myself in. And most often, this is the case...however here comes the hard part. I have to Obey the commands I am given in order to take the Creator's hand and be lifted out of my trouble. That's where I get stuck, maybe it's an overt oppositional-defiant streak, the burden of being artistic, or just me being a product of the "disconnect from reality and go digital" generation - but I have trouble doing the part that is required of me to take part in my own rescue.
In the young adult Sunday School class they're watching a series of videos called "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction." I only caught a moment this week as I ran hither and yon setting up bells, grabbing a cup of coffee, and making sure my vest was on the right way, but what I heard was like many other things, tied to Trust-ing and Obey-ing. The essence is this "We live some portion of our lives in a spiritual Egypt, and God walks into that place where we have placed ourselves in slavery and rescues us. Ingratitude is a direct product of forgetting the nature of God. Whenever we complain that 'this isn't fair' it's us forgetting that God is not fair. God has no obligation to walk into the slave's quarters and sever the chains that we have bound ourselves with. But God does anyway." It looks like a wonderful Sunday School class, and I hope anyone who doesn't have a class of their own will give it, or one of our other classes their serious consideration. Great things seem to be happening!
In the sermon this week, Pastor Ron told us about the way to find real success. The final thing, and the first thing he told us was to ACT on the things that we talk about. It's very easy to plan a huge program, intend deeply to set out and make it happen, and then rest on our collective laurels and watch the opportunity fly by. I know this because as a musician and a person in general, I am deeply guilty of sitting on the riverbank and watching opportunity sail by in an almost ridiculously elaborate barge with a big sign that says "Hey, come on board already!"
There were some tools that were recommended to temper our actions, to make certain that they serve the Creator and all of Creation however. First of these is self-denial. Every wise college student has to practice this on a daily basis, we're constantly tempted with ways to throw our money away. At UMKC that situation is exacerbated by the closeness of the Country Club Plaza to our campus where you can easily eat, drink, and shop your way to abject poverty in the space of a few hours (or less if you work hard). My personal weakness on the Plaza is their three-story Barnes and Noble Bookseller - nearly every day I can think of a reason to go there for something: a delicious latte, a new movie, a book from any of ten genres that I read when I have time, or even some supplemental course texts just because I'm sick of going to the library all the time. In addition to that, there is Luyben music just up Main Street where I can easily spend entire monthly salaries on vast treasure troves of printed music all set in my key!
So, if like me you find that temptation to be wasteful is sometimes too much - I encourage you not to give up. I had a shallow, but meaningful experience with delayed gratification this week with my good friend Jon. The Chancel Choir knows Jon from our first rehearsal this fall, and a very few other times that he has filled in for a rehearsal. Jon and I both deeply love the pumpkin pancakes at the Hanover Pancake House, one of our favorite places to go and have Denver Omelet, some coffee, and discuss our musical and philosophical reasons for being (or catch on up events in one another's lives -whichever is more pressing). Since about April, the Pumpkin pancakes have been off the menu, because they are a seasonal item. Every so often for those intervening months, Jon would go in, and every time order the pumpkin pancakes knowing they weren't available, but just unable to wait anymore! At long last, the day arrived on September 11 that we went to the Hanover at 7:30 in the morning for the first day that Pumpkin Pancakes were back on the menu. Now, these are always amazing, but after months of waiting, and waiting, and quite impatiently demanding we get our pancakes now! These were quite possibly the best pancakes ever made.
I think many experiences happen like that, so I believe in the future I'll certainly try delaying what I want just to see how good it feels when I finally get it. The other thing Ron mentioned was that we have to release ourself of our desires in order to receive what God has waiting. The analogy he used was two buckets - one full of water that represents our wants in this world, and another full of oil that represents the hope and power and joy that God has for us. If our bucket is full of water, the oil has nowhere to go!
The dangerous thing about this analogy is we want to immediately dump our bucket, but it's very difficult to just take the things we want out of our life and turn them over. Thus, it's a gradual process, but it's a gradual process we cannot keep track of or it's self defeating. In the Tao Te Ching it says "The more I mark it, the farther I am from Tao." The Tao in Chinese thought, to take something utterly complicated and unknowable and attempt to address it briefly - is a summation of everything in the world that exists simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, in everyone and separate from them.
I'd like to apply the quote from Tao Te Ching to having our buckets emptied of water. "The more I take note of emptying the bucket, the more water I put back in." As Americans we really want a quantifiable number for absolutely everything, and as someone who has a fairly solidly sketched two-year plan for life - I can say I'm guilty as charged. If we want to receive the blessing however, we must empty the bucket - which starts with not taking any notice of what we want. The less we ask, "What do I want out of this" and the more we ask "What will best serve those who depend on me" without keeping track of how often we ask one or another of the questions, the closer we are to utmost Communion with the Divine.
If that last seems a bit complicated, I recommend that you Trust and Obey.
If any ladies of the church are free from 7:30-45 we will be beginning rehearsals this Thursday for "Lift Thine Eyes" from Mendelssohn's Elijah which will be part of the all music celebration on October 25th.
Rehearsal thoughts for this week:
Carilloners: Festive Rondo, Because he lives
Chancel Choir: Lift thine eyes, Bless Thou, In This Very Room, Here I am Lord, Somewhere a Child, and a new piece!!
