Light and Momentary

Two voices, four hands

I told you about it earlier this year when Stella and I first started playing Taylor Swift together on the piano, but I haven't posted about how much we've enjoyed it in the months since then. Taylor Swift songs are usually some version of a I-IV-V-VI chord sequence, so it's easy to goof around with them in a key that works for us. (Taylor's 5'10 height means she has a bigger skeleton, which means a bigger larynx, which means a lower range, so we usually move them up a step or two.)

Pete was home over the weekend and he recorded this one-take-no-warmup video of us singing Maroon. It is rough around the edges but I hope it captures the fun we've been having with these songs. At about 0:41 you can see Stella smile at me. That smile says, "Mom, did you seriously just start to play the VI there AGAIN?" At about 0:42 you can see me smile back, and that smile says, "These hands are ROCK SOLID on the V chord, sweetheart. (But yes, I did almost play the VI again.)"

We can't quite decide whether to end on the V or the I, and in this recording there's a bit of dissonance at the end. But you could make a case that it's fitting, given the song.

Joyful Noise

One of the musicians at our parish asked Stella and me to sub this weekend, and so we went to their Thursday night rehearsal. It was bigger than expected; he's playing for three of the masses this weekend, which meant there were a bunch of musicians at the rehearsal. 

I'm still thinking about how much fun it was. The pianist is an interesting guy. I would 100% pay money to hear him play and sing if he had a gig in town -- he has a nice voice, and he's a far better pianist than I am. But he cannot -- just cannot -- read music. He's been in this role for many months now, and I keep expecting him to get more comfortable with reading music. But no: someone asked him to play the alto line in the Gloria and he called me over to do it instead. At the same time he has a deeper understanding of music theory than I do, a better intuition for the complex interrelationships of messy jazz chords.

I guess that's my happy spot: in the middle of an enthusiastic crowd of competent amateurs. There was another 15-year-old girl there, happy to see Stella again, and she and I were weaving harmonies above and below the melody line. Her dad sang baritone across from us. Near the end we all sang Sanctuary together and I reveled in the depth of the improvised harmonies.

Sometimes with church volunteering it's easy to let the quibbles interfere with the joy: that one participant who says we shouldn't sing anything social-justice-y (lyrics based on Matthew 25 are right out when she's planning the music), or the older lady who keeps trying to tell Stella what to do in a slightly unkind way. But what I want to remember is our loose circle around the piano, with the tabernacle light flickering on the other side of the church.

"Lord, prepare me," we sang, "to be a sanctuary, pure and holy." We sing this fairly often after communion at our parish, so we slipped easily into harmony -- stretching our voices across the octaves, the accompaniment spare and gentle underneath. "A sanctuary for you," we concluded. The final chord hung in the air and collectively we breathed it in: the goodness and the joy of making music together in that sacred space.

'Tis the season, but not for long

Tomorrow is the beginning of Ordinary Time for Catholics. It's a little weird for the new season to start on a Tuesday, but that's how it goes when Christmas falls on a Sunday. This means today is the last day on which it makes much sense to talk about a Christmas carol, and so I am going to squeeze in some Christmas carol thoughts.

The nutshell version of the post is this: if you have any influence over which Christmas music will be performed live at a venue near you, be VERY CAREFUL about selecting What Child Is This. It is a pain to sing solo, because the phrases go on a leetle too long. But it is a MINEFIELD to sing with others. CAUTION NEEDED; hazards await.

By my count there are six different spots in What Child Is This? where the interval between two notes changes from version to version. Some sheet music will have half-steps in some of the spots; some will have whole steps in some of the spots. All of these divergences happen on sixteenth notes, which means that the dissonance between the half-step singers and the whole-step singers will be brief, but it also means it's very very hard to correct reliably. Here, I will play you a little sample to show you what I mean:

Yesterday I had agreed to substitute for the usual cantor at the early Mass. When I got there at 7am, there were two junior high girls who were planning to sing as well. Normally it's a more-the-merrier vibe, but normally we don't sing What Child Is This. I asked the accompanist to help us practice the tricky whole steps, but you guys, it's just really hard to sing the right notes in the right spots, especially as you wade into the verses where you to think about the lyrics as well as the intervals. I decided I would just fade out for the sketchy whole-step bits and let the girls sing what sounded right to them, but I didn't realize that this would mean a livestreamed clash between their voices and the keyboard. Was that better or worse than throwing my at-least-intermittently accurate vocal in the mix? Who can say?

The version that lives in my head is all half-steps, all the way through, all six times. I do not have a single sheet-music version that does it this way, but that's the version in my head regardless. So here on the very last day of the Christmas season, for those of you who are not too weary of Christmas music, I have recorded the Jamie Gladly All Half-Steps version. 

What child is this, ALL HALF-STEPS ALL THE TIME

And remember for next year: if you're picking Christmas music to be performed live somewhere, go with Hark the Herald Angels Sing over What Child Is This.

Ordinary Time

Today is the end of Christmas and the beginning of Ordinary Time, and so I am sharing a song I wrote with you. It's about new beginnings, and persistence, and it is perhaps ironic that I had to spend more than a week prying myself out of perfectionist hell before I posted it. But anyway-- 

New Year's Day

I love a fresh start

I love a clean slate

I love a new leaf, I love a blank unblotted page

Where I can try again to shape a life

from a strand of unformed days

I begin as I hope to go on

We begin, we begin again we begin, we begin as we hope to go on

 

When I was younger

I thought next time I'd get it right

I thought I'd grown up

I thought my plans were watertight

But here in middle age I have

this middle-aged insight:

we just begin as we hope to go on

We begin, we begin again we begin, we begin as we hope to go on

 

BRIDGE:

False starts and do-overs lie ahead of me

But pit stops and way stations beckon hopefully

like showers, like confessionals

where we step forth fresh and clean

For in my failures I am learning to be free

In my failures I am learning to be free

 

Here on the threshold

I look across this span of days

I cannot know the trials, the gladnesses

that wait upon my way

But there'll be mornings full of mercies

there'll be treasuries of grace

So I'll begin as I hope to go on

We begin, we begin again we begin, we begin as we hope to go on

We begin as we hope to go on

 

New Year's Day - 1:9:22 3.38 PM

If the player doesn't work in your browser, you can probably right-click to download the file or play it in a new window.

A public health ditty

Look, it's a silly song about the pandemic. Lyrics follow.

Chorus:
It's not that hard to cover your nose
Inside your mask is where it goes
The COVID case count grows and grows
So please take care to cover your nose

Verse 1:
You wouldn't wear your pants below your privatest of parts
You care about your neighbors' lungs; you care about their hearts
You can spread the virus long before your very first symptom shows
So please take care to cover your nose

Verse 2:
Your doctors and your nurses are among the hardest hit
Spare a prayer for long-term care workers; they're in the thick of it
Pneumonia is no picnic and a vent just straight-up blows
So please take care to cover your nose

Bridge:
We are all in this together, friends and strangers
So we all must work together, no Lone Rangers
(though even the Lone Ranger wore a mask
I suggest you do the same)

Verse 3: 
It's not a magic bullet but it cuts the odds you'll spread
the virus to your neighbor, who might wind up all too dead
A quarter-million deaths and counting; here's what I propose
Let's all take care to cover our nose

The Flute Report

I played my flute at Mass again today, with an expanded set of music. Somebody -- Mary, maybe? -- asked me to say more about the flute I bought. It's an intermediate Gemeinhardt, open-hole. 

I had the idea that I would just hit the ground running. I used to be good at flute; I would be good at flute again. It's going a little more slowly than I thought it might. At first the instrument and I didn't always agree about which octave we were going to be in. This is mostly resolved, but I am still working on the adjustment to an open-hole instrument. This flute has an inline G key (my old beginner flute had an offset G), and it's going to take me some time to feel comfortable with covering the open G key since the hand position is a little different. 

The thing that is most surprising to me is the way that my brain is clunkety-clunking across multiple key changes. The Mass parts are almost entirely in F, and I found myself needing to be very deliberate with myself about the other pieces I was playing. It didn't always work. I issued myself a firm reminder before the Lamb of God, which modulates. "Don't forget," I told myself, "TWO SHARPS." If you have any music background you are wincing at that reminder: if you're playing in F and you modulate to G, there's only one sharp. This was painfully apparent when I played a C-sharp, loud and clear, where a C-natural was called for.

The directors are so kind and encouraging, though, that I could just shake it off. They asked if I'd come back and play again tomorrow morning, actually, but I declined.

**

I am determined not to let perfectionism get in the way of joy.

Today I was sitting quietly and holding my flute between songs, feeling it cool gradually as the warmth of my breath dissipated. And maybe this is odd, but it made me think about the goodness of post-Incarnation life: I have been given the gift of breath, and I can use it to make the air dance around me. I am pulling from a set of skills I learned as a young girl -- many many hours spent figuring out how to unite fingers and breath and tongue and brain into one coordinated effort -- and when it goes well my whole heart sings through them: you alone are the Most High Jesus Christ!

I was thinking too about the mystery of hearing. You never say to yourself, "Okay, that note I'm hearing is causing my eardrum to vibrate a thousand times per second"; you probably don't say to yourself, "Wow, it's so cool that my cochlea can do a sort of Fourier transform thing." You probably don't imagine the physical movement of the air being converted into electrical energy, racing down your eighth cranial nerve, traveling to your inferior colliculi and your temporal lobes. I am thinking about young Samuel, saying, "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening" -- and about the gift of the listening itself.

That's the treasure of acoustic music, right? We use our bodies and our instruments to direct the very air around us to give glory to God; we use our ears to pull meaning from the dancing air. I say, with fingers and heart and breath, glory to God!, and you can hear it and sing along with me: glory in the highest!

The bud may have a bitter taste

Remember the night before the election, when I told you I'd been singing an old hymn to a new tune? It's a hymn with a story. It was written by William Cowper, who spent his life struggling to see the goodness of God while burdened by crushing mental illness. 

I went to confession on Saturday afternoon ("Bless me, Father, for I have been A JERK about the election") and my pastor reminded me about the permissive will of God: you can believe in the sovereignty of God and still acknowledge that an awful lot of stuff has hit the fan over the years. In singing about the will of God I have not suddenly decided that this situation is his active will. But I am certain that I could see the goodness of God in Aleppo or in a famine, so I will pull my socks up and aim for a better attitude about 21st-century America. Wary and resolute, but also optimistic. I believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living, just like Psalm 37 says. (I might look a little bit possessed if I try to make a wary-resolute-optimistic face, but you'll know I mean well, right?)

First thing this morning I called all of my Congresspeople plus Mitch McConnell to make some noise about Bannon's appointment. It doesn't take very long to leave a voice mail: "My name is Jamie Gladly. I am Senator XYZ's constituent in Gladlyville, and I would like to register my strenuous objections to Steve Bannon's appointment as chief strategist. I would like to urge Senator XYZ to do everything in his power to keep Bannon out of the White House. Thank you for your consideration." Will they listen? No idea. Did it make me feel better? It really did, actually. And my 17yo said, "Thanks, Mom, I appreciate that you're calling them."

Recordings in which I am singing push every one of my perfectionist buttons. But you know, I'm really glad I was brave and posted the hasty one with baby Stella in 2009 (oh my gosh, look at those thighs! and remember a world in which toddlers who didn't sleep were our idea of a big problem!*). When I look back at it now I don't wince the way I did when I posted it. So I am going to be brave again, even though I am worried that these high notes may cause you auditory distress. If I had been perfectionistic this morning about The Right Thing To Say that would make Mitch McConnell leap into action, I wouldn't have done anything at all. So here's to imperfect action, and the hope that these lovely words, recorded in more haste than I might wish, may bring you some solace as well. (If the in-line audio player doesn't cooperate, you should be able to right-click and listen in a new tab.) 

*seriously: I got a rejection notice today from a journal that had given me promising preliminary feedback, and I was just like, "Yeah, well, bigger fish to fry." Instant perspective! How's that for a teeny silver lining?

God Moves

God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.
He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines of never-failing skill
he treasures up his bright designs and works his sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take: the clouds ye so much dread
are big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head.

His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour.
The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.

There are two other verses at this link if you're curious. Huh, I might need a new blog category. I refuse to call it the President Trump category, though. What should it be?

Thou most kind and gentle death

I was kicking around a few different titles for this post: "In which I plan for a future without me in it." "In which I take control freakitude to new heights." I decided to give up on a title while I googled the opening hymn I knew I wanted, and boom: there it was.

When I die, please kick off the funeral Mass with All Creatures of Our God and King. You can skip the middle verses if you wish, but please sing the death one loud and clear. I have cautioned my husband that On Eagle's Wings will cause me to rise up out of my coffin and wail "Nooooooooooooooooooo," so let's make sure to avoid that one.

One thing I don't know is how much choice we have about funeral readings. Does anybody know? If I could pick today, I'd pick Zephaniah 3:16-20: the Lord our God in our midst, loving us tenderly and joyfully. But if we're supposed to pick from the set that seems to be in circulation, then I'd say Isaiah 25 instead. Funeral Masses at our parish always feature Psalm 23, but I'd prefer the last part of Ps. 116 instead. I don't know of a good setting, though. Maybe I should write one.

Second reading, non-negotiably, is 2 Cor 4:6-11,14-18. This will not surprise anyone who has sent me a non-work, non-bloggy email at any point since 1999, or indeed any readers of a blog that is, after all, called Light and Momentary. Gospel: John 11, as much of the story as the priest is willing to proclaim.

Offertory: It Is Well With My Soul. (Do you know the story? It's a cool story -- click the link if you've never heard it.) Catholics never sing that hymn, but I'm not sure why. It remains a favorite from my evangelical days. Communion, if this is not vain: That We Might Live (see the very bottom of this post). Meditation: Crown Him With Many Crowns, being especially for sure for certain to sing the Lord of life and Lord of years verses. Oh, and also the Lord of peace and Lord of love verses. The people from work who come to my funeral are going to be like, "Jamie's funeral just went ON and ON and ON." (Though really, it's the eulogies that have the potential to make a funeral go ON and ON and ON. Attention, potential eulogists: make it snappy. (Please.) More importantly, make it about Jesus and not about me, please.)

Funerals at our parish always end with the Song of Farewell, but if it's not too wacky I'd rather have mine end on a different note. All of my children's baptism Masses ended with a song called Thanks Be To God, a song that continues to evoke for me the enthusiastic hope inherent in the best beginnings. And what is death to a Christian if not the greatest beginning?

**

Please share a link in the comments if you are posting about this stuff, or leave as much of a comment as you'd like if you don't blog. (People often apologize for long comments, but I love it when people take the time to write about what they're thinking. I am still terrible about responding to comments, but I love them all the same.)

**

In 1990 the pastor's wife at my little evangelical church said she wished she had more options for communion songs. I went home and wrote one based on Philippians 2, but then I was too shy to share it. In hindsight, it's striking to me how Catholic it sounds even though it was written at a point when becoming Catholic was the LAST thing on my mind. I still like it, so I am sharing this version in case you might like it too. I recorded it in between dashing home and dashing off to preschool pickup, and my haste shows, but I'm ignoring the impulse to clean it up in favor of getting dinner started for my family. (Oh, I just listened to it and you can totally hear that I am sitting in the basement next to the furnace. Oh, well.)

TWML

Lyrics: From these wounds God's blood flowed: poured out, freely, that we might live. He who was one with God humbled himself, bled and died that we might live. He became nothing for our sakes-- obeyed unto death, even death on a cross, that we might live. Let his name be exalted! Let it be above all names! Come give praise to him whose body was broken that we might live. In his name we come now: Lord, come, fill us again that we may live.

Something New

Here is a video of my daughter eating a piece of paper while her mother watches, wondering, "Is she eating that paper?" (It came back out right after the camera was off. I don't know why she likes to eat paper, but she does. Maybe I should have vaulted over to fish it out of her mouth, but I didn't.) There are approximately a zillion disclaimers I could disclaim here. But some of you may enjoy it and the rest of you know where to find the pause button, so here it is anyway.

This is a song I started to write three years ago, about a night when Pete was in the throes of a nap transition.  One night when his brothers woke him up (AGAIN) I came utterly unglued, and this song is about coming back to my senses. The pieces of the song wouldn't quite come together then, but for some reason on Sunday I decided to finish it.

These are the lyrics:

The Not Quite Full Moon

v.1: The baby was sleeping when the noisy boys woke him
I could tell there'd be no sleeping any time soon
I flew into a fury and out of my front door
and on the horizon stood a not quite full moon.

Ch.1: They always to go sleep, I know; I'd forgotten in my angry morass
The truth that eludes me when anger deludes me is this: this too shall pass.

v.2: For close on an hour we paced through the neighborhood,
me in my fury and him at my side.
But a baby can't sleep when his mama is raging
So we turned one more corner, his eyes open wide.

Ch. 2: The hours drag like years sometimes, though the years fly so fleetly, so fast
The truth that eludes me when anger deludes me is this: this too shall pass.

v.3: The not quite full moon thrust herself through the treetops
and her light fell upon me like courage, like balm
The thoughts of my heart, which were "why me?" and "what now?",
were swiftly supplanted by a much-beloved psalm.

Bridge: The sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon, nor the moon by night
The one who neither slumbers nor sleeps will watch, will guard your life

v.4: I can tell that my babies are made in God's image
Because they're none too fond of this slumbering thing
But peace is contagious as surely as rage is
And sleep stole upon that small boy in his sling.

Ch. (hybrid): They always go to sleep, I know; I'd forgotten in my angry morass
A bit more perspective, a bit less invective, for this, this too shall pass.

v.5: I wish I could say that I'd never been swayed, that
the truths I saw clear in the moonrise still shone
When slowly his eyes closed as we walked through the shadows
and the not quite full moon rose and lighted us home.

***

Oh, goodness, I just checked the preview of this post and I am internally disclaiming even more. I couldn't tell just what she was doing, see, because her back was to me. And and and-- only that way madness lies ("I know I said I'd get you the first part of chapter 3, but I was busy working on the breath support in my video because I wasn't at all happy with the high notes"), so I think I will just wince a little and post it anyway. This is what our home is like, with a million books around and a baby who is mostly gentle with them, except when she's not. And a mom who loses her temper sometimes, and who always hopes to do better.