“One who wants to leave behind a gift”
~~~ Otto Rank’s definition of the artist
*****
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2020/03/11/one-liner-wednesday-just-sayin/
Badge by Laura @ riddlefromthemiddle.com
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert does a recurring skit, now a best-selling book, called Midnight Confessions, in which he “confesses” to his audience with the disclaimer that he isn’t sure these things are really sins but that he does “feel bad about them.” While Stephen and his writers are famously funny, I am not, so my JC’s Confessions will be somewhat more serious reflections, but they will be things that I feel bad about. Stephen’s audience always forgives him at the end of the segment; I’m not expecting that – and these aren’t really sins – but comments are always welcome.
~ JC
I don’t feel like a musician anymore.
I started playing piano at seven. I began studying organ as a preteen and was the organist of my rural Catholic church at fourteen. I majored in music at Smith College, where organ was my main instrument, I played often at chapel, I sang in choirs, learned that I could compose, and was named the Presser Scholar in my senior year.
After I graduated, married B, and moved to the Binghamton NY area, I continued with church music until I took a few years away when my children were young. Realizing that it wouldn’t work for our family for B and I to never have a common day off, I volunteered with the music ministry at my church, accompanying the youth and junior choirs and subbing when our music director needed to be away. When tendon problems in my elbow eventually made it impossible for me to play for very long at a time, our music director would play and I would conduct.
When our parish disintegrated in 2005 and my church music volunteering evaporated, except for occasional special celebrations, I still had my long-time affiliation with University Chorus to keep me musically active. After the retirement of our long-time director, though, University Chorus, which used to sing a major concert every semester, has cut back to only singing at one concert a year, at most. This academic year, we have not met at all and I am not sure we will ever re-convene. Due to uncertainty and personal scheduling complications, I haven’t been able to join another group.
With my last steady musical commitment gone, I don’t feel that I am still a musician, which leaves an empty space in my identity. In a period of my life when there has been so much loss, losing that piece of myself is especially difficult because music has long served as a vehicle to express emotion and to find community and comfort.
I don’t know if I will ever recover the musician part of my identity. Theoretically, I could be singing on my own every day and working on sight reading so that I would be ready to audition if there is an opportunity, but it feels too futile, not helped by the fact that I am a very anxious and not particularly good auditioner.
It is likely that I will sing again with the Smith Alumnae Chorus, either on campus or on tour, but those choral experiences would only be a few days a year. Not an identity-affirming amount of time.
Maybe what I should say is that, for many years, I was a musician.
Since the Jubilee of 2000, I have belonged to NETWORK, a lobbying and educational organization dedicated to the principles of Catholic social justice and how they can be expressed through our democracy in the United States.
Their Lenten program this year is “Becoming Faith-Filled Voters.” In the introduction, the prayer segment was this new hymn. I was very moved by it and wanted to share it. While it is written in a religious context, I find that it invokes many principles that are shared by all people of good will.
A Hymn for a Time of National Crisis
O God of All the Nations
LLANGLOFFAN 7.6.7.6 D (“Lead On, O King Eternal”; “Rejoice, Rejoice, Believers”)
O God of all the nations, your ancient prophets saw
that kings and institutions are not above the law.
Integrity is precious, and truth will one day stand;
Your way is peace and justice, and love is your command.
O God, when times are troubled, when lies are seen as truth,
When power-hungry people draw praise and not reproof,
When greed is seen as greatness, when justice is abused,
We pray that those who lead us will know what they must choose.
We pray they’ll gather wisdom and lift up high ideals,
To guide our struggling nation along a path that heals.
We pray they’ll have the vision to value each good law,
To put aside ambition, to seek the best for all.
O God of all the nations, may those who lead us see
that justice is your blessing, that truth will set us free.
Give all of us the courage to seek the nobler way,
So in this land we cherish, the good will win the day.
Tune: Traditional Welsh melody, from Daniel Evans’ Hymnau a Thonau (Hymns and Tunes), 1865 (“Lead On, O King Eternal”; “Rejoice, Rejoice, Believers”)
Text: Copyright © December 19, 2019 by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette. All rights reserved.
Permission is given for free use of this hymn.
When my granddaughter ABC was living with us, we sang a lot of songs with her, but one of her favorites was “Old McDonald”.
I would often sing it to her when we were trying to get her to sleep. Using it for that purpose, I would try to sing as many verses as possible, and would extend each verse by singing the animals sounds backward in succession.
This was a challenge when you were doing 15 verses or so. In order to keep things, well, in order, I would group the animals and then remember the order within each subgroup.
I’d start with barnyard animals, cows first because she had a book where Old McDonald had a cow. (It was a board book, so only cows.) Then, horse, sheep, pig, sometimes goat, ending with dog and cat, which could be pets or work animals.
Next, I would go on to fowl. Chicken, duck, goose, turkey, sometimes chicks and doves.
E-I-E-I-O!
Then, I would go on to animals that could be wild animals or ones that were part of the farm. Frogs, bees, and sometimes animals that don’t make sounds, like rabbits. (FYI: rabbits go hop, hop here and hop, hop there.)
I could sing continuously for about fifteen minutes, which was usually enough for ABC to drift off to sleep. I’d sometimes back out of the room and close the door still singing.
Ending very quietly e-i-e-i-o…
ABC, who is now living in London, is now heavily into dinosaurs and making what she thinks are dinosaur sounds.
I don’t think Old McDonald had one of those…
E-I-E-I-O!
*****
Please join us for Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays! This week’s prompt was animal sounds. You can find more info here.
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“Heaven. I’m in heaven and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak, and I seem to find the happiness I seek, when we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek.”
This has been running through my head every since I read Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week. [Note: Given that this is running through my head, I may have made a mistake in the text. I also am not sure of the composer and lyricist, but it is one of the Great American Songbook sort.]
I also have a black-and-white movie version of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing around in my head. Again, I’m not sure if there is a movie that meets this description. I don’t know if this is memory or imagination.
It reminds me that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, backwards and in heels. Somehow, he gets more credit than she, though.
I wonder if, now that I have written this, the song and dance in my head will stop…
*****
In case you didn’t guess, Linda’s prompt this week is “cheek.” Follow this link: https://lindaghill.com/2020/02/14/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-feb-15-2020/ to learn more and join us!
Yesterday, I attended an event of the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton. They presented a Handel Messiah Parts II & III sing with soloists from the choir and orchestra volunteers from the Binghamton Community Orchestra. The director, Bruce Borton, is an emeritus from Binghamton University. I sang in the University Chorus under his leadership for over 25 years.
There were a lot of people there, including a good number who had sung with UC. We were sitting in mixed formation and I sat with three good friends whose participation with UC was even longer than mine.
I had performed part one of the Messiah, but not the rest, except for a scattered chorus here and there. It’s hard to have sung for as many decades as I have without having sung the “Hallelujah Chorus”! Admittedly, there were some sections that I could not keep up with, given that I was sightreading with text at tempo, but I am so familiar with Baroque style that I could manage to re-orient myself harmonically, at least in time to cadence.
It was fun to have a chance to sing with my friends again and to watch Bruce conduct, but it was sad, too. I have no idea when I will have the opportunity to do choral singing again.
Bittersweet.
Change is stressful.
Even when it is a sought-for or hoped-for change, like welcoming a new child or moving into a new home.
An unwelcome change, such as serious illness, accident, or death of a loved one, is even more stressful.
Over the last several years, we’ve gone through the illness and death of my mother-in-law and my mother, the welcome addition of adult children and our first grandchild to our home and the pain of them flying away, and the crowding out of pursuits that used to occupy us. All of this personal change overlays the ever-shifting sands of tumult in the US.
I can attest that change is stressful.
People keep telling me to breathe.
After the stress of the first Christmas season without my mom, I decided to give myself breathing space in the form of a mini-sabbatical, still attending to my vital tasks while allowing myself time to go to the movies or read or write or whatever else I felt like doing that day.
Of course, participating in Just Jot It January fit right into that plan!
As I’ve been reflecting on these last few weeks, I am starting to formulate what changes I need to make going forward. Knowing that there will still be a fair amount of day-to-day uncertainty with our family life, I won’t attempt a strict schedule. I do plan, though, to be more deliberate with my writing practice. No, this does not mean that I will post every day for the rest of the year as I have been for Just Jot It January, although I do hope to continue posting without some of the major breaks I’ve had to take in the past.
In the area of writing, I do need to be more deliberate about editing and publication. I find the publication submission piece particularly daunting. There are hundreds of literary journals and magazines and small presses that specialize in poetry and it is difficult for me to figure out to whom I should send my work. Because submissions typically charge a reading fee, you want to invest in those publications that are most likely to be interested in your work. I tend to be overwhelmed by the choices and the specifics of differing submission procedures. I need to summon the energy to undertake these less fun not at all fun aspects of the writing process to get my work out to the public.
Oh, and I need to start doing some open mic and/or group readings. Reading in public, even with a small group, takes a lot of energy and courage for me, but it is very important for poets to do.
I also need to make a dent in reading the huge backlog of poetry journals, chapbooks, collections, and anthologies waiting for me. I will probably never catch up.
Years ago, I had a few dozen blogs that I read on a regular basis. I was a frequent commenter, as well. Even though I know this is what every good blogger should do, I don’t think I can go back to it, choosing instead to concentrate on poetry. I am committed to continuing Top of JC’s Mind, but I will spend the bulk of my blogging time writing posts and responding to comments. I will continue to read some blogs, but it will most likely continue in my current haphazard fashion. I know that means I will gain followers only slowly, but I’m not a big stats person. I do want to take this opportunity to give a shout-out to all my readers and followers! I am humbled that you choose to spend part of your time here.
I also used to spend a lot of time reading and responding to emails. I was on a lot of mailing lists – against fracking and for environmental advocacy, for progressive political principles, for increasing social justice, for some specific candidates/officeholders, for reform of the Catholic church, and so on. I have cut back on a number of them and have lately taken to deleting a lot without even opening them. I will keep a core of them, because these issues remain important to me, but I will try to be intentional about which I read and take action on.
Sadly, singing has faded into the background. I never thought this would happen, but the seeming demise of my long-time chorus has taken away my usual Monday night rehearsals and rehearsing at home during the week. I don’t have ABC here anymore for impromptu renditions of “Old McDonald” or Sesame Street songs. I should be doing vocal exercises and sight reading practice every day to keep my voice in good form, but I don’t have the heart for it. Maybe, someday, I’ll feel like singing again.
I may limit evening activities to poetry gatherings, choosing to be at home with family otherwise. I’m sure there will be the occasional evening event that will draw me away, but I want to spend most evenings at home. In part, this is to spend time with B who works long days. Even if we are just watching television or reading or doing puzzles, it is comforting to be together. Additionally, given my own introversion, it takes a lot of energy to be in groups of people. It’s difficult to summon that energy at the end of the day.
I am also trying to make some changes that impact my physical well-being. I am trying to eat more thoughtfully, exercise (a tiny bit) more, and sleep longer at night. Rather than trying to make drastic changes, I am doing little things that send me in the right direction. I think that is a more sustainable way for me to proceed.
The other area that I hope to make some changes is making time for friends. This is not totally under my control, as many friends have their own busy lives, but I think if I actually make a call or send a note, we have a better chance of getting together, whether in person or by videochat. I cherish all my friends and feel their support, even when we aren’t able to get together, but I need to turn some of our vague “let’s do lunch or breakfast” into actual times and dates.
That’s a lot of changes to make, and, therefore, a lot of stress.
At least, it will be stress that leads to positive change.
Fingers crossed.
*****
The prompt for Linda’s Just Jot It January today is “change.” Join us! You don’t need to use the prompt – I seldom do – because anything counts as a Jot. Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/24/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-24th-2020/
I may have made a mistake in my quest to catch up on movies.
Because I admire Tom Hanks as an actor and Fred Rogers as a loving and generous soul, I wanted to see A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. I had appreciated the 2018 documentary on Fred Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, and wanted to see what more this fact-inspired fictional movie had to say. I knew that it was about a journalist who had written a piece about Fred Rogers, but little else, other than that Tom Hanks had been nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actor rather than Best Actor.
I found the juxtaposition of the much darker story of the journalist, Lloyd, played by Matthew Rhys, with the gentle, caring, spiritual depth of Fred Rogers to be jarring. I also hadn’t known that the death of a parent is a major theme in the movie; while the situation in the film is very different from my own recent experience, that aspect of the story was still upsetting for me.
My reaction reminded me of my response to the film Julie & Julia, another film about an unlikely pair of protagonists in which I reacted positively to the elder and negatively to the younger. An aside: the link in the prior sentence is to a blog post I wrote in 2014 about my reaction to the film and blogging. Re-reading it just now was… an experience – and a chance to look back at a post from early in my blogging and poetry days and reflect on where I am now as opposed to where I thought I might be. At any rate, I think it still stands up as a decent piece of writing, so, if you have the time and are so inclined, check it out.
When my daughters were young, PBS was a mainstay in our house. I admit that I had a more enjoyable time watching Sesame Street with the girls than Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. I wasn’t a fan of the slow pacing and I was not at all a fan of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Every time someone said, “Correct, as usual.” to King Friday the XIII, I cringed. Over the years, I’ve learned to think about it more from the child’s viewpoint and understand that the show was built to give children the time and space to deal with their whole range of emotions. This was not readily apparent to me as a young parent.
There is one episode that has always stayed with me. Yo-Yo Ma was Mr. Rogers’ guest and was playing a movement of one of the Bach cello suites. Fred asked him if he played it differently after he had had children and Yo-Yo Ma said that he did play it differently after he became a parent, that the emotions underlying his interpretation were changed because of his children. As a musician myself, this resonated with me and has stayed with me over the (many intervening) years.
Some of the most emotionally resonant moments in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood for me were ones where something Mr. Rogers was saying reminded me of my own family. For example, there is thread in the story about Mr. Rogers’ attachment to his puppets, like Daniel Tiger, even though they were getting worn. In an attempt to draw him out, Mr. Rogers asks Lloyd about his own childhood “special friend”, which turned out to be a stuffed toy called Old Rabbit.
My mind immediately flashed to a story of childhood toys that take on larger meaning. When my daughter E and her spouse L had to spend major amounts of time on different continents while doing research or while waiting for the visa process to finally complete, they would exchange their favorite stuffed toys. E’s cow “Kuh” and L’s duck “Pineapple” made quite a few transoceanic flights and are now ensconced in London permanently with E, L, and their daughter ABC. To show you the extent to which Kuh and Pineapple were connected to E and L’s love story, here is the wedding cake topper that a friend made for them:
Back to the movie. When the journalist Lloyd finishes his piece, his spouse reads it, saying that it is brilliant but not really about Mr. Rogers. I feel the same way about this blogpost, which is why I said in the title that it is “review(ish)”. Fred Rogers’ greatest gift was caring about each person he met on a deep level, meeting them where they were and helping them connect with and express their own feelings. It is all to the good that this film, the documentary, the vast archives of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and the non-profit organization he founded, re-named Fred Rogers Productions after his death, which now produces Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, serve as continuing reminders to accept ourselves and care for others.
Mr. Rogers often said or sang, “I like you just the way you are.” That message to me is part of the call, expressed in Christianity and held by those of many other spiritual paths, to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister who taught by his example. I appreciate those who are carrying his message in the present and into the future.
The world needs to hear that message now more than ever.
*****
This post is part of Linda’s Just Jot It January. Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/09/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-9th-2020/
Other than One-Liner Wednesday and Stream of Consciousness Saturday, I don’t usually follow the Just Jot It January prompts, but today’s prompt is “intention”, which sparked my interest. If the prior sentence makes no sense to you, you definitely need to visit Linda Hill’s blog, Life in Progress, and check it out!
It was my intention to try to re-organize my life after so many changes in 2019.
Or maybe I should say “organize,” given that I can’t actually remember the last time I felt that my life was organized.
This is definitely not the first time I have felt that I should (re)organize. In truth, I have had multiple junctures in my adult life – when my daughters started school, or moved away from home for higher education or work, or when Grandma moved nearby and we weren’t trooping back to Vermont so frequently, etc. etc. – when I thought I would re-organize and have a schedule and maybe make progress on long-term goals.
Somehow, it never quite worked out.
I know that this sounds like either an excuse or a complaint, but it is not meant to be either.
It is a recognition of the vicissitudes of life and how priorities need to be reshuffled to meet a new challenge. I chose to prioritize caregiving over other possible activities – and caregiving is seldom a follow-the-schedule sort of thing. Unfortunately, my extended family has suffered an unusually large number and variety of diagnoses, some of which took years to pin down and some that are difficult to treat. I’ve spent time supporting friends who have had cancer and died at a much younger age than we had hoped. I’ve spent major amounts of time volunteering to address emerging community needs.
These choices were all intentional, but they meant postponing or jettisoning personal goals. There were times earlier in my life when I thought I would have my musical compositions published and might return to paid work as a church musician. Circumstances, including orthopedic problems and a crisis that tore my church community apart, intervened and those dreams disintegrated.
Serendipitously, my music losses made room in my life for more writing, albeit in a somewhat haphazard way. My blog and my poetry have shoehorned themselves around major caregiving challenges in the twenty-teens. My dreams of submitting poems for publication on a regular basis and of having a book in print by sixty turned out to be unattainable. I suppose the book part is still a possibility, but it is unlikely because now, at 59, neither of my poetry manuscripts is currently in shape to submit.
Which circles me back to my intention to organize my life…
It is true that my caregiving activities are lessened now, but they are still there and somewhat unpredictable. Something that I have said often over the last few years is also still true; sometimes, the problem is not so much lack of time as lack of brainpower. I definitely can carve out more time for writing now, but I don’t necessarily have the brainpower to do it effectively.
I’m tired.
I guess that, sometimes, when you have run on adrenaline and/or cortisol for a long time and then you stop, your mind and body don’t just jump back to normal function. (I’m not sure that this is medically true, but it is my current way of understanding how I am feeling.)
A week ago, while writing for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, an idea floated to the surface that has kept coming back to me. Perhaps what would be most useful right now is not a schedule, but a sabbatical.
I had intended, early this year, to do revisions on a few individual poems and to assemble my chapbook manuscript for critique by my local poet-friends, so that I could submit to contests and publishers in the spring.
Now, I am feeling that I should not put that pressure on myself.
Maybe I will rest for a while and then feel rejuvenated and creative and I will be able to work on it.
Maybe I won’t.
I just feel too tired to force the issue.
*****
Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! You can follow the prompts or not as you wish. Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/05/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-5th-2020/
Stream of Consciousness Saturday works like this. Linda puts up the prompt on Friday for us to write without editing and post on Saturday. (Confession – sometimes I write on Friday and schedule the post for Saturday.) Linda’s prompt for this week was to write about a word that has “ingle” in it any way we like. As soon as I saw the prompt, I thought of this word that I am about to use and my (very stuffy) head hasn’t been able to think of anything else since – and, yea, verily, it is Saturday morning where I am right now.
When we were visiting in the UK, our granddaughter ABC sang long bouts of continuous choruses of “Jingle Bells”. Often, she would also be dancing/running around, unless, of course, we were on the bus or train. Anyone who has been around a two-and-a-half-year-old knows that it is possible for a child that age to do, well, just about any activity repetitively, but it was revealed that Lolo, her paternal grandfather, had been encouraging this particular activity. Given that ABC, our daughter E, her spouse L, and L’s parents, whom I will call Lolo and Lola here as ABC does, all live together, there was a lot of time for encouragement. (Lolo and Lola are the common names for grandparents and those other family members of that generation among Filipinos, which is ABC’s heritage from her father’s side.)
We have been back in the US for almost a week, so I’m not sure if the “Jingle Bells” loop is still continuing with ABC or if she has tired of it, but I’m sure her little voice and legs and brain are busy with something!
*****
Join in the fun of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2019/12/20/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-dec-21-19/
2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley! https://www.quaintrevival.com/
Joanne Corey 