Noli Me Tangere

demotivation

this rings uncomfortably true:

i love you; please subscribe to me

i'm feeling kind of blue today; i just broke up with my longtime e-auctioneer this morning.

i finally got one too many solicitory emails from a certain online auction site. it seemed like about the 8th notice i've gotten from them this week, but the point is not merely the volume but the fact that i haven't read any of these emails in months, maybe years. not because it's not a good site to get fantastic deals consumer electronics (as they've so often reminded me), but because i'm not shopping.

so finally i decide to unsubscribe. instead of the usual impossibly complex de-subscription process, i get an immediate (i mean instantaneous) screen that says simply:

"We're sorry we could not serve you better."

...and immediately i feel pangs of guilt for dumping them. isn't this the sort of teary, kicked-in-the-stomach confession that people throw around when they break up? in my grogginess, i mumble something about how "it's not you, it's the emails" before i realize what i'm doing.

AOL routinely sends me love letters proclaiming their deep desire to reunite with me. they're probably jealous of my heavy correspondence with amazon. and now that u-bid and i have broken things off, i am at last free to pursue ebay, my true love. sure, her interface leaves something to be desired, but i love her for her content.

Precious Lord, Take My Hand

I sang in a community choir last night. The rehearsal was in an old church in an old neighborhood. A plaque laid in stone near the front steps reads “Erected in 1906”. While the sopranos were working on their vowels I studied the ceiling of the building and wondered what had transpired beneath it in the last 98 years. I imagined elegant prohibition-era sermons on the danger of drunkenness and a civil rights leader exhorting the crowd with fiery oratory. I imagined more recently a congregation debating the merit of female pastors (a debate the liberals/progressives apparently won). And surely at some point choirs bigger and better than ours shook those stone walls with Bach chorales.

I also marveled at how old churches were seemingly built for choirs. Choirs and pipe organs. When I was a kid, the pipe organ was the worst sound on my 61-key Yamaha. But 10 years later I would visit the Cathédrale St-Pierre in Geneva and become teary-eyed and weak-kneed when those huge pipes bellowed out the service-ending fugue. I’m sure the floor shook, as did I. Those notes were pregnant with grandeur, and I felt I must repent. It was the first time that that church music scared me because it was good. (Previous fright had more to do with aforementioned keyboard sounds.)

As a high-school senior I sang in a choir once with some of the best teenage singers in the state under a brilliant conductor. We knew the music before we arrived in Savannah for the festival. At the first rehearsal, we were halfway through “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” when I had to stop singing, head full of a thousand heroic MLK images. A black kid named Michael sang that solo at the end in his trembling tenor and I became black. For a while, the sheltered white boy felt their pain.

Precious Lord, take my hand
bring thy child home at last,
where the strife and the pain all are past.

Looking back, this was probably the first time I wanted to be choral director of some sort, and one of the formative reasons black choirs move me. I don’t even love choral music, but I love singing in choirs. I love the sound of all those voices in harmony. And the conductor, there in the sweet spot, hears the best sound of all.

I have had this vision: sometime down the road I’m directing a choir in an old, old urban church with a balcony and a pipe organ. My family, who taught me to sing, is in the choir. All my friends from through the years are somehow in the choir. Even Christa, who can’t carry a tune. Even Pete, who doesn’t like music. But when we sing, we do it with all the vowel purity of a brit-choir and the throaty exuberance of a big black gospel choir. They pound my eardrums with the strains of sorrow and joy and I am proud of their sounds.

That's a silly picture. But I think that part of heaven must be something like this.

Hold me, Jesse

file this under "things i never expected to see":

The Maestro

last night i had my first guitar lesson. i learned about as much about classical guitar as can be expected in a first lesson, including how to hold the instrument (very comfortable), how to create the magic triangle between the thumb and index finger. i was surprised to hear that Beethoven composed several pieces for mandolin and harpsichord. i also learned that Christopher Parkening is like the Brad Pitt of classical guitar: talented, but disrespected for being pretty. (this is not the case with someone like Kenny G, who is neither talented nor pretty. nor respected, for that matter.)

my instructor is the adjunct guitar and lute professor at Clayton State College. he's sort of a disheveled but amiable fellow who favors my uncle Ned. i think it will be a productive time; he's talking about getting me started in both jazz and classical technique in a very short time, which will be quite an accomplishment since i'm now just a hack strummer with bad technique.

i thought it strange, however, that both my voice teacher and my guitar teacher declined to shake my hand when we met. both of them knew me by phone only, so i when i walked into the lobby and we met face to face for the first time it felt very natural to extend my hand in greeting. but neither reciprocated. the guitar prof left me stranded. it must be some means of breaking me of any ego i have left so they can mold me into their kind of apprentice virtuoso.

there is a kind of cool mentor / apprentice relationship with musicians that's very fascinating. in the programs for Spivey Hall, a performer's bio always mentions who they "studied under". discipleship is very important in that world. it's like yoda and skywalker, or cus d'amato and tyson, or something. my vocal coach told me he got his masters in voice, but never really learned to sing until he heard THE VOICE one day. he tracked down that singer's coach and found an 87-yr old hermit guru who completely revolutionized his singing technique in 2 weeks. how he did this, i'm not sure, but i imagine it involved using the force.

i don't honestly know how far i'll go with this but it's exciting getting started, and i am hungry to learn, to improve and to be molded.

Stick Around

My friend Amy says that all my songs are about leaving or being left. In keeping with tradition, here's another:

i’m gonna be, stick around
i am gonna be someone else
you’re gonna see, if ya stick around
springtime rain and sunshine good for your health

it’s gettin' better, there ain’t no doubt
something good is waiting for you, for me
it’s never easy, never said it was easy
think by now you know what I mean…

i’m holdin’ on, to you holdin’ onto me
everyone is sailin’ away
if you believe, won’t you come over here
come on, hurry up and stay

we’re gonna be, stick around
everything you want us to be
all that I’ve seen, in this town
i know that you’re going to see it, too

here’s your tuition, room and board
here is your Mercedes Benz
this is your life, your only chance
sink your feet in the dirt, and the clay,
my friend, and stay...

i’m holdin’ on, to you holdin’ onto me
everyone is sailin’ away
if you believe, won’t you come over here
come on, hurry up and stay

it’s gonna be somethin’ else
everything is coming alive
stick with me, won’t ya let me help
sooner or later the sun gonna up and shine

TMTOTH, vol. 3

As I seem to have run up against a nasty blogger's block, I'm find myself forced into simple reporting (sans commentation) while I try to rediscover my voice (whatever that means).

Today's edition of "Too Much Time on Their Hands" is an odd, odd site to see. It's not quite weird enough to be weird for weirdness' sake, but it's still pretty weird. But it's utterly useful. Haven't we all needed a database like this at one time or another?

www.menwholooklikekennyrogers.com

mess

whoah. what happened to this thing?

Raymond Charles Robinson, R.I.P.

Much will be said in the next few days about the genius and influence of Ray Charles, so I don't need to repeat it. He overcame a lot in his life: blindness; poverty; drug addiction; being born in Albany, GA.

I remember hearing a few years ago that Ray was generally unimpressed with current hip-hop stars. This may come off as just another cranky old codger, but he knew that of which he spoke. After all, he wrote, sang, played piano, saxophone, and clarinet. He was an R&B singer who did a country album. And it was a good one. Who could pull that off today?

"I was born with music inside me... Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my liver, my kidney, my heart. Like my blood."

Looks like I'm going to pull out some old vinyl this weekend and have the blues.

when the pied piper is late

I could almost say that rats, like most rodents, are verging on cute. There's not a huge difference between the rat and say, a chipmunk, at least not a fundamental difference. If you forget about their tendency toward disease and thievery, they're okay, smart even.

But it's hard to feel bad for somebody who leaves turds all over the top of your fridge. How he got up there, I'll never know, but if I had to guess, I'd say he probably won't do it again.

Gotcha, suckas!

Name Change

Okay, so the votes have been tallied. And the results are:

(drumroll...)

1) Abe is full of 'bosh'
2) Noli Me Tangere is cool
3) Dad likes Grant Lee Phillips
4) Ipse Dixit is cool
5) Lee is bored and creepy

Clearly, the people have spoken.

Today I re-christen this blog "Noli Me Tangere". This seems a rather ironic name for a website created, at least in part, to keep in touch with people.

Anyhoo, you may be interested to know that these are reputed to be the exact words the risen Christ uttered to Mary Magdelene in John 20.

Gipper Wit

I don't claim enough knowledge to know if his politics were necessarily good for the country, but I believe his general spirit was. I don't remember Carter, so Reagan is the first president I remember being in office (as I became aware of such things in kindergarten).

Since becoming an adult, I hadn't thought much of him. He was only a relic. But I've enjoyed seeing clips and reading about him this weekend. I am reminded of why he was the Great Communicator, and why he was so popular, even among his enemies. And I can see how his entertainment background set him up so well for politics. Whether he was truly a nice guy or not, I can't say. It really doesn't matter; in his relationship with his country, with us, he was a nice guy.

Farewell, Gipper.

"I want to say that I don't mind at all any of the jokes or remarks about my age. Thomas Jefferson made a comment about the Presidency and age. He said that one should not worry about one's exact chronological age in reference to his ability to perform one's task. And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying."

button under seat, throttle open, ignite...

The Name Survey

You may not know that this space was actually the first Atlblog ever created. In my zeal to get here first, I gave little thought to the name I chose (AJTCEPN), thus the trainwreck above. And I know from my marketing 101 how important a name can be. So I commissioned a high-powered name search committee to find a more accessible (read: shorter) and memorable (read: popular) title. (latin phrases are good because they have a very academic air, a certain old quality.)

ipse dixit (an unproved assertion)
Noli me tangere ("don't touch me.")
Magister Mundi sum! ("I am the Master of the Universe!")
Fac ut vivas ("Get a life.")
froon do (i don't know what it means, but it is awfully fun to say. almost as fun as "laawk doike shee" or "pish tosh".)

As with all my blog activity, the approval of my peers is the driving motivator. Would you be so kind as to vote for one of the above? And if you like, back up your choice with coherent reasoning.

I Work at Dysfunction Junction

As I mentioned, 25% of my company quit this past Friday (leaving me the only american-born employee in the office). Tuesday, I get back to the office and find that someone has anonymously sent these letters to the VP (Saito) and Controller (Okubo). This is just the latest randomness in the strange disintegration of my office.

I heard Jack Brisco was a wrassler, but I don't know for sure.

From: Jack Brisco
To: saito@xxxxx.com
Cc: okubo@xxxxx.com
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2004 1:33 PM
Subject: ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?

ONCE AGAIN YOU TWO HAVE DROPPED THE BALL, HOW DO YOU LET FOUR EMPLOYEES LEAVE IN ONE MONTH ? IT REALLY APPEARS TO ME THATYOU TWO DON'T CARE OR IS IT THAT JPP HAS PLANS ON HAVING AN ALL JAPANESE FRONT OFFICE? I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE THOUGHT THAT YOU TWO WERE MEN ENOUGH TO LET YOUR EMPLOYEES WHAT YOUR PLANS WERE. HOW DO YOU FEEL COMING THERE KNOWING THAT YOU HAVE DESTROYED A COMPANY AS WELL AS LET SOME GOOD PEOPLE LEAVE THAT COMPANY.

I BET THE BIG BOYS IN JAPAN DON'T KNOW HOW BAD THE SITUATION IS? OR ARE YOU COVERING EVERYTHING UP? SAITO YOU NEED TO BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF BY LETTING OKUBO RUIN THE COMPANY AND YOU SIT BACK LIKE EVERYTHING IS ALRIGHT. BE A MAN FIX THE PROBLEM ...OKUBO!!!! YOU CAN'T SAY THAT YOU HAVEN'T HEARD THAT HE IS A PROBLEM WELL SAITO HE IS A BIG PROBLEM . TIL NEXT TIME!!!!

From: Jack Brisco
To: saito@xxxxx.com
Cc: okubo@xxxxx.com
Sent: Sunday, May 30, 2004 11:48 PM
Subject: JPP!!!

THIS IS JUST IN CASE YOU DID NOT GET MY LAST EMAIL!!!

HOW DO YOU LET FOUR EMPLOYEES IN ONE MONTH LEAVE YOUR COMPANY AND YOU SIT BACK AND LET IT HAPPEN??

SAITO YOU HAVE LITERALLY LET OKUBO!!! DESTROY WHAT YOU WERE SUPPOSE TO COME IN AND SAVE, IF I WERE YOU I WOULD BE ASHAMED. HOW MANY DOES THAT MAKE NOW? YOU HAVE GOT TO GET A HOLD ON OKUBO BEFORE THE ONLY PEOPLE THAT ARE LEFT ARE THE JAPANESE OR IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT ANYWAY? I KNOW YOU HAVE PROBABLY HEARD THAT OKUBO IS A PAIN IN EVERYONE'S ASS WELL MISTER THAT IS TRUE!! I COULDN'T IMAGINE LETTING HIM DESTROY MY COMPANY, I WOULD GET HIM SHIPPED BACK TO JAPAN IMMEDIATELY. I ONLY FEEL SORRY FOR THE EMPLOYEES THAT ARE LEFT TO DEAL WITH THIS IF THERE ARE ANY. HAVE YOU EVEN CONSIDERED THERE FEELINGS IN ALL WHAT HAS HAPPEN? YOU MAY WANT TO TALK TO THEM AND REASSURE THEM THAT EVERYTHING IS OK OR NOT, DON'T LEAVE THEM HANGING NOT KNOWING WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO JP. SAITO YOUR HOUSE IS NOT IN ORDER!!!!! YOU AND ONLY YOU NEED TO FIX IT. I'M SORRY TO TELL YOU BUT YOU CAN'T BRING JAPANESE CUSTOMS TO AMERICA AND EXPECT THAT WAY OF THINKING TO WORK IT WON'T HAPPEN!!! I WONDER WHAT THE BIG BOYS ARE SAYING IN JAPAN OR DO THEY EVEN KNOW? PROBABLY NOT HUH? FOUR PEOPLE IN ONE MONTH ALL MAINLY BEHIND ONE PERSON ...OKUBO. AND FROM WHAT I UNDERSTAND PEOPLE ARE LEAVING WITH NO OTHER JOB OPPORTUNITIES JUST TO GET AWAY FROM ..OKUBO!! I GUESS IT DOESN'T MATTER TO YOU BECAUSE ALL EXPENSES ARE PAID FOR YOU GUYS, SO WHAT THE AMERICANS DO IS NOT AN ISSUE HUH? I COULD NOT HAVE PEOPLE'S WELL BEING ON MY CONSCIOUS BECAUSE YOU CHOSE NOT TO ADDRESS THE REAL PROBLEM..OKUBO!! FROM WHAT I UNDERSTAND YOU SEEM LIKE A LIKEABLE PERSON BUT YOU REALLY NEED TO TONE OKUBO DOWN A NOTCH OR SIMPLY GET HIM A TICKET BACK TO JAPAN. POINT BLANK!! SAITO I WOULD ONLY HOPE THAT YOU ADDRESS THOSE PROBLEMS AT JP BEFORE THEY SNOW BALL TO A GREATER PROBLEM, USE YOUR AUTHORITY YOU ARE THE SUPERIOR!! OR IS OKUBO TRYING TO CONTROL YOU TO? SAITO, YOU NEVER KNOW HE MAY BE TRYING TO GET YOUR POSITION!! WATCH YOUR FREINDS, BUT WATCH YOUR ENEMIES CLOSER!! I UNDERSTAND THAT THE AMERICANS HAVE A SAYING " I WOULD FEED HIM WITH A LONG HANDLE SPOON" I SUGGEST YOU GET ONE OR SOME!!!! ....til next time

The 2004 Sardine Hippie Road-Trip Adventure

As far back as I can remember in my childhood, my family would pile into a van each summer and make the 6 hr drive to Pawley’s Island, SC for the annual Okie family reunion. This was (and still is) a wonderful spot, a little-known 4-mile long barrier island south of Myrtle Beach. But the tradition died after my grandparents’ car got broadsided on the causeway one year and we really haven't been back since.

So we were all elated when my cousin Diana decided to hold her nuptials on the island, Sunday morning 5/30/04. For my generation, this was a return to the vacation spot of our youth, where we chased ghost crabs, read comic books and performed sadistic surgery on beached jellyfish.

But first came Charlotte’s graduation and Saturday afternoon I was hurtling down I-75 with a new Sunburst Seagull in the back seat and a 7pm date at the GA Agri-Center. I cried on this trip, as I have before on this same stretch of road. Not because I’m sad, but more because I’m both happy and sad all at once. Happy for my family and sad for me. Or happy to see them and sad that we live apart now. (Plus, by this point in the trip I’ve been doing nothing but thinking and feeling for the past hour and it can be a little much.) But mostly, I'm struck by the goodness in our lives. This is Grace, and it is beautiful.

Speaking of grace, Charlotte gamely delivered her valedictory address to much applause. Her face was larger than it had ever been before.

She delivered what is often such a dry, cliched message with great animation. Needless to say, she was thrilled when it was all over.

Afterward, we retired to the house for ice cream and mom’s cobbler. Outstanding.

Early the next morning, all eight (8!) of us packed ourselves like sardines in the minivan and rumbled down I-16 toward the coast. It was like a multi-generational hippie road trip complete with bushy beards, organic snacks, and 46 Nalgene bottles, except the VW bus had been replaced by a Plymouth Voyager.

I tend to be anxious and carsick in packed cars, but this road trip was a blast. We talked about relationships, theology and future plans. Adam gets the purple heart not only for riding 12 hours in a packed car with his new in-laws, but also for doing it all with his left buttock entirely off the seat. In the end, everyone was glad to have ridden in one car. This is closeness.

The island was serene, though busier than I remember. I don’t love the beach (I prefer the mountains) but this beach is relatively quiet and unspoiled and on this weekend, downright balmy.

Back at the house, we ate lots and were regaled by Scott’s stories.

We stayed very busy with this
...and this ...and also this

Diana and Damon seemed genuinely joyed to have everyone there. I don’t believe in omens, but even so, the rainbow that appeared later in the day made me glad. Glad for them. It was a fitting bookend.

And I kept thinking, “this life is good.”