Noli Me Tangere

Happy New Year Greeting

Polkalogue

Crying

*Warning: This may not be suitable for small children, animal rights pansies, or anyone afraid of physical and/or emotional carnage.

Lately, there's been a lot of crying in my house.

I was at a friend's house watching the game the other night when my phone rang. It was Phil, sounding a bit spooked. He had seen a ghost. A little brown furry ghost that disappeared behind the fridge. We've been clean for months, but now it looked as though the cold weather had brought a holiday visitor.

When I got home, Phil had barricaded the kitchen so there were only a couple of places to hide: behind the fridge and behind the stove.

I gave the fridge a shove and he bolted out from behind it, almost running into my foot before busting a U-turn and disappearing behind the fridge again. Phil secured the doorway while I made one more shove of the fridge. Out shot our buck-toothed guest, spinning his little legs on the linoleum, trying desperately to find the traction that would propel him out of the danger of daylight.

Thump. He was surprised to find a barricade over his favorite escape route. As he paced its length hoping in vain for an opening, I seized the moment and, after a couple of misses, landed a size 11 shoe square on his rear end. With this, he began the most awful crying you can imagine. It was not cute; it was more blood-curdling, and I felt awful.

Unfortunately, we hadn't planned for this moment, so here I was stuck with a screeching rat under my toe, who was gradually wriggling himself free, and I had no weapon with which to finish him off. There was a frying pan in reach, but I couldn't imagine anyone would be able to use it again after it pummelled a rat. Phil and I, unable to leave our stations, yelled for help. It appeared in the form of Matt's 7-Iron.

You would be surprised how hard it is to finish off a dying animal. I was surprised at the resistance I felt to giving that final blow. It's like the resistance I feel before cliff-diving. It's fear of the finality of your move.

But our adolescent rodent friend would not shut up and so I clenched my teeth and with one chip shot to the back of his neck, he was silenced. My heart was racing. But at least he wasn't crying any longer.

That night, I dreamt I was swimming in the ocean, trying to help a sperm whale that was crying. This is no coincidence.

Last night I returned to the house after the game and found a woman standing in the hall. She was an old girlfriend of one of my roommates and apparently had dropped by unannounced. A bit later she was gone, and then we heard a man crying from behind the house. This was not sniffling. It was howling, and it went on for a good 15 minutes, standing in the cold rain in our dark backyard. It was the worst crying I had heard since Tuesday, but this time I couldn't end the misery. I exchanged a knowing glance with my roommate as we listened to the wails.

"That's rough."
"Yes it is."

He'll be alright, but I can't say the same for our rodent friend.

demolition

Doing December duty,
my car runs rough
past the old, dirty diner where I caught her:
an angry escape artist, tired of her own tears.

It was perhaps our last negotiation;
a midnight congress
over crappy coffee
served by a somnambulant seniorita in mexi-town.

Today her restaurant was razed,
and reduced to rubble.
Now only ruins remain
of the old, dirty diner,
of our love,
and all her trouble.

And all I want for Christmas
(besides peace on earth)
is a shiny new diner
and snowfall in mexi-town.

finito

Yesterday morning I got in my cold car, refueled, and drove 25 miles so I could play a 30 second piece on the piano. This seems silly, but it was worth 40% of my grade. The prof showed my my score: 26 out of 28. As good as I can hope for, but she docked me for my dynamic expression. Apparently I didn't play Hopak with as much feeling as the piece deserves. When I protested that I did in fact do the accents, she yelled at me and told me not to complain about an A. So I shut up and went home.

And with that, I was done with finals...with the exception of a little voice jury that I skipped due to a nasty cold that turned my head into a vast mucous volcano and my voice into Dylan, circa 2004. The jury hearing is rescheduled for after the holidays, so I had to take an incomplete in that class. My prediction: A's in understanding-based courses, B's in performance-based courses.

But it does feel good to be done. Now I need to get to some things I've been putting off because I was too busy during the semester: bills, cleaning, exercise, bathing, praying, songwriting.

I'm Fired.

In case you're wondering why I haven't blogged much lately, or called you, or hung out with you, it's just because I've been so busy, what with school and work and this other project.

I think this is uncanny. When I watched the video for the first time, I thought it was me. In fact, I'd say right now I'm doing a better Bradford than Agassi or Kowalczyk.

signs. everywhere signs.

I'm not sure what Mr. McLuhan would have said about this but lately I've seen funny signs. I pass so many advertisements every day that there are bound to be a few that are ridiculous. Like this one, which I pass twice each day:

Can someone explain to me how Star 94 is "different"? Different from what?

Dave Barry has written wisely about advertising, and though this was in reference to a different ad campaign, his words ring very true in this case:

"It may be the best marketing concept I have seen since back in the 1970s,when McDonald's, which does not wait on your table, does not cook your food to order, and does not clear your table, came up with the with the slogan 'We Do It All For You.'"

This is a truly bold claim, that a Jefferson Pilot-owned, top-40 radio station, which plays only "today's hit music" and whose only distinctive is middle-of the-road mass-marketability, is somehow "different". It's a little dubious when 99x trumpets the "alternative" label, but Star 94?? Give me a break. Has anybody heard Cindy and Ray? I've had sardines that were less canned than these two.

I would've said that Star 94 is "different" by virtue of being the ONLY radio station with no claim to the "alternative" appeal, but I guess that just went out the window.

Lately, posters for these guys have appeared all over campus. And it took me back. I saw Strike Force back in the 80s in the Macon Coliseum, and I remember thinking this was really a cool thing, these greased guys in tank tops who would grunt and smash things then talk about God. Somehow it escaped my notice that these were greased guys in tank tops grunting and talking about God.

I can't disparage them for what they do. It seems like an honest, legitimate ministry and it's hard to argue with results like "Averaging a 20% church growth within 12 months following crusade". But it makes me wonder how it came to be. Was there a pastor who woke up one day and said, "You know what this church needs? Sweaty men breaking bricks with their heads"? Or was it a bunch of ex-football players trying to find their part (pectoral) in the body of Christ? It doesn't even seem to be a secular knockoff, though they clearly come from the WWF school of evangelism.

If you want to hear a funny story, ask my friend Phil about the time the Power Team came to Romania to do a crusade. Apparently something was lost in the translation.

life goin' nowhere, somebody help me

This is the time of year the everybody complains about eating too much. If you didn't stuff yourself silly over thanksgiving, the weeks following offer an endless stream of leftovers, fatty snacks, and holiday treats.

Some people feel bad about eating too much at thanksgiving dinner. But I'm almost ready to contend that overstuffing can be a catalyst for even greater thanks-giving. This year, after I realized that I put too much on my plate, I knew I must find a way to eat it all, lest I appear ungrateful on thanksgiving. So I did. I ate more than I have in a long time. Afterwards, I walked back into the kitchen and saw how much was left over, that none of us could eat, for sheer lack of space. Of course, that didn't stop my grandmother from trying feed us more.

Thankfulness is not hard to come by on occasions like this, but nothing quite drives the point home like having your stomach stretched and being literally unable to eat what's given to you. My distended-ness was tangible blessed-ness. The Psalmist gave thanks because his cup had runneth over; why shouldn't we when our gut runneth over?

This time of year has become a time of stuffing of another kind. For me, at least, November and December have been like a musical feast, where I try to stuff as much music into my head as will fit in two months. No sooner had I cleared the Clayton State Chorale entrée off my plate when for dessert I had to scarf down about thirty 80's covers and holiday polka songs. Once that's done, there's St. Paul's choral music and the accompanying instrumental parts, then the next week I've got my solo recital for school, which will require some serious stuffing of its own.

It occurs to me that this sounds like complaint, or worse, bragging. But I'll be the first to admit that these times are the fruit of my own decisions, and as stressed out as I get, I relish this time of year. It's good music, and it's a time to be stretched. And I know too much of my own mediocrity to brag; preparing 50 songs in two months makes a busy musician, not a good one.

Ultimately, I'm thankful for this stuffing as well. And the stretching metaphor continues to fit: trying to sing "Another One Bites the Dust" in the original key may, oddly enough, get me an A in voice studio class.

One of my biggest hindrances this semester has been my habitual use of tension, especially in the high register. It's been second nature for so long that I don't even know I'm doing it despite my prof's best efforts to point it out. (this habit can probably be traced back to my early efforts to sing along with Phil Collins) But this "bad tension" hinders consistency, and wears out my voice prematurely.

And so over thanksgiving I listened to my 80's practice tape. In the 80's it was very fashionable for men to sing in very unmanly ways, and my tape included several egregious examples of this phenomenon, courtesy of The Bee Gees, Queen, and Journey. And I knew that I couldn't afford to sing these songs the usual way without doing lasting damage to the instrument on which I would be graded in few days, so I tried a new technique that doesn't sound great, but does let me hit Journey notes with minimal tension.

During my next voice lesson my prof took me into some high scales, then suddenly paused and asked me what I was doing differently. I didn't know, but I did confess, with some embarrassment, that I'd been trying to sing Queen songs without hurting myself. He said it was the best I had sounded yet, and I realized I was onto something.

The irony of this is that a while back I brought up Freddie Mercury's name in a discussion because he's thought to have had a pretty amazing natural instrument and my prof said, tellingly, "Yeah, he probably could have done something with that voice." My thought was, “he did quite a few things with his voice in 'Bohemian Rhapsody'.” So I found great amusement in telling him that Queen was making me a better opera singer.

Anyway, I'll put in a plug in for these events, in case I didn't tell you yet, or you are just bored, or have a fever for which the only prescription is more polka:

47th Annual Holiday Polka Party
Dec. 3rd, 8pm
The Robins Pad (The Biltmore)
Open to anyone who is not afraid to polka the lights out.

Shadows of the Nativity
a service of lessons and carols, featuring shadow puppetry
Dec. 12th, 7pm
Defoor Centre
Open to the public

Abe’s Voice Jury Recital
Dec. 13th, 1 pm
Clayton State College and University
Closed to the everyone except frowning professors

Great Essay

Some of you have already seen this, and some of you may not care. But there's a great essay here, if you, like me, are interested in the nature of christian doubt and its implications.