Music of Joy - Change Ringing

A few years ago, a friend of mine moved to NYC and joined the Trinity Change Ringers.  When Jeremy told me he had made the change from choir member to church bell ringer, I was a little perplexed.  He had such a lovely tenor voice, and an amazing understanding of music; I did not see any benefit to having him pulling a rope instead.

And I told him so.

He asked me if I had ever heard of change ringing; I had to answer that I had not.  He shared a New York Times article with me and gave me insight into the amazing cascade of ringing church bells, and the difficult nature of making the music.  And of course, I geeked out about it and started reading.

"The 'music' consists of cascades of bell strikes, called rows or pulls.  Variations in the order are introduced according to strict rules.  About five minutes of ringing is called a touch.  A full peal has 5,000 individual sequences.  Skillful ringing is like a steady stream of sand; poor ringing like clumps of earth".

I gotta say, that description does not make it sound much better.  Fortunately, the internets are filled with videos of amazing things (amazing things are not always good, just so you know - don't go looking for good things when you google 'Miranda Sings').  But then I listened to some, and was amazed.  Each of the notes, rung over and over again, with a pattern that defies expectation, and repeating in such a long loop that it is hard to even know that there is a repeating pattern.

Infinite variations. Each note, in isolation, providing just a toll. But together, instead of the expected cacophony, pure beauty.

The bells begin with a descending scale.  But then as the different rhythms for each bell continue, the character of the sound changes.  Listen to a little bit of it (or the whole thing, if you'd like!), but skip to about 3:00 to see how the sound changes.

I found myself thinking about that bell ringing and the beauty of the sound when I was in our church service a week ago.  One of the beloved members of the church was accepting a new job as minister of families out of state.  She had been involved with the children's ministry, and also with a ministry called Jacob's Ladder, which is a service to help adolescents and young adults with intellectual disabilities by helping them develop tools for adulthood.

The children sang.  The Jacob's Ladder youth played handbells.

My first thought was to expect cacophony.  Decades ago I played handbells in a youth bell choir, and quickly discovered how easy it was to botch a piece totally by playing at the wrong time.  Shortly after the first performance, I decided handbells might not be my way to fame and fortune.

As I listened to the bell ringers, however, I was amazed.  The sound was glorious.

Finally, the thought occurred to me that the out-of-time rhythm that  each of the players joyfully produced was, in essence, a form of change ringing.  Each of the ringers played their part of the chord in a rhythm that expressed their heart in a new way.  They started more or less together, cut off more or less together, and in between, they rang those bells.

Infinite variations. Each note, in isolation, providing just a toll.  But together, instead of the expected cacophony, pure beauty.

The end result was a beautiful experience.  One that touched me and reminded me of something important - that everyone has their note to play.  That where I expect dischord and tension, there is often beauty. 

And where I cannot find the beauty, it might just be because I haven't waited long enough to hear the pattern, and see the beauty. 

It also reminded me that I can play a melody by myself.  But that real joy and beauty comes from letting my note be joined with others, playing as imperfectly as I do, and with enthusiasm that brings joy with it, and make amazing music.  The music of the spheres.  Music of joy. 

I think I am going to listen for that beauty this week.  See if I can't listen for the change ringing in my life, and bring some much needed change.

Music rant

David Finley, Bruce Baker, GianMarco Beltram, Windi Sebren, and a couple of others, you are exempt from this.

Open letter to the rest of you:

I did not know you liked Prince.

I did not hear from you that David Bowie was the most amazing performed you had ever seen; that the concert of his you saw changed your life.

I did not know that the soundtrack to your life was exclusively written and performed by Merle Haggard.

You never said. I never heard you talking about going out to hear the live music.  I never got to watch the uploaded video of you screaming out the lyrics to your favorite song in a karaoke bar.

I DID watch that kitten video you posted.  It was cute.

But why did you wait until after he died to eulogize Prince?  I started watching the videos, and mercy.  I understand why I was not a fan when I was growing up.  He was too edgy, combining a raw male sexuality with femininity in a way that I did not have any mechanism to interpret.  I enjoyed his music a lot; I know all the lyrics to his popular tunes, and I
loved the sexual innuendoes that pervaded each lyric. I even went to Glam Slam the one time I was in Minneapolis (a friend was a HUGE fan).

But I did not really know about his musicality until you started sharing the videos yesterday.  I missed an opportunity to recognize his genius when he was alive... because you didn't tell me you were a fan. How had I missed this?  Sure, MTV showed the polished videos of Prince back in the 80s, but heck - even the Backstreet Boys had polished videos.

I'm talking about music, because that is a passion of mine, and because after watching the video of his induction into the Hall of Fame, I was just floored.  But for all of the fact that music floats my little red wagon, the same applies to every venue: artists, actors, gem polishers, mimes, flint knappers, all of the people who fill your life with meaning...

Please.  Let's change that.  Tell me who you listen to, who you watch, and where I should go and see the play that changed your life.

Tell me, so that I can glory in their brilliance, revel in their genius, and light up with a new-found gem that I can carry with me. I want to see what changed your life, and maybe have a chance at the same thing. And please, please, please,

Don't wait until they are dead.  Because then it will be too late.

Give a Little Whistle

When was the last time you whistled?

When I was a little kid, one of the doctors in my doctor's office was a world class whistler.  I mean, he had grace notes, he had warbles, he had vibrato, and his laser whistle pierced the entire office.  And as much as I hated going to the doctor (I had strep throat about four times a year), I loved hearing the other doctor whistle. 

I once heard my dad quote to Caroline, "A Whistling Girl and a Crowing Hen, Seldom Come to a Very Good End." (What?!)

In youth choir, we sang a Disney medley, which included one of the numbers from Pinnocchio:

When you get in trouble and you don't know right from wrong,
give a little whistle!
Give a little whistle!
When you meet temptation and the urge is very strong,
give a little whistle!
Give a little whistle!

So why do we not whistle?  What is the prohibition against whistling? 

I have posted before about the move towards professionalizing any performance art, and how it is probably the reason why we don't sing as a group.  It is actually something that makes me pretty sad.  But if you think that getting a job as a professional singer is tough, imagine your chances of getting a contract as a professional whistler?

It simply doesn't happen.

Whistling, in our culture, is a happy, frivolous activity.  It is the sound of the carefree.  The kid, fishing rod on shoulder, whistling while headed to the local pond.  The hobo, complete with bindlestiff over the shoulder, whistling, with not a care in the world.   

It is not the image of the serious corporate man.  The intense professional lawyer, whistling on her way to court?  Nah.  In fact, intensity of any kind seems to have zero overlap with whistling.

But why?

There are languages that use whistling to communicate detailed information, like La Gomera. But anthropologists are not even sure whether to include whistling in as a category of music. (My friends Louis Towles, Bruce Baker, David Finley and I tested this theory by trying out as walk-on whistlers for the award-winning Easley Marching Band.  We were summarily dismissed.)

And I have zero idea why it was not permitted for girls to whistle (the incomparable Lauren Bacall line notwithstanding).  That makes no sense to me.

Truth is, I love whistling, and realized how long it had been since the last time I had seriously engaged in a good whistle when I heard a co-worker whistling yesterday AS HE CAME IN TO WORK.  It was a tuneless whistle, but it might as well have been McFerrin's masterpiece, for the effect that it had on me. 

It made me smile.  And within a few minutes, I found myself singing the Pinnocchio tune in my head, whistling the refrain.  Almost immediately, the Andy Griffeth tune replaced it.  With some work, I forced that tune out with the unfortunate Scorpions tune Wind of Change. Then the Bridge on the River Quai tune.

And I smiled the whole time.  After all, who can avoid being happy while whistling?  And if it is true that our facial muscles control our mood, rather than the reverse, maybe - just maybe - we can become more happy by whistling.

I am certainly willing to give it a try. Maybe while sitting on the dock of the bay.  Wasting time.

 

Fighting discouragement

Vignette #1

"I bought a banjo about a year ago.  And I have been working to teach myself how to play for the past year."

"Oh, well, that's good.  I understand it is the easiest instrument to play"

My next door neighbor is not known for his tact.  A concert pianist, he doesn't have a lot of sympathy for people who struggle with music.  It isn't unkindness.  It is just that he has no idea what it is like to struggle to make music.

Or maybe his struggle is simply in another form.

But those words just killed me.  My short fingers do not move quickly.  They do not stretch where they need to go.  They are not nimble, and they do not play the music I hear in my head.

Particularly because I do hear music in my head all the time - I am preternaturally susceptible to the earworm, and I go through my life with my own soundtrack (there is a woman who appears at regular intervals in my life to the theme of the Wicked Witch of the West) - it is a particular struggle when I can't get that music out. 

So I hear the music, and yet I struggle to make the instrument sing the way I hear it in my head.

And to hear a musician so easily dismiss my year of work to gain competence.... it hit harder than just having a bad session.

Vignette #2

My wife opened the kiln.  This firing was particularly slow, so we had been waiting on this moment for three days.  She reached in, and pulled out the tile....

...which was blistered and cracked.  The glaze had simply not adhered to the clay body, and the result looked awful.  This was the second batch she had run with a new clay, and it meant that her work for the past two weeks had been for nothing.

Vignette #3

A co-worker gets turned down for a supervisory job, and is supplanted by someone with less experience.  Five times in a row over three years.

and Vignette #4, and #5, and #6....

Everyone deals with disappointment.  But what do you do when it goes beyond just not getting the gig (or the girl, or the promotion....)

What the difference is, has nothing to do with the disappointment in not succeeding.  That element is in present in any process, and represents a temporary emotional setback. It is the discouragement (dis-cour: literally, losing heart) that really is the danger.  In high school, I read a book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. I have read it numerous times since, each time getting something different from it.  But I remember particularly his discussion on what he called 'gumption traps'.

Gumption traps, he explained, are the dangerous places in a project where you lose enthusiasm for the project.  And they can be external (where you have a setback) or internal (where you have a hang-up.)

So how do you deal with these traps?  How do you face disappointment without becoming discouraged?

No, seriously.  I am asking.

I am told that taking a break helps.  (Pirsig mentioned that mechanism for dealing with a setback.)This approach helps because it allows the brain to change perspective on the problem. 

Violence also helps.  Well, not exactly, but there is something cathartic about breaking things and using physicality to fight discouragement.  I once used about four days with a sledgehammer to fight off a discouraging setback (fortunately, the concrete sidewalk needed to come out anyway).

What other elements help you? What are your walls?  What happens when you hit your wall, and how do you push through it?

Post Mardi Gras reflection (not Lent-related)

Growing up in SC, I always considered Mardi Gras to be an exotic holiday – a day of absolute indulgence.  College buddies who road-tripped to New Orleans to celebrate this floating holiday had a cachet that nobody else could match.  To have taken days off from school on an unsanctioned holiday, attending the ultimate festival of pure decadence in the US – that was the mark of a serious hedonist.

When I arrived in New Orleans as a budding anthropologist in the late 90s, I decided that my best approach to this festival was an analytical one.  I would observe the rituals associated with Mardi Gras, allowing myself to enjoy it while maintaining a safe distance from the frenzy.

I looked at the ritual in terms of the symbolic redistribution of wealth between the elites elevated on the floats and the commoners below.  I considered the rites of passage necessary to gain entry into secretive organizations.  I observed the psychological changes involved in the masking behavior.  I wanted very much to experience the music that was so pervasive in the city, and to mark how it united the culture groups that lived here: the high school bands that take great pride in both sound and display. 

So I joined the crowd as a participant observer, with all of my observation skills engaged….

…and emerged, three hours later, wild-eyed, bead-festooned, ears ringing, reeling from the experience.  I had bloody, scraped elbows where I had ‘defended my position’ (did I really just elbow a little old lady in the face for some 22-cent beads?) and bloody, scraped knuckles

Recital

Kathe and I have been taking music lessons for a month.  I have my banjo; she has a keyboard (although what she really wants is a piano.)

We are adult music students, a bit of a rarity.  And we both are convinced that we can do it, and we devote the time to practice, like we never could (or did) when we were kids. We set aside time, and are very protective of that time, because we have a goal in mind. We want to play.

What we are doing is very different from what kids do when they are given lessons. 

The typical child lesson (I have made some assumptions here) goes something like this: MomnDad decide child progeny (CP) is going to learn an instrument.  They give CP a choice: oboe or saxophone; CP chooses the one CP think is best/coolest/least dorky/easiest-to-hide-in-the-locker-at-school.  (Or, if you have a piano in the house, you get to learn piano).  M&D buy the instrument, and go about finding a suitable tutor.

And when I say ‘suitable’, what I really mean is ‘affordable’.

CP is encouraged to practice, and at the end of the semester/year, is rewarded with an opportunity to dress up and give a concert, that M&D attend.

From CP’s perspective, here is what happens:

M&D: “Do you want to give up the last remaining shred of video game time to practice the tuba, or to practice the piccolo?”

And just like that, CP is suddenly forced to give up a half-hour to an hour of every day to practice an instrument that he does not love, and then spends an additional hour with an adult who gets to be a

My Nieces Elsa and Anna

My niece is the most wonderful creature ever.

Riley Claire is the middle child – the second of three stairstep girls.  At two years old, she has already understands that in order to have something of her very own (that is, something that her older sister does not take away from her and claim as hers) that she has to ask for items that do not appeal to Molly Emma.

Items like, for example, Anna dolls.

Every little girl out there has explained to her parents the importance of the Elsa dress, the Elsa wig, the Elsa lunchbox, the Elsa bedsheets, the Elsa sleeping bag; you name it, and the Frozen marketing department has put an Elsa on it. 

Molly has claimed every Elsa item in existence as hers….and has gotten very nearly the full set.

Riley Claire decided that, rather than fight for every Elsa item, she liked Anna best.  As a result, she has laid claim to everything Anna related.

She has also come to realize that Anna doesn’t have magical powers, so she requested an Elsa doll of her own.

Fast forward to Christmas morning. 

Who's on First

There is an odd linguistic quirk that I noticed when I lived in Yucatan. Lots of words in Spanish end in the letter N. When those words are used at the end of a sentence, Yucatecans close their mouths to close the sentence, making it into an M sound. (Voiced bilabial nasal, for any IPA geeks out there)

Not terribly ununusal, but kinda fun to have identified a regional variation.

So bread - "pan" - becomes "pam" when it ends a sentence. Ham - "jamon" - becomes "jamom." "Yucatan" becomes "Yucatam."

My second season in the field, one of my co-workers pulled me aside. "What is her name?" and tipped her head in the direction of the new member on the project.

"Kim," I replied.

"Her," Soco said, and pointed with her chin.

"Kim!"

Nigerian Prince

So I got the brief email, complete with misspellings.  The essence is that Ira Curry wants me to get in touch with her to claim my $600,000. 

 

I have wanted to do this for so long.

 

I responded, saying that I would be very pleased to accept the money, please make out a cashier's check to James Lawton, and send the check to my workplace.  Did I mention that it is a military installation?

 

Over the past week, I have carefully answered each of the emails, and finally requested that my contact at the courier services call me, that the $320 he wanted me to pay for courier services seemed really high, and I did not have a lot of money to pay him for something that was a 'pig in a poke'.  And yes, I used the expression.

 

When 'James Collins' called (happened during my lunch break), I told him I wanted someone here to verify that he was legit.  He said he would send me the website and a point of contact.

 

This was the response:

 

Hello,

Here is our site and one of our customer in Usa

http://elitecourier.com‍

(657) 549-0581

 

 

 

The Elite Courier website is not a real website.  And when I called him on it, and suggested that he might be trying to scam me for $320, he gave me an indignant email.

 

Complete with a 'LETTER OF GAUANTEE' from the high court of India:

 





Now I am no expert, but this reminds me of the 'Eric the Half a Bee' sketch:

"That's not a Cat License, that's a Dog License with the word Dog crossed out and the word Cat written in in crayon!"

 

Accompanying the image of the Letter of Gauantee was a picture of the parcel that they are sending, along with the following text:

Official greetings to you respected . I am in receipt of your last mail which is well noted. I will like to make it clear to you that due to your last message that this is %100 legit and also you need to make the payment before your parcel can be dispatch from our office here in India to your given destination and also there is no way we can be able to take money from you without carrying out our duty because we don't want to jeopardize the name of our company.

 

Why are you so skeptical about this we have sent you the letter of guarantee document that was given to us by the high court of India in regard to Ira Curry donation that is be given to you, because you have to know that this money is going to make a lot of changes in your life and the life of the people around you , so am going to attach a copy of the letter of guarantee to you and if you insist not to make the payment kindly inform us to enable us disclaim your parcel,all you have to do is just to revert back and fill in the copy of the disclaimers form that will be sent to you for us to cancel your parcel and that will allow you to give it to any charity of your choice and right now you have known our conditions if you wish to make the payment please do inform us.looking forward to hearing from you.

 

Regards/Thanks

James Collins

 

I don't know.  What do you think?  Legit?