Dancing on the Edge

Waters Blue

2010-07-21T11:17:00.000-07:00

This morning I was prancing through the text of the first volume of my autobiography, in preparation for its printing in a month or so. As I was reviewing the material that I had written about my childhood in Belmont Shores, California, I came across a passage that I had written in connection with a poem that I had included. For some odd reason, it moved me deeply, so much so that I desire to share it today. At the heart of the matter are the feelings that I have for the ocean and why I loved to sit on the shore listening to the surf, or why I enjoy sailing instead of simply riding in a powered boat. First, the introduction to the poem, then the poem (actually lyrics to a song), and finally my explanation as to why the sea and things like unto it appeal to me.

At the creation of the earth, there were two kinds of waters mentioned, the waters above the earth and the waters beneath the sky. Water has ever been the symbol of cleansing and life, of solitary journeying, and of the joining with the infinite. I believe that life is such a solitary journey fraught with storm and eminent danger, but only for this life. We set sail from a distant shore to make our way into mortality and hope one day to return home to friends and family. We sight each other's sails from time to time and even sail along side, but the craft is ours alone, no one can take the helm for us. If we lose our way, the waters of the world have no consolation; where we have been is no more; the only sure waters are above us, by which and through which we will finally navigate if we are ever to find home.

Waters Blue

I used to sail with friends from shore to shore
but never left behind an open door
and then I set my face against the wind
and have not seen my friends again
the waters carried me beyond the sun
to things I'd never seen nor heard of
and now I ride a cresting wave alone
and watch for the sweet hills of my home

Waters blue, waters to look into
trying to get myself through
waters pale, waters reflecting my sail
waters erasing my trail back to you

Times and time again to drift away
the winds and oceans have no soul
drifting tempest tossed from sea to sea
roll all there is to life from me
in this darkness of the wind swept tide
my soul is yearning for a beacon
a star or sunshine flooding through the night
to show me where to find my light

Waters blue, waters to look into
trying to get myself through
waters pale, waters reflecting my sail
waters erasing my trail back to you

Some say there is no harbor we can find
where we can shelter from the wind
this world's an endless waste is what they say
and so they drown in their own way
but I see the harbor shining blue and free
of all the storms of life surrounding
and soon the sails will signal waiting eyes
and arms that sweep away goodbyes

Waters blue, waters to look into
trying to get myself through
waters pale, waters reflecting my sail
waters erasing my trail back to you

PNH
9 October 1979

Anthropologists and other social scientists, in order to define the evolutionary development of mankind, suggest that our fascination with the sea hearkens back through our racial subconsciousness to when our far distant ancestors first fearfully emerged from the seas to pursue a new course of life upon the terra firma. In evolutionary terms, I suppose that the sea might be construed to be the original Garden from whence we cast ourselves out in our attempt to bring into being an advancement of life. The sea then becomes our mother from whose womb we have all sprung. Were I a secular humanist, this would all seem quite prosaic to me. Others in the scientific world, students of human development, suggest that the beginning of life within the literal womb of every child's mother is what draws us to the ocean. The sea then becomes a surrogate mother rather than a literal one; one to which we long to return because only there can we partially regain what we once enjoyed in full: peace and comfort.

In terms of my own self-analysis, I do not believe that it is the splash of amniotic fluid that draws me to the ocean, nor is it the genetic echoes of primordial waves upon ancient beaches upon which my ancestors slid. I am drawn to the ocean for two reasons. The primary one does involve a remembrance; one which involved a gentle time with loving parents. The second comes from the same time frame: a young boy filled with the wonder of the ever-expanding vastness of his world. It is the surprise of the immensity of the horizon that affects me the most when I crest that last hill before the shore. I am always astonished. A similar effect took place within me as I drove down Paseo del Norte in north Albuquerque in the early evening looking westward. Albuquerque, I have said many times, has the most magnificent sunsets in the world. It is not just the coloring, which is inspiring, but the fact that one cannot, even with perfect peripheral vision, take in the horizon all at once. It is too broad a view for human sight.

Were I dissecting my own emotional viscera, I would say that this love of the sea, the overwhelming vastness of the sea, hearkens back to a far earlier time than anthropologists and geologists imagine. It is a time before the foundations of the earth were laid, when my spirit looked upon the infinity of space and the eternity of time and I decided that this vastness would be my abode forever. The ocean is a faint representation of home, but one which most men have forgotten entirely. In their attempt to explain their undeniable feelings at such wonders, they have imagined for themselves scientific mythologies of inordinate complexity. It is my conviction that our sense of beauty, eternal and infinite, is but one of the many aesthetic senses that passed through the veil with us as we came into mortality. I, for one, am grateful for that link with my destiny.

Infinite Regression

2010-06-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, James Taylor wrote an environmentalist song called “Traffic Jam”. I suppose that it is cute in its own way, but I never really like the musicality of the piece. There was, however, a verse that really captured my imagination. I include the previous verse just to give you an idea where the narrative of the song was going.

Well, I left my job about 5 o'clock,
It took 15 minutes go three blocks—
Just in time to stand in line,
With the freeway looking like a parking lot.

{Chorus}

Now, I almost had a heart attack—
Looking in my rear view mirror.
I saw myself the next car back,
Looking in the rear view mirror,
'Bout to have a heart attack.

It is to be imagined that JT was also in the third, fourth, (and so forth) car looking in his rear view mirror, “Bout to have a heart attack”. That effect is called “infinite regression”.

When I was a little boy, I read a short story about a man who was sitting in his den reading a novel. The novel was about a man sitting in his den reading a novel about a man who was reading a novel, and so forth. In the novel, the man reading the novel was about to be assassinated by a murderer who had just come in through the door behind the chair. The first man reading the book then hears the floor squeak behind him. Again, the effect was “infinite regression”. The intent of the story was to chill the person reading the short story and ultimately look behind himself for the murderer. I know that the story was written by a prominent writer, but I just can’t remember who it was. I remember, however, that in the pulp science fiction magazine where I first read it, the cover was illustrated with a series of identical pictures of men reading a book, infinitely regressing.

I am in the midst of reading the complete fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, purportedly the master of 20th Century horror stories. There is no question that Lovecraft had an inventive genius, but his style of writing decidedly draws attention to itself. It is as if H.P. thought of three words, like “charnel”, “gibbous”, and “lugubrious”, and then opened a thesaurus in order to come up with every possible permutation of those three words. These would all be strung together for a distance of 5000 words or so while telling a dark tale. As he got older, Lovecraft became less addicted to that process and his stories became a little more moderated.

At the end of the first third of the book, however, H.P. Lovecraft produced a lovely little story that has to do with our topic. It is called “The Silver Key”. It is about ten pages long in my edition. Lovecraft wrote the short story in the fall of 1926 and had it published in January 1929. In tone, it differs greatly from everything that he had written prior to those dates.

The protagonist is a fellow named Randolph Carter. The opening sentence of the story is: “When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key of the gate of dreams.” The rest of the story has to do with how Carter tried to deal with the loss of his imagination. Frankly, it is a rather long diatribe about the ineffectual nature of every other genre of fiction and philosophy. Carter spends the next twenty years of his life trying to find a replacement for that which he had lost. One night he had a dream in which his dead grandfather came to him in a vision and reminded him of a box in the attic. Randolph immediately retires to the attic, finds the hideous box, and opens it to find a great silver key. A short time later, Carter decides to visit the old house of his youth, where he had been raised by his great aunt Martha and his great uncle Christopher. He drives to the hill upon which the house had been built and walks the path toward the top. Along the way he hears the voice Benijah Corey, his uncle’s hired hand calling for him. Eventually the two meet, and Randolph is taken to the house to be greeted by his long lost relatives.

What is hinted at, is that the fifty-year old Randolph has become a ten-year old boy again, equipped with the silver key by which he is able to open the gate of dreams which was located somewhere on his uncle’s property. The fellow grows up again, and for the next twenty years enjoys all of the benefits of the key and domain that it opened to him. The assumption is that this has been repeated several times and the boy/man has become essentially immortal. This effect might be termed “infinitely progressive”, yet it is in reality merely a loop.

All of these things produce another effect, a disassociation from reality, that reality is not really what it seems to be, that we are part of a mechanism that is far more complex and convoluted than we might suppose. Lovecraft’s perception of “reality” is extremely black and bleak, the attempted comprehension of which, he suggests, can bring nothing but madness. The stories and lyrics that use the infinite regression technique are merely playing for a short burst of startled, emotional reaction from their audience.

This manner of writing does little to improve the human condition. It does, instead, inspire fear of the unknown, insists on the insignificance of the human creature, and that the universe is, in the end, a capricious and unbridled thing which has no concern for creation.

Coleridge wrote that one of the necessities for writing and reading Romantic literature was the “willing suspension of disbelief”, that the reader must assume that the world that the author is creating has a reality worth exploring. While that approach has merit up to a point, there have been and continue to be great abuses of that principle by which men of our age have become cynical and selfish, believing in the world of their own creation and having no compunction against forcing others to believe in it too. Most of the world’s ills can be traced to these idiosyncratic assertions of “reality”.

What is absent in all of this is the truth, a truth that states that there is a “reality” that does govern all that we see, experience, and understand. What is not generally known is that that truth is benevolent, kind, compassionate, and willing to do whatever is possible to bring happiness and joy into the hearts and minds of the inhabitants of the earth.

AMS Redux

2010-05-05T06:56:00.000-07:00

I finished “The Unbearable Lightness of Scones” last night. It has taken a while because I generally only read a chapter a day. This pedestrian method, however, is completely consistent with the author’s intent and style, inasmuch as the book was originally published in serial form in the daily newspaper “The Scotsman” located in Edinburgh, Scotland. The title, as delightful as it is, derives from a single page toward the end of the book on which there is a 15-line discussion between three of the characters about the “sturdiness” of Big Lou’s scones. It is merely an aside that has little or no bearing on the rest of the story. It is as if Alexander McCall Smith came up with an utterly compelling phrase and then had to employ it in some fashion in the narrative, and was so tickled with the result that he used it for the title of the whole book.

I am not criticizing this approach in any fashion. That is what frequently happens to me. The last paper I delivered at Brigham Young University was an essay about Benjamin Whorf and Edward Sapir’s theory about cultural and language as reflected in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. I called it “A Thousand Words for Sand: Benjamin Whorf, Edward Sapir, and the Planet Arrakis”. In the fifty minute presentation, I think that I spent no more than 35 seconds saying anything about Frank Herbert or his masterpiece “Dune”. I don’t think that many in the audience were overly distressed; only four girls of the 200 persons in the audience walked out. Richard Hatch of Battlestar Galactica fame was across the hall making his presentation. Who can compete with the Adama kid?

Other than the title, I was particularly impressed with McCall Smith’s ability to get inside the minds of his characters, keeping them distinct and on-target. Of particular note in this novel was his portrayal of Cyril, the gold-tooth dog of Angus Lordies. In the same chapter wherein the sturdy scones appeared, Cyril finds himself laying down under the table where Angus and his friend Matthew are drinking their coffee in Big Lou’s bistro:

But when Cyril awoke from his brief nap, the problem that confronted him was not one of understanding what was being said over the table, but what he saw underneath, down at dog level, close to the floor. For there before him, only inches away, were Matthew’s ankles; half clad in socks, half exposed. It was a sight of which Cyril had dreamed, and in some of his dreams he had acted. This was Cyril’s temptation, and it was an immensely strong one. Indeed, had Mephistopheles himself concocted a challenge for Cyril, he could not have come up with a stronger, more tempting enticement. Matthew’s ankles were Sirens, and they beckoned from the rocks of his ruination.

He could not resist. For years he had gazed upon these ankles and restrained himself. But now he knew that he could do that no longer. His life would soon be over; dogs did not last all that long, and he wanted to do this before he passed beyond all temptation. So, suddenly, and without giving Matthew any warning, Cyril moved forward and nipped Matthew’s right ankle; not too hard – he liked Matthew – but enough for Matthew to give a start and look down.

Cyril looked up, his jaws still loosely fixed around the ankle; he looked up into Matthew’s surprised eyes. This was the end; Cyril knew there would be shouting and he would be beaten with a rolled up copy of The Scotsman. He would be in disgrace, perhaps forever. This was truly the end.

Matthew stared at Cyril. He opened his mouth, ready to say something, to shout out in outrage even, but he did not. He looked down upon Cyril and then, reaching down, he gently pushed him away. He did not want Cyril to be punished. He said nothing.

Thus we forgive one another; thus reconciliation and healing begin.

What a delightful way to present a lesson as old as civilization.

Do You Know the Swim?

2010-04-14T10:28:00.000-07:00

I just watched "2012" for the second time. The scenes of Malibu sliding into the Pacific were spectacular. All the time I was watching the movie, I had a song going through my mind. You may or may not remember it. The Jamaicans have the right approach to disasters that you can do nothing about. Be sure to turn off my Dance Card before you start the non-video.

Where’s the Lost and Found?

2010-02-26T11:19:00.000-08:00

Okay, I have made the dive into the vagaries, the misconceptions, and the mythologies of one of the iconic television programs of all time. I have been watching “Lost”, but I’m not... lost, that is.

The first season turned up on my doorstep as the result of one of my daughters saying, “Dad! You have to do this!”

I replied, “I don’t have to do this. I have lots of other things to watch, and since, as you have pointed out to me many times before, my mind is dribbling out of my ears at an increasing rate, all of old stuff will be new to me. Onward and upward to ‘Farscape’!”

“No, no, no! Try it! You’ll like it!”

Actually, I tried it for two reasons. First, I really did want something new to watch and, second, I was tired of all of the mysterious talk at the dinner table and in the neighborhood about the stuff that is going on in the final season. So I began with season one.

I had, prior to these past couple of weeks, seen portions of about three episodes, but none of those momentary glances really gave me any idea what was going on with the various characters or the situation that they were in. Now after having watched all but the second half of “Exodus”, the season finale, I have a few observations to make. Doing so, I know that I will be ridiculed by the fans, that I have no clue, that “You just wait! You’ll see that I am right in the end!” I don’t care. I am responding to what I have seen so far, all future mysteries aside.

First, I like the photography. Shooting the series in Hawaii was a good choice. Watching each episode in high definition DVDs on a good 37 inch screen has been delightful. I, not the original fans, am getting the full impact of what was intended by J.J. Abrams and the boys because I am seeing it in a better venue. Hawaii has enough variety that the scenery can become a part of the story line. I find that as helpful as the music at times.

Second, the story-line and the dialogue are well-crafted and, amazingly enough, almost believable. The little flashbacks into the lives of the survivors is a nice touch, showing that the characters were already “Lost” long before the plane fell apart. But that is all part of the charisma of the show. We as the audience are fundamentally just voyeurs; we really want to know all of the little secrets that everyone has. I like the fact that the writers have gone to great lengths to have the individual life-bubbles bump each other in the background. Sometimes, if you look away from the screen for an instant, some little connection would be lost. I suspect that this is why the DVDs have sold like hotcakes.

Thirdly, it is clear that the casting department went to great lengths to have the speaking characters be as physically diverse as they could be. There is no mistaking Hurley for Sun. It was a fun moment when Dominic Monaghan showed up as Charlie. As I watched him stand beside all of the other actors in the show, I realized that he really is no bigger than a hobbit. Go Merry! Drink some more of that Entwash back at the cave! The appearance of Danielle Rousseau, her intriguing accent, sent me back to my “Babylon 5” days, when Mira Furlan played Delenn using her same dulcet Croatian tones. I have to say, however, that in the last week I have seen four people that could pass for Hurley; none were moving as fast as Jorge Garcia can.

With regard to the underlying mythological aspects of the show, I have failed to see anything that is usually attributed to the superstructure of the storyline, and I know a great deal about the mythologies of the world. Perhaps they show up later. For the benefit of anyone who reads this piece, I have to add that when a “novum” is presented, an unexplained event, and its source is never related to the real world, the reader or viewer is engaged in fantasy. When the “novum” is explained in believable terms, the audience is in the middle of a mystery. When the “novum” is explained as an extension of current technology, but a technology that does not yet exist in the real world, then we are enjoying science fiction. By the end of this final season, I am quite certain that some one of the fans, perhaps many, is going to be disappointed as to how the real genre falls out. In the meantime, I will go on to season two, knowing that people are not going to fuss with me a lot.

All the Right B Movies

2010-02-04T09:57:00.000-08:00

I have always liked watching films…., even the bad ones…., especially the bad ones. When my father brought home our first television set, a nine-inch round screen device, I could not get enough. In the Los Angeles area, we had four or five stations. My particular favorite was Channel 9, KCAL, if I remember correctly. One of their early programming ploys was “The Movie of the Week”. What was meant by the title was that the same movie would be shown every night at 7:00 PM for seven days in a row. That is how I managed to memorize the complete dialog of “Godzilla” starring Raymond Burr. The film was made in 1956 and apparently went straight to television from the theaters. Here are the opening lines as spoken by Burr:

“This is Tokyo. Once a city of six million people. What has happened here was caused by a force which up until a few days ago was entirely beyond the scope of Man's imagination. Tokyo, a smoldering memorial to the unknown, an unknown which at this very moment still prevails and could at any time lash out with its terrible destruction anywhere else in the world. There were once many people here who could've told of what they saw... now there are only a few. My name is Steve Martin. I am a foreign correspondent for United World News. I was headed for an assignment in Cairo, when I stopped off in Tokyo for a social; but it turned out to be a visit to the living HELL of another world.”

Godzilla ravages Tokyo but eventually is destroyed by a special formula that looks like Alka-Seltzer while it is working, and dissolves Godzilla as if he had been attacked by a billion Piranha fish. Sound familiar? This formula has been followed by almost every science fiction film ever since. The interesting thing is that the environmental community was influential in producing this film as well. Godzilla was the product of atomic bomb testing. In fact every monster film in the 1950 was a product of atomic bomb testing.

Godzilla was a “B” movie. The term is similar to the categories for records when they were released as “singles”. The “A” side of a record was the hit, the song that was being played on all of the radio stations across the country. The “B” side was just a filler song; sometimes good, usually not. When we went to the movies as kids, there was usually a double feature. The “A” movies was generally something like “Gone With the Wind”; the “B” movie was something like “Plan 9 From Outer Space”, reportedly the worst film ever made (I own it on DVD, and it is). The most impressive “B” movie I ever saw in the theater was “Blood of Dracula”. I watched it with some of my cousins in Brea, California, while our parents went off to somewhere more entertaining. I had nightmares about “Blood of Dracula” for years. When Nancy Perkins (played by Sandra Harrison) transformed into a vampire I nearly lost my lunch, my breakfast, and every meal that I had eaten the previous week.

Some critics suggest that most of Alfred Hitchcock’s movies were of the “A” variety. While others may quibble about it, I have to say that my personal experience with his “Psycho” was of the “B” movie variety. I was home on leave from the military, visiting with my cousins in Imperial Valley, California. Mike Waddington and his twin sisters, Jan and Jean, are some of my favorite people in all of the world. When they suggested that we go see the new Hitchcock movie I was game. I remember sitting in the theater in Brawley, my cousins on either side of me, the tension of the movie increasing in a geometric function, until the heroine decided that the bright thing to do was to go down the stairs to the basement. I could tell that that was a bad idea. I knew this because I had seen a lot of “B” movies; I knew this because the music told me so. I decided that that was as good a time to go to the bathroom as there ever would be. I took my time, but Alfred had my number. As I walked by into the darkened screening room, Lila Crane (played by Vera Miles) was just turning the rocking chair around with Norman Bates’ mother in it. I am afraid that I was just a little unnerved.

I bring all of this up because of my little foray with “B” movies this week. I was at Wal-Mart shopping for something, when I stopped at the DVD section. There were two movies I had never heard of before. The first was “Lost City Raiders”. The cover contained a picture of the Statue of Liberty mostly underwater with fire coming from the torch, the Brooklyn Bridge broken and mostly submerged, and divers swimming with the sharks. But it starred James Brolin and Ben Cross, so I thought, “Well, this has to be a “B” movie (my ‘favert’) and it has the added attraction of having people who can actually act”. I was wrong on both counts. It was a “C” movie and the film had 98 minutes of non-acting. The only thing that saved it was the special effects. At the heart of the matter was environmentalism, global warming plus the world really offending God. My capacity for suspending my disbelief (which is extraordinary in any event) was expanded to new heights of fancy.

The second film was “Inalienable”. How could you miss with folks like Richard Hatch, Courtney Peldon, Marina Sirtis, Erick Avari, and Walter Koenig? A “B” movie it was, however, with bells on. I should have expected exactly what I got when I saw that dear old Ensign Chekov had written and produced the thing. All I need to say is that Richard Hatch gives birth to an alien boy with six tentacles and the government finds out about it. After watching all 106 minutes of the movie, I said to myself, “Hmmmm, Walter seems to have some unresolved family issues”.

Now, having given my review on these two beasties, do I regret having watched them? Heavens, no! I now own the three worst films ever made in the history of cinematography. What could be better than that? I know! I’ll start with the first season of “Farscape”! No? Maybe “Earth: Final Conflict”, then…. Perhaps, “Alien Nation”….? “Space 1999”…? the possibilities are endless!

Mortification of Words

2010-01-14T09:45:00.001-08:00

Mortification is a great word. It is the consummate expression of embarrassment coupled with a wish to die. For me, the great piler-up-of-words, mortification comes when one of those delectable morphemes that I have so carefully chosen proves to be egregiously misspelled.

I have actually felt this way was since I was a boy. I wanted everything that I wrote to be correct and fully comprehensible. Often I would ask my mother, my father, or someone else close to me, “How do you spell this word?” Invariably the response was, “Look it up in the dictionary; that is what it is for”. As I look back on it, there could have been no stupider response to my request than that one. The last time I checked, the dictionary was arranged alphabetically. In order to find the word, you actually had to know how to spell it. If you wanted to find the word “psychosis”, yet knew nothing about the abomination known as the “silent p”, you could spend an enormous amount of time flailing about in the "C" and "S" sections, trying to find the thing. A dictionary is primarily a repository for meaning, not spelling, and even then the meaning is dependent upon the year in which the dictionary was published. Let me give you an example.

The words “tempest” and “storm” are clearly related words, almost synonyms. In fact, in my Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged), each word is used to define the other. In Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), however, there is a distinct difference between “storm” and “tempest”, the former being a blustery weather pattern unaccompanied by precipitation. That is to say, if there is rain, hail, sleet, or snow, you have no “storm” but a “tempest”. Thus, “rainstorms”, “hailstorms”, and “snowstorms” were all considered lexical abominations in 1829. How the mighty are fallen!

But I digress.

So the counsel to resort to the dictionary in order to discover the correct spelling of a word fell on deaf ears. What to do? I grew up in an era of pencils. There were no ball point pens to speak of, and the school administrators no longer trusted the students with inkwells and quills. We had places for them in our desks, but we never used them. I suppose that there were legions of young girls with black-tipped pigtails who all grew up to be school teachers and then demanded pencils for the boys as soon as they became available. The use of pencils and the demand for hand-written assignments provided a wonderful loophole for those of us who were orthographically challenged.

My hand-writing has been almost illegible since the 1st grade. My teachers insisted that I write all of my letters between the light blue lines printed on the worksheets that they gave to me. I cannot recall the exact problem that I had, but I failed miserably and each corrective measure that my teachers took only made matters worse. By the time I was in sixth grade, the educational system had given up on me and I was commonly known as “Scrawl-boy” throughout the rest of the time that I attended the Chino Unified School District. I used this to my advantage. As I was composing my assignment, if I happened upon a word that I did not know how to spell, I caused my handwriting to become just a little more “scrawlly”, thus leaving the teacher to decide whether I had actually misspelled the word or if she was simply incapable of reading my hand. Interestingly enough, most of my teachers assumed that I knew what I was doing. Even more interesting is the fact that the ruse worked until I was almost finished with college.

The other side of the loophole of the pencil-scrawl syndrome was the nature of the medium. The only time I ever had my feet held to the lexical fire was in ten-grade English. We had weekly vocabulary tests the object of which was to demonstrate that we knew how to spell the ten words given to us at the beginning of the week. My friend Billy and I sat in the front seats of the two left-hand rows of the classroom. After the quiz, the teacher would say, “Okay, exchange papers with the person next to you and correct each other’s spelling”. Billy and I did EXACTLY that, using the erasers cleverly placed at the ends of our pencils (we had the same first-grade teacher; no serious forgery was necessary). As a result, we were considered the best spellers in the class, until the time came for the annual spelling bee.

Obviously, there came a time when these deceptions would no longer work. Upper division classes in college required typed papers. My Master’s thesis could not be written in pencil. My Doctoral program required a major publishable tome. I passed through a thousand hells trying to catch up.

Today I am somewhat noted for my vocabulary. My colleagues at Utah Valley State University frequently referred to me as the “Word Maven” and I would oblige them by posting a “Word for the Week” on the wall outside of my office. The practice apparently had some entertainment value inasmuch as the corridor was frequently packed with spectators trying to improve their semantic agility. The down side of this increased facility with the English language is that my spell-checker (the modern equivalent to my friend Billy and his eraser) is frequently confounded by my word choice, desiring to change perfectly good words into contextual gibberish. I keep my eye on the little villain. From time to time an editor will chide me for the use of a word. Most of the time I simply fire back a scathing retort, declaring in no uncertain terms that I am not in the practice of “dumbing-down” my prose.

Even so, I find myself mortified from time to time. A week or so ago, I prepared a manuscript to be reviewed in a refereed competition. I originally wrote the text many years ago, but decided that it would serve well under the circumstances. I had read the manuscript repeated times and felt that the narrative was error-free. I printed the text, stuffed it into the manila envelope, scrawled the editor’s name on the cover, and set it aside to be posted. For whatever reason, I decided to reread the file on the computer and found another five errors. Admittedly they were minor typographical problems which would probably not be noticed by anyone reading the piece, but I was horrified. I made the corrections on the computer, reprinted the paper, opened the envelope and exchanged the pages. I can hardly wait for the reply.

For those of you who will now parse my blogs in order to uncover mortifications, I wish you luck. It’s a waste of time. I have ways of dealing with those who think to grab me by the chin-hairs. I will ultimately refer you to Webster’s Third REALLY New International Dictionary (Unabridged, 2014), wherein the supposed misspelling will appear in all of its glory.

"As you say, Sir"

2009-12-17T09:26:00.000-08:00

For my midday entertainment, I am in the middle of a BBC series called "Jeeves and Wooster", starring the inimitable Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. I quite like it, mostly for the linguistic play that is continuous throughout every episode. Trillium walked through the family room a couple of days ago, watched for a few minutes, and walked off, muttering something about none of the characters having any admirable qualities at all. She had missed Jeeves, of course.

Jeeves, according to the story line, is a Celt, although we are never told from which part of Celtic-dom he was from. He has no Scottish brogue, none of the Irish lilt, and no Welsh aspirated consonants. We might therefore suggest that he hailed originally from Cornwall, but who knows? He is a gentleman's gentleman, a valet who watches over Bertie Wooster's circumstances with decorum and long-suffering. He is well-read, linguistically acute, and invariably has a grasp of any given situation and the manner in which any afflicted soul might be extracted. Hardly anyone realizes the genius of the man, save at the very moment of distress.

Britain continually pokes fun at itself, particularly on the subjects of class, nobility, and wealth. "Jeeves and Wooster" exploits every aspect of the cold war that exists between the classes and the sexes. Bertram Wooster and his friends are young fops who have hardly two synapses to rub together. Whenever Bertie takes a situation in hand, he invariably makes the mess increase exponentially. The matrons of the production are invariably portrayed as malignant shrews who realize that the only power they have left in the world comes by way of bullying everyone around them. Bertie's aunts constitute the embodiment of British cynicism. The patriarchs are men who are used to being obeyed in every venue except in their own homes. They have some wisdom, but they are mostly governed by bias, prejudice, and tradition. The single young women are either love-smitten fluff-heads or calculating predators waiting for the moment to strike.

In the midst of social chaos, Jeeves is the only level-headed character on the stage. He knows exactly how things should be done in order to restore sanity, but he is, in the end, only a valet. Therefore, every thing he does is subtle, a careful nudging of the rudder here and there, until all is righted. He is a singular voice of reason in a company of lunatics.

Now I find this series endearing, perhaps because it deals with the world as it is in a jocular fashion. In 44 minutes I can enjoy a "reality" show that is far more entertaining than 44 minutes of the raw stuff available through channel surfing.

If I want to watch young women in a perpetual state of cluelessness, I can turn to Channel 53 (VH1), Channel 55 (MTV), or Channel 59 (E!). If I want to see the foolishness of bigotry, tradition, and wrong-headedness, I can immediately switch to Channel 48 (MSNBC) or Channel 42 (HLN). If I want to see young men grasping the wrong end of the stick, I merely need to focus on Channels 34-37. If I have a craving for the angst between the sexes and generations, I can spend time watching Channel 30 (TLC), Channel 31 (CMT), Channel 46 (Lifetime), and Channel 60 (Style). I do not, however, ever come away edified by any of this.

So for the time being I will stick with "Jeeves and Wooster". After that I will probably have to turn to "Get Smart"

Galileo versus DaVinci versus DeMolay

2009-11-28T11:40:00.000-08:00

Last night, Trillium and I watched Ron Howard’s latest Robert Langdon movie “Angels and Demons”. It wasn’t bad; typical Hollywood fare, though, I am afraid. There were lots of chase scenes and a rather stellar explosion at the end; dozens of people died, generally at point blank range. As a result, the visual impact of A&D was far greater than the “Da Vinci Code”, and considerably less cerebral. We watched the special features section on the DVD where Ron and the boys tried to explain why that was the case. Ron Howard wanted to do a movie that stretched his directorial skills; something that was different from the “Da Vinci Code”. He asserted that he had never been interested in doing a sequel of any kind because that implied doing the same thing over again. But He and Dan Brown agreed that something different could be done with “Angels and Demons”; they never said what the different thing was and why it could be done. I am prepared to tell you, however.

The fact of the matter is that A&D was the first of the three Langdon novels that have been written; the “Da Vinci Code” being the second, and the “Lost Key”, published earlier this year, was the third. The “Lost Key” concerns itself with the esoteric aspects of Freemasonry as expressed in the architecture of Washington DC. While the Masons in the story are almost entirely sympathetic characters, the rituals of the fraternity are graphically represented. Were I a Mason, I might have been a little disturbed at the manner in which the Masonic symbols were rather starkly presented, most of which without explanation, without laying out the underlying history from whence the symbols developed. One comes away from the book asking one’s self, “How could these intelligent, well-educated men engage in what appear to be medieval barbarisms”. Frankly, I believe that Dan Brown’s intent was that we would walk away with that question ringing in our ears. Does Dan Brown have any personal antipathy toward Freemasonry? I doubt it. He is a story teller who found the Masons far too tempting to pass up.

The “Da Vinci Code” explored the legend of the Holy Grail in Gnostic terms. The Gnostics were primarily 2nd Century advocates of the “secret” knowledge that explained the origins of Christianity. The notion that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene has been around for hundreds of years. Some ancient texts suggest that he was also married to Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, the friend whom Jesus raised from the dead. That these women bore him children as been part of Gnostic literature for nearly 2000 years, almost since the foundation of the Christian Church in the meridian of time. Dan Brown was not introducing anything new, but he was revealing ideas that had been suppressed for generations for being heretical to Traditional Christianity. The Catholic Church took umbrage at Brown’s presentation of the Gnostic literature as fact, and was not any less distressed at the rather malignant portrayal of certain segments of Catholic culture. Does Dan Brown have any personal antipathy toward the Catholic Church? I doubt it. He is a story teller who found the Gnostic legends far too tempting to pass up.

“Angels and Demons” treats another secret organization, the Illuminati, and the involvement of such men as Galileo, Bernini, and Raphael. The underlying tension in the story is that which seems to exist between science and religion, some of which played out four hundred years ago in the life of Galileo. The irony of Brown’s theme, however, is that of all of the denominations of traditional Christianity, Catholicism is far more at ease with scientific research and discovery.

Much of this attitude derives from the writings of one of the finest, if not the finest, theological minds that has ever graced the Catholic Church: Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican priest who lived during the 13th Century. His “Summa Theologica” came to inform almost all Catholic philosophy, a work that is based on the Aristotelian approach to truth, the same philosophical approach that informs modern science. Prior to the 13th Century, the greatest Catholic thinker was probably Saint Augustine, a neo-Platonist who lived during the second half of the 4th Century and the first half of the 5th Century. For eight centuries, from Augustine to Aquinas, the Catholic approach to doctrinal philosophy followed in the same path established by Augustine in his “The City of God” and “On Christian Doctrine”.

When the Protestant Reformers sought for recognition, they essentially rejected Thomas Aquinas and Aristotelianism, and turned to the kind of Neo-Platonist approach that Augustine had advocated. For five centuries, from the 15th Century to modern times, the conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism has been fundamentally the same as that which naturally existed between the Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Plato. Therefore, Protestants tend to be far more offended by scientific thought than are Catholics. Hence, to find in Brown’s Camerlengo, the advisor to the Pope, a rabid Platonist, a reactionary to Aquinan thought, is almost too much to swallow. Brown overstepped himself a little there.

The “Da Vinci Code” is a far more cerebral volume than is “Angels and Demons” and while it does have some action, the real power of the writing is in the pursuit of the Grail legend. “Angels and Demons” is more of a thriller, a story that takes place during a twelve-hour period, an hour by hour race to save the lives of the four Cardinals and to find the anti-matter bomb. The Illuminati legend is not as richly important as was the Grail legend and as a result, there is not as much philosophy to discuss. The books, therefore, differ radically in their pacing and focus. Ron Howard perceived that difference between the two novels and saw how “Angels and Demons” could be a “different” movie. The irony here is that although the movie is different from the “Da Vinci Code”, it is very much like every other action/adventure movie that Hollywood has cranked out in the last thirty years or so. It will be interesting to see whether Ron Howard can perceive another “difference” in the “Lost Key” that would compel him to direct the third movie.

Love Over Parklane West

2009-11-11T18:59:00.000-08:00

A week or so ago, I finished watching the third season of “Psych”. I actually like the series. The concept is interesting: a fellow who has such observation skills that he can resolve mysterious crimes with great ease. He, of course, is faking his psychic talent, but his detective abilities are off the chart. There is in the series a wonderful tension, however, one that has been used to good effect in many previous shows and will no doubt find expression in future productions. The protagonist, Shawn Spencer (played by James Roday), is secretly interested in the junior detective of the Santa Barbara Police Department, Juliet “Jules” O’Hara (played by Maggie Lawson). As it turns out, Juliet has some mutual interest as well, but any opportunity to explore their feelings is usually frustrated by the other characters or the plot of the story. The third season ended with a forth-right Juliet suggesting that maybe they should pursue the romantic situation a little. This, unfortunately, was overshadowed by the fact that Shawn was at that very moment, in the middle of a date with his high school sweetheart, Abigail Lytar, a girl that he had originally left in the lurch many years before. Shawn wants to take Juliet up on her offer with all of his heart, but he cannot bear to embarrass Abigail again. Season Four continues in that same spirit.

The series “Chuck” also has a similar unrequited love tension. Chuck Bartowski (played by Zachary Levi) is smitten by one of his federal “handlers”, Sarah Walker (played by Yvonne Strahovski). Sarah is constrained by her job; Chuck is constrained by his shyness. The truth is that they both want to find some common ground, but any attempt to do so is broken up by Sarah’s partner, Major John Casey (wonderfully played by Adam Baldwin) or by the nefarious plot lines. Everyone wants the relationship, but everyone knows that it would ruin the show. What a conundrum!

Last night I finished another novel by Alexander McCall Smith entitled “Love Over Scotland”. This book is the third in a series called “44 Scotland Street”. In my opinion, McCall Smith hasn’t written anything finer. The books are engaging, the characters charming, even the most annoying person has redeeming qualities. One of the protagonists is a young woman named Pat who is an assistant at an art gallery run by Matthew. Matthew is painfully shy, even though he is extraordinarily wealthy. Through the first two volumes of the series, and most of the third book, Matthew has one distress after another as he watches Pat suffer through her trials and tribulations. He is inclined to care for her, but he doesn’t want to be misunderstood. Toward the end of the novel, both Pat and Matthew realize that there may just be a chance for them together. When that realization appeared in print I almost shouted out loud for joy. McCall Smith had set me up, of course, and I was particularly susceptible to his ruminations on love. I wish to share a few of the most poignant with you.

Antonia, a new character in the series, is a writer of novels about ancient Celtic saints, who has endured a dreadful marriage and is finally coming into her own. She is flat-sitting her friend’s apartment while the latter is off doing anthropological work on the Malacca Straits pirates (a most entertaining adventure, I might add). She briefly meets a six-year old named Bertie, a gifted linguist and accomplished saxophone player. Here is her reflection on her encounter:

She thought back to that little boy, to Bertie, and now she saw what it was about him that made him so appealing: he spoke the truth. Candour was so attractive because we were so accustomed to obfuscation and deceit, to what they call spin. Everything about our world was becoming so superficial. All around us there were actors. Politicians were actors, keeping to a script, condescending to us with their brief sound-bites, employing all sorts of smoke and mirrors to prevent their ordinary failings from being exposed…. Light, clarity, integrity. Every so often one saw them, and in such surprising places. So she had seen it in that peculiar conversation with the little boy on the stair. She had seen candour and honesty and utter transparency. But you had to be a child to be like that today, because all about us was the most pervasive cynicism; a cynicism that eroded everything with its superficiality and its sneers. And a little child might remind us of what it is to be straightforward, to be filled with love, and with puzzlement.

When I read that, I wanted to be a child; I didn’t want to be part of that adult world that manipulates the truth to its own advantage. I wanted to be straightforward, filled with love.

Sometime during this past week, Trillium asked me about the title of the book, “Love Over Scotland”. “What does it mean?” I told her that I did not know exactly, but I was certain that Alexander would get to it eventually. He did, and it raised some questions in my heart and mind. A paragraph after Antonia’s thoughts about Bertie, she thought about another character in the book, Angus Lordie, a man she initially found absurd; in this she was somewhat justified.

When Dominica came back, Antonia thought, I shall do something to show her how much I value our friendship. And Angus Lordie, too. He’s a lonely man, and a peculiar one, but I can show him friendship and consideration too. And could I go so far as to love him? She thought carefully. Women always do this, she said to herself. Men don’t know it, but we do. We think very carefully about a man, about his qualities, his behavior, everything. And then we fall in love.

I wondered if that was what Trillium did 42 years ago. It had never occurred to me how exactly she made that decision to be my wife. If Alexander McCall Smith is right, if that is the way women choose those with whom they fall in love, then I have not received a greater compliment in my entire life.

Right at the end of the book, Pat and Domenica are talking about a wonderful thing that Matthew had done for Big Lou, the woman who owned the coffee shop down the street:

“And was Big Lou pleased?”

“Very,” said Pat. “She hugged him. She lifted him up, actually, and hugged him.”

Domenica smiled. “It very easy,” she said. “It’s very easy, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“To increase the sum total of human happiness. By these little acts. Small things. A word of encouragement. A gesture of love. So easy.”

The book ends with a dinner party in Domenica’s flat where Angus reads one of his poems. It is about maps, geographical and personal. Here are the final lines, which speak for themselves.

Old maps had personified winds
Gusty figures from whose bulging cheeks
Trade winds would blow; now we know
That wind is simply a matter of isobars;
Science has made such things mundane,
But love – that, at least, remains a mystery,
Why it is and how it comes about
That love’s transforming breath, that gentle wind,
Should blow its healing way across our lives.

Love, unrequited or not, is worth the effort.

Disguises

2009-10-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

I watched the first hour of a movie last night. I decided that I was too old to watch the rest in one sitting. I will try again later in the week. The story line was mildly interesting. A young man, somewhat reminiscent of Orson Wells played by Thomas Jacob Black, wants to make an epic movie, but the whole project quickly begins to fall apart. By the time I got to the 59:48 point in the film, the soundman and one of the other production assistants had been brutally murdered. “A fine movie for Halloween,” I said to myself. Then suddenly, I realized that I recognized one of the actors. I was not certain who it was, but I knew that I had seen him somewhere else. The interesting thing was that the character seemed completely out of his element; that is to say, I was suspicious that his normal venue was not high drama. I stopped the movie to look at the case and discovered that I was right. The fellow normally plays outrageous comedic characters in the movies. Those of you who are his fans already know that Thomas Jacob Black is professionally known as Jack Black, the star of “Shallow Hal”, Nacho Libre”, School of Rock”, and many other comedies. In filming “King Kong”, Peter Jackson did little to disguise one of his major stars. He correctly surmised that Black’s acting talent in a serious drama would be sufficient to persuade the audience that “Carl Denham” was in the movie and not Jack Black. For my money, both Jackson and Black succeeded.

Oddly enough, I thought about the notion of effective disguises throughout the whole night. I probably dreamed about it, too, but I cannot recall everything that my brain serves up to me during those magical hours. I decided, however, that there have been four times in my life that I have disguised myself so effectively that no one was certain who was beneath the disguise.

The first time happened when I was twelve or thirteen years old. The community where I grew up had long before decided that if they wished to minimize the ancillary damage associated with Halloween they had to get the kids to a party with high-energy activities so as to burn them out before midnight. They were only marginally successful. During my thirteenth year, mother and sister thought that it would be funny to dress me up in a frilly dress that had been handed down through the family and, with the application of copious amounts of makeup and a wig, pass me off as Judie’s cousin who was visiting for the holidays. I was equipped with the usual prosthetics (oranges) and taken down to The Oaks where the party was raging. I was shy, somewhat demur I suppose. Judie had no trouble introducing me to all of the kids. I don’t remember what kind of costume she was wearing, but it didn’t make her shy or demur. The charade went on for about an hour and then I couldn’t take it anymore. It wasn’t the notion of being a cross-dresser; that word hadn’t even come into the language yet. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy not being recognized; I love a mystery as well as anyone. It was the way that the boys, my closest friends, were looking at me. They thought I was a girl. They looked at me as if I were a girl. I did not like it. I wondered if I had ever looked at a girl the way those boys were looking at me. I wondered if girls were aware enough to know how boys looked at them and if they knew what those looks meant. I decided as a young teenager that there must be a better way to appreciate women than merely ogle them.

The second effective disguise took place while Trillium and I were living in Garden Grove, California, as relatively young marrieds. We were invited to go to a friend’s house for a rather large party; scores of our close acquaintances were going to be there. I thought to go as Frankenstein’s monster, but that would have been typecasting and not much fun. I couldn’t manage shy and demur under those circumstances. Then Trillium came up with an idea. “Why don’t you go as a pile of leaves?” She brought an orange sheet, pinned hundreds of paper leaves to it, and then stuffed twenty or thirty large balloons underneath with me. By crouching down and shuffling along, my costume and I were no more than three feet tall. Just as we got to the front door, I climbed underneath the sheet, waited until Trillium was safely inside, and then rang the doorbell. Our hostess was startled by my appearance. I did not say anything, but she invited me in anyway. I made my way over to a corner and waited…. and waited…. and waited. After about an hour I gave it up. My costume was more than effective. No one had any idea who was beneath the sheet. On the other hand, I was starting to get cramps in my legs from crouching down. Additionally, I had not been able to talk to anyone the entire time, nor had I had any refreshments. A great costume, probably the best ever invented, but my brain had made promises that my body couldn’t keep. At least no one was ogling me.

The third instance happened at Purdue University. I had been responsible for helping to organize a “50s” dance for Halloween. I had all of the appropriate records and the DJ equipment. In order to make the event more fun, the committee announced that the famous DJ “Wolfman Jack” would be at the party. I eventually acquired all of the appropriate clothes, wigs, and facial hair to make the disguise work. The party started and for an hour and a half I introduced all of the records using the famous “Wolfman Jack” gravelly voice. Throughout the evening everyone around me was asking “Where’s Zaphod? He’s supposed to be in charge”. One of my conspirators, probably Trillium, spread the rumor that I had come down with the flu and was home sick. Eventually I stood up and said with what was left of my voice, “Well, I’m done!” Everyone was surprised and fun was had by all. I quit because the wig and the facial hair were driving me crazy. I was hot and sweaty from the wardrobe as well. “How does Robert Weston Smith do this every night?” I asked myself. Adding insult to injury, I was stuck with WMJ’s voice for about two weeks thereafter.

The fourth instance actually happens every morning when I get up and look at myself in the mirror. “When did this all happen?” I say. “Where is the guy who used to look back at me out of the mirror? This guy looks like he is wearing a fat suit, and it is really life-like. Someone should get an Academy Award for this!”

I guess that I am now officially in disguise at age 67. We had friends visit us a couple of years ago, friends whom we had not seen for more than twenty years. The first words out of Velda’s mouth were, “Why, Zaphod, you haven’t changed a bit! You look just like you did when you showed up on our doorstep in 1961!” I replied, “Why, Velda, you have really changed a lot. Back then you could actually see with those eyes!”

I went with the Young Men and Young Women in our neighborhood to visit Temple Square a while back. I was sitting off to the side, listening to one of the lady missionaries give her little lecture, when I was approached from behind. “Dr. Beeblebrox? Hi, I’m Seth Jones. I was in one of your classes at the University two years ago. This is my wife Jan and our baby boy, Jamie.” I said that I was happy to see him again and wished him and his family the best. On the spur of the moment I asked him how it was that he recognized me from across the Tabernacle with my back to him. “Oh! That’s easy! No one has a head shaped like yours, especially from the back.”

Who knew? I guess I am going to have to eat foods that will pad my skull if I really wish to be incognito.

Non-Singers in the Choir

2009-10-20T15:31:00.000-07:00

When Trillium and I were young married students attending Brigham Young University, we lived in Springville, Utah. The fellow who directed the Church choir taught music at the high school and was one of the most masterful directors I have known throughout my long life. Trillium and I joined the choir along with our friends David and Jennie. I was a tenor in those days and delighted in attempting to live up to our director’s expectations. I sat next to David who, for all of his enthusiasm, was completely tone deaf. He was almost continuously off-key, but he forged ahead with great gusto. David’s clarion call of non-conformity did not go unnoticed by the director and he spent much time working with the tenors so as to get some sort of semblance of correctness from us all. I think that David was oblivious to his lack of talent and I am certain that he wondered who was singing amiss that our leader was spending so much time with us. Oddly enough, by the time we were to perform, David had managed to get within a third or a fifth of where we were all supposed to be and our director had achieve sainthood.

From time to time I have performed with other choirs and ensembles wherein someone was not quite with it. In some cases that fact was strenuously pointed out without mercy and with very little patience. Often the offender would not return after a few sessions. I knew for myself that with some effort, even the most egregiously tone-deaf singer could be whipped into line. I fear that some of these other directors and leaders did not achieve sainthood.

There have been two other talented men who have demonstrated much of the same kind of patience and kindness towards those who would be singers. Years ago I met a fellow in Southern California who had a specialized group called the Grandland Singers. Douglas Brenchley was one of those individuals who had so much enthusiasm for music that no amount of dissonance could wear him out; at least that was the case in my presence. I remember sitting in one of his choirs in the MacKay Building at UVSC when the person announcing the program mentioned Doug by name stating that my friend was capable of making broom handles sing. Being somewhat shaped like a rather stout broom handle I enjoyed the compliment. Doug has since retired from service at UVSC, but he still has occasional opportunities to lead young men and women into rather stellar performances. The notable aspect of his tenure was even though he had a premier choir that one had to audition for, yet there were at least two other choirs that anyone could join and perform in. Everyone who wished to raise their voices was allowed to do so, even though the chandeliers would shake and the fine china would rumble.

In our congregational choir here in Orem I have had the pleasure of being directed by Gordon Jessop, a cousin of Craig Jessop who for a long time directed the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I have watched Gordon closely and can testify as to his patience in attempting to get 35 people all singing off the same sheet of music. No one in my life has been as kind to an offending singer as is Gordon. I rejoice to be in his company. Two of my daughters and one of my grandchildren presently sing in the choir and after the first of the year I will be able to rejoin the group.

I have thought about what I might do if some unthinking soul were to put me in charge of a choir again. I have come up with a solution. Everyone can participate in this system

May we all be as creative and as tender-hearted to the gifted and to those less gifted as those who inspired this program.

Immortality

2009-10-09T16:44:00.000-07:00

I was caused to introspect today, in part because I finished a book that I have been reading for the last week or so. I usually read just before going to sleep, but the author captured my imagination so much last night that I had to finish the book today. It was a tough read; about 300 pages after the 230 I had already put away. I am an inveterate reader; I have been since I was a child. Of the books that I have in my library, I think that it is safe to say that I have read 95% of them. There is something wonderful about watching another mind work until, of course, the story becomes so fascinating that the read becomes vicarious living, as did the final half of this book.

I write as well as read. I think that some people have concluded that I write because I love the sound of my fingers pattering away on my keyboard. Hence, both the length and the unintelligibly of my pieces. The truth is that I think that I have meaningful things to say, perhaps even unique things to say, and I wish to preserve them. I started out by producing reference books. I did many of these. After composing my 1200-page doctoral dissertation, I began a project of research that ended up as an eleven-volume glossary of J.R.R. Tolkien's invented languages. Since I could not remember for very long any one of the entries, I put each linguistic element into a computer file and eventual printed them all off. The main set of seven volumes can be found in libraries all over the world, even though there are less than 200 copies of the work. It is a wonderful thing to walk into a major library where my books are prominently displayed and recognize them for what they are.

I compilied other reference works after that, having to do with my professional pursuits. Again, there was a relatively small audience, but it tickled me every time I walked into a room where one of these rare volumes was shelved.

I have written poems and short stories, some of which have actually seen the light of day, published by people other than myself. I am grateful when editors have understood and valued my take on a notion. I have delivered papers in conferences throughout the United States, in Canada, and Great Britain, many of which have been published by appreciative audiences and societies. A Google of my full name will produced a list referencing about half of what I have done during the past fifty years. The results of this sort of search will produce a six to ten-page printout. I have thought myself fortunate to have lived in a day where I can write about blood diseases, art, music, and scriptures and have those ruminations be accessed by hundreds of people located in more than fifty nations around the world. It is easy to get just a little giddy thinking about the potential. However, my reading today snapped my emotional chain just a little.

Joseph Fort Newton, a prominent Mason, has stated,

"Time is a river and books are boats. Many volumes start down that stream, only to be wrecked and lost beyond recall in its sands. Only a few, a very few, endure the testings of time and live to bless the ages following. Tonight we are met to pay homage to the greatest of all books--the one enduring Book which has traveled down to us from the far past, freighted with the richest treasure that ever any book has brought to humanity. What a sight it is to see five hundred men gathered about an open Bible- -how typical of the spirit and genius of Masonry, its great and simple faith and its benign ministry to mankind."

I read a portion of this quote in Dan Brown's latest novel "The Lost Symbol", the book that I finished today. Dan only quoted the first three sentences in Newton's opening paragraph and was intent on making a point just a little different from that of its author. I thought that it was important that you feel the spirit of the original. I am not a Mason, but I know a great deal about its history. I have had close friends who were Masons, others who were members of the Eastern Star, DeMolay, and Job's Daughters. They invariably have been good people with high standards in their dealings with their fellow men. All of these observations about Freemasonry, however, constitute an unavoidable aside.... Pardon me for that.

After reading John Fort Newton's quote in Brown's book, I think that I had a bit of a reality check. I projected myself fifty years into the future. Which, if any, of my scribblings will remain among the children of men? Some of my works are nicely bound, but I am afraid that they will not endure the ravages of time. Time and again I have been reminded of this fact and yet I am inclined to forget it. I cannot bear the reality. In the end, the ruminations and philosophies of men, mine included, will fade on brittle paper, crumble and fall away into the elements from whence they come. Who in this world would see to the copying of anything that I have written? I have concluded that probably no one in their right mind would do so.

If my writing will not endure beyond a generation, what will be the significance of my life, the things that I have learned for myself, ideas that I wished to instill in the hearts and minds of other? I would like to believe that they are worthwhile, that I am worthwhile, that every sentient being on this planet is worthwhile. I have concluded that there is only one thing that can be done. I have shared as a parent; I have taught as a teacher. These I have done with joy; I may still do so in the venues left to me. If I have done well, something of myself has been imparted, one candle lighting another, that candle perhaps eventually igniting the wicks of hundreds of other candles. The only mortal legacy that we have to offer is a little point of light, a solitary life, one flickering flame that with a little effort can be the means of driving the darkness from this lost and fallen world.

Where Everyone Else Has Gone Before

2009-09-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

Saturday, Trillium and I went to see Star Trek at the dollar theater. In some respects, this was a first for me. I had seen all of the other Star Trek movies within the first or second showing of the films on the first day of their release. I am a Trekkie! So what! The fact that I did not see the movie during the first week (as did my two sons) did not particularly distress me. I thought "Good for them; good for me!"

In preparation for Saturday's jaunt, I had watched all of the Original Series (all 79 episodes)and first six of the Star Trek movies. What a waste of time! The opening scene of the movie saw to that. The dingbat Romulans and Spock obviated any advantage that I might have otherwise gained in the enjoyment of the movie. The whole Star Trek universe had its reset button pushed and everything, just about everything worth knowing about Star Trek trivia, was dumped into the trash can. Was I upset? Not at all. Now the boys at Paramount can do anything they want, assuming that anyone would be interested in a newly created worldview of the 23rd century. Most Trekkies like to argue about the sharpness of the blade of Kodos the Executioner and how many tribbles can dance on the head of a pin. All that is mercifully behind us now.

My hesitancy to going to the theater in the first place was borne out shortly after the previews began. The sound was loud, disruptive, and the dialogue was almost impossible to distinguish from any other sound effect going on. When I buy the DVD, I will sit down in the family room and suit myself as to the auditory intensity. I walked out of the theater somewhat more stunned than entertained.

Having said all of the foregoing, did I like the story? Not bad! The new actors have not yet become endearing, probably because they could all be my grandchildren. The fellow that played Doctor McCoy, Karl Urban, worked, however, even though they had him saying some really cheesy lines that only DeForest Kelley should have spoken. His personality worked, as did his mild southern accent. I was intensely amused by the series of events that supposedly gave him the nick-name "Bones".

Zachary Quinto's Spock was okay. A little too emotional, I suppose, but that was an integral part of the story. It took a long time for Leonard Nimoy to settle into the part that made him a SciFi icon. Nimoy really didn't have him down until the first movie. The charm in this piece, though probably the most disturbing, was the love interest between Spock and Uhura. That was really inexplicable, but worked nonetheless. It was certainly better than the unnerving romance between Scotty and Uhura that took place on Bill Shatner's watch in the fifth movie.

Chekov and Sulu were hard to picture, but the accents worked, sort of. Sulu's hand-to-hand combat joke worked, not once but twice. Who knew the Romulans were packing blades? Scotty was funny, but not in the James Doohan way. That was a breath of fresh air. Bruce Greenwood's Christopher Pike was the stable focus of the movie; great casting, good acting. Spock's parents didn't work for me, probably because I liked Mark Leonard so much as the quintessential Vulcan.

The Kirk persona must have been deeply troubled by his father's death at the hands of the Romulans. I had great difficulty trying to equate the two Kirk's. And I thought that the depiction of the reprogramming of the Kobayashi Maru scenario was sophomoric and not nearly as clever as it should have been. The Kirk of TOS would have been far more subtle and devious. As a treatise on a young man crawling back from a series of social and academic blunders, I thought that the story worked, but it was not James Tiberias Kirk.

Casting Zoe Saldana as Nyota Uhura was a stroke of pure genius and was completely in keeping with the casting of female actresses throughout the Original Series. She had Nichelle Nichols' edge as well and her persona would have persuaded any red-blooded American boy in the 23rd century to study linguistics.

Will the boys at Paramount come up with another movie? Could be, but I hope that the characters settle down a little.

Precious

2009-09-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

I have been a fan of Alexander McCall Smith for a good many years. Like many readers, I was introduced to his prose through “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency”, but I have since consumed much of his other publications as well. The Botswana series is consistently delightful. The characters are endearing, filled with genuine sentiments, simple in an exalted way. I thought that the other series would bring as much pleasure as the first. In some respects that has been true.

The protagonist of “The Sunday Philosophy Club”, Isabel Dolhousie, is not nearly as charming as Precious Ramotswe, not nearly as innocent, nor is she filled with the same sort of joi d’vivre. She is, however, a moral philosopher and therefore the narrative of each novel is filled with an exploration of moral dilemmas, usually on an extremely personal level. I am afraid that some of Isabel’s moral choices disturb me, but I suppose that was McCall Smith’s intent. The application of moral values is far more difficult a process than the mere discussion of them. A discussion frequently becomes heated; the application frequently is humbling.

The “44 Scotland Street” series is considerably less-high flown than “The Sunday Philosophy Club”. The female protagonist is considerably younger than those in the first two series, a young woman still pursuing her education at the University of Edinburgh. The delight in this series revolves around the eccentricities of the other characters in the story. The twenty-year-old Pat MccGregor seems to be the only normal person in her world. Everyone else is wonderfully odd. I suspect that every personality quirk that Smith has ever encountered in his life is finding voice in this series. None of the characters are depraved, but all of them have some sort of bizarre trait or weakness that speaks to some aspect of the human condition. The reader never feels sorry for any of them, but rejoices in having come to know them.

The fourth series, “The 2 ½ Pillars of Wisdom” is comprised of three volumes: “Portuguese Irregular Verbs”, “The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs”, and “At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances”. The titles reveal something of the spirit of the books. Of all of the writings of Alexander McCall Smith, I found these to be the most appealing to me. In the first place, the protagonist, Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, is a linguist whose moderate claim to fame has been his 1200 page work on Iberian philology. He has not received the accolades that he thought that he deserved for his masterpiece and therefore engages in somewhat paranoid thought and activity. Inasmuch as my own particular claim to fame also involved a 1200 page masterpiece, a three volume work on J.R.R. Tolkien’s creative linguistics, Professor von Igelfeld’s circumstances resonate within me. Igelfeld is clearly demented and borders on insanity, yet he has his moments of insight. I rather suspect that the protagonist’s personality is a concatenation of every academic that Alexander McCall Smith every met, including, no doubt, much of his own personal experience as a university faculty member. The three books are a monument to the frustration and dangers of living in the “ivory towers” of academe.

All of this came to mind this past week as I watched the opening episodes of “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” that has been airing on HBO during the year. The BBC had brought the series to life, with Jill Scott portraying Precious Ramotswe. I had not realized how invested I had become in the world that Alexander McCall Smith created in his series set in Botswana. The BBC did the only reasonable thing by filming the entire series in southern Africa. Smith’s vivid description of the land and the people prepared me for the production. I have to confess that I had not been watching the first episode fifteen minutes before three little tears had appeared at the corners of my eyes. In many respects I felt at home. Part of the feeling came from several years of reading the books, remembering the undeniable love that Precious had for her homeland, a pure and natural patriotism that did not involve politics. It was her connection with the land and all living things upon it that delighted her. The other sensations for me had to do with two separate occasions in my own life when I lived in areas that were visually similar.

As a little boy, I spent my summers in Imperial Valley with my grandparents. My Grandfather Gaskill was a rural mail carrier in Calipatria, California. Throughout the 1950s I spent hours with him driving about the surrounding farms on dusty roads delivering mail in his old right-hand drive Studebaker. Some of the living conditions of the Mexican farm laborers were not much better than those just outside of Gaborone, Botswana. Notwithstanding their visual poverty, the men were universally friendly to my grandfather, delighting in the mail that he brought to them from their families far away. The spirit of that time and place was duplicated in the filming of Smith’s stories. I suddenly found that I had come to love Botswana as I loved my own grandfather. It was a surprising connection.

Many years later, I spent two years or so among the people of southern Mexico, living with them, teaching them. At that time, the country was deeply divided between the very wealthy and the extremely poor. A middle class was beginning to appear in those days, but the vast majority of the people were living in conditions not much different from those portrayed of Botswana. Notwithstanding the great deprivation in material goods, the Mexican people were loving and kind, full of hope and pure desire, not unlike that which the BBC managed to capture on film in their series. The Mexican people were deeply patriotic for much of the same reasons given for Precious Ramotswe’s patriotism. They loved the land and all things that dwelt upon it. I came to feel the same way.

I will watch the rest of the first season during the weeks to come. I am hopeful that my mind and my heart will continue to be as engaged as they were in the beginning. It is a precious thing to be enabled, to find commonality with places and people a half a world away. Great writers bring people together.

The Three Muses

2009-08-24T18:46:00.000-07:00

Trillium and I had the opportunity to be in the company of one of the icons of the College of Humanities last Thursday. Richard G. Ellsworth served in the English Department while I was working on my Bachelors and Masters degrees at Brigham Young University. After completing the purpose for the which we spent an hour and a half with him, our conversation turned to another of the faculty members with whom I had had a close working relationship. I was saddened to hear that he had died a year ago, that I had been unaware of his funeral. I would have liked to have attended. For the last few days I have given thought to the great teachers in my life, those who had shaped my own teaching style. Three immediately came to mind.

Dean Bruington taught music in Chino, California, first in the whole city school system and then later only at the High School. I took my first lessons in the clarinet from Mr. Bruington during the fourth grade at Richard Gird Elementary School. I have no idea how long it took me to get passed the rather odious sounds that a neophyte woodwind player makes on his way to limited proficiency. The extraordinary thing of it was that Mr. Bruington tolerated all of it, from all of us, for the next three years. I am certain that we had concerts, perhaps the parents came to them, perhaps the students at the school came. I remember none of it. I suppose that neither the parents nor the students really wanted to either. No doubt hope sprang eternal and they all anticipated that by the time we all went to the Junior High School, more than passing progress would have been made.

I remember that there was a music room for the band and orchestra at the Junior High, which was a tremendous improvement over the cafeteria at the elementary school. Whereas in the cafeteria we sounded like we were playing in a cavern, in the band room we were able to focus every musical error right into our own ears. Junior High was a desperate time for teenagers passing through the early stages of puberty and the music was not helping a lot. At the High School, the music facilities were housed in their own building very far away from the rest of the academic buildings and twice as far from the sports complex. It was a new campus and the Board of Education had anticipated the arrival of all those they had heard in the cafeteria during the previous five years.

Mr. Bruington, however, had confidence in us. We were a small school, with a marching band of about seventy or so, an orchestra of about sixty, and a swing band of about twenty-five. I played either clarinet or tenor saxophone in the three main venues. In the concert band (which was what the marching band was called when it wasn’t moving), I sat in the first chair of the front row just to the left hand of Mr. Bruington while he conducted us. I have to say that while I was a pretty good clarinetist, good tone and control, I was not particularly gifted in the ability to sight read. I would go home with new music and try to figure out what was going on with the notes on the page and usually failed miserably. On those days when we were to practice the piece for the first time, I would sit in my chair, scrunched down a bit, and would fake my part for a while as the rest of the band blithely went their own way. Eventually, I would hear that which I should be doing and then I usually could play it perfectly. I played clarinet by ear. Mr. Bruington tolerated that for about five weeks in my first semester as a Freshman. I remember vividly the day my formula for faking my way through rehearsal came to an end. The band was at full throttle, I was whimpering my way through the fingering of the new piece, when suddenly Dean Bruington stopped everyone with a wave of his baton. He looked down from the podium and said, “Zaphod, I can’t hear you. I can hear every other person in this room, even ones that I really would rather not hear, and yet though you are seated just two feet from my ears, there doesn’t appear to be anything happen with that instrument of yours.”

The eyes of the other sixty-nine members of the band were focused on me. I explained that I had spent hours practicing, trying to figure out what I should be playing, but had not been able to work it out.

“So you thought that by not playing that you would somehow be contributing to the success of the band.”

I said that must be it. Fourteen year olds will agree to just about anything when everyone in the room is looking at them. Then Dean Bruington said something to me that went down into my heart like fire.

“Zaphod, listen to me well. If you play so that I can’t hear you, I can’t help you get any better. Play your mistakes loud, own up to them, and then I can help you get it right.” The next three years were glorious.

When I came home from Mexico and began my schooling at Brigham Young, the first religion class that I took was from a fellow named Ivan J. Barrett. My practice in all of my classes was to sit in the front row of the classroom slightly to the left of the podium, a hangover, I suppose, from my days as a clarinetist. Ivan was the most dynamic teacher I had ever met. He was constantly in motion, stalking the front section of the room like a tiger in a cage. He had a habit of demonstrating aspects of the lesson with his person. If the subject of the day’s lesson involved a prophet standing on the wall of a city and condemning the inhabitants thereof, he would jump up on the top of the table where his notes were and begin shouting at us, pointing his finger at us one by one, as he called us all to repentance. I vaguely remember him throwing something at someone at the back of the room who had fallen asleep, but that may have been in my health class where the teacher was far less dynamic.

Ivan J. Barrett was a short fellow with the body structure of Lou Costello, but with none of Lou’s self-depreciating shyness. Frequently, as he was marching up and down next to the front row, he would propound a stimulating question or make a stunning declaration of some kind about the passage of scripture that we were reviewing and then point to one of the students in the third or fourth row and say, “What do you think about that, Brother Jones? Hmmm?” For the first few weeks there was generally a marked silence in the room, everyone holding their breath to see if Steven Jones could come up with an answer that would satisfy Brother Barrett. Someone trapped beneath that penetrating glance of Ivan’s eye generally reacted as if they were an insect that had just been mounted in a collection. The front row seemed to be exempt… for a while. I remember that on many an occasion after the first month, Ivan Barrett would pause directly in front of my chair and skewer someone a few rows back, point his finger, ask his question, wait for the response, and then when everyone was preparing to relax he would drop his eyes to mine and bellow, “Oh? Interesting! What do you think of Brother Shepherd’s answer, Brother Beeblebrox?” And then he would grill me for three or four minutes about my opinion, with a bit of whimsy playing on his lips and a sparkle in his eyes. I never fell asleep in his class even though it was just after lunch and there was no air conditioning in the room.

In my own teaching, I picked up not a few of Ivan’s mannerisms, the misdirected glance being one of my favorites. I brought into my pedagogical style a lot of his flamboyance and I think that my students rather enjoyed it, for the most part. I remember once, though, that someone in one of the groups I had been teaching came up to me afterwards and said with a bit of a huff in her voice, “You sounded just like a Baptist preacher!” I had not been trying to be just like a Baptist preacher; I had known a lot of Baptist preachers growing up and none of them had ever inspired me to teach like they did. I guess that I was the next best thing; I was a Barrettist preacher. I think that Ivan would have just laughed out loud at the suggestion that he taught like a Baptist minister.

When I began my Masters program in the English Department at Brigham Young University, I was given John Edward McKendrick as my Chairman. I think that I took every subject that he ever taught at the University. I met with him frequently in his office as I was approaching my defense and the completion of the rest of the requirements for the degree. There were three things that were particularly unnerving about Jack McKendrick’s office. First, there was hardly any room to negotiate pedestrian travel in his office. Almost all of the floor, the entire desk and all furniture, save for two chairs, were always filled with piles of papers, books, and other detritus so that the visit was always accompanied by an impending doom, a potential flood of printed works, an ineluctable wave of wood pulp. Richard Ellsworth said that he himself was afraid to go in there without some sort of flotation device. The second point of intimidation was that on the back of the office door there was mounted a full-sized color photograph of Bela Lugosi dressed as Dracula with a caption that said, “I vant to bite yourrr neck!!!!” I seldom looked at that door while visiting with Jack, but the terror was almost as bad facing in the opposite direction.

Professor McKendrick did have one piece of furniture that was entirely unencumbered with student papers or books. He had a low stand, within arm’s reach, upon which was a Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged). As we would talk about my various projects, from time to time he would hold up his hand and say, “Just a moment, Mr. Beeblebrox, I want to check something.” He would then mutter something in relation to a word that I had just used in the conversation and open “The Dictionary”, run his finger down a couple of columns until he had found what he was looking for. “Hmmmm!” he would say with his back to me, “It seems that you have escaped this time!” Then he would turn back to me with exactly that same expression that I knew was on the picture behind me. The first couple of times this happened to me, I was almost beside myself with fear. After a couple of weeks of this, however, I was so depleted in adrenaline that when he did it to me again, I just started to giggle, and then to laugh right out loud. He laughed right along with me and for the first time I knew that Jack McKendrick was on my side and that he did not want me to fear the system that I had become a part of. He frequently caught me on my use of words, but, as it had been with Dean Bruington, I never made the same mistake twice.

All three of my great mentors have passed away: first, Dean Bruington many years ago, then Ivan Barrett on the 16th of August 1999, and finally Jack McKendrick a year ago, almost to the day. I miss them and grieve a little because I did not know when they passed out of this life. I think that I would have liked to have said goodbye before they were put underground. Some of what they were, however, lives on in me when I have occasion to teach. I hope that there are some of my students who may remember some of my borrowed mannerisms, and be inclined to implement and perpetuate the same, not for my sake, but for the sake of students everywhere.

Titipu and the Devil

2009-08-09T17:06:00.000-07:00

Last Friday Trillium and I left Orem for parts northern, specifically the lovely little valley of Logan, Utah. We have visited a couple of times before, usually in connection with some sort of activity that happened to be scheduled there. Several generations back, however, portions of my family used to spend vast amounts of time there, primarily because that is where they had their homes. Portions of the valley are named after the portions of my family who themselves were blessed with the nominative gift. These are beautiful little communities; clean, well-kept, and apparently filled with cheerful, well-adjusted, human beings. One wonders why other portions of my family moved elsewhere.

Our jaunt to Logan was part of the weekend celebration of Trillium's birthday, a chance to get away from the "everyday" into the "once-in-a-while". We stayed in Providence, which was not named after my family, in a bed and breakfast called the "Providence Inn". Everything happened just as the proprietors said it would during the two days we were there, so I am somewhat encouraged about future forays. There is no reason for me to reveal the number of birthdays Trillium has experienced; she would rather not be reminded. In fact, after today's celebration she said to me, "We need not do this again". She meant, I assume, the lighting of the candle and the singing of the hymn, and not the trip to Logan.

Trillium has always loved opera. Early in our marriage, I discovered that buying LPs of works by Belleni and Verdi for her brought about extraordinary expressions of gratitude. "La Traviatta" is one of her favorites. With all of this in mind, in an attempt to do something wonderful, I made arrangements for us to attend the Utah Festival of Opera that has been held in Logan for these past 17 years. Several operas are performed during the months of July and August. During this season, the Company put on "Camelot", "Carmen", "Cavalleria Rusticana", "Pagliacci", and "The Mikado". I chose to take my wife to this last, to the penultimate performance.

"The Mikado" was the ninth collaboration of Arthur Sullivan and W.S. Gilbert of a total of fourteen. It opened on the 14th of March 1885 at the Savoy Theatre in London. It ran for 672 performances, the second longest run for a musical production up until that time. By the end of 1885 there were over 150 companies performing "The Mikado" all over Europe and America. The opera has enjoyed immense continuing popularity during the past 125 years. Of all of the songs performed in the production, three have reached iconic status: "Willow, tit-willow" sung by the tailor Koko; "Behold, the Lord High Executioner", sung by Koko and the men in the chorus; and "Three little maids from school are we", sung by Yum-yum, Peep-bo, Pitti-sing, and the girls in the company. The latter is certainly familiar to any who have seen the film "Chariots of Fire". The story line is delightful, hardly a moment passes in the work that does not advance the whole theme.

UFO's production was magnificent, from the orchestra to the company of players. The role of Koko was played by Michael Ballam; Yum-yum by his daughter Vanessa. Much could be said of each of the other performers, but suffice it to say that none of the ensemble, from the leads to the chorus, was unequally yoked. There was a perfection to what they did Friday night which is seldom found in more accessible productions. What was clear was that all of players were enjoying themselves immensely, rejoicing in their performance and relishing every moment of the two and a half hours we were all together. I do not know for certain, but were I to guess, the unity of the cast and the joie d'vivre which they exuded, derived primarily from the presence of Ballam himself.

Michael was the founder of the Utah Festival of Opera and remains the Director. His vision helped produce the Ellen Eccles Theater where most of the UFO performances are staged. There is no finer venue anywhere; not the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, not the Pantages Theater, not the Shubert Theater, magnificent arenas all, where Trillium and I saw the likes of the "Phantom of the Opera", "Les Miserables", and "The Secret Garden". I estimated that there were about 1500 in the audience Friday night, all with a wonderful view of the stage and without any hindrance of the music or dialog.

The theater was built in 1923 and served the community for decades as the Capitol Theater. It was completely remodeled in 1993 and opened as the Ellen Eccles Theater. The stage is 70 feet wide, 36 feet deep, and 65 feet high, allowing for magnificent and imaginative staging. The sound system in conjunction with the natural acoustics of the building is without parallel. It is also called the Cache Valley Center for the Arts. All of these things combined with the energy of the company to make our evening at the opera a memorable one.

Another word about Michael Ballam. For those of us who belong to The Tribe, his face is as familiar to us as any in the world. In conjunction with his familiarity in general, I would like to relate a little anecdote. Years ago, I attended a conference of religious educators held at Brigham Young University. The topic that year was the New Testament. During the opening session, all of the attendees were seated in the Marriott Center anticipating a stimulating introduction to the week's activities. For some reason, I was seated on the floor of the MAC about ten feet from the grand piano. At a certain point in the program, bearded fellow sat down at the piano and was introduced as Michael Ballam. At that time I had no idea who Michael Ballam was, and inasmuch as he was bearded I could not readily see his facial features, even though I could easily see him. But when he spoke........!!!!! a thrill went through my whole system because I knew exactly who he was and why I knew the voice so well. He then sang "O Divine Redeemer". I do not know how many people were in the building, but it was nearly full. There was no noise of any kind while Michael sang. It was as if the entire world, every aspect of it, physical and spiritual, had stopped to witness the premiere symbolic testimony as to the mercy and compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ. When Michael finished, the silence continued for what seemed to me to be a very long time. It was as if we had all been given a few moments to digest what we had just witnessed. Michael withdrew and the conference continued. I remember nothing else of that six-day conference.

So now I sit here at my computer at least 25 years later, making connections with a man whose hand I have never shaken, but who has affected my life profoundly. I hope to have the opportunity to meet him some day. Maybe Trillium and I will go back to the 2010 season. Maybe we will go to the Cafe des Artistes after the show and wade through the hundreds of people there just to look him in the eye, to see up close that wonderful twinkle that is certain to be there.

Ghosts in the Music

2009-07-25T08:32:00.000-07:00

I had another dream last night. Trillium and I went off to the upper mid-west to visit people that I had known almost fifty years ago. We stayed in a home where we were most welcome and as the morning passed there were more and more people who were directly related to the people I had known. They were cordial and seemed to know how I fit into their relatives’ lives. My friends were not there, however; I guess that they had all passed away. The next generation of family members was grateful for the role that I had played in their ancestors’ lives, but they were subdued. I was not uncomfortable; I simply was no longer an active part of what once was. I was like a ghost, even though I was still alive.

Nanci Griffith wrote a song years ago called “Ghost in the Music”. It’s a great title but the lyrics don’t live up to its promise. The reason that the title came to my mind in conjunction with my dream is almost obvious. There are songs that I have long since identified with certain individuals. I sing those songs partly because I have always liked the music and the sentiments, and partly because I have always liked the people I associated with them. Thus, Cat Stevens’ “I Wish I Wish” is inseparably connect to Jon Woodhead; I cannot think of the one without thinking of the other. The works of Maurice Ravel are inseparably connected to RaNae Merril; I cannot do anything about that. The performances of Johnny Murad and the Harmonicats are so engrained in my childhood that I cannot hear anything by them without immediately thinking of my own mother and father sitting in the front room of the Mariner’s Cabin in Carbon Canyon where I grew up. There are nine songs now that are inseparably connected with the Forest for the Trees, my two daughters and son-in-law with whom I have learned to sings those songs in a unique way. The odd thing about these associations that I have made is that they are “ghosts in the music”, save perhaps for the F2T2 songs. The people that I connected with the songs and the reasons that I did so have long since lost their life. The songs may not have changed, but my friends have and many are self-conscious about the fact.

Each of my children has songs associated with them, usually songs that I sang for them when they were young children. I have written songs for each of them at some point as they were growing up. As I look back on the music and lyrics I am not impressed; I don’t think that I was a very good songwriter; my children have become better than the songs were. In these cases, I am the “ghost in the music”; the person I was when I sat down to compose what I thought was something wonderful for my little children. I am fretful today that I wasn’t better at my craft at a time when I was trying to put into words and music how I actually felt. A hint, a “ghost”, is all that is there; the substance is gone. It makes me feel a little melancholy.

I have written pieces for Trillium over the years for much of the same reasons that I wrote songs for our children. I wanted to preserve something of our life together in music and lyrics. I have invariably liked the most recent song better than all the rest that I had written before. Thus, “A Cloud of Angels” is currently the piece that causes my emotions to come to the surface almost immediately. The guitar work is the best that I have ever composed; the words still deeply moving to my soul.

Several years ago, I was given the opportunity to make a presentation at a large conference on the effects of poetry, how sounds and words work together to touch the hearts and minds of others. I chose six bits of poetry. I read the Chaucer’s “Prologue to the Canterbury Tales” in Middle English to help the people in the room realize how beautiful poetry can be even when one is not even consciously aware of what is being said. I next read the first ten quatrains of the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to demonstrate how powerful language can become when it is purposefully structured. I followed up with Emily Dickinson’s “To Make a Prairie” which is the quintessence of brevity, worth repeating here:

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

I resorted next to “The Tuft of Flowers” by Robert Frost, perhaps the greatest American poet to have ever lived. I cannot read this piece aloud without losing control of my voice at some point. Dickenson’s poem is whimsical; Frost’s is profoundly reflective of the human condition. I ended my portion of the presentation by singing Trillium's “A Cloud of Angels”. This was several years ago, the song freshly written; the power of the music, the lyrics, and the singer all very much alive; there were no ghosts. I am afraid that the audience was defenseless before me at that time. I had prepared them academically and emotionally to be connected with me at the very moment that I wished to share something profoundly intimate, something otherwise inexpressible.

Seven years have passed since I wrote “A Cloud of Angels”. It is probably about time to compose another piece for my wife. I hope that I am not over the hill (or under the hill for that matter), compositionally speaking.

Dreams are like ghosts coming to visit the place where they once lived. No matter how hard one tries, one can only just barely be there. There is no substance, only memory. Perhaps in the resurrection there is hope.

If Trees Ring in the Forest and No One is There to Record Them, is There Still Music?

2009-07-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

The title to this entry is so precious, so radically funny, that I am quite certain that no one will get it until the end. The word play is outrageous, the puns are painful, and, on the whole, the sentiment is an inside joke of enormous proportions. I will end up killing a dozen birds with one stone.

At first blush, there is the obvious nod at the old philosophical conundrum: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?” The whole of the argument regarding the answer to this question has to do with definitions. Believe it or not, grown adults have spent vast amounts of time and resources attempting to answer the question. Is “sound” something that can only exist when there are humans about, or animals, or other sentient beings? Is there a difference between “sound” and “noise”? Whole nations and kingdoms have risen and fallen while attempting to resolve the issue. What if the sentient being is deaf? What if he “feels” the vibrations with his feet? Is that still “sound”, even though he did not hear it with his auditory nerves? What if, instead of a tree, the thing making the “sound” was a dog whistle? You would not hear the pitch, but the dog would. Was there a “sound”?

Now we find ourselves at an international crossroads. The inhabitants of the British Isles would be inclined, at this point, to say, “This is the stupidest thing I have ever been forced to contemplate!” and they would walk off and never give the chestnut another thought. If they were from Wales or Cornwall and you raised the question again, they would hit you with a cudgel. It is hard to say what a Canadian would do. An American, at this juncture, would immediately want to turn to the dictionary to resolve the problem. As it turns out, the definition of the word “sound” in Webster’s New International Dictionary stipulates that in order for there to be a “sound” an auditory processing organ has to be involved. With that definition in hand, I would ask the philosopher five more questions: “What if, instead of a human being, there were an operating tape recorder in the forest when the tree fell? Would there be no sound at all at that moment, if there were no one to hear it at the time? Would there be a retroactive “sound” if someone chose to listen to the tape? And what if no one ever listened to the tape? Would that mean that there is no sound on the tape? At this point, your brain should be responding to this issue the same way that Tim Burton’s Martians responded to the music of Slim Whitman.

Tree rings are fascinating. Trillium and I went to Fisherman’s Wharf for our fortieth wedding anniversary. We rode over and back on Amtrak (Trillium’s little gift to me) and we did anything and everything that Trillium wanted to do while we were in San Francisco (my little gift to her). We drove up to Muir Woods in Marin County for one of our day hikes. Some of the Sequoias are more than 250 feet high. The redwoods in Cathedral Grove are more than 1200 years old. The park has a cross-section of a giant redwood, showing the tree rings for many hundreds of years, labeled with various historical events. One wonders if that particular tree heard any of the goings on that have been since pinned to its innards. Each ring represents a year and it is possible, with an extremely good magnifying glass, to determine the particular ring that represents the year that you were born. If a ring is thick, the rainfall and weather were favorable for tree growth that year. If a ring is thin, then the circumstances were less favorable. The ring for year of my birth is notable for the tremendous stresses that the environment suffered, particularly toward the middle of July and even more pronounced the closer the tree grew to Pomona, California.

On the night of October 7th, 2007, eight months after we walked by the thing, a 180-foot tall redwood, seven feet in diameter, fell during the night. I assume that someone noted the descent, since they sent me a bill. I wrote back that I hadn’t heard a thing so it must not have happened.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the birth of two of my daughters, Jen and Shy. They were born twelve years apart and they have the rings to prove it. Trillium and I went over to Shy’s house in the afternoon to take a card to her and to wish her plenty of subterranean water supplies and root nutrients. In the evening we went to Jen’s house for chocolate cake and Oreos. The cake was three years old. I counted the rings. They are both doing pretty well, considering how old they are.

How much do I have to say about The Forest for the Trees before the joke finally dawns? We have chosen our music for our next performance. We will begin with Cat Steven’s “Trouble”, followed by “The River is Wide”. The middle will be graced with Shy and Not-Quite-So-Shy singing “Gulf Coast Highway”. Jen and I will render “Long Black Rifle” in order to give the audience time to realize that hardly anything more exiting is going to transpire during our set. We will finish with our best piece, “Bright Eyes”. If no one comes to the party, will there be “Still Music”?

All Along The Injured Coast

2009-06-10T15:04:00.000-07:00

I am a confirmed bibliophile, and I don’t mean just the Bible. I am a book lover. I watched an episode of Star Trek yesterday called “The Court-martial”. The long and the short of it was that Captain Kirk had been accused of something he didn’t do and was haul up before a panel of officers to determine if he should be dismissed from Star Fleet. Kirk’s attorney is Sam Cogley (played by Elisha Cook, Jr.), a man who despises the computer and depends solely on the written law as it is contained in printed books. I am not as far gone as Sam Cogley, but I have never read a book on the computer, even though I have access to many thousands. I have been tempted to buy a “Kindle” from Amazon, but even though the Kindle is shaped like a thin book, I cannot figure out how to turn the pages.

The bottom line of all of this is that Trillium and I have thousands of books piled up around our rather large house. I have put in large wall cabinets and have bought oak book shelves to put the books in and on, but no matter how much I double-stack them all, I can never seem to get enough room to get the books all off the floor. I decided this week that I needed to do something about it, so I started in the family room, figuring out the most efficient way of arranging them so that I could easily find any book in the library, even though a specific book might be located behind another on the shelf. All proceeded swimmingly until I became tired of the sound of shifting books and the incessant sneezing. I decided to double-dip my time by listening to music. I had recently brought the CDs up from the dungeon, so the possibilities were all in front of me. Wondrous things transpired!

The first CD that I listened to I had bought more than ten years ago. I have been an Art Garfunkel fan for a very long time and I bought the recording without any preconceptions, except that I knew that it would be good. There are thirteen cuts, all pleasant, but three just knocked me out while they were playing; I had been knocked out when I first listened to them twelve years ago. The title of the CD is “Songs from a Parent to a Child”. Some are old folk songs, others were written by modern composers like Cat Stevens and James Taylor. The sixth cut is a song by Marc Cohen, “The Things We’ve Handed Down”, a song that struck me in part because of my relationship with my father. The tenth cut is “Lasso the Moon”, a piece written by Billy Simon and Lowell Alexander. The chorus is angelic, especially because of Garfunkel’s ethereal voice. The instrumental work is magical, mainly because of the artistry of Jimmy Webb at the piano. The eleventh cut is “Dreamland”, written by Mary Chapin Carpenter, a singer/songwriter for whom I have some affinity. I had heard Mary sing this song before, but without the amazing guitar and mandolin work of Eric Weissberg. I was so taken by these three pieces that I cut two audio CDs for “The Forest for the Trees” to see if they would like to sing them in the future. If they don’t, I will.

Today I continued rearranging books and again the dust and the book shifting badgered me into pulling out another CD. It may have been some sub-conscious thing that made me chose “Paul Simon’s Concert in the Park”, but I certainly was not openly thinking of Simon and Garfunkel when I put the CDs in the changer. I just happen to like the drum riff at the beginning of “The Obvious Child” which was performed by about 20 percussionists pounding away on their drums, guys like Mingo Araujo. Cyro Baptista, Dom Chacal, Sidinho Moreira, and Grupo Cultural OLODUM. The crowd must have gone crazy when they started up; I about go crazy when I hear it on the stereo. The show-stopper for me, however, was the first cut on the second CD, “The Coast”. I include the words below, knowing that without the music they are not nearly as effective. I have edited the lyrics just a little, cutting down on the repetition a touch. The lines and images are for me, in conjunction with the music, pure Simon and worthy of any wordsmith anywhere.

The Coast

A family of musicians took shelter for the night

In the little harbor church of St. Cecilia

Two guitars, bata, bass drum and tambourine

Rose of Jericho and Bougainvillea

*******

A trip to the market

A trip into the pearl gray morning sunlight

That settles over Washington

A trip to the market

A trip around the world

Where the evening meal

Is negotiable, if there is one.

*****

We are standing in the sunlight

The early morning sunlight

In the harbor church of St. Cecilia

To praise a soul's returning to the earth

To the rose of Jericho and the Bougainvillea

******

If I have weaknesses

Don't let them blind me now

Summer skies, stars are falling

All along the injured coast

Don’t try to understand it as a whole. I don’t think it is possible. The phrasing and the music are interwoven in such a fashion that the words become little strobe lights, little flashes of intensity that almost blind the mind. I have the studio version of “The Coast” in my play list, but for my money it is not nearly as compelling as the performance in Central Park. By the way, I do not think that there is a better rhyme in the English language than that between “St. Cecilia” and “Bougainvillea”, but I can’t tell you why.

T-Cubed

2009-05-30T14:18:00.000-07:00

This past week Truman G. Madsen died. I have known him for a long time, and like the many other famous people I have known for a long time, he didn’t know me from Adam’s off-ox. When I first started teaching many years ago, Truman was one of those individuals who was frequently asked to address congregations of religious educators in order that they might be benefited from his experience and wisdom. I don’t think that I ever took exception to anything I ever heard him say; I generally took exception when other people took the things that he said out of context and tried to beat me senseless with them.

At the height of his career, Truman was a professor of “Fried Froth” at BYU, as President John Taylor liked to refer to Philosophy. Truman made something more substantial out of the ruminations of self-instructed men. Frequently, those self-interested, meandering thoughts, regurgitated generation after generation by teachers and students alike at universities around the world, became springboards for something of true import and, best of all, even comprehensible when illuminated by his inspiring enthusiasm and clarity.

I am not certain how many books and articles he has written over the years, but he was prolific. I checked the Deseret Book website a few moments ago and he had 14 titles still in print that they were offering to the public. Amazon had 69 books and 6 DVDs in their listing. Brigham Young University has 7 of his addresses at the university available, beginning in 1965 to 2000. The following is a listing of some of the books that have gained some notoriety during the last forty years or so according to one website.

Joseph Smith the Prophet
Eternal Man
Defender of the faith: The B. H. Roberts story
Christ and the inner life
Five Classics by Truman G. Madsen
The highest in us
Four Essays on Love
Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian parallels
The Radiant Life
The Life and Teachings of the Prophet Joseph
Presidents Of The Church: Insights Into Their Lives And Teachings
Jesus of Nazareth (Volumes 1-4)
The Sacrament - Feasting At the Lord's Table
The Temple: Where Heaven Meets Earth
The Concordance of the Doctrinal Statements of Joseph Smith
Revelation, Reason, and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen
How To Stop Forgetting and Start Remembering
How to be Loved and Beloved
B.H. Roberts : the Book of Mormon and the atonement
Philosopher and the Quarterback
The Commanding Image Of Christ
The Temple in antiquity : ancient records and modern perspectives
Joseph Smith among the prophets
House of God: The Promised Blessings of the Temple
BYU Studies Vol. 10 No. 3, 1970 - Institute of Mormon Studies
Joseph Smith - Ein Prophet?
BYU Studies Vol. 13 No. 4, 1973

As I browsed through the Deseret News this morning I came across a tribute to Truman Madsen in which the author referred to Truman as the “Lion of LDS Letters”.

“What a winsome title,” I thought. “Maybe it’s even apt.”

Being of a rather fanciful frame of mind, I wondered what my epitaph composer would come up with when I shuffled off my mortal coil.

There may be some justification for a glorious title of some kind. I have written as much as anyone on the planet about the invented languages of J.R.R. Tolkien. There have been more than twenty books and about fifty articles published during the last 25 years or so that have had my name affixed to them. I have given papers all over the United States and Canada at conferences and conventions on Tolkien’s linguistic genius, and even appeared at Oxford University for another one of my erudite takes on Tolkien’s style of writing. The Tolkien Society of America graced me with one of their Honorary Doctorates several years ago and the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship gave me one of their annual awards for work that I had done on the “Father Christmas Letters”. At one point I was the undisputed authority on the languages of Middle Earth. One day many years ago, I became somewhat flushed with the reception that some of my writings and addresses had generated and effused to Trillium how wonderful it all was. She, the well-grounded soul that she is, carefully, but quickly put all of my hyperbole into perspective.

In reference to a recent article that I had written for “Mythlore” she said, “Zaphod, what is the circulation of ‘Mythlore’?” I said that I supposed that it was in the neighborhood of 1200 to 1300 copies, sent throughout the world to individuals and libraries alike.

“Now,” she continued, “during the next 20 years or so, how many people do you think will sit down with a copy of ‘Mythlore’ and peruse your deathless prose?” Being conservative, but loyal to the journal of the Mythopoeic Society, I said that I would estimate maybe as many as 10,000 people might devote a little time to the subject.

“Okay, I will give that to you, my dear,” as a smile began to play upon her lips. “Can you give me an idea as to the population of this planet?” I estimated the total to be about 6.5 billion.

“So, the relative importance of your wonderful little piece of word-smithery and the readership thereof…?”

Well, this past week also marked another milestone in my sojourn in obscurity. I began reading Christopher Tolkien’s latest addition to his father’s posthumous works, “The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrun”. I had always considered myself to really be quite informed about J.R.R. Tolkien’s life and letters (I can tell you what “J.R.R.” stands for). I had managed to read just about everything available on the man prior to 1982 when I received my PhD on his works and I attenuated that research for the next 25 years. Both my Masters and Doctorate degrees focused on Old and Middle English language and literature in an attempt to understand precisely what Tolkien was about in his creative works. I dabbled in Welsh, Finnish, Gothic, Old Icelandic, and a variety of other languages and bodies of literature because I knew that he had at least a passing interest in them. Reading Christopher’s introduction to the “Legend”, however, revealed to me again how woefully ignorant I have been regarding J.R.R. Tolkien’s career and expertise. I told Trillium after I finished the introductory materials that I felt like I had successfully explored what I thought was Mount Tolkien, only to discover that I had merely taken a few steps out of the Valley and had ventured only a short way into the Foothills.

So, what is the gist of all this?

I have decided to come up with my own epitaph, one that reflects that which has been bestowed upon Truman Madsen. While my long-time acquaintance may indeed be the “Lion of LDS Letters”, I have decided that I have become the “Titmouse of Tolkien Trivia”.

Time Enough at Last

2009-05-17T12:32:00.000-07:00

Early this morning I had to make a presentation, one that potentially could have great bearing on the lives of those who live in our neighborhood. It was a presentation that I had spent the last week working on, sometimes in the evenings, sometimes throughout the day. It was a topic that had captured my imagination and burned like fire in my mind. Computer files were involved; translating .csv files into a workable format for MS Word Tables. When I finished all of my preparations, burning CDs and printing hardcopies of the resultant tables and the instructions as to how to use them, I was exhausted. I then spent a great deal of time trying to figure out the best way to present an hour's worth of material in less than 15 minutes. I fussed and agonized about it.

This morning I woke up at 2:30 and really could not get back to sleep. When the alarm went off at 5:30 I was certainly ready to get out of bed. In between, during those three hours, I had a series of dreams which seemed to represent a degree of chaos and frustration in my life. In one scene, my office at the Institute had been boxed up in a haphazard way and everything that I had a place for, was out of place. My office has always been a place of order and peace, a haven for me and my mind, and to have it in disarray was disturbing. In addition, I apparently was expected to prepare a lesson in the midst of all that clutter and deliver it in short order. Needless to say, when I finally realized it was all a dream, I was relieved.... sort of. I think perhaps the thought of having to make the presentation at 6:30 on a Sunday morning in a venue that I had not experienced before, was a little too unnerving. Needless to say when the time for the presentation came, it went off without a hitch and several of those in attendance commented on how effectively the material had been presented in such a short period of time.

Was there a message in my dream? No more than what is self-evident. Much of my office from the Institute is still in boxes in the garage, five years after I brought them home. I guess I really don't have a good place to put the little decorations that made my office my own. At some point I am going to have to dispose of the stuff that I treasured because my students had given them to me. Maybe I can no longer afford to have the clutter in the garage. My den is cluttered enough. I think that I have too many outward reminders of my life and not enough changes in my heart and mind because of the people who gave those things to me. I am going to do better. If the whole house were to burn down and every memento lost in the flames, how could I remember what those people meant to me, or even that I knew them at all? I have to be a different sort of man,one worthy of the friendships those trinkets represent. Perhaps I have to be a better man because of the presentation I made this morning, that I, most of all, should be motivated to be what the presentation addressed.

The other scene in my dream this morning had to do with my glasses. I was ready to make my presentation, everything perfectly in order, when my glasses broke; the ear pieces fell off so that I had to resort to holding them up to my eyes by sticking my index finger on the bridge of my nose. Inconvenient and unnerving. In order to give you a sense for what I felt I will review a Twilight Zone episode that I first saw many years ago. It was called "Time Enough at Last".

A fellow named Henry Bemis, an inveterate reader, is mocked by his family and associates for the types of things that he regularly reads, and even for the fact that he reads at all. Without going into the rest of Rod Serling's agenda in this story, let me just say that in the end, the world is destroyed by atomic warfare, and he is the only person left alive. He had been eating lunch in the bank vault when World War III was fought and lost. He is initially distressed to find himself alone until he discovers that the city library has been spared, with all of the hundreds of thousands of books intact. He is overjoyed, finally having the opportunity to read anything and everything he desired without interruption and criticism. It was then (you guessed it) he inadvertently broke his glasses.

I rejoice in the power of literacy, the ability to hear the minds and hearts of people whom I could not know because of the distance of time and space. To lose that ability because of clumsiness or any other accident was and is horrifying to me. I suppose that is why of all of the Twilight Zone episodes I have seen, that is the one I remember the best.

I feel the same way about losing what little mental capacity that I have through stroke or any other brain damage. In some respects this capacity is like a pair of spiriutual glasses. I wouldn't want to break them. The world likes to mock the way right-minded people think and attributes their morally-based views to some sort of mental aberration. The world also has no hesitancy to explain away faith-oriented approaches to living one's life as the product of a frenzied mind. I would rather not give them any opportunity to explain away why I feel the way I do about serious and sacred things. Were I to have a physical aneurysm of some kind, and were able to maintain my conscious faith, I suspect there would be those cynics who would avow that the wrong part of my brain had been damaged, that had the part that supports my faith been destroyed, there would have been an immediate improvement in my overall performance as a human being.

I am glad that I have eyes to see spiritual things or that I have spiritual glasses, if you will. I can discern the minds and hearts of those around me by reading the things which they have chosen to record, weighing them against those things which I seem to know intuitively. I can watch the world as it interacts with itself, learning to distinguish those things which bring peace and harmony to the world and those things which do not. In simple terminology, I can learn for myself to distinguish between good and evil. I am glad that I am a man of faith, one who believes in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man. I can look at my own existence, my place in the world, with depth perception, both sets of eyes functioning properly.

I have retired from the workplace. I have, indeed, "time enough at last" to do the things that I really want to do. I hope that I can always remember that those things that I want to do require me to have "glasses", by which I can see how to set my life's "office" in order, that I might be successful in achieving my heart's desire in peace.

I Do Know Jack!

2009-04-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

I called my friend Jack Christianson this morning about 7:30. He was getting ready to play a round of golf. I had already spoken with his wife earlier and she had given me his cell phone number. I think he was eating breakfast with "work related" companions before hitting the links. We exchanged pleasantries and then I told him why I had called.

I have known Jack personally for about ten years. He and I were colleagues at the Institute at UVSC for the last four years of my career with CES. For two of those years he was the Director of the Institute and was technically my boss. I never once felt that he considered me an underling or an inferior; in fact, it was quite the reverse. He always seemed glad that I would call him friend. In 2004 I retired; a year or so later he took advantage of some rather interesting opportunities which now allow him to play golf as a work-related activity. He seems to have prospered.

The reason that I felt impressed to call him was that I had a dream about him this morning, a rather fanciful dream as dreams go, but one that taught me something; actually two somethings.

The earliest scene of the dream that I can remember was that Jack and I had met incidentally in the middle of town somewhere. He was the President of the United States, with the black cars, the secret service agents, and all of the rest. He was his own affable self and invited me to go with him for a while. He was not playing golf, but there was some sort of sporting activity involved, if I remember my dream correctly. In any event, we spent a couple of hours together and then he had to attend to other commitments and our paths separated.

A short time later, as I was walking along the street, I happened to meet Nancy Polosi whom I knew for some reason. We began talking about Jack and his administration, but she seemed just a little smug about him. Her air was such that I assumed that Jack must still be a Republican. Something was said or inferred in our conversation that I thought it was really important for me to see Jack again. I knew where he was staying, a hotel in the middle of town, and I went there as quickly as I could.

I went into the main lobby and asked for him, but he had not yet arrived. About that same moment there was a hustle and bustle off to my right and Jack and his men came into the building through a small door. Jack was in body armor and most of his face was covered by a ski mask, but I could see his eyes and hear his voice. His hands were tied in from of him. He shouted out to me "Run! Get out of here!" Just at that second the entire hotel shut down. Large metal doors covered the entrances and windows of the building and all of the lights went out.

I sat there in the dark for a while trying to figure out what was going on. After a few minutes a voice close to me said, "Do you know Jack?" I said that I did. The voice said "Is he your friend?" I answered in the affirmative. The voice then said, "You are never going to see your friend again!" I was stunned in my dream and, then, something happened inside of me.

I asked "Is Jack alone?"

The answer was "Yes".

I continued, "Is he going to die?"

Again, "Yes".

Then I said, "Can I see him now?"

"If you go to him now, you will die as well. Do you still want to see him?" I said that I did. That is when I woke up.

When I came to myself I had two deep impressions upon my mind. The first was, that for the first time in my life I thought that I really understood the sentiments of John Taylor in June of 1844 as his friend Joseph made his way to Carthage, Illinois, for the last time. John could not bear the thought of being anywhere else other than with his friend when Joseph lost his life. I had felt the same way in my dream. I could not bear the thought that my friend Jack would die alone if I did not go to him, even if it meant my own life hung in the balance.

The second insight that I had this morning was that I suddenly realized that I had never felt that way about anyone during the sixty-six years of my life, that I was willing to die so that a friend would not have to depart this world alone. What an odd and sobering revelation. It was somewhat bitter-sweet. One the one hand I was glad that I could have those feelings, that I was capable of them, even if it was only in a dream. On the other hand I wondered why I had not felt that way before about any of my friends, the good men that I had known over the years.

Jack Christianson and I do not socialize much. I have only seen him three or four times since I retired, so it seems odd that he would become the subject of my dream. Yet, I think I understand why. Jack and I shared a great deal independently. We had grown up in different parts of the world, served in the Church Educational System in differing ways, and yet our manner of thinking, our approach to resolving important issues were quite similar. It was as if we had been cut from the same bolt of cloth. We instantly enjoyed one another's company because of that which we had in common.

The lesson that I gained from all of this is that I do not believe that Jack Christianson is the only person on the earth for whom I would be willing to sacrifice my life. There are undoubtedly many others. I hope that I do not have to have a dream for each of them in order to realize their worth.

Change the World

2009-04-21T14:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the world was glorious. It’s not so bad today. In fact, for the last few weeks there have been days when I just wanted to be outside doing anything but heading back indoors. I have been working on the planters in the front of the house, much to the delight of my neighbors. There are ranunculus, pansies, petunias, geraniums, violas, and a strain of dianthus that I hope decides to take over the whole front yard. I do not know how many hours I have spent on the three planters, but I know that I am well into double digits. Yesterday I started about two o’clock in the afternoon and did not finish until well after 7:00. Afterwards, I was as sore as a boil. The shower and clean clothes helped, but it was when I finally went back outside and sat in the glider on the front porch that I finally found out what I had been doing.

The sun was setting, far to the west. There were little pinks and blues still bidding for sky-time, but I closed my eyes to listen to the wind. Across the street, Gordon has a stand of musical river birches that catches the wind and fondles it until it moans. Next door Ron has a large conifer that does the same. Down the street my friend Vaughn has an elm that is tall enough to obscure thirty percent of the horizon and sways in rhythm with every whisper of a breeze. I cannot bear to be indoors when the wind is blowing.

Whenever I sit by myself out there with all of those natural instruments in play, I cannot help but think of one of the final scenes in the John Travolta movie, “Phenomenon”. George, the character that has been deeply affected by an unidentified power, spends his down-time listening to and watching the wind in his trees. If I recall correctly, he says that he is listening to the earth breathe. I think that he also tells his love interest that when he is gone, that is, when he dies, that he will be like the wind, that he will always be with her. Again, I am probably remembering this poorly, but I think that the final scene features the girl, Lace, sitting with her two children on the front porch, watching and listening to the wind. If the movie didn’t end that way, it should have.

I thought about my experience last night and said to myself, “Well, if the movie was that memorable, particularly on a visceral level, the soundtrack must have been marvelous”. So, I went on-line to see what I could find.

Thomas Newman, one of the sons of Alfred Newman the composer, wrote the original score for the movie. Among many others, he also wrote the scores for “Reckless”, “Finding Nemo”, “Wall-E”, “Pay it Forward”, “Little Women” and “Shawshank Redemption”. For the last two movie scores, in 1994, he received a double nomination for an Academy Award, the only double nomination that year. He did receive an Academy Award in 2004 for “Finding Nemo”. When I finally located the soundtrack CD, I listened to all of the cuts trying to find one that had something of the spirit of the movie in it. There were pieces by Jewel, Peter Gabriel, Taj Mahal, Marvin Gaye, The Iguanas, and several others. I said to myself, “When did these come into the plot? I don’t remember any of this stuff. I hate this stuff!” I could not find anything composed by Thomas Newman for the movie, but I did find something that seemed to come close to the spirit of the film: “The Farm” from “Road to Perdition”.

Having dissed the rest of the non-Newman soundtrack, I have to say that there was for me one song that I liked: Eric Clapton’s “Change the World”. It does not and did not contribute to my enjoyment of “Phenomenon”, but it has a nice sentiment and his guitar work is wonderful. I will try hard to think of Clapton’s piece as I sit on the front porch tonight, trying to see if I can make it fit the birches, pines, and elms. I probably will not think about it long, even though I am trying to do that very thing he sings of. Sorry Eric......

I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go

2009-04-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

I had a jolt this morning as I sat at my computer. The phone rang and when the caller ID came up I said to myself, “Hmmm… That’s a little odd. Who would be calling me from there at this hour?”

When I picked up the phone a sweet voice said, “Hello. Is this Paul N. Hyde? This is Kristie calling from President Thomas Monson’s office. Do you have a minute or two?” A thousand things went through my mind in the nano-second before I responded in the affirmative. The real reason why anyone from the President’s office would be calling me never occurred to me; I had forgotten all about it. I wrote a letter last Sunday morning.

5 April 2009

Dear President Monson,

When I came home last night from the Priesthood Session of General Conference, my wife Pat asked me how it was. I said, “Let me tell you about the closing hymn…..”

My branch of the Hyde family joined the Church in Freedom, New York, in 1834, at the time Joseph Smith and Parley P. Pratt were recruiting members for Zion’s Camp. They eventually moved from that little valley to Kirtland, Ohio, and from thence to Missouri, Nauvoo, the Salt Lake Valley, Kaysville, Logan, and finally, Auburn, Wyoming. My wife’s family in the Church travelled half way around the world from England to Utah, with several stops along the way, eventually ending up in Beaver, Utah. During the Great Depression, my Grandfather, his wife, and his youngest son moved to Southern California. Just before World War II, that Star Valley boy met a girl whose immediate ancestors hailed from Missouri and Minnesota. They married in the fall of 1941; I was born into that inactive part-member family in July of 1942. About that same time, the Girl from Beaver met a fellow from Duluth, Minnesota, a French Canadian Swede, who swept her off her feet in Seattle, Washington. My wife was born into that inactive part-member family in August of 1945. Although I would stay in California for most of my childhood, Pat’s peregrinations would take her from Washington to Nevada, and finally to northern Minnesota where I met her during my tour of duty with the Air Force in 1963. After my mission to southern Mexico, Pat and I married in the St. George Temple; the officiator was her grandfather, David Heber Edwards. “I’ll go where you want me to go……”

I guess that I have always wanted to be a teacher, even from the time I was a child. I learned in school so that I could share with others the knowledge I had acquired. As a result of the inactivity of my father’s little part-member family, I was not taught that I should be baptized at age eight, but I was given rather extraordinary opportunities to learn about the Savior, his life and ministry, that were not part of the established curriculum of the Primary, the Sunday School, or the Mutual Improvement Association. Eventually, the members of the Church sought me out, and on the 4th of April 1959, I was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My wife experienced a similar childhood in Minnesota, except that her faithful mother was the instrument by which she learned the fundamental principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She was nine years old when she was finally baptized, but still had but limited access to the formal organization of the Church until she graduated from High School. Before we were married, both Pat and I were fervent in our studies of the doctrines of the Kingdom, her library being as extensive as my own. I spent three years of my tour with the military actively preparing myself for my mission to Mexico. By the time that I left for Veracruz, I had read almost every LDS book in print, including the various Histories of the Church, the writings of the Presidents of the Church, and other Brethren of the General Authorities of the Church. From 1961 to 1964, I hitch-hiked from Duluth, Minnesota, to Salt Lake City, in both April and October, so that I could attend General Conference. There was a special place in the Tabernacle set aside for men in uniform. I sat there during every session taking notes, being uplifted. After those sessions I had the opportunity to shake hands with the likes of N. Eldon Tanner, Gordon B. Hinckley, Marion D. Hanks, and, yes, even Thomas S. Monson. I shared the insights that I had in Conference with those around me in Duluth. From August of 1964 to November of 1966, I shared those things, and many others, with my companions and the people of southern Mexico, having to learn another language altogether in order to do the latter. I found out about the Church Educational System while on my mission; I had never heard of the Seminaries and Institutes before then. I determined that that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I attended BYU, taking classes in Spanish and English Literature (a double major) and in the process picked up 30 hours of religion classes from the likes of Ivan J. Barrett, Robert J. Matthews, and many others on the faculty in the Religion Department. I began teaching Seminary in the fall of 1969 at Bountiful High School Seminary. Shortly thereafter, I was asked to teach Institute classes at Cypress College in Buena Park, California. During my 35 years with CES, I taught students at Purdue University, UCLA, USC, the University of New Mexico, and finally at Utah Valley State College. In all of this, my wife and I have tried to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ as revealed in these latter days to the servants of God. “I’ll say what you want me to say….”

From the time that Pat and I became formally active in the Church, first as young single adults and then as a married couple, we have willingly accepted the various callings that have come to us by revelation and the laying on of hands. Pat has served in almost every capacity in every auxiliary in the Church; I have been blessed to serve in various callings in the Wards and Stakes in which we have lived. Each of the callings has required us to be better people than we were before we were called. For the most part, we rose to each occasion. As we have learned the principles and ordinances of the Gospel, we have tried to apply them directly to our daily walk and talk. Wherein we have been successful, we have been fundamentally changed, laying aside a portion of the natural man and slowly but surely partaking of the divine nature. We are not perfect by any means, but we have improved and are still improving. We have tried to raise our children in righteousness and in the attempt have become better ourselves. We have served the living and the dead, and we think that no matter where we may find ourselves, in this world or in the next, we will be somewhat comfortable with those who are like-minded, those who are trying to please God the Father. “I’ll be what you want me to be…..”

Last night I was silently celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of my baptism. I wanted the day to be a little different from the rest because I wanted to be a little different as a result of it. As I sat in the Stake Center waiting for the session to begin, I prayed that I might be particularly edified by what was said and done, that I might be more determined, more committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, his Church and Kingdom here upon the earth. The speakers were wonderful; I might easily flatter you and your counselors. But the singular moment came, the capstone of the meeting, when the young men from BYU-Idaho sang the closing hymn. I like the sentiments of the song, but I have never really enjoyed the music for some reason. I will sing it when called upon, but I would not choose it if left to my own devices; I much prefer “Ye Elders of Israel”, written by my great-great grandfather, Cyrus H. Wheelock. But whoever did the arrangement of “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go” somehow got inside of the hymn; it was transformed into something glorious. The sentiments and music amplified each other and I could not have wished for a greater blessing than to have heard that hymn sung that way. If I may say so without being misunderstood, it was as if the entire Church were singing “Happy Birthday” to me last night. I came home a better man, or at least a man who more than at any other time in his life wants to “go”, to “say”, and to “be”, what the “Dear Lord” desires of me.

This has been a long letter. I hope that you have arrived at this point without having been wearied by my pile of words. But I do have a request to add, if it is not too unseemly. Would it be possible to communicate my feelings to the one who arranged the closing hymn last night and to the choir itself for their performance? I don’t know how I would go about doing that myself. I would appreciate any effort in that direction.

Today I will watch the Sessions of Conference with anticipation. It was fifty years ago to the day that I was confirmed a member of the Church. I remember standing in my first Fast and Testimony meeting, begging the saints in the Chino California Branch of the Church to forgive me for anything that I might have done during the first sixteen years of my life that might have brought embarrassment to them, that they might forgive me my weaknesses and follies. I believe that they did. I feel the same way today, that I might be at home with the people of the Lord, that I might not be a stranger or a foreigner to the Kingdom of God, but a fellow citizen every whit. I am grateful for those around me who have my best interests at heart, who love and cherish me as a member of their eternal family. I treasure the friendships that I enjoy in the quorums of the Priesthood, for the spirit of brotherhood that only those quorums can provide.

Know, President Monson, that Pat and I love you, and are willing to follow your righteous counsel, wherever it may take us, whatever we are required to say, whatever we may become as a result.

Sincerely,

PNH

President Monson’s secretary had called me to ask if it would be all right for him to send a copy of the letter to the two men in Rexburg, Idaho, who had been responsible for the arrangement and the performance of the hymn. I said that it would be perfect in my eyes to do so. What a delightful thing to have happen as the result of a singular five minutes on a Saturday night in April! Little connections of joy and happiness, a little moment that changed my life and perhaps the lives of others. What could be better than that?

http://broadcast.lds.org/genconf/2009/04/30/GC_2009_04_310_IllGoWhereYouWantMeToGo___eng_.mp3

Pure Philology

2009-03-30T03:22:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning at 2:30 with my brain on fire. That happens to me from time to time, particularly if the events of the previous day have been provoking. I went to choir practice in the afternoon and my friend Gordon spent part of the time trying to help the members of the choir comprehend that the words of hymns are not merely sounds to be articulated, but sentiments to be conveyed by the meaning of those words in combination with one another. As we went through the several verses of “Precious Savior, Dear Redeemer”, a hymn that we are going to sing on Easter Sunday, he asked about each noun, verb, adjective, and adverb, soliciting from us the meanings attached to them. Our practice was considerably improved.

Precious Savior, dear Redeemer, Thy sweet message now impart.

May thy Spirit, pure and fervid, Enter ev'ry timid heart;

Carry there the swift conviction, Turning back the sinful tide.

Precious Savior, dear Redeemer, May each soul in thee abide.

Precious Savior, dear Redeemer, We are weak but thou art strong;

In thy infinite compassion, Stay the tide of sin and wrong.

Keep thy loving arms around us; Keep us in the narrow way.

Precious Savior, dear Redeemer, Let us never from thee stray.

Precious Savior, dear Redeemer, Thou wilt bind the broken heart.

Let not sorrow overwhelm us; Dry the bitter tears that start.

Curb the winds and calm the billows; Bid the angry tempest cease.

Precious Savior, dear Redeemer, Grant us everlasting peace.

H.R Palmer

During the latter part of the Third Watch this morning, I began to think about my own response to language. I wondered if I, like J.R.R. Tolkien, could consider myself a pure philologist. “I like history”, he said in a letter to his son Christopher, “and am moved by it, but its finest moments for me are those in which it throws light on words and names.” Tolkien frequently spoke of his “linguistic aesthetic”, his predilection for certain kinds of sounds and rhythms in language that particularly pleased him. I find that I am not particularly satisfied with anything that I have writtn unless it can be read out loud, no matter how long a sentence may be, no matter how lengthy an essay may be; good writing is a joy to read out loud. In conjunction with the sounds and rhythm of any piece of prose or poetry is the flow of ideas that illuminate the mind and heart. This only comes when a writer actually has something to say, when he has felt or understood something profoundly. This, more often than not, is the great stumbling block for most erstwhile writers. Shakespeare’s MacBeth laments something of this meaningless prattle that many writers choose to serve up to their readers.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

This, of course, is Gordon’s point exactly. To sing without the accompanying intended emotion subverts the whole point of performing.

I wrote earlier of John Denver’s “Perhaps Love”, a piece that was originally performed by Denver and Placido Domingo. Many years after the song first aired, John Denver performed “Perhaps Love” in a live concert somewhere in Southern California. A friend who was at the performance commented afterward that for some reason that particular version, just the singer and his guitar, had moved the audience more deeply than anything that he done that night. Denver smiled and said, “It was something that I learned from Placido. He sang his part with emotion, each word having its own articulation, its own sound, its own emphasis, according to its meaning. ‘Cloud’ and ‘warm’ should be sung differently than ‘storm’ and ‘steel’ and I have tried to do more of that when I perform.” Imagine that! Many people cannot abide the duet and prefer the solo, but the power of Denver’s solo performances derived directly from the collaboration. Domingo helped Denver get inside of his own creations.

There is a point of diminishing returns, however. I write songs to express feelings that I have bubbling up inside of me. Sometimes the feelings are so strong during the composition that I cannot publicly perform the song until I have sung the piece over and over again, pushing the emotions down. Sometimes I get so far inside of a song that I forget what I am doing, even failing to play the chords properly on the guitar. I frequently have to practice a set for months in order to strike a balance between the sentiments and the skills.

When the choir first gathered to practice the three hymns that we are going to sing on Easter, Gordon asked me to talk to the members of the choir about the historical setting for “Peace Be Unto Thy Soul”, a work that he had composed based on a passage of scripture. I did so with some expertise. The effect on the altos, where one of my daughters was performing, was dramatic. Jennifer said afterwards that the women around her could not sing, they were so deeply moved by what I had said. As we rode together to the practice yesterday, Jenny said, “Hey! Gordon didn’t ask you to talk about the hymns this week, did he?” I replied in the negative. “Good,” she said. “I would really like to get through the thing this week.”

Two weeks ago I had no trouble whatsoever singing “Peace Be Unto Thy Soul”. Yesterday, I could not finish the piece at all. My knowledge, my preparation for my little talk two weeks ago, had steeled me somewhat against the power of the lyrics. With that knowledge fading from my mind, my heart unabashedly accepted the significance of what Gordon had written and I was undone. Hopefully I will do better next week and the week after that.

Words mean things. They represent little pieces of who and what we are. They allow us to share the innermost parts of our private sanctuaries with each other. Communication is, in the end, “communion” with all of the power that particular word can convey. We invite others to drink from the living waters of our soul and by so doing we are mutually and eternally bound to each other. If done properly, the union is accompanied by brotherhood and love. I am glad that I know Gordon Jessop.

Perhaps Love

2009-03-14T19:10:00.000-07:00

When I first started performing in the early 1960's, the songs that I wanted to play were those of my era. I was not a Beatles fan by any stretch of the imagination. I own all of their music today, but not because I enjoyed them then, but because I have since learned something of musicality from them. I learned Buddy Holly songs. It took me six months before I could play any one of his pieces, but once I did I discovered I could play them all. I remember my friend Bud Peterson saying to me one night after I had played at a Church social, "Well, It was nice that you could play the same song three times tonight." I decided that I needed to expand my repertoire just a little. I settled on folk music, in particular the early music of Bob Dylan. I learned to play guitar in just about the same location in the country that he did, and his music had just a little bit of northern Minnesota stuffed into it, a stuffing that I seemed to enjoy a lot. I went away to Mexico for a couple of years and while I was gone, little Bobby Zimmerman reinvented himself. I found that I was not really in a frame of mind to play and sing his new material.

I was a Peter, Paul, and Mary fan, an Ian and Sylvia fan, a Bud and Travis fan, a Pete Seeger fan, a Joan Baez fan, having no idea as to where they were politically, or even that they were politically active. I just liked the music and the meaningful lyrics that went with them. I suppose that one of my favorite pieces at the time was the "Ballad of Springhill, Nova Scotia" by Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacCall. I sang it often as a young folk singer, but there came a time when I just simply did not include it in my sets. I was reminded of it again, however, a year or so ago when the Crandall Canyon mine disaster took the lives of six men initially and then a second collapse killed three of the rescuers. The bodies of the six Utah men were never found. The final lines of MacCall's period piece had application.

Eight days passed and some were rescued,

Leaving the dead to lie alone,

Through all their lives they dug a grave,

Two miles of earth for a marking stone

After returning to Utah, I found myself playing the songs of Gordon Lightfoot, simply because they were beautiful. Others of his pieces I learned because he touched a part of my past. The ore boat "Edmund Fitzgerald" wintered in Duluth, Minnesota, while I lived there and I saw that great ship many times I went over the High Bridge to Superior, Wisconsin. Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is fourteen verses long with a wonderful chord sequence for the guitar. I performed it many times to receptive audiences, especially in the Midwest. I remember being invited by one of my children's elementary school teachers to come perform it for her class. In the middle of my rendition, the woman broke down in tears; one of her relatives had gone down with the ship.

They might have split up or they might have capsized

They may have broke deep and took water

And all that remains is the faces and the names

Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

At some point I made a connection with Henry John Deutschendorf and began playing his music, and the music that he borrowed from other songwriters. I guess that it was about that time that I figured that I never needed to become a recording star because everything that I wanted to do and thought that I could do, had been done by this fellow. Of all his songs that I have learned, this one that follows is by far and away my favorite. It was originally released as a duet with Placido Domingo.

Perhaps Love

Perhaps love is like a resting place

A shelter from the storm

It exists to give you comfort

It is there to keep you warm

And in those times of trouble

When you are most alone

The memory of love will bring you home

Perhaps love is like a window

Perhaps an open door

It invites you to come closer

It wants to show you more

And even if you lose yourself

And don`t know what to do

The memory of love will see you through

Oh, love to some is like a cloud

To some as strong as steel

For some a way of living

For some a way to feel

And some say love is holding on

And some say letting go

And some say love is everything

And some say they don`t know

Perhaps love is like the ocean

Full of conflict, full of pain

Like a fire when it`s cold outside

Or thunder when it rains

If I should live forever

And all my dreams come true

My memories of love will be of you

John Denver

I was watching television tonight, after Trillium and I finished another Inspector Morse episode, and one of the PBS stations was presenting a program on Denver's music. In the particular segment I watched, John Denver explained how the song came to be written. He and his wife, Anne Martell from St. Peter, Minnesota, were having troubles in their marriage, a separation had taken place and they were staring down the long, lonely highway of divorce. The song was a tribute to her; in spite of all of the misunderstandings and distresses that they had experienced, she was his real love. That, I think, was the spirit of all of John Denver's music. He had a way of looking at the very worst of situations and finding the very best that could be said. There was talk of a possible reconciliation of their marriage shortly before his accidental death off the coast of California on 12 October 1997.

At the heart of every marriage there are sentiments much like those John Denver had for Anne Martell. We sometimes forget those wonderful sentiments, much like Denver did when he and his wife separated. The trick is to remember, to keep before our minds and hearts, the reasons and the feelings that we had in the beginning. Always.... always... always....

Half of the Story

2009-03-06T14:18:00.000-08:00

My two sons have done this little quiz and I decided to do the same. I found that the great fallacy of this exercise is that more frequently than not, I could have answered the questions either way. The "either/or" argument is deceptive. I do believe that there is a large part of my personality that is quit "scientific", but I have stewed in the cauldron of the Humanities so long that I have absorbed much of that flavor. Additionally, I believe that the test assumes a basic "Aristotle/Plato" philosophical dichotomy. What I find interesting in this is, because of my religious background, Platonic philosophy has a more active role in my life than most Aristotelian scientists would like to admit to. I do not find this a confliction; I perceive it as an enhancement.

You Are An INTJ

The Scientist

You have a head for ideas - and you are good at improving systems.
Logical and strategic, you prefer for everything in your life to be organized.
You tend to be a bit skeptical. You're both critical of yourself and of others.
Independent and stubborn, you tend to only befriend those who are a lot like you.

In love, you are always striving to improve your relationship.
You have strong ideas of what love should be like.

At work, you excel in figuring out difficult tasks. People think of you as "the brain."
You would make an excellent scientist, engineer, or programmer.

How you see yourself: Reasonable, knowledgeable, and competent

When other people don't get you, they see you as: Aloof, controlling, and insensitive

What's" Your Personality Type?

Music for the Living and the Dead

2009-02-12T08:47:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in choir practice a few weeks ago when someone brought up the prospect of the choir singing at a funeral. I do not recall who the subject of the conversation was, but I began considering my own death. Not that I was perturbed at or desirous of the effect, I was simply contemplating my own funeral. Now that Trillium and I have settled on where we are to be planted when that magnificent day arrives, I began to think about the program for the service. I thought that since I was to be the focus of attention, I ought to have a say in what transpires before I have no say at all.

I have only had one piece of music on my mind and heart when I have thought of the concluding ceremony. I fell in love with it the first time I ever heard it performed.

Jerusalem

And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England's mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England's pleasant pastures seen !

And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills ?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills ?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold:
Bring me my Chariot of fire !

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England's green & pleasant Land.

William Blake

I am an Anglo-phile. I have been my whole life. I prefer English literature over American, even though I have studied both. I have stood at the top of Sears' Tower in Chicago, but I prefer looking up at the facade of Queens College or contemplating the lovely interior of Radcliffe's Camera. The legend is, had my family remained in England instead of coming to the New World, we would have owned Oxford and we would have a larger burial plot than the one we presently have under a set of stairs in Westminster Abbey.

So as I sat there, contemplating my funeral, I said aloud, "I know what I would like you to sing at my funeral."

"What's that?" said our director, who can make broom handles sing and turn the meanest poem into musical glory.

"William Blake's 'Jerusalem'. You know, that same piece that was played at Harold Abrahams' funeral at the end of 'Chariots of Fire'."

Gordon chuckled, "Well, good luck. We probably will not be practicing that anytime soon."

I replied, "I am not hoping to have it performed anytime soon, but perhaps we ought to work it up just in case." The score has not appeared in our folders, so I have not been holding my breath.

About the same time that all of the morbidity appeared in our choir practice, Gordon introduced a piece by Gabriel Faure, "Cantique de Jean Racine" arranged by John Rutter. Jerolyn, our more than accomplished pianist, had already mastered the piece and when she began to play, I said to myself, "I can live or die by this". Faure had written the music when but a young man of nineteen in 1864 to accompany his paraphrasing of St. Ambrose's hymn "Consors paterni luminis" composed in the 4th Century AD. I never tire of it. Perhaps no one can ever tire of something wrought in divine passion and preserved in the amber of pure love.

Mad Music Skills

2009-02-02T08:38:00.000-08:00

One day, not so long ago, The Forest for the Trees were ensconced in the Dungeon practicing, or at least pretending to practice. I was attempting to work out some sort of accompaniment on one of the guitars when Jen said "Gee, Dad, you have some mad guitar skills". I was startled for two reasons. First, I had never heard the word "mad" used in that fashion. I have to say that I was somewhat pleased at the evaluation once I knew what she meant. Secondly, I didn't think that what I was doing was particularly "mad" or "skillful"; I was merely trying to make something pleasant to go with our singing.

I have thought about that phrase a lot during the last month or so. I have wondered what Jenny would have thought if she had heard me playing when I was practicing eight or nine hours a day, when I did have "mad skills". Even when I was merely practicing an hour or two a day, I found that I was able to do some things with my instruments that lack of practice has caused me to lose. When she made that remark, I had not picked up the guitar for more than a week. I began to have an old familiar groan rise up within me.

I have also thought about what I would consider "mad guitar skills" and who really had them. I know that there are rock musicians that are touted as being the great guitarists of our lifetimes, but for some reason none of them have really done it for me. Typically they have been loud and muddy, very little crispness in their performance. I have heard only one guitarist in my entire life who really had "mad skills". I was glad to have known him; he was my friend.

I am not sure when Jon Woodhead first picked up the guitar, but by age sixteen he was one of the finest guitarists in the country. Since then he has played with the likes of John Stewart (of Kingston Trio fame), Carlos Santana, Maria Muldaur, Leon Russell, Ace, Peach, and many others. We collaborated in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in part because Jon said he actually liked some of the songs I had written. We wrote a few songs together, he providing the musicality and I the lyrics. Some of the pieces I put on "Rollin' Home" several years ago; some of them bring just a little moisture to my eyes when I listen to them.

As we cut the tracks, I usually ended up on the twelve-string guitar and Jon did all of the rest. He was the master of the fret-less bass, the slide guitar, the keyboard, and a multitude of other instruments that I had never seen before, much less held in my hands. My particular moment of astonishment at "mad guitar skills" took place one evening as we were warming up in his front room. We started talking about music that we both liked, folk and contemporary blues and such. He asked me if I heard Cat Stevens' "Bona Mone Jakon" album. I told him that I had almost worn my copy out and that I thought that Stevens was one of the most innovative rhythmists in the business.

He then said to me, "Do you remember this?" He then played the clearest rendition of the guitar riff of "I Wish, I Wish" I have ever heard. He "out-Stevensed" Cat. I was thunderstruck. I had him play it over and over again. Here were "mad guitar skills" in person, in the flesh, sitting two feet away from me.

One of the great tragedies of Jon Woodhead's career is that he was never really appreciated the way that he should have been. He has had a life full of music, but he has not had the recognition that he deserved. Whenever I think about choices I could have made as a young man, desiring to be a professional singer, I think about that vagaries of the system that allows noisy, disharmonious, abusers of sound to come to the forefront and subjugate the real masters in relative obscurity. What could I have done in that industry that would not have eventually destroyed me? I have often felt like I had been on a battlefield, with shells bursting all around me, bullets whistling by, and I barely managed to get out of harm's way just in time.

So I sit once a week with two of my daughters and one of my son's-in-law and make music, laying down tracks on that old Fostex recording system that Jon and I learned to use many years ago. Occasionally, one of them will say "Gee, Dad, you have some mad guitar skills", and I feel part of something really grand.

Catgut Strings

2009-01-31T07:36:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, The Forest for the Trees had a recording session in the Dungeon. Things went moderately well; they will continue to go better; I was encouraged. Everyone left to go home and I scurried about attending to a couple of other tasks around the house

On a sudden, I heard a muffled crash, followed shortly thereafter by a blur headed up the stairs past the family room, the finale supplied by Trillium: "What was that?"

"Something fell upstairs," I replied.

"No," said Trillium, "Something fell down here." She was in the Atrium.

I had forebodings. I went to the Dungeon and discovered that the Pevey mixer had fallen from the computer hutch shelf on to the 12-string guitar. Two of the strings had been broken and two of the bridge pins had their heads severed off. I was distraught. "How in the world did that happen? I said out loud.

"You left the door to the Dungeon open."

"And...?"

"And.... Miss Kitty went in exploring, apparently jumped up to the top of the hutch, walked out on the edge of the mixer, and then scared the daylights out of herself as the whole thing came crashing down. So, before you have any ideas about doing that cat in, you will have to admit that it was your fault for leaving the door open."

Trillium was right. That was exactly what happened, and I did have designs on Miss Kitty's innards. Only two things deterred me.

First, the 12-string is a steel-string guitar. I had to go down to Summerhays and picked up a new set of strings. I decided on a set of Elixir strings. I think that I put the Nanoweb coated strings on. They are beautiful, far more beautiful than what my first impression was on the method of replacing the strings. It has taken a week for them to settle in and the guitar may be ready by the time we get together again to practice. While I was there at the music store, I picked up six bridge pins. You can never have too many of those. The pins cost me a dollar; the strings cost me $30.00. As I paid for the items, my eviscerating finger began to itch.

Second, natural guitar strings are not made from feline entrails, a fact that I learned while trying to find a recipe for an e-string. They are made from the viscera of a variety of animals, all of whom must be lean and ill-fed in order to have the proper tonal quality. Strike two on Miss Kitty.

So, the cat is safe for now, so long as she leaves the Yamaha alone.

A Month of Sundays

2009-01-18T18:46:00.000-08:00

Years ago, while living in Simi Valley, there came a time when I only had a few things to do on any given Sunday. We went to Church in the morning and I had the whole afternoon free. I decided that I would try to compose a poem each Sunday, a reflection of everything or something that had happened during the week. I have to say that I was moderately successful. Having been recently released from an assignment which has consumed my Sundays for the past five years, I found myself again with a little time on my hands. I thought that I might venture once again. I have chosen to provide you with the first one of this long series, simply because it is the first. It may be a while before I share in this vein again, simply because I know how most people respond to poetry. This has music to it; I need to have music in my head to produce metered and rhyming poetry. I doubt that I will ever set this to that music, however.

Paean

Before the dawn of our creation
Ere the sun shone on the sea
We were stars of anticipation
Singing perfect melody
Countless hosts rose up in Heaven
Angelic voices made the aire
The sons of God sang with elation
As their paradise appeared

Speak a word, the lights descended
Into a darkness without dreams
Speak a word the thoughts intended
Forming rivers, hills, and streams
In the mists the flowers blossomed
Every creature known to man
Filled the earth as God intended
From the mountains to the sand

From the dust, a son delivered
From his side a love was framed
In the Garden by the river
Every living thing was named
Lords of life, a grand dominion
Over all beneath the sky
With a promise from the Giver
That the Heavens would be nigh

Countless ages, fading stories
Separate us from that hour
When the dews still fell in glory
On every leaf and blade and flower
Bitter-sweet, a taste remembered
On every tongue from day to day
Singing angels stirring memories
As they guide us on our way

PNH
18 January 2009

Pictures at an Inhibition

2009-01-11T17:29:00.000-08:00

You will recall (or not) that when I began this blog I wrote about one of my students at UCLA who helped make a magnificent connection between my dancing daughter, Maurice Ravel, and one of my poems written in the early 1990s. ReNae was not only an accomplished concert pianist, she was an extraordinarily talented photographer. One year she decided to approach her photography in a novel way. In some manner she was able to reverse the lenses of her camera in order to take detailed close-up photographs of flowers. When she first told me about her project and the doubts that some people had expressed about it, I immediately thought of one of the final scenes of J.R.R. Tolkien's wonderful little story "Leaf By Niggle".

Niggle was a painter who had grand designs and managed over many years to produced a vast mural, a work that had originally started with a single leaf of a tree. Without going into all of the ramifications of the story, suffice it to say, that most of those who knew Niggle thought his life's labor to be hardly worth anything at all. After Niggle and his friend Parish had gone off to the Mountains, one of the town Councilors, Tompkins, and Atkins, one of Niggle's erstwhile companions, discussed the whole nature of Niggle's art.

"I think he was a silly little man," said Councillor Tompkins. "Worthless, in fact; no use to society at all."

"Oh, I don't know," said Atkins, who was nobody of importance, just a schoolmaster. "I am not sure: it depends on what you mean by use."

"No practical or economic use," said Tompkins. "I dare say he could have been made into a serviceable cog of some sort, if you schoolmasters knew your business. But you don't, and so we get useless people of his sort. If I ran this country I should put him and his like to some job that they're fit for, washing dishes in a communal kitchen or something, and I should see that they did it properly. Or I would put them away. I should have put him away long ago."

"Put him away? You mean you'd have made him start on the journey before his time?"

"Yes, if you must use that meaningless old expression. Push him through the tunnel into the Rubbish Heap: that is what I mean."

"Then you don't think painting is worth anything, not worth preserving, or improving, or even making use of?"

"Of course painting has uses," said Tompkins. "But you couldn't make use of his painting. There is plenty of scope for bold young men not afraid of new ideas and new methods. None for this old-fashioned stuff. Private daydreaming. He could not have designed a telling poster to save his life. Always fiddling with leaves and flowers. I asked him why, once. He said he thought they were pretty! Can you believe it? He said pretty! "What, digestive and genital organs of plants?" I said to him; and he had nothing to answer. Silly footler."

"Footler," sighed Atkins. "Yes, poor little man, he never finished anything. Ah well, his canvases have been put to 'better uses," since he went. But I am not sure, Tompkins. You remember that large one, the one they used to patch the damaged house next door to his, after the gales and floods? I found a corner of it torn off, lying in a field. It was damaged, but legible: a mountain-peak and a spray of leaves. I can't get it out of my mind."

ReNae invited me to her show of the photographs that was located in the Student Union Building on campus at UCLA. The following Friday afternoon I walked over to the campus center through the Mathias Botanical Gardens. I do not remember just how many pictures she had hanging in the gallery, but there must have been about twenty or so. These were large framed artworks, two and three feet square. They were stunning. I sat down hard on a bench in the middle of the room and just looked... and looked... and looked... at just one of the pictures.

As I sat there, I had a little quatrain come into my mind, a funny little piece about what I saw, how I interpreted what hung on the wall before me. I do not remember exactly which one I started with, but by the time I had spent an hour or two in the room, I had written twenty little subscripts, one for each of the pictures. One was about corndogs and split milk, another about a Spanish love song, a third featured one of the Voyager probes nuzzling for electrons. In the final poem, I pretended that I had been a honey bee in a wonderful garden, sipping at the lip of each flower. I laughed out loud a couple of times as I figured out what I saw there.

At some point, ReNae walked in and said, "What are you still doing here?" I handed her the little collection of epigraphic poems. As she walked to each photograph she began to laugh out loud. "These are great! Would you mind if I set these up in large type and put them beneath the pictures?"

"Be my guest," I replied.

After a couple of weeks, the art show came down and the beauty and humor became a sweet memory. A couple of years later, after we had moved to New Mexico and Renae had moved to New York City, she sent me copies of all of the photos (considerably smaller, but still lovely) mounted with all of the little poems I had written. She thought that she had a publisher that was willing to use her photos in a calendar and she wanted to know if she could use my poems as captions. I replied that I had written them for her and that she was free to use them as she chose. I do not know what became of the collection, but I have long since referred to that Friday afternoon experience as my "Pictures at an Inhibition".

My title played off Modest Mossorgsky's own title for his suite that was a musical response for a exhibition of over 400 of the paintings of Viktor Hartmann, one of Mossorgsky's personal friends, on display at the Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg in February and March of 1874. Hartmann had died the year before of a brain aneurysm at the age of 39. When Mossorgsky attended the showing, his creative genius took wings and within six weeks he had composed the ten set piano solos that constitute the suite, together with the "Promenade" that links each of the smaller works. In 1922 Maurice Ravel made the orchestrated version that is the most popularly performed today.

Again, here are integral connections that have been made between great creative efforts and the humble ones which have deeply influenced my own life. It really does not matter, I suppose, that ReNae has not become a world-famous photographer. It does matter that she touched my mind and heart in her own special way and I was able to respond in kind. It is not much different than that which took place between Mossorgsky and Hartmann. For those who would rather dismiss these experiences as minimalist tripe, I would say that it will be a long time before any of them find their way to the Mountains.

I hope Renae is still taking and showing pictures. She has a gift.

1812

2008-12-31T20:15:00.000-08:00

I am not certain when I became a fan of the Napoleonic Wars. I think that it all began when I started reading C.S. Forester's "Hornblower" novels. From there I went to Patrick O'Brian's novels and from thence to Alexander Kent's take on the same time period. I love the sea and the travels with these great fictional mariners turned out to be informative and entertaining. I ended up obtaining a series of books printed especially for sorts like me called the "Heart of Oak" novels. I was surprised how many otherwise reputable authors at some point in their careers opted to write a novel about the sea, and especially about the maritime wars between England and France. Eventually, however, the supply ran out and I went looking for something else in the same time frame. This is when I discovered Bernard Cornwall.

I had watched a couple of episodes on PBS, dramatizations of Cornwall's "Sharp" series. I think that I actually saw the pilot, "Sharp's Rifles", long before I discovered the books. The series traces the life of a commoner who, as a recruit in the British army in India, saved the life of an officer who would become Lord Wellington. Richard Sharp follows Wellington to Portugal, at the beginning of the battles against the French and Spanish that would eventually terminate in the great Battle of Waterloo wherein Napoleon would be defeated and exiled. Cornwall, a gifted writer, made each advancing step in the series a vibrant picture of early nineteenth century warfare, extraordinarily graphic, not intended for the faint of heart. As each advance through Portugal, Spain, and France transpires, Richard Sharp rises to the occasion and rises in rank until he serves as a field officer in Wellington's staff. It is a gripping and compelling history of a violent time.

In conjunction with the books I was reading, I was constantly reminded of Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture", a piece that also evokes the same period of time. For whatever reason, I had always thought of the piece in conjunction with Waterloo, but of course, it was not written with that battle in mind. Tchaikovsky was celebrating the Battle of Borodino when the Russians defeated Napoleon's Grande Armee in the winter of 1812. The combined losses of the French and the Russians were in excess of 100,000, neither side obtaining complete success. With the onset of winter, however, what was left of the French army was literally decimated; only one tenth of the forces that invaded Russia survived to reach Poland on their return to France. The Overture was written in October and November of 1880, the premiere performance taking place
in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior (a church built to commemorate the battle) on 20 August 1882. Oddly enough, Tchaikovsky denigrated his own work by saying that it was "very loud and noisy, but [without] artistic merit, because I wrote it without warmth and without love". Ironically, it is one of the most performed and recorded of his works.

At this New Year's Eve, another connection with the Napoleonic Wars is possible. Years ago Dan Fogelberg wrote a song called "The Same Auld Lang Syne" a song that has currency to this day, even though a score of years have passed since he wrote it. Ostensibly, the lyrics are autobiographical. In Fogelberg's own words: "In 1975 or 76 I was home in Peoria, Illinois visiting my family for Christmas. I went to a convenience store to pick up some whipping cream to make Irish coffees with, and quite unexpectedly ran into an old high school girlfriend. The rest of the song tells the story." The girl was Jill Greulich with whom Dan Fogelberg had gone to high school. While the story line has some tenderness to it, the melody line was taken from the main theme of Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture". I remember hearing Fogelberg confess that on that level, the song was a bit of a joke, a sentiment much like Tchaikovsky's. Again, ironically, there is probably no one song more frequently and consistently played on the air than "The Same Auld Lang Syne".

Same Old Lang Syne

Met my old lover in the grocery store,
The snow was falling Christmas Eve.
I stole behind her in the frozen foods,
And I touched her on the sleeve.

She didn't recognize the face at first,
But then her eyes flew open wide.
She went to hug me and she spilled her purse,
And we laughed until we cried.

We took her groceries to the checkout stand,
The food was totalled up and bagged.
We stood there lost in our embarrassment,
As the conversation dragged.

We went to have ourselves a drink or two,
But couldn't find an open bar.
We bought a six-pack at the liquor store,
And we drank it in her car.

We drank a toast to innocence,
We drank a toast to now.
And tried to reach beyond the emptiness,
But neither one knew how.

She said she'd married her an architect,
Who kept her warm and safe and dry,
She would have liked to say she loved the man,
But she didn't like to lie.

I said the years had been a friend to her,
And that her eyes were still as blue.
But in those eyes I wasn't sure if I saw,
Doubt or gratitude.

She said she saw me in the record stores,
And that I must be doing well.
I said the audience was heavenly,
But the traveling was hell.

We drank a toast to innocence,
We drank a toast to now.
And tried to reach beyond the emptiness,
But neither one knew how.

We drank a toast to innocence,
We drank a toast to time.
Reliving in our eloquence,
Another 'auld lang syne'......

The beer was empty and our tongues were tired,
And running out of things to say.
She gave a kiss to me as I got out,
And I watched her drive away.

Just for a moment I was back at school,
And felt that old familiar pain .........
And as I turned to make my way back home,
The snow turned into rain ..............

You can never go home, Dan; all you can do is become entangled in the history of the world.

Dan Fogelberg died on 16 December 2007 of prostate cancer. He was 56.

No Need to Say Goodbye

2008-12-18T22:03:00.000-08:00

Music in films is a kind of magical synthesis of sound, rhythm, and feeling that amplifies visual meaning. Frequently the music of a motion picture becomes so identified with the story line that it is virtually impossible to think of one without sensing the other. Visual craftsmen, like Steven Spielberg, have sought for their musical counterparts, composers as talented as themselves in portraying the story in another medium. It is interesting to note that Spielberg has only released two films without a John Williams score. It should surprise no one that Williams composed all of the music for the first three "Harry Potter" movies, the "Indiana Jones" franchise, and the Christopher Reeves "Superman" movies.

It is hard to imagine a Tim Burton film without a score written by Danny Elfman: "Beetlejuice", "Batman", "Batman Returns", "Edward Scissorhands", "Mars Attacks", "Sleepy Hollow", "Planet of the Apes", "Corpse Bride" and others, including "Alice in Wonderland" to be released in 201o. Elfman's prodigious talents appear in other films as well, including "Mission Impossible", "Men in Black", "Good Will Hunting", "Spiderman", "Nacho Libre", "Charlotte's Web", "Kingdom", "Wanted", and, of course, the theme from the "Simpsons".

Jimmy Webb may not be as well known as Williams and Elfman, but his composing skills have made an indelible mark on the minds and hearts of those who remember the haunting melodies of "The Last Unicorn", the animated version of Peter S. Beagle's masterpiece. The title song, "Man's Road", "In the Sea", and "That's All I've Got to Say" convey the central wonder of the book and the film. They have become inexorably connected.

In the shadow of the forest

Though she may be old and worn

They will stare unbelieving

At the Last Unicorn

Mike Batt's "Bright Eyes", for the movie "Watership Down", particularly Art Garfunkel's rendition of it, is unforgettable.

Is it a kind of a dream

Floating out on the tide

Following the river of death downstream

Or is it a dream?

Does anyone remember the composer for the three "Lord of the Rings" movies? Howard Shore. But no one can forget "In Dreams". What a wonder it was to hear "Aniron" and "It May Be" for the first time, stunned at the performance. I stood in the theater throughout the entire rolling of the credits just to see if Enya really had been singing Shore's pieces. Howard Shore also scored the movies "Silence of the Lambs", "Mrs. Doubtfire", "Se7en", "The Last Mimzey", and "The Aviator", among others.

I had another "rolling of the credits" moment the other night as I watched for the first time the latest remake of "Prince Caspian". Regina Spektor's "The Call" snared me completely. I am not certain that I really like everything that Regina has done in her music, but "The Call" has become integral to my appreciation of C.S Lewis' masterpieces in the "Chronicles of Narnia". I listened to it over and over again, and then went on the internet to find out more about Ms. Spektor. What a powerful thing it is to have the senses blended together forever in a period of four minutes or less!

It started out as a feeling, which then grew into a hope.

which then turned to a quiet thought

which then turned into a quiet word.

And then that word grew louder and louder, till it was a Battle Cry

I'll come back, when you call me. No need to say goodbye.

Just because everything's changing

doesn’t mean its never been this way before

All you can do is try to know who your friends are

as you head off to the war.

Pick a star on the dark horizon and follow the light

You'll come back, when its over

No need to say goodbye

you'll come back, when its over

no need to say goodbye

Now we're back to the beginning

It's just a feeling and no one knows yet

but just because they can’t feel it too doesn’t mean that you have to forget

Let your memories grow stronger and stronger,

till they're before your eyes.

You'll come back when they call you

no need to say goodbye

You'll come back when they call you

no need to say goodbye.

I think that is what music does to us... the memory of that wonderful synthesis between sight and sound... no need to say goodbye.

Two Gigs and a Byte

2008-12-06T14:23:00.000-08:00

Over forty years ago, Pat Simonson, Linda Benson, and I formed a folk group that we called the "Antiquities". The name was supposed to be ironic; all of us were in our early twenties. It was a time of folk music; we were sort of on the leading edge of the whole movement. We sang songs from the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Bud and Travis, Ian and Sylvia, and Bob Dylan, among others. We performed all over northern Wisconsin and Central Minnesota. We did a little bit of television and radio, and a lot of concerts. We actually got paid for our efforts at times. If I may say so, we were really quite good. We won talent contests and were featured performers at folk fests of one sort or another. The whole thing came to an abrupt end when Linda got married and I headed off to southern Mexico for two years. During my absence Pat kept performing and by the time I returned home, she had made a name for herself in St. Paul. We had a couple of agents hankering for our talents, but I decided to get married and go to Utah to go to school.

Rocky Mountain Water tastes so fresh and fine
Rocky Mountain Water tastes so fresh and fine
Well if I don't get some of that Rocky Mountain Water
I declare I'm going to lose my mind
Rocky Mountain water tastes so fresh and fine

"The Antiquities" (by way of the Upper Noblick Ten Thousand)

About seventeen years ago, Jon Woodhead and I collaborated on a number of songs and performed around Simi Valley, California, for a time. We called ourselves "J.P. Legrande". The name was derived from our first initials and my dad's middle name. Jon is an accomplished musician, having been on the road with the likes of Leon Russell and Mariah Carey. We genuinely liked each other and spent hours working on several songs which we recorded in his front room using my Fostex recording equipment. A few years ago I resurrected the best of our work and produced a CD called "Rolling Home". In 1993, I was transferred to New Mexico and he eventually ended up performing just outside of Denver, Colorado, playing the blues that he loves so much. Jon had all the right connections, but for the second time in my life, I avoided entering into the profession.

Hear her cry, hear her moan

Rollin' by, going home

Through the lonely, clouded darkness

Rollin' home

J.P. LeGrande (by way of PNH)

During the time that I worked at UVSC, Shydandelion and I had the opportunity to perform publicly at various talent shows. We did songs from Nanci Griffith, Cat Stevens, and others to entertain the troops. We had a lot of fun. I retired and SD got married and began to have children.

Trouble

Oh, trouble set me free

I have seen your face

and it'd too much, too much for me

Zaphod and Shy (by way of Cat Stevens)

About four or five months ago we found out that Jen and her family were coming to Utah, and actually ended up less than a hundred yards from our home here in Orem. We decided to do something that we had not done before. We formed a singing group, which we are calling "The Forest for the Trees". We have been practicing traditional Christmas songs for the past six weeks or so, and last Tuesday night we made our first performance at a Church Christmas party. I guess it was okay, for all that I could tell. Last night we went to the hospital to perform for T-ma. We sang the same set that we did Tuesday. Several of the nurses complimented us on our music. I was actually standing so I could here the others, and so I could heartily agree. The doctor on duty, a tall, gangly, grey-haired fellow stuck his head in the room and said, "Hey you guys are really good. Are you recording artists?" I said that we were going to lay down some tracks in the next week or so. "So are you guys performing somewhere? Are you on tour?" I had been waiting for this setup for a month.

"No," I replied. "We probably will never perform professionally; so it really is impossible to see 'The Forest for the Trees'." Goooooood onnnnne!!!!

Sleep my child and peace attend thee

all through the night

Guardian angels God will send thee

all through the night

Soft the drowsy hours are creeping

hill and vale in slumber sleeping

God His loving vigil keeping

all through the night

The Forest for the Trees (by way of Nick Reynolds)

I am really glad that I have never made it big performing. I know and understand the attraction of singing well before an audience of 10,000 and have them all be appreciative. I also know what it feels like to sing at a dinner club where most of the customers have had far too much to drink. I also have performed when everyone else was preoccupied with their neighbors and when I packed up my guitars and slipped out of the room, no one really noticed.

What I do enjoy, is singing with others who really like to sing, who enjoy harmony as much as they do singing lead, who can take advice from individuals outside our foursome so that we sound better together. We sang well enough last night that we went to Village Inn to celebrate. I had French toast. I felt like toasting us all.

Wild Surmise

2008-11-27T08:21:00.000-08:00

Last Monday our little group of Empty Nesters met at Pat and Rich’s home for our monthly meeting, a short discussion, and refreshments. As anyone with a calendar could have anticipated, Pat’s lesson focused on Thanksgiving and the spirit of gratitude. After her introduction, all of us were asked to express that singular thing that we were most thankful for; we had been warned prior to our get-together that our little moment in the sun would take place. Needless to say, most of our friends spoke about their spouses and family, their good health, and their religious life. In nothing were they cavalier about their feelings; their sincerity was real. Having been prepared by Pat’s phone call, I had given the assignment some thought, but it was not until we were sitting in our friends’ living room that my contribution came to me.

How important is it in our daily lives to breathe, to have our bodies refreshed and nourished by food and drink? How vital is it to be clothed, sheltered, and comfortable? I could not exist upon this sphere without any of these things. Likewise, life would have no meaning or substance without Trillium, our seven children, their spouses and their quivers full of grandchildren. I had thought of these as obvious objects of our gratitude and said so. Beyond the obvious, however, there was one aspect of my life for the which I could not have more thankfulness.

I have been modestly graced with language, the power to read, write, and make vocal utterance. Admittedly some of these expressions are lengthy, verbally ponderous things. I am not certain why that is so, but I have found it difficult to be otherwise. Aside from my writing, I enjoy reading at length. During the past year I have consumed several novels, biographies, and classic volumes from different eras in English and world literature. In my reading I have been able to connect with the minds and hearts of men and women whom I would have otherwise never met. Imagine that! Here in the middle of Utah Valley, without leaving my home, I have travelled thousands of years and hundreds of thousands of miles in my mind to be with individuals whom I have come to appreciate. Even in a bad translation, the descent into Dante’s “Inferno” is an extraordinary affair.

Since Monday I have had occasion to ponder the continuing unfolding of my mind and heart as I have read from the writings of Adam Clarke, the thoughtful observations of Bruce R. McConkie, and the considered opinions of the editors of the NIV and the New Jerusalem Bible. I have come to understand the Apostle Paul in a way that few people in the world have, not because I am particularly brilliant, but because I can read. It is a wonderful thing to have an insight into the experiences and teachings of a man who lived nearly two thousand years ago, to sense his emotions, his deep and abiding love for a people who looked to him for the truth, his determination to protect them from the prospect of persecution and the possibility of personal regret for having entered into the covenants associated with Christianity. There have been times when I have felt as if the spirit of that great man was at my elbow, helping me to comprehend his words, to set them properly in the context of his world.

In conjunction with the fixing of my mind on this wonderful linguistic gift, I thought of John Keats, one of the great Romantic poets of the 19th century. In October 1816, Keats was introduced to the translation of Homer’s works as freely paraphrased by the Elizabethan playwright, George Chapman. One of Keats’ boyhood friends, Charles Crowden Clarke, showed him the book one evening and they stayed up until dawn to read the volume together. Clarke said that at times “Keats shouted with delight as some passage of especial energy struck his imagination”. At mid morning, John Keats presented to his friend the text of the following sonnet. As little points of interest, the reader might like to know that the planet Uranus, a celestial body unknown to ancient astronomers, was discovered in 1781 by Sir William Hershel. That discovery is certainly the source for one of the lines below. We ought not to be distressed that it was Vasco de Balboa and not Hernan Cortes who stood on that singular peak in Panama, a fact that Keats’ friend immediately pointed out to him. “Balboa”, however, has three syllables and “Cortes” but two; to correct the history would have been to destroy the line and Keats let it stand as he had written it in the fires of his epiphany.

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

“Wild surmise”! That is at the heart of all good reading, the sudden awareness that someone somewhere has changed your life forever.

***

Dancing on the Wind

2008-11-22T08:32:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite poems by Robert Frost is a piece entitled "A Tuft of Flowers". For most people, and justifiably so, Frost is addressing the frequent loneliness we all feel as we make our way through the world, notwithstanding the fact that we all are engaged in similar tasks. All of us are children, most of us are parents. We all wrestle with world events that we do not understand; and then there are the world events that we do understand. We reach out to one another; sometimes as friends, sometimes as lovers. Our associations with one another are as needful as air. Robert Frost suggests that sometimes the most vital connections occur when we least expect them.

A Tuft of Flowers

I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the levelled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been,--alone,

`As all must be,' I said within my heart,
`Whether they work together or apart.'

But as I said it, swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a 'wildered butterfly,

Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night
Some resting flower of yesterday's delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

I left my place to know them by their name,
Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

`Men work together,' I told him from the heart,
`Whether they work together or apart.'

I have always loved the role of the butterfly, the Dancer on the Wind, that facilitated the deep and abiding connection between the reaper and the turner of the hay. The butterfly had no idea what it had done; it simply was looking for butterfly weed. It obeyed its nature and unknowingly drew the hearts of the two men together. Needless to say, had either one of the men failed to do that which they had been called upon to do, the flight of the butterfly would have been meaningless.

As we go through life we fully expect to be rewarded for the good that we do. We expect compensation for our labors. We desire recognition, honor from those whom we esteem. I think that I would rather, when all is revealed, to be surprised to find that I had been a blessing to another in a wonderful and miraculous way, as transcendent as that which the butterfly accomplished, pointing out in my trembling flight through life one of those things which bind us together as the children of God.

Singing Skies and Dancing Waters

2008-11-15T17:13:00.001-08:00

I grew up in the mountains of Southern California. I spent my summers building dams in the creek that ran through my back yard, sleeping in a tree house 30 feet up in a eucalyptus tree, and wandering in the wild for hours on end. For me there is hardly anything as delightful as walking hip-deep through a field of meadow grass still wet with dew or running full-tilt downhill into a stiff canyon wind. Pop psychologists like to say that human beings do not dream in color nor can one dream of flying. I have done both; I'm not certain why.

When John, Paul, George, and Ringo were all the rage in the mid-sixties, I was not a fan. I did not own a single Beatles record until I was middle-aged, and then I bought all of their music on CDs. I did so, not because I really liked everything they did; I just liked a goodly number of their rather thoughtful pieces. I particularly like "Mother Nature's Son", a song I did not know until I heard John Denver sing it. I actually thought Denver had written it; I do not think that I was alone in my misconception. The words are quite simple, yet compelling. They do lose some of their power in written form because the music is such an integral part of the piece.

Mother Nature's Son

Born a poor young country boy

Mother Nature's son

All day long

I'm sitting singing songs for everyone.

Sit beside a mountain stream

see her waters rise

Listen to the

pretty sound of music as she flies.

Find me in my field of grass

Mother Nature's son

Swaying daisies

sing a lazy song beneath the sun.

Mother Nature's son.

The first time I heard James Taylor's "Gaia" I was sitting in my den in Albuquerque. I was stunned by the song. I could visualize every image that he painted As he climbed up into the mountains and stopped to rest, I did so as well, as I had done many times before in my life. When he looked back over the mountains, so did I, and with him I became "Helpless, speechless, and breathless" as his percussionist did all the right things to my ears, heart and mind. I think it was one of the purest moments that I have ever had in music. James affectionately referred to his song as the "tree-huggers' anthem". So be it.

Gaia

The sky was light and the land all dark

The sun rose up over Central Park

I was walking home from work

GAIA

The petal sky and the rosy dawn

The world turning on the burning sun

Sacred wet green one we live on

GAIA

Run run run run said the automobile and we ran

Run for your life take to your heels

Foolish school of fish on wheels

GAIA

Turn away from your animal kind

Try to leave your body just to live in your mind

Leave your cold cruel mother earth behind

GAIA

As if you were your own creation

As if you were the chosen nation

And the world around you just a rude and dangerous invasion

GAIA

Someone`s got to stop us now

Save us from us Gaia

No one`s gonna stop us now

We thought we ought to walk awhile

So we left that town in a single file

Up and up and up mile after mile after mile

We reached the tree line and I dropped my pack

Sat down on my haunches and I looked back down

Over the mountain

Helpless and speechless and breathless

GAIA

Pray for the forest pray to the tree

Pray for the fish in the deep blue sea

Pray for yourself and for God`s sake

Say one for me

Poor wretched unbeliever

Someone`s got to stop us now

Save us from us Gaia

No one`s gonna stop us now

My appreciation for John Denver's gift is profound, even though I recognize that he was not the perfect musician nor was he the perfect wordsmith. But he and I made little connections during his career. I adopted a number of his songs and have performed them around the country as I have had opportunity. That his biography is entitled "Mother Nature's Son" should surprise no one who is familiar with his music. I had an extraordinary experience a number of years ago with one of his lesser-known songs. I, again, was in my den, writing some aspect of my autobiography with one of his records playing in the background. I had been lightly listening to the music, but on a sudden the words of "Singing Skies and Dancing Waters" broke through and I realized that John Denver had experienced something akin to my own youthful experiences. I heard in his song something of my own poem that I had called "The Sparrow" where I had tried to capture in writing my first real contact with God. I understood that he, too, had struggled with a sense of the divine, worrying that somehow the world had been with him, "too much and too soon". I am aware that not every person who has heard the song thinks that it is profoundly religious in nature, but I am certain that it is.

Singing Skies and Dancing Waters

So many years ago, I can't remember now

Someone was waiting for me

I had the answers to all of my questions

Love was so easy to see,

I didn't know

When I was younger, I should have known better

I thought nothing was new

Through all the spaces, and all of the changes

What I lost sight of was you

I didn't know, I didn't know

I could see you in singing skies and dancing waters

laughing children, growing old

And in the heart and in the spirit

And in the truth when it is told

My life became shady, and I grew afraid

And I needed to find my way home

I just couldn't see you, I thought that I'd lost you

I never felt so much alone, are you still with me

Somehow in reason, I lost sight of seasons

I'm growing out, growing in

Sometimes in evenings, when daylight was needed

I thought I'd never see you again

Are you still with me, are you still with me

I'm with you in singing skies and dancing waters

laughing children, growing old

And in the heart and in the spirit

And in the truth when it is told

If my faith should falter

And I should forsake you,

and find myself turning away

Will you still be there, will you still be there

Ill be there in singing skies and dancing waters

laughing children growing old

And in the heart and in the spirit

And in the truth when it is told

Paul McCartney and John Lennon's song was inspired by their direct contact with the naturalist spirit of Hinduism. James Taylor's work was motivated by a tender regard for environmentalism. John Denver was attempting to find something greater than himself, something that he ultimately found in nature. What I find uplifting about all of this is that it is possible for just about anyone to discern truth. Perspectives may differ, interpretations may vary, but we find that all of these are facets of the same gem. The great gift that we give to one another is given when we write our prose, poems, or lyrics that express a portion of the divine that emenates from all of creation; a taste of the truth, perhaps a recipe for finding the truth. For all of their diversity, these three songs found a resonance within me and I became a better person, a better man, a better partcipant in life because of the synthesis.

When we have gleaned all of the truth that we can share with one another, there is Another who is perfectly willing to share all He knows with us as well.

Dancing on the Edge -- The Poem

2008-11-13T11:44:00.000-08:00

I thought that you might like to have the poem in its linear form.

Dancing on the Edge

Stunning:

a glint of light poised at the brink
glittering pirouettes and dazzling leaps
from point to point,
nimbly and deftly wrought,
heedless of the gaping abyss
that drops away into
a never-ending ebony of starless nights

Madness:

electrifying near-insanity, risking all
for to catch the light of sun and moon and stars
wrapt about and within,
an incandescent glory
on the precipice,
double-daring a descent into the foxfire
upon the valley floor

Twilight:
no better time to dance,
while all else lies in the muddle
of day and night,
the very moment when
the difference twixt white and black dissolves;
the dancer testifies
of all that is fading
of all that is dawning
of all that is beyond our ken
of all that we hope is true

Quenched:
or expended, we know not;
fallen on the hinder side,
a searing unseen spectacle
of trailing flame and whitened ash,
scattered embers winking out,
dark waters embracing what fire remains;
we know not;

Quickened:
or caught away, we know not;
drawn from heights to cleave
unto greater heights,
a rising point of light
seeking her own
beyond the fall of night;
we know not;

Below:

we dwell in shadows,
placid in the warm, moist glades
fearful of the unused path,
the perilous crest,
where angels dance
upon the razor's edge
which separates
the living from the dead

Paul Nolan Hyde
1 December 1992

Dancing with Words

2008-11-13T07:26:00.000-08:00

One of my beautiful daughters is a dancer. Her grace and emotion on stage have stunned professionals; they have made her father weep for the beauty of it all. Years ago I wrote a poem about her, attempting to put in word and rhythm that which I felt as I watched her. The result was "Dancing on the Edge", the lines of which appear on the left sidebar of this website. A few days after having written the poem, I had the opportunity to show my little piece to one of my graduate students at UCLA. At her request I gave her a copy. That evening I received a phone call from her. She was excited. "I want you to hear something!" She put her phone on top of her grand piano and began playing the first movement to Maurice Ravel's "Le Tombeau de Couperin". After a minute or two she picked up the phone again and asked "What does that remind you of, other than Ravel's exquisite compositions?"

"It is my poem," I whispered.

"Yes, it is! Now, listen to this!" She then began to play parts of the subsequent movements of Ravel's masterpiece. "Anything there move you to wordsmithery?" I am afraid the whole forge was on fire.

I spent the better part of the Christmas vacation that year penning poems to match the all of the movements of "Le Tombeau de Couperin" as follows:

Prelude -- Dancing on the Edge (1 December 1992)
Fugue -- First Kiss (15 December 1992)
Forlane -- Song of the Drunken Dwarf (6 December 1992)
Rigaudon -- Nen Lalaith (15 December 1992)
Minuet -- Consenting Eclipses (9 December 1992)
Toccata -- A Touching (16 December 1992)

When Renae finished her course of study at UCLA, her Master's Recital included "Le Tombeau de Couperin". The six poems were included in the printed program, and the corresponding piece was read before each movement was played.

Needless to say, I cannot now read any of the six poems without being overpowered by my memories of my daughter, my association with Renae, and my love for Ravel's works. It constitutes a synthesis, a melding of separate parts of my life into one thing, a unity of soul which no doubt is inexplicable to anyone else, save they have experienced the same. A cynical detractor might suggest that my daughter is a clumsy oaf, that my sentiments about her dancing have been artificially generated simply because I am her father. Such critics, of course, have never seen her dance. Another ignoramus might suggest that there are better schools of music then that at UCLA. Undoubtedly there are, but that observation does not directly impact my memories of a gifted concert pianist who helped me create a body of work which brings joy to my heart and mind every time I look at them. Someone might rightly say, "Well, I am not a fan of the Impressionist movement in music composition." So be it, but that does not change the fact that "Le Tombeau de Couperin" has affected me deeply as it became associated with other parts of my life's experience. Finally, a churlish person might say, "I don't get your poems". More's the pity, because understanding my little poems would help him to understand me, not altogether a bad thing given the divisive, rancorous world that we live in.

So what is the significance of this little posting? It is that no one of the parts of any man's life completely explains the whole of it. It is not the separate members of our families, our diverse friendships, our quixotic preferences, our vacillating opinions, or our word-usage that define us. We believe and feel the way we do because we have made irreversible connections between epiphanous moments in our lives, creating an indestructible core of truth that defines us as worthwhile human beings. No one can effectively assail us at our core without destroying who we are.

Likewise, why we believe the way we do about God, or about Heaven, or about morality cannot be explained in bits and pieces.