”Fear not!” said he, for mighty dread had seized their troubled mind. . .

Veterans’ Day, anyone?

Curses on Georg Friedrich Händel! It’s All Souls’ Day, and I should be charitable to someone who is no longer here to defend himself. But I’d like to know how I remember the hymn “Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve and press with vigor on” sung to Handel’s tune Ciroë  is number 577 Episcopal Hymnal 1940—when I have not played the organ in a church that used The 1940 since 1982.

Ciroë (Cyrus) is one of those tunes from a Händel opera (in this case Cyrus, which no one has ever heard) some kind person arranged for congregational singing as a hymn tune. You know, like “Joy to the World.” I’ve never heard the operatic works from which the tunes were snatched, but my guess is they are complex arias or instrumental set pieces.

This morning the tune circled in my mind with the words

Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve,
And press with vigor on;
A heavenly race demands thy zeal,
And an immortal crown,
And an immortal crown.

A cloud of witnesses around
Hold thee in full survey;
Forget the steps already trod,
And onward urge thy way,
And onward urge thy way.

Philip Doddridge (1702-1751) wrote these words;  they were first published in Hymns Founded on Various Texts in the Holy Scriptures, by Job Orton in 1755 (1).

I think I was singing the hymn and tune because Joanie the Cat woke me up purring at 5:05, and I realized that even if I could go back to sleep (which would have been impossible because I was already singing the hymn and tune in my mind), she would not let me. “Awake. . . stretch every nerve.”

That I was humming the tune and remembering the words—yes, all of them—to the first two verses of the hymn was strange enough on its own, but that I realized the second stanza is appropriate for today, All Souls’ Day, boggled my poor half-asleep mind.

Where on do these thoughts come from? That today is All Souls’ Day is of no consequence to me, and I do not have any truck with the idea that “a heavenly race demands [my] zeal,” and I don’t particularly like the tune. It’s not horrible, but I dread having it in my head all day.

(Yesterday I was plagued with the tune of “We’ll have an Old Fashioned Wedding,” from Annie Get Your Gun, which I’m pretty sure I had not heard since I saw a performance of the show early this summer. It rattled around in my head all day. And it will now probably alternate in my awareness with the Händel tune for the rest of this day—because I mentioned it.)

I learned the hymn tune Ciroë long before I was an Episcopal church organist; the tune as I learned was named Christmas. We sang it in the Baptist church when I was a kid with the words

While shepherds watched their flocks by night,
All seated on the ground,
The angel of the Lord came down,
And glory shone around,
And glory shone around.

“Fear not!” said he, for mighty dread
Had seized their troubled mind.
“Glad tidings of great joy I bring
To you and all mankind
To you and all mankind.

Nahum Tate, the magisterial hymn writer who was poet laureate of England, wrote the words in 1700. They first appeared in Tate & Brady’s Psalter, in 1702 (2).

Almost as clearly as I remember “Awake, My Soul” is number 577 in The 1940, I remember my father leading our Baptist congregation singing “While Shepherds Watch” with my organ accompaniment. That may be a composite memory from among the hundreds of such moments tucked away in my unconscious. But this hymn and tune definitely have some place in the life of, if not my consciousness, at least my feelings.

Today, as I said, is All Souls’ Day. I’m not quite sure what that means. Someone told me once the difference between All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. It was something such as, “Not everyone is a saint, but everyone is a soul.” Of course, the main requirement for both is being dead.

My mind is freely associating in a way that I wish I could stop. Somehow, I have “While Shepherds Watched their Flocks” connected in memory with my maternal grandmother as well as with my father. Most likely that’s because I placed the hymnal with the Christmas words I looked up on her sewing machine, which I have in my living room.

Now I have “While Shepherds Watched,” “We’ll Have an Old Fashioned Wedding,” my father singing in church, and my grandmother’s sewing machine caroming around in my brain, each vying for dominance in my awareness. And it’s All Souls’ Day.

Curses!

None of this makes much sense to me. I’m marveling at the complexity of my thinking/feeling today. It’s probably no more complex than it ever is, but I’m seldom aware of the complexity.

Last week I was walking up Main Street in Dallas. Crews of men working out of trucks proclaiming they were from “The Christmas Light Company” were climbing light poles and being hoisted into trees on cherry pickers stringing up the dreaded lights for the Dallas holiday season. It was October 27, not even All Hallows’ Eve or All Souls’ Day. One young man happened down from a pole just as I walked by.

“Putting up Thanksgiving lights?” I asked in my best sardonic voice.

“No. Veterans’ Day lights,” he said deadpan without missing a beat.

And so the “holiday” season begins for me. Unbidden tunes in my head, and a comedic workman stringing up Veterans’ Day lights on Main Street. Somehow it all fits. Especially today when, to be the honoree of the Holy Day, one has to be dead. I’m sure I have no way to explain the complex, circular, string of thoughts in my mind.

I do, however, understand clearly—but more with curiosity than dread, these days—where it’s all headed, for me personally and for all of us.

“Fear not!” said he, for mighty dread
Had seized their troubled mind.
“Glad tidings of great joy I bring
To you and all mankind.”

It’s not about Christmas. All Souls’ perhaps.
_____________________
(1) “Awake, My Soul.”  The Cyber Hymnal ™. 1996. Web.
(2) “While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night.” The Cyber Hymnal ™. 1996. Web.

“kindness. . . profligate in its expenditure” A (probably incomprehensible) poetry lesson from the irrepressible professor

I will consider my cat Chachi. Do you know what his tail held up and hooked means?

Two moderately long poems and an 18-minute musical work (I’ll be amazed if anyone wades through all of this).  However, taken together, they say something about the life of my mind and “spirit” today that I can’t say myself, so I offer them for your consideration in whole, in part, or a bit at a time.

On August 13 my posting here was read by way more people (way more) than any other posting I’ve made on this blog.

. . . Oh friends, take
whatever kindness you can find
and be profligate in its expenditure:
It will not drain your limited resources,
I assure you, it will not leave you vulnerable
and unfurled. . .  

–– From “Be Kind,” by Michael Blumenthal (printed in full below the picture of Christopher Smart)

 Michael Blumenthal’s poem once showed up on my “timeline” on Facebook, and I’ve sent it to friends on important occasions. Let me get all ooey-gooey and sentimental. It’s one of my favorite poems because it reminds me to be grateful.

And to try to be kind. It will not drain my limited resources to be kind.
And then, because I was trying this morning to be grateful for so many things, the beginning of a list:

For friends I don’t know
For friends I do know
For my family
For my small ability to make music
For my even smaller ability to get outside my self-absorption and love someone else
(and for the people who have taught me to stop worrying about “the meaning of life”
because that’s probably the meaning of life)
For the gift—it’s nothing I thought up myself
—of the decision to love a couple of people unreservedly
For the pipe organ in my living room
For the choir of Calvary Lutheran Church, Richland Hills, TX
For enough intellectual curiosity to find new poetry to read every day
For enough intellectual ability to have a modicum of understanding of that poetry
For my cats who make it nearly impossible for me to live in a “normal” home
For Dr. Steven Thornton’s magic arthroscopy
And for so much more I can’t begin to say

Rejoice!

After I remembered Michael Blumenthal’s poem and decided to write about my gratitude, I thought of my favorite poem about gratitude (isn’t it amazing how the mind makes connections among memories), that is, “Wild Gratitude,” by Edward Hirsch (printed in full below).

Hirsch’s image of the cat comes from the “I will consider my cat Jeoffry” section of Christopher Smart’s poem “Jubilate Agno” (Rejoice in the Lamb). Obviously it’s impossible for me to think about Smart’s cat Jeoffry without having in mind “Rejoice in the Lamb” by Benjamin Britten which I once had the great joy to accompany, which is one of the moments of my life for which I have “Wild Gratitude” (see recording endnotes).

There. From your reading my blog two days ago to the organ accompaniment to “For I will consider my cat Jeoffry.” How’s that for a meandering of the mind?

Insane or TLEptic?

[A sidebar: I have often thought Christopher Smart was not insane, but merely had Temporal Lobe Epilepsy–his hypergraphia, his incomprehensible religious fervor, and his babbling about the strange images in his imagination, and his inability to concentrate on details such as money are presentations of TLE.]

“Be Kind,” by Michael Blumenthal         

 Not merely because Henry James said
there were but four rules of life—
be kind be kind be kind be kind—but
because it’s good for the soul, and,
what’s more, for others, it may be
that kindness is our best audition
for a worthier world, and, despite
the vagueness  and uncertainty of
its recompense, a bird may yet  wander
into a bush before our very houses,
gratitude may not manifest itself in deeds
entirely equal to our own, still there’s
weather arriving from every direction,
the feasts of famine and feasts of plenty
may yet prove to be one,  so why not
allow the little sacrificial squinches and
squigulas to prevail? Why not inundate
the particular world with minute particulars?
Dust’s certainly all our fate, so why not
make it the happiest possible dust,
a detritus of blessedness? Surely
the hedgehog, furling and unfurling
into its spiked little ball, knows something
that, with gentle touch and unthreatening
tone, can inure to our benefit, surely the wicked
witches of our childhood have died and,
from where they are buried, a great kindness
has eclipsed their misdeeds. Yes, of course,
in the end so much comes down to privilege
and its various penumbras, but too much
of our unruly animus has already been
wasted on reprisals, too much of the
unblessed air is filled with smoke from
undignified fires. Oh friends, take
whatever kindness you can find
and be profligate in its expenditure:
It will not drain your limited resources,
I assure you, it will not leave you vulnerable
and unfurled, with only your sweet little claws
to defend yourselves, and your wet little noses,
and your eyes to the ground, and your little feet.

“Wild Gratitude,”  by Edward Hirsch

Tonight when I knelt down next to our cat, Zooey,
And put my fingers into her clean cat’s mouth,
And rubbed her swollen belly that will never know kittens,
And watched her wriggle onto her side, pawing the air,
And listened to her solemn little squeals of delight,
I was thinking about the poet, Christopher Smart,
Who wanted to kneel down and pray without ceasing
In every one of the splintered London streets,

And was locked away in the madhouse at St. Luke’s
With his sad religious mania, and his wild gratitude,
And his grave prayers for the other lunatics,
And his great love for his speckled cat, Jeoffry.
All day today—August 13, 1983—I remembered how
Christopher Smart blessed this same day in August, 1759,
For its calm bravery and ordinary good conscience.

This was the day that he blessed the Postmaster General
“And all conveyancers of letters” for their warm humanity,
And the gardeners for their private benevolence
And intricate knowledge of the language of flowers,
And the milkmen for their universal human kindness.
This morning I understood that he loved to hear—
As I have heard—the soft clink of milk bottles
On the rickety stairs in the early morning,

And how terrible it must have seemed
When even this small pleasure was denied him.
But it wasn’t until tonight when I knelt down
And slipped my hand into Zooey’s waggling mouth
That I remembered how he’d called Jeoffry “the servant
Of the Living God duly and daily serving Him,”
And for the first time understood what it meant.
Because it wasn’t until I saw my own cat

Whine and roll over on her fluffy back
That I realized how gratefully he had watched
Jeoffry fetch and carry his wooden cork
Across the grass in the wet garden, patiently
Jumping over a high stick, calmly sharpening
His claws on the woodpile, rubbing his nose
Against the nose of another cat, stretching, or
Slowly stalking his traditional enemy, the mouse,
A rodent, “a creature of great personal valour,”
And then dallying so much that his enemy escaped.

And only then did I understand
It is Jeoffry—and every creature like him—
Who can teach us how to praise—purring
In their own language,
Wreathing themselves in the living fire.

An introduction to Christopher Smart’s poem with the entire text of the “I will consider my cat Jeoffry” section.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/poem/2009/10/in_nomine_patris_et_felis.html

THE BEST RECORDING of Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb” I’ve found online is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsZP-IH8XbM

The entire text is here (I guess it’s impossible for choirs these days to sing so you can understand all of the words).
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~tan/Britten/britlamb.html

George Frederick Handel and other misfits in Scottsbluff, NE

George Frederick Handel
(23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759)

In a year around 1957 a group of musicians/businessmen/educators –I don’t know who they were—held a contest for young musicians in Nebraska. They offered a prize that seemed to a junior high school kid in the millions of dollars. Kids from all over the state auditioned, and some lucky prodigy won those millions.

I should have known right then I was not cut out to be a performer. By that time I was taking organ instead of piano lessons, and they didn’t have facilities for organ playing. So I trooped over to the Longfellow School in Scottsbluff, NE, my home town, and plopped myself down at the piano in front of the judges and cranked out what was probably a just-short-of-brilliant reading of a transcription of the “Largo” from Handel’s opera Xerxes. It was the only piece I could play on both the organ and piano.

My performance probably did not matter to the judges. It was my total lack of showmanship and ease in front of the crowd. I dreaded the performance, and it showed. I played without even announcing the title of the work. Public performance is mainly torture for an introvert—especially one who has Medial temporal lobe epilepsy seizures on a daily basis and never quite knows when they will strike.

Since that day I have been disquieted by the music of George Frederick Handel. Do you blame me?

Today is George Frederick Handel’s 228th birth anniversary. OK, Georg Friedrich Händel, if you must. He was German, but England’s greatest composer until Ralph Vaughn Williams (or Edward Elgar, or some other great composer most of you have never heard of—might even put Arthur Sullivan in that rarefied atmosphere). His music is, of course, Italian.

I thought I might have a chance to win the competition because a couple of years before I had had some success at such a venture. My best friend Rusty Fuller heard about the “Junior Star Parade” (not the same contest) and its first prize of three silver dollars and decided he’d win.

Rusty was a short wiry energetic kid with red hair and freckles, the baby of a family of four boys, not the serious middle child in the Preacher’s family (they lived across the street from our church, but he never had to go to church anywhere!). He was probably the first “love of my life.” He couldn’t sing and knew nothing about music, but he bribed me with promise of one of the silver dollars when we won if I’d teach him a song. So on a Saturday morning at the Midwest Movie Theater, we got on the stage and he cut-up and carried on and acted the natural performer and stole the show (now and then joining me on the chorus) as I sang “This Ole House.” Sometimes I think I’ve won one of the three silver dollars in every relationship I’ve had since then.

There you have it. Stuart Hamblen and George Frederick Handel forever indelibly joined in a marriage in my mind that makes me a bit squeamish every time I hear either of their names. Fortunately, Hamblen never played any other part in my life, and Handel wrote no solo organ music I was obliged to study earning a Bachelor of Music in organ; I never had to contend with either of them again.

Funny thing, though. Here in my waning years I don’t regret either of those unpleasant experiences. What I do regret is that my self-image was so distorted that I didn’t learn from either of them that perhaps I ought to be learning to write short stories or becoming a boring scholar or computer scientist (to make a zillion dollars) or . . . well, almost anything other than torturing myself with the 60-year dream that someday I will be a great performer. Introverts of the world, unite!