I've been working on putting together (yet another) new blog, one that documents my attempts to make music. It started with an interest in figuring out how to put one of those audio players on a blog page and then took a life its own. Anyway, if you're interested in hearing me sing badly, play the guitar (and banjo) in a variety of styles, see what I've been up to musically, and perhaps even sing along ... it's here:
Here's a great song that I've been singing for about a year. I first heard a Doc Watson version of the song and then a wonderful duet which featured Joan Baez and Pete Seeger. The simplicity and the riddle, question, and answer structure of the song makes it really charming. I guess it's also somewhat appropriate for me since 1. we're now living in Cherry Abundant Michigan and 2. my life's work is wrapped up in stories that normally have endings - if not always satisfactory ones - so it's nice to sing a song that turns that expectation on its head ...
I gave my love a cherry, that had no stone I gave my love a chicken, that had no bone I told my love a story, that had no end And I gave my love a baby, with no crying.
How can there be a cherry, that has no stone? How can there be a chicken that has no bone? How can there be a story that has no end? How can there be a baby with no crying?
A cherry when it's blooming, it has no stone. A chicken when it's pipping, it has no bone. The story of my love, it has no end. And a baby when it's sleeping, there's no crying.
Here's a little tune called "On the Road to Boston", somewhat appropriate given the Celtics' remarkable come back last night. And yes, that's me and my banjo playing efforts.
Being fortunate enough to live in the hometown of Eldery Instruments, I've been paying regular visits to the store. I've fallen in love with a particular guitar and I now call it "my" guitar, even though there's not the slightest chance of me ever owning this particular gem.
It's a little parlor guitar made by two luthiers who are based in Vermont. Their company -- Froggy Bottom -- makes acoustic guitars that have won awards and are consistently heralded with much acclaim. This one's no exception.
What I really love about this guitar is how responsive it is in the bass and mid ranges for a small guitar. Playing a bigger body Taylor after trying out this guitar makes the Taylor sound thin and stiff in the lower range (and this was a decent 814). It's got an amazing resonance of bass for something of its size. I'm guessing it has to do with the fact that the guitar has a walnut body. Plus there are some cool (some people might think them cheesy) ornamental details on the instrument. I've played this guitar about 4-5 times, and every time I go to Elderly to try out more guitars, this is the first and last one that I play. I even felt a little jealous yesterday when someone else had clearly played the guitar recently (tuned it to dropped D ... might be the same guy whose been playing all the Collings guitars which were all tuned to dropped D ... ) If there's one thing that is a 'shortcoming' on this particular guitar is that the neck meets the body at the 12th fret, which makes playing up the neck a little difficult.
This particular guy is on consignment at Elderly and I'll keep playing him until someone decides to take him home. I'll never have the moolah to buy him, even though at 5 000 bucks, it's about 2 000 dollars cheaper than placing an order with the Froggy Bottom guys.
Left: Cool biplane painting design on the heel cap. Froggy Bottom gets an artist to do individualized designs for each of their guitars.
I've been listening, quite obsessively, to the British hymn "I Vow to Thee My Country". I've mentioned the hymn in connection to a fabulous movie ("Another Country") on the blog some time back but I've most recently revived an interest in the hymn because it moves me in ways that make me suspicious and worried about who (or what) I am. Ok, this basically means that listening to the hymn makes me teary. Earlier this week, as I listened to it on YouTube, I was just downright weepy. Here's the version that moved this hard heart as well as the lyrics:
I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.
Now, what intrigues as well as irritates me, is how such a nationalistic hymn of jingoism that subordinates choice and freedom to that old lie and masks imperial ambition as obedience to a higher call moves me to tears. Even if the imperial ambitions of the hymn are outmoded the comments on the YouTube video attest to the fact that the hymn stirs lots of feelings of patriotism. (I even saw a comment on another video of the hymn that said "we will have the empire again ... "). An old verse that is now no longer included in hymnal versions of the song underscores the virulent and violent nationalist sentiment that the existing verses make very little effort of concealing:
I heard my country calling, away across the sea,
Across the waste of waters she calls and calls to me.
Her sword is girded at her side, her helmet on her head,
And round her feet are lying the dying and the dead.
I hear the noise of battle, the thunder of her guns,
I haste to thee my mother, a son among thy sons.
The use of the hymn in the film Another Country is smart precisely because it questions the values of sacrifice in the name of imperial expansion. Yet I also found myself emotionally stirred when the hymn's melody (from Holst's "Jupiter" and also known as "Thaxted") was used at key points of the blatantly propagandistic film Roaring Across the Horizon, a Chinese film about China's superhuman and successful attempts to develop the 原子弹 (do I have that right?) In that film, Holst's theme swells in the background every time the Chinese manage something amazing -- like flattening the uneven, sandy ground of the Gobi desert with huge rollers driven only by raw manpower, calculating with abacuses what the Americans and Soviets could work out only with the aid of computers, and, of course, firing off the bombs.
Adding another dimension to this question of why I am so strangely moved is the fact that Holst's uplifting and majestic theme really comes in the middle of a very different piece of music. The "Jupiter" movement of Holst's The Planets is also subtitled "The Bringer of Jollity" and its opening strides, as well as the rest of the movement really do create a rather light-hearted atmosphere with its quick tempo and playful call-response accents of the woodwinds and brass: some of it sounds like incidental music for an old Western. Placing the sweeping grandeur of this middle section against the frivolity of the rest of the movement conveys a message that is quite different from the hymn's rather straightforward appropriation of the stirring melody. Especially interesting in thinking about the musical context of the Thaxted theme is the way it returns with the low brass toward the end of the movement, gets taken up by the trumpets but then gets shuffled, unresolved, into the rest of the movement's final seconds.(Here's a video of the entire movement).
So, my question revolves around how someone whose developed so many defenses against nationalistic feeling goes to pieces at something so flagrantly 'patriotic'. Worse, it isn't even 'my own country' that we're talking about here but a wholly irrational response to some vague (but nonetheless dangerous) feeling of .... I don't even know what to call it. Perhaps the idea of sacrifice just gets me. I'd be interested to know if anyone else is strangely moved by the hymn and if they can put a finger on why.
