Lonesome

Kinda lonely here with all green themed jazz tunes on Kuer. I just removed a couple of black garbage bags of food frozen in mid-rotting stage from our twin deep-freeps that kids turned off. For once I'm grateful we have to take the cans out to the middle of our ocd circle. Now to do something about the moths. I am killing about 30 a day and their numbers seem to be going down.

I'm getting less and less enamored with being in the house by myself. I used to enjoy it for about 3-4 days. Now it's about a day. I really miss Lara and the kids. Reading Lara's posts make me miss them more. Such remarkable writing and such remarkable people.

I had a really fun and interesting time in Seattle last weekend. I played with Jessica Lurie and Greg to Danijel Zezelj's live narrative painting. I even got to bring 4 of the 8 paintings home. Really amazing, white on black panels painted with tiny rollers. We also did a couple of little performances in schools where Danijel did really nice paintings of a long-legged elephant with a ballerina on top holding a parasol. Incredible economy of strokes. Maybe I go to Seattle too much, but it always restores my perspective, musically and artistically. Greg's playing is always surprising, creative, sonically and rhythmically tasty beyond description, and both thoughtful and visceral.

Teaching?

I must admit, I often enjoy teaching immensely, and then sometimes I dislike it. One never quite loses the stage fright, especially when one doesn't know the students that well. I had an awesome experience teaching on Friday. GEM, the BYU Group for Experimental Music, finally had a breakthrough and performed collective improvisations that included listening, beautiful and interesting textures created collaboratively, etc. It was really one of the greatest feelings in the world to experience it and to see the joy on their faces afterward. There is a great deal of faith involved in doing something so crazy as going into a windowless room with musical instruments and making music with no score or plan in advance. It took a few weeks for them to get over their self-consciousness and to apply this faith in real time. I think this is what I love about improvisation so much. It is a divine process, especially when engaged in with others.

I have some theory students who are a bit faith-challenged. They ocd-ly ask questions over and over again that mostly have to do with any possible challenge they might encounter on a test. There is a bit of a disconnect with the concept of critical thinking. It reminds me of this bit they used to do on Letterman a year or two ago with one of the actors that pops up here and there. He would ask Dave endless questions that were tedious and difficult to answer, but not interesting. These theory students can be really fun and smart too, though. My favorite technique with dumb questions is to over answer, i.e. to link up to tangents that involve wider historical, philosophical, spiritual, aesthetic themes. It's amusing to me and the smarty-pants students, and for those who are interested in only knowing what will be on the test, it kind of puts them on notice.

I'm teaching a class on the first principles and ordinances at the Forensics Unit today. There's a whole different kind of teaching. Probably the most diverse group of 20 or so people you could ever get together. One of my avenues of inquiry is that there is no difference between generic faith and the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ mentioned in the Articles of Faith as being the first principle. Joseph Smith said that faith is the principle of action in all intelligent beings. Moroni (7:12-22) says that all good things come from God, and further that existence is about "laying hold on every good thing" by means of faith. D&C 88:6-13 says that, as the light of the world, Christ is in the Sun, moon, stars, etc. and that He is the power by which they were created, etc. His light is also said to bring life to all things. All this points to the idea that faith in anything that is good or true is, in essence, faith in Christ.

unceasing

The family lore puts Christian, at age four, lying under the luscious 1920's nine foot Steinway in Kingston, Ontario while his mother practiced the Bach Partita in C minor; at age seven he decided to become a composer.  As far as I know, he never wavered from that decision, and almost every moment of his life has been devoted to this calling.

Last night at the Madsen recital hall, I saw Christian at what his mother called his apogee.  Two premieres were made, an organ piece performed by Neil Thornock and a piano sonata played by Scott Holden.  And then a set of prepared viola improvisations performed by Christian.

The organ piece was funky and mysterious.  I love organ, Christian's writing for organ, and Neil's playing.  The piano piece was gorgeous, and Scott is so complete as an artist, so expressive, but balanced by a deep intellectualism, and so virtuosic and yet soulful.  

Christian's viola set was mesmerizing.  Grandpa Woody called it a magic show, and he was right.  The exploration of sound was expansive and compelling, suspenseful even.  I loved every minute.

And how does this happen?  Just to dispel the myth of the crazy, romantic, composer, it happens when a person works unceasingly for most of his life.  There were years when Christian arose at four a.m. every day to practice and compose, works an eight-hour day job to support the family and then stayed up late in the night to continue working.  He loves his work and spends every spare minute on it, but even still he manages to be there most nights to eat dinner with us and put the kids to bed.  And then work until two in the morning again.  I've watched him sit at a desk for eighteen hours a day for months finishing a symphony.  

In his student days, he was legendary for keeping a bag of potatoes in his locker that he could nuke and eat while walking across campus so as not to spend any money or time on anything that would take away from his focus. 

Christian's unceasing devotion, his unflagging faith in his calling, and his passion for his work, all astound me.  He is an amazing man and an amazing composer, and you all should get out to hear his music someday soon.

Steak Conference

I had a fun time at Stake Conference today with Elder Moon and Elder Russell M. Ballard. Elder Ballard said recounted his experience at the inauguration with Pres. Uchdorf. He said it was an unprecedentedly amazing experience. He said that the church is politically neutral. Then he said that "no matter what our party affliction..." that got a laugh, that we should all support and pray for our new president. It felt a little like 1978, I have to say. He also talked a lot about the economy and quoted at length Pres. Hincley's 1998 talk about preparing for economic hardship. In the afternoon I heard a talk on KBYU from Ezra Taft Benson, maybe from the '60s or '70s about communism. Not sure why they chose to broadcast that one.

We went to Goblin Valley yestreen. Really incredible. The drive was half the fun. But Goblin Valley was such an immanent experience. There are no trails so the kids can basically go anywhere and you can see people from pretty far away. You can climb any of the goblin-like structures. If you fall, the ground is really soft. We finally started going barefoot.

Lula and Me

Lula and I are sitting with two laptops trying things out. She is quite savvy with Gmail chat and got me set up on it. We tried to chat with the Engsplunds, but they are probably in bed. We also took pictures for our Gmail profiles. Lula also made some awesome hot chocolate. She told me that you need to do it on the stove top because it doesn't taste as good when done in the microwave. Lu also showed me an amazing 12 year old yodeler on America's Got Talent.

Lara, your posts are amazing. Funny and fascinating. Keep it comin'. Last night we watched Confessions of a Teen-age Drama Queen. Very nice movie actually. The moral: even if you're not in New York, if you are happy you have New York with you all the time, or something like that?

I through my back out two weeks ago while taking Ceci and Moses for a walk. It has been plaguing me ever since. Went to Seattle last week for a gig with a solo viola set, and I toyed with not going because the kind of viola stuff I was doing is very physical. So after the concert last Sat. it was so bad I found it difficult to walk or stand and actually spent Sun-Tues in bed essentially. Mom has been doing basically everything for me. She's amazing.

I am now teaching a group of students that has a combination of cluelessness and touretz-esque compulsion about asking questions. Sometimes I will answer the same question three times in a row about something that's in a handout. Fun tho'.

Daddy Post-it

I was so proud of Daddy tonight. He performed a 25 minute piece called "Passage" (for piano and sax) he wrote a few years ago for his concerts in Istanbul. It was by turns startling, funny, moving, sweet, and odd in its periodicity--there were at least ten jumps in style, meter, tone, etc. without transition. Near the end, Daddy improvised a several minute long cannon/figured bass type thing. And when the piece ended, the audience stood and cheered. A well deserved standing ovation. Congrats, Daddy!

Congrats Daddy!

Daddy was just notified that is a finalist for the Herb Alpert award for composers given out by Cal Arts--he is one of 20 finalists and the award is 75K!!!!! He was nominated anonymously. As a finalist, he gets special consideration for an artist's residency at MacDowell, Ucross, Hedgebrook and the like. We all know that Daddy rocks--nice to see some one else give him the props he deserves.

Sunday Dinner

Hi Girls--This is Mom, posting on Dad's computer. I thought you all might be homesick for Sunday dinner, so here's a little run-down on the meal. First, I'll start with potatoes, since they're vegetarian, vegan even, so Liza could eat them. I got the recipe from thepioneerwoman.com, and they're called crash hot potatoes. Ingredients include red potatoes, olive oil, kosher salt, cracked pepper, and chives from Tamara Call's garden. They were a hit with the diners. Here's a close-up so you can really understand the crunchy kosherness of these delicious little pommes de terres.



Onto the salads--the green salad was mine, and included orange cherry tomatoes nestled among the greens. They were so sweet with almost no acidity, verging on too sweet, but residing just enough on the tomato-y side to make them perfect. Emily composed the gorgeous red tomato salad with two kinds of tomatoes, which you can see from the different shades of red. The more purpley deeper colored tomatoes were an heirloom variety from the Frandsen's garden and the more common looking tomato from the Farmers' Market. Again topped with Tamara's chives, olive oil, sea salt and cracked pepper. It was a delicious salad and I think we'll make another one for dinner tonight again.

Finally, the chicken, which I selected during a black-out at Albertson's. As Lula and Cecily stood sobbing, "Let's go home now!" I determined to find the last thing on my list and I felt my way through the meat section until I groped something that felt like a chicken. It felt fantastic! I couldn't tell what kind it was, or how much it was, but I decided to go out on a limb and purchase it anyway, and hope it wasn't 20 bucks. I got to the last working register (must have had some sort of back up power source) and bought my chicken (it was 7 bucks rather than the usual 5--but was a roaster and a little bigger than the normal birds I buy, and was also "all natural, no hormones, vegetarian fed, but not free-range --which would cost a lot more than seven.) Roasted the chicken for an hour at 400 degrees after liberally coating with coarse sea salt and cracked pepper. It was delish.

Finally, I have no pics of dessert, but Emily made summer pudding (berries and bread in a mold--beautiful and delicious), we had five varieties of ice cream, I made Grandma Eva's hot fudge sauce, and Liza made vegan brownies. Also, Liza played a movement from a Beethoven sonata on the piano, and she and Dad performed "Autumn Leaves" and "Angel Eyes"--she sang beautifully. Uncle Ray and Aunt Carol from Alberta were here, and Bonnie also stopped by. It was a lovely evening--we sat on the porch eating while it poured rain--nearly perfect but for the absence of our darling daughters.


xxoo,

Mom

All Quiet on the Western Front

Pretty quiet here w/o Eva and Ingrid. Cec and Lu are fairly settled in their new digs, although one of them usually manages to migrate upstairs during the night. Too cold or too scary or something down there. Moses is fun and funny as always, very upbeat for the most part. Mom is, I think, enjoying her new schedule. I am looking forward to seeing her new writing, although we are both keeping our work kind of under wraps for awhile. I am amazed at how creative and literary you all are. You all have a gift with words. Speaking of which, have you written any limericks or odes late, Ingrid? How is German coming along?