Forty Five

Forty Four wound up being a very good year.  Both Bella and Isaac have taken such incredible leaps in the past year:  Isaac working on his reading, his math, and generally growing into big-boyness.  Bella with her new Synchro club, and being a peaceful, smart 4th grader.  Her kindness and serenity amazes me every day...  even when she is pulled into drama with Isaac.

I supported Pamela's new business, and have been proud to see her out in the world connecting with people and making plans.

My work was wonderful this year - No huge dramas, and a lot of emerging work in areas that I have been laying seeds for years.  I made a good amount of money, and signed up work that will have it increase a bit next year...   which I'll need to fix the leaks in the shower.  I bought an ownership stake in my company too, but don't think we'll be selling anytime REAL soon.

I got two couples married in my 44th year.  I read a LOT of books and saw a LOT of movies.  I played a lot of cards, and built a lot of Legos.  I cuddled my dogs.

I wasn't as recreationally creative in 44 as I have been in other years - I didn't blog nearly as much, I didn't write a piece of music, I barely worked on languages...   I didn't play my drums as much as I had hoped (but maybe I need to move them to the basement, so that I'm less self conscious about the "whump whump whump" audible throughout the house.

I did exercise, and actually got into running - I'd say I ran almost 50 miles in my 44th year, which is 50 more than I ran in my 43rd.  In my 44th year, we got into climbing the rock wall at REI.

As a gift, the elections turned out in a way that pleased me, though I confess I didn't do a lot of volunteering or phone banking or even donating...  But I still felt good about it.

Not a lot of regrets in 44.  I'm looking forward to 45 being pretty great too.

That old devil perception...

I had an amazing moment tonight with Isaac as we were lying in bed:

He asked "what's a frown upside down?"  I answered "A smile!"  He asked "What's a SMILE upside down?"  I answered  "a frown".  He then asked "What's a frown halfway to a smile?"

I thought and said, "I think it's just a straight line mouth"

He said "No...  it's a moon".

And what hit me about this is that as we were talking about this whole smiles thing, we had a fundamentally different IDEA of how that smile was turning upside down:  I saw it like a line bent upwards, straighening, then bending downwards.  He saw it as a fixed crescent, that rotates to turn upside down, so if you stop halfway, it's a moon.

What it told me was that sometimes you can agree on a starting point, and an ending point, but have a completely different way of getting from A to B:  If Isaac hadn't asked me about the "half way", I'd never have known we weren't thinking of the same thing...

I know it's really a minor thing, but it really took me aback in a good way and gave me some insight into how people brains work differently, and how important it is to understand the process.

Choreographers

Bella has been listening to my music... a LOT.  As she's been walking through the house with my old tracks blasting on the iPad, I've caught snippets of songs I haven't heard for years...  so it got me to pull a playlist together and listen to some of this stuff.

From 1989-1993 I did a number of pieces of music for choreographers - first for my old roommate in the French house, then for others...   In all I did music for 5 major works - the first was only 8 minutes, the middle three were about 20-30 min, but my last was over an hour.

As I listen to this music, I'm pretty amazed at what I pulled off.  This was all just done in my spare bedroom direct to DAT, a wall of synths with me riding the knobs and levels as it went.  It really was a performance.  It's not all brilliant - I'd say that each piece has at least 15 minutes of really good stuff, and 10 minutes of "ok".  Some of it had to do with trying to get to a time the choreographer wanted, so there's some stretching...   Also, because the choreographers were getting a lot of music for no money, they didn't really edit or push me to fill out the lighter bits...

I was very influenced by David Van Tieghem, who worked with Laurie Anderson, and did two very good instrumental albums of music adapted from dancepieces for Twyla Tharp.   The influence is strong, but the pieces weren't derivative, at least.  They all sound like ME.

But listening also got me a bit sad:  In almost all cases, I worked very hard on the music, only to have the choreographer turn it into an improv movement piece:  In each case, I saw the premier, was happy to see a few "coincidental" moments where the body was thrown down right on a big "boom" in the music...   only to have that moment not happen at all the next night.  In fact, in once case, the dancer threw himself down to the ground in a very similar manner, but a solid two beats AFTER the big boom, which made it feel like a mistake.

I confess I never truly understood the language of dance, but it seemed to me that the movement could have been matched better - or "choreographed" a little better.  Maybe the dancer was doing an "echo" movement...   But each time, I figured "maybe next time".  

But what broke me was the hour long piece - it was huge and ambitious - I was writing tons of music, and when I arrived, a few things happened:  First, the facility wouldn't let me manually cue the tapes - they wanted me to lay it all down onto one long tape.  But they had very poor facilities, so the process added a layer of hiss to the music, and their techs couldn't reduce it.  So it didn't sound as good as I wanted.

But worse, the choreographer was having massive issues with writer's block, and she made an 11th hour decision to abandon her choreography and turn it into an improv:  The problem is that this was with 15 dancers of varying skill, trying to tell a narrative story, filling up an hour of time across 10 pieces of music I had written. 

The premier night, I was sitting in the sound booth hearing my music with hiss on the top, watching 15 dancers MAKING CRAP UP for a full hour.  I had worked so hard on this, to have it come out so poorly, it was just heartbreaking.  

After that, I made myself unavailable for this work:  a few chorographers called me up with ideas, but I begged it off.  And the choreographer of that last piece, apparently oblivious to my disappointment, left me a lot of messages for more dances.  I never returned the calls.  In general, when it comes to music for dance, I liked the music I wrote for the dance a lot more than I liked the end result.  After five times, I figured it was time to move on.  

But I have been enjoying listening to the music again.  It's good stuff.

Three of Four

Of the last four weddings I have attended, three of them were officiated by me.  The latest was just yesterday, at a beautiful small church in rural southeastern MN, just the couple and their parents (and Pamela).  It was a beautiful space - with a wood stove right in the middle of the room, and oil lamps and candelabras providing the light along with the setting sun.  It was a crisp fall day, with a pure blue sky.

The couple (who are keeping this under their hats for now, so will remain unnamed) trusted me to write the ceremony and provide some vows, which they loved.

As I reflect, I'm so grateful to Paul and Melissa Olson, who asked me 4 years ago to get ordained and perform their ceremony - it was in a field near New Ulm, another beautiful rural setting...   I remember being out to dinner with them, when they were about to ask a sensitive question...  I was SURE they wanted me in their ceremony (though knowing how any brothers Paul had, I figured I would be far back in the line).  When they asked if I would perform the ceremony, I said YES without a second thought.  It just seemed right.  Geek that I am, I read the ceremony off of my white Amazon Kindle.

My talent lay dormant for 4 years, but then my friends Gregg and Rachel had me do their wedding late summer in a planetarium in Philadelphia.  This one had a lot of Jewish tradition in it, which was fun to learn about, and I had to wrangle a good dozen speakers...  AND we did the glass breaking...  it was wonderful.

And now to have done one more in just a few months...  now it's strange, but I'm thinking "yes, this is a thing I do now" - I'm just expecting someone else to ask.

I feel I'm actually pretty good at this - I love to write (as you know), and I am not shy in front of a crowd...  and I also like to create a service that is very personal to the couple - I would never want to be one of those priests who just read the same service over and over...  Not that I'll have that risk - it's not everyone who wants an agnostic geek to perform their wedding.  I'm just happy that there are 3 couples (so far) who DID.

And I'm pretty sure I would have done a great job on the 4th wedding, if only Erik had asked.  But as consolation, I did get to stand on that stage as one of his "best guys", so it was worth it.

The other fun thing to consider:  My kids are growing up knowing that a person can pretty much do anything:  Write music?  Climb mountains?  Help doctors?  Marry people?  Sure, I can do that.  And so can they, someday.