Culture – Page 55 – Into the Woods

The dropouts: Who will they be this time?

Tintern Abbey in Wales [Wikipedia]

I realize that there’s a long tradition of making facile comparisons to one’s own time and the fall of Rome. Still…

From History of Rome, Michael Grant, Scribners, 1978:

“In the vain hope, then, of keeping their armies in the field, the imperial authorities ruined the poor and alienated the rich. They also alienated and then very largely destroyed the solid segment of the population that came in between — the middle class…. But the external invasions and internal rebellions of the third century A.D. had dealt this middle class terrible physical blows, while the accompanying monetary inflation caused their endowments to vanish altogether…. The cities of the empire, their public work programs cut to nothing or severely restricted, began to assume a thoroughly dilapidated appearance; and then in the fourth and fifth centuries, despite contrary efforts by Julian and others, their position still continued to worsen, and the old urban civilization, especially in the West, plunged into a sharp decline….

“So throughout the last two centuries of the Roman West there was an ever-deepening loss of personal freedom and well-being for all except the very prosperous and powerful…. The authorities sought to impose maximum regimentation, to pay for the army and prop up the imperial structure. And yet all they thereby achieved was to hasten the ruin of what they wanted to preserve, by destroying the individual loyalty and initiative that alone could have achieved its preservation….

“There were also various other causes of the downfall of the western empire, secondary and peripheral, though not altogether unimportant. One of these was the proliferation of dropouts who refused to participate in communal and public life. There were many people who found the social and economic situation intolerable and in consequence went underground and became the enemies of society. A large number of them became hermits and monks and nuns, who abandoned the company of their fellow human beings….”

I’ve asked several friends for their thoughts on what form the dropout phenomenon might take this time. The social and economic dislocations of the 1970s led to the hippy and communal movements, and many people (including me), remember that period and were influenced by it. Whatever the shape of the new dropout movement, a neighbor pointed out two attributes that I’m sure we can count on. The new dropouts will be connected by the Internet, and they will be green, very green.

While we're on the subject…

Sean Jackson: Superman visits Trinity Church Wall Street (Youtube)

Don’t worry … this is not going to turn into an organ blog. It’s just that I’ve been thinking a lot about organ installations because I’m in the middle of making tricky decisions about where the wiring and speakers will go for the electronic organ in my new house. In the future, I’ll post details about my plans for a digitally sampled organ, as well as an analog organ console, in my house. I fully intend to have big-organ sound in the house like that in the Sean Jackson video above.

The interesting thing about the organ in the Sean Jackson video above is that this is not a wind instrument. It’s a new electronic organ built by Marshall & Ogletree, pushing digitally sampled electronic organs to a new level. The organ at Trinity Church on Wall Street was ruined by ash and smoke when the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11, 2001, and the organ was replaced, at least temporarily, by the Marshall & Ogletree organ.

A nice thing about the people at Trinity Church is that they’re not persnickety about what kind of music is played on their organ. Though the Mighty Wurlitzer has its place, these church-type instruments are extremely well suited to grand motion pictures music. The more this kind of music is played on the big classical (as opposed to theater) organs, the more people will regain an interest in listening to the organ.

Below: a very good church organist in New Jersey:

When You Wish Upon a Star — played with impeccable taste (Youtube)

Theme from Masterpiece Theater (Youtube)

Giving amateurs a chance

Ron Reseigh (who is not an amateur) at the Berkeley Wurlitzer

I’ve been thinking all day about amateur musicians and things people (and communities) can do to encourage amateur musicianship.

When I was in San Francisco, for a while I was member of the Northern California Theater Organ Society, which owns and maintains the large Wurlitzer organ at the Berkeley Community Theater. Once a month, on a Sunday, the society has an “open console” during the afternoon, and anyone who would like to play the organ can play it. Here’s a Youtube link of Ron Reseigh playing “Alone Again (Naturally)” on the Berkeley Wurlitzer.

I have played this organ. It’s quite an instrument, and not surprisingly it’s the biggest organ I’ve ever played. Most communities are notorious for being stingy with organs. Even though an entire church bought and maintains an organ, the organist usually keeps the key and won’t let anyone touch it. I even remember a newspaper story from the 1970s about a “phantom organist” who would break into churches at night to play the organ. The Mighty Wurlitzer is no snob. It will respond equally and faithfully to whoever touches the keys.

I totally understand the phantom organist. And I also want to chide those who sometimes refer mockingly to “the People’s Republic of Berkeley.” Where else do the common people — amateurs — get to touch the King of Instruments?

And since I’m sitting here in the woods missing the Berkeley Wurlitzer, here’s Mark Herman (also not an amateur) playing it.

Homemade music

Just now on Facebook, there is a thing going around in which people are supposed to write 25 random things about themselves. An old friend of mine did this, and one of the random things about him is that he used to play an instrument, but because of an abusive band director and snobbish bandmates, he stopped. He says he still has the urge to throw a French horn out a high window and watch it smash. Thus for as long as I have known him, I have never had the pleasure of hearing him play.

Over the past six or eight decades, something has changed in our collective musical culture, and something of great value has been lost. It used to be that people were encouraged to play, and to practice, as amateur musicians. Now we scorn them and humiliate them. How many people have stopped playing an instrument altogether once they realize (or are cruelly told) that they’ll never be a professional?

It used to be that the prettiest face anyone ever saw was the prettiest face in their little village. Now, thanks to the media, every face must be compared with world-class beauty. Recording technology is a great gift and a terrible humiliation at the same time: We can hear the best music that the world has to offer, but it’s that impossible standard by which amateurs are judged.

The word “amateur” itself has taken on a certain cruel connotation. It comes to us from French and Latin, of course, and it just means that someone loves something. But now the word means dabbler, or inferior. It’s an insult.

Thank goodness we don’t belittle people who cook at home, or insult them by referring to them as amateurs. The culture of home cooking actually is healthy. We encourage it. We are eager to sample what other people have made. We exchange techniques and recipes. Thanks to the New Frugality maybe we’ll even have a renaissance of cooking at home.

I’m afraid that if homemade music ever has a renaissance, it will begin with defiance. We amateur musicians must begin by putting our foot down and declare that we will not let anyone’s judgment — including our own — deprive us of the joy of making music.

What they're eating in the south of France #5

This is a guest column by Anivid, who lives in the South of France and who also took these photos in markets near her home.

By Anivid

Hello Everybody,

We’re here on a French town market in the South. Even though it’s January, it’s not extremely cold – around 48° Fahrenheit. The time of the day is early in the morning, where the customers haven’t yet started to arrive. The marchandises (fruit, vegetable & especially for this week: honey) are nicely presented – a quality, I personally am very fond of. It’s not only about finding something edible to a fair price – it’s also about esthetics – you first eat with the eyes, then the mouth & last the stomach – all three have to be given their share of attention & consideration 😉 E.g. the lettuce is presented in a nice row, the big tomatoes (called Tomato de Boeuf), are sliced into halves for the customers to enjoy the beautifully arranged chambers inside, with the intersections covered with film. There’s shown respect for the country’s products! Perhaps it’s better saying the countries’ products, as e.g. the egg-plant (aubergine) and the squash (courgette) are from northern Spain (marked: ESP), whereas the radish (radis), radicchio = Belgian endive (trévise = chicorée rouge, where the roots are used for “coffee”. Do you know chicory coffee in the States ??, in Europe we knew it during WWII, and in France it became a specialty we still know ;-), and tomato are from P.O. our departement (66) Pyrénées-Orientales.

You see, the northern part of Spain (South Catalonia), and the southern part of France (North Catalonia) once belonged together, but the Treaty of the Pyrenees 1659 gave one part to France and another to Spain (not to speak about an enclave in France, called Llivia, which became Spanish 😉 A little earlier Andorra had become a co-principality with the French President and the Monsignore on Sicily as co-princes – Andorra is situated at the foot of département Pyrénées-Orientales 😉 We have a lot of such historically based constructions in Europe. All this happened in the late Medieval Ages. Earlier, around 1100-1300 same landscapes together with Provence and the Balearic Islands belonged to a kingdom called, the Kingdom of Mallorca, and further back, in the Antiquity, the romans were here. Hannibal & the elephants crossed the Pyrénées before they finally came to the Alps. The road they made is still here 😉

Enough history ??

We’ll go back to the market.

There being a whole booth with honey, the light, creamy sort as well as the darker, almost liquid sort – and here on the honey booth we can see the two official languages in the P.O. represented: French (miel) and Catalan (mel). Catalan is a specific language totally different from both French and Spanish. One can learn a lot by a little trip to the market – eh ? I assume you know all the products over-there, also the avocado, the kiwifruit, the artichoke (artichaut), the pumpkin (potiron), the broccoli, and the fenugreek (fenugrec).

Voila ! – what are you saying ??

Sustainability festival

The local Hare Krishna community has taken a strong leadership role in sustainable and alternative living. Today they had an all-day “Local Sustainability Festival” at their temple near Sandy Ridge, about eight miles from my place. There were speakers on gardening, rainwater harvesting, farming with draft animals, and seed-saving techniques. Stokes County’s Hare Krishna community has been here since, I think, the 1980s. Most of them have settled in a beautiful little valley well away from the main roads.

Livestock

One of the sessions on sustainable farming

The end of an American (and Carolina) tradition

One of my two Carolina Porch Rockers, on my back deck

The North Carolina company that made the famous Kennedy Rockers is going out of business. Last month, the P&P Chair Co. of Asheboro, North Carolina, said that it’s closing after 82 years. Partly it was the recession, and partly it was the death of Bill Page Jr., son of one of the founders of the company.

John F. Kennedy bought some of P&P’s rocking chairs in 1955 after Kennedy’s doctor recommended the chairs for Kennedy’s back. The doctor’s belief, the story goes, was that the rocking chair helped relax the back muscles because it kept the muscles in motion. The chairs became famous when Kennedy became president and took one of the chairs to the Oval Office in the White House. The chair has often been called the most famous chair in America. My grandmother had one of these chairs.

There were two basic models — the indoor chair with a woven seat and back, and the porch rocker. The chairs are identical except for the seat and back.

About 10 years ago, I wanted to buy rocking chairs as a gift to my mother, for her porch. When I told my older sister that I was looking for heirloom-quality rockers and asked her what I should buy, she responded immediately that I should get the Carolina Porch Rocker from P&P. She knew, though I did not, that the Carolina Porch Rocker was the same chair as the Kennedy rocker. Before I started construction on my new house, my mother let me know that she was giving the chairs back to me for the new house.

The chairs really are made to last a lifetime or longer. My chairs have a bit of patina from sitting on a porch, but they’re just as tight and sturdy as when they were new. All these chairs have the P&P label stamped underneath the chair’s arm. The chairs were never cheap, and though they’re not rare, I imagine that their value just went up considerably because of P&P’s closing. I’m even thinking of permanently bringing one of my chairs indoors to sit near the fireplace.

The P&P stamp on one of my chairs

John F. Kennedy in a Kennedy Rocker

William Page Jr., who died in November (AP)

I’m lucky to have two of these chairs. They are symbols of a different era, and trophies from North Carolina’s lost golden age of manufacturing.

A nice carpenter gothic

This is Rockford Methodist Church, built in 1913. It’s in the little town of Rockford, close to the Yadkin River. Note the chimney. Not all old wooden churches of this vintage have chimneys. I have not been inside this church, so I don’t know what kind of stove might be, or might have been, inside.

Lady Windermere's Fan

Have you ever been to a high school drama production that wasn’t fun? I thought not. What’s that? Some of you say you haven’t been to a high school drama production? Then you have missed an important piece of Americana.

The local high school did “Lady Windermere’s Fan,” and a young neighbor who had the role of Lady Plymdale invited me to go.

What magic, to be so young, rather the the Wildean old curmudgeon that some of us are.

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

— Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan

Where late the sweet birds sang

Early fall has very quickly become middle fall. Though these pear trees up the road still have most of their leaves, the leaves on the trees in the woods are turning brown and falling. Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

A bare, ruin’d choir of woods below my house

A briar berry

A dried weed

That time of year thou mayst behold thriving turnips and mustard.

Something black and wicked tiptoes through the turnips. A Lily cat?

My house seen from the woods

My front door. I now have a shiny new doorkey to jingle in my pocket.

These two shots of the house show some of the angles that made the house so tricky to build.

The winter wind will whistle around these corners in a very gothic sort of way.

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

— William Shakespeare