A Poem for My Father--

Shortly before Thanksgiving, while working with my organizer lady, I had a profound emotional experience; the next day I read in Diana Glyer’s The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community about Owen Barfield writing a poem for C.S. Lewis on the first anniversary of his death and it struck me that I should write about what happened the day before. This is the result:



Yesterday
in sorting, shifting house
I came upon my dead father's watch, a wristwatch
with large face and metal band
that marked it as of a certain time
in marking time

In my throat there caught and formed a swelling egg of grief, of loss

Brushing lightly across the well of tears
I staved them off
suppressed them as inconvenient
for I was working and not alone

Please, I pray, do not let this be a final dismissal
of his import or my gratitude

He was as large as life: expansive and wise
fixed and blindered
quick to laugh and quick to glare
too smart by half and always giving credit where perhaps little credit was due

I am his true child

I will miss him until Heaven.


November 15, 2007 © Lynn Maudlin, all rights reserved

Oliver Sacks' Brain

One of the most amazing stories from Oliver Sacks' book, An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales, is "To See And Not See" and it gives us a glimpse into the remarkable miracle of ordinary, garden variety, everyday sight. Couple that with Dr. Paul Brand's observations from The Gift of Pain (essentially a re-release of Pain, The Gift Nobody Wants) and you suddenly realize that virtually everything you know --or think you know-- is processed by an organ without any senses of its own, encased in a dark box. And, if you think about it too long, it really freaks you out a bit...

Part of the fun of working with Jeremy in mixing the live House of Bread recordings was growing to recognize all the more how differently we process sound and memory, memory of music and intervals. An example: Rowena from our church just died unexpectedly but, all things considered, mercifully-- her daughters and some friends came to church on Sunday and instead of a sermon Fr. C gave us the opportunity to stand up and share (including memories from a week earlier when she was in church and had a word about someone feeling "sad - but not depressed") and as we drew to a close he announced, "Lynn is going to sing a song she wrote and then we'll continue with the creed." Happily Jeremy & Buzz stood up with me because this was a complete surprise and while I was fairly sure I'd remember the lyrics (and did), I was also pretty sure I didn't remember the chords (!!! - stop laughing. I've written about 400 songs and play 10 songs every Sunday w/the worship team; I try not to memorize them) - happily Jeremy remembers the intervals and he filled in where I fell apart.


Better yet, I think only the three of us were aware, not the family and congregation. So I can't begin to explain how I memorize (mostly repetition, I think) versus how Jeremy simply remembers. He hears the tempering of instruments and therefore recognizes the key in which a piece is played; I transposed one of my songs one Sunday morning and he said, "ah, that's good, it sounds better in A." I simply can't imagine hearing that way; the only way I know if someone has changed the key on something I'm singing is if it moves it out of my range.

Next: The Female Brain

Note: The very cool brain image at the top of this entry is by Sven Geier; he works for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and creates cool fractal art. Thanks, Sven!

Loscon Weekend Enchilada

Three Days to Never: A Novel

The day after Thanksgiving for Los Angeles science fiction and fantasy fans means Loscon and a lovely holiday tradition it is, too, although it does get in the way of any plans for out-of-town Thanksgiving events. I got to enjoy my annual dinner with Tim and Serena Powers (blatant link to most recent novel, above) on Friday night which was really delightful. We have conversations that run in about 14 disparate directions and we never quite finish any of them, so there's always more to talk about. I love these guys: smart, funny, and always thought-provoking. I gave Tim a copy of Diana's book The Company They Keep which he proceeded to stay up late reading - I know because I was sitting in the Green Room with Diana the next day when Tim walked in and said, "I was reading your book last night, I'm about a third of the way through--"

Diana was delighted ("Tim Powers is reading my book!") but I knew he would really enjoy it: good scholarship, solid connections, well-written, engaging - and it's about C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams (and the other 16 Inklings, too) - what's not to like?!

Karen Willson came in and joined us during the break between the end of the Inklings panel (Diana Glyer, David Bratman, Tim Powers, Mark Ferrari, and another author (and librarian!) whose name I have blanked on; really excellent) and my concert. I was looking through my folder of "Songs Not Inappropriate for SF Concerts" and trying to decide what I would sing and she said, "sing to me! Pick songs you'd like me to hear," which made for an interesting selection. Started with "I Gotta Kill My Clone," which people really enjoy ("I caught her dating my boyfriend - I think he may prefer to be with her..."), then "High Frontier" - the song I wrote a week after the Columbia shuttle tragedy. If I'm remembering right I then sang "Difficult Drinks" and "The Fire Says Yes" which I consider sort of a "graying of fandom" song ("In the still of the night I curl up with a book but I'd rather be curled up with you--") and then "Come In, Houston," "Left Turn Love," and closing with "Emotional Junkie."

It was really fun for me that Dr. James Robinson, the musical guest of honor, did a combination concert/explanation performance following mine. I didn't know him or his work and he's delightful and very funny!

I didn't get to as much programming as I'd like and I drove home Saturday night so I could be at church Sunday a.m., thereby missing John Hertz and Tom Veal's infamous PrimeTime Party (starts at 1:00 a.m. and runs until 7:00 a.m.; it's a lot of fun) - but perhaps next year I'll make my excuses at church and stay for the whole enchilada.

More Engineering, from the Artist side...

What prompted me to write this post (and the previous) was the degree of satisfaction I got from doing the hands-on mix of a rather complicated song. This particular singer was more oriented toward performing in the room rather than remembering we were capturing the performance via the microphones (funny, because he's very good at being on-mike in the worship team setting). So he dropped in and out in funny ways related to when he turned his face toward another 'character' - these things need to be corrected, or at least minimized, in the mixing process. This particular song also had an internal narration and a choral section, so at some point in the song every microphone needed to be turned up to specific levels, which would change and shift throughout the song, but because of the pedal clunk of the live piano sound (see previous entry) I couldn't leave the microphones on through the whole song or there was too much bleed-through.

And it's really fun for me to figure out what I need to do and create a mental road map of the work and then do it all in live time - very exciting! And I really don't know why it's exciting to me. Hmmmmm.

Now the challenge is learning to be content with the reality of its massive imperfections because live performance standards are quite different from studio performance standards, and understandably so: there's so much energy in live performance that a clunker of pitch goes by and is quickly forgotten - but you capture a recording of the moment and you can listen to it over and over and over again... *sigh*.

This is definitely "live" and I need to be okay with that...

Engineer Lynn - or Soundmixing

As a singer/songwriter, I've spent a fair amount of time in professional recording studios and I've watched a lot of mixing go down. Twenty-four tracks, flying faders, amazing punches - shoot, we even did a genuine reverse cymbal crash on my album (nowadays I suppose it would all be done digitally; can you tell I'm practicing to get crotchedty? Give me another 30 years and I'll have it down--). But I've not done much mixing myself.

I've been working with Jeremy (young brilliant musician and computer wiz, on the worship team together) on mixing the live sound from the performance of House of Bread so that we can have a reasonably good sound recording (I don't anticipate a wide release but at least for the folks involved and other churches interested in it, etc.). We're working with the little eight-track hard drive recorder that Jeremy used to capture the performance.

First fun part: the grand piano had a problem with the sustain pedal; this wasn't particularly noticeable in the room and the dynamics of performance are such that folks don't really notice it - they're more caught up in the story and the singers and the faces and the moment rather than an occasional soft *clunk*. But despite our best efforts on the day to minimize the clunking sound, the recorded track is full of it. And, being the sustain pedal, it's not even "in time" with the music (!!). So I re-recorded all the piano. This wouldn't be so hard in a studio setting but with a live performance where I was "accompanying" singers (allowing them to shift timings, etc., rather than driving the songs and forcing them to fit with the piano) it was a bit of a challenge.

Complicated by the fact we had 7 open mikes picking up room sound. Fine, we shut down the mikes we don't need at any given moment but it still leaves the singer's microphone with the original piano track audible in the background. This means I have to try and play the replacement keyboard pretty much the same way I played it live. Ha! Actually, that wasn't nearly so hard as I expected - Jeremy would give me the sound of the (new) keyboard and the original tracks and sometimes I needed more vocal and sometimes I needed more of the original piano. A few of the tracks were particularly "floaty" but even those I was able to re-record with surprisingly little difficulty.

The Passage of Time--

I had no idea it had been so long since I'd posted here, amazing--

This has been a challenging year: sorting through paperwork and junk, anticipating a move. Very hard when you've lived there for 29 years and you have a hard time with paper and organization in the first place-- ACK!!! (runs screaming from the room). And I've discovered --well, recognized-- that my computer is the Tar Baby and I'll go in and spend hours happily working away, finding something to make me feel "productive," when in fact I'm futzing.

bleah.

Of course, today is okay because I am in fact on holiday so I can't possibly go work on organizing my house or throwing stuff away! Good excuse to post here... pray for me, if you think of it.

Hollywood Bowling

I took my granddaughter, nearly 8 years old, to the Hollywood Bowl last night. I expected my grandson to come as well but he declined. He is not yet 6 and still a bit young to impose Great Art upon him, but the time will come when I think we (his parents and I) shouldn't take "no, I'd rather stay home and play on the computer with my dad" as a suitable option. I believe his father has introduced him to "City of Heroes"...

So the program was The Grand Tour: Mozart in Vienna and it was delightful. I was surprised that the Five Contradances only got a single iteration (they're very short, played once through) - is that typical? Obviously not if one were dancing, but for concert performances? Perhaps someone else will know the answer and leave a comment.

I was not familiar with the pianist, Shai Wosner, but he was very good at the Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor - a piece that requires very fast hands. One of the nice things about the big screens put up now at the Hollywood Bowl is the close-ups shown and fast hands are shown to good effect!

Courtney loves the violins; she was very excited about hearing the violins again. I asked her as we drove out, "would you like to play violin?" and she said no, she'd like to play the piano (!!) - I found that very curious - I guess I can't entirely relate to the idea of loving an instrument, as a child, and not wanting to learn how to play it... hmmm.

The conductor Nicholas McGegan was good fun, I've not seen him before. He was very engaged with the music and his enthusiasm was infectious. He also wasn't put out by people applauding between movements of the symphony (No. 41, "Jupiter") and occasionally you'll see the eye-rolling "how can I be playing for these peasants?" kind of attitude.

I was also very impressed with the L.A. Phil's new Principal Oboe, Ariana Ghez. As many of you know, I have extensive first hand experience of excellent oboists!

I really love these concert trips with Courtney. At home she bounces around almost endlessly, but she behaves beautifully in these settings. Her questions are soft and she tries to wait until later (!!). She does bounce along with the music some, but that's allowed, right? (it had better be - what a sad world if bouncing along to the music wasn't allowable).