fox

a) I do still have many many spaces open in the Ask Me A Question In February sweepstakes. It's obviously okay that people haven't been banging down my door to ask questions, because the Post Every Day In February ship has apparently sailed, but.

b) I can only get DW about 30% of the time at work these days, so all my internetting is really in the evenings. Which are also, along with my weekends, pretty booked up for the time being. If it's not one thing it's another, and the other thing is generally something to do with the wedding. Whose smart idea was it to plan a wedding, anyway? [grouch] Last week in our metalworking class I flunked soldering, but last night I nailed it, so hey, I may be able to make a classy-looking ring for Himself after all. (Have I mentioned that we're making our own - in fact each other's - wedding rings? Because we are just that adorable/insufferable/ymtc? I'm enjoying learning, but that one I'll absolutely point out was his idea. A good idea, but.)

c) I thought the knot in my shoulder was making itself really really known, but just in the past few days actually the range of motion in my right arm has been a lot *worse* than before - Monday I couldn't even lift my elbow high enough to put my hand on my hip. I'm going to see the doctor tomorrow. Hopefully it's either nothing that needs a surgical solution, or something whose surgical solution is fast and easily-bounced-back-from (and can be done outpatient and/or on a Saturday).

d) To sum up: not dead, still getting married, hoping my right arm doesn't fall off. And how are all of you?

wintercreek asked for a post about vocal music, specifically mentioning your experiences singing for religious services.


So what can I say? I'm a singer, and most of what I sing is religious in nature, though I myself am not. My voice is best-suited as a soloist to earlyish music (in European terms), and what those guys were writing was - at least what we're still using of what they were writing is - generally sacred music, or musical settings of sacred texts. (As a choral singer there's more secular stuff out there, but I've still tended to be with groups that do older stuff that has demonstrated its appeal over time more often than newer stuff that, well, hasn't. Not never! But a new work by a modern composer still has as much of a chance of being a setting of a biblical text, or a poem by a religious poet like Hopkins or Donne, as of being a setting of a secular text or even - gasp - one written by the same composer who wrote the music. I'm afraid I'm thinking of Sir Paul McCartney's Ecce Cor Meum as an example of the very last. For pre-contemporary works, the most obvious example to me is Carmina Burana, which of course is not merely not-sacred but actually profane.)

( Lots of rambly background. )

Just as when I was singing in the Church of England, singing for the Catholics does involve leading a worship service in which I am not actually participating. I mean to say: there's not really a mechanical difference between singing parts of the Mass in a performance of, say, Bach's Mass in B Minor and in an actual Mass. Except that, non-mechanically, one is a performance and one is somebody's religious experience. I don't think I do my singing any differently in those different circumstances. When I'm in a chorus that's performing a work with a sacred text, I try to think about the composer's faith when I'm singing the words; I don't need to be a religious person as long as I can make the audience understand that the composer was a religious person. (Or not. Apparently, at least according to the program notes from our last concert, Verdi was a great atheist? But you'd never know it by his Requiem. So as long as I can make the audience believe that the composer was a religious person, then, it doesn't matter what they think about me.) (Somewhere back in my archive there's a post about Rachmaninov's Vespers, in which I make essentially that point about one of the bits that goes "aliluiya, aliluiya", and someone in the comments invoked Cleveland-area homeboy Marc Cohn, who, as all the world knows, wrote And she said "Tell me, are you a Christian, child?" And I said, "Ma'am, I am tonight.")

So it's the same with singing in a choir that's providing music for a church service. Sometimes I try to think about the composer's faith, and sometimes about the congregation's. I don't believe in the words I'm singing myself, but I don't have to, as long as I enrich the experience of those who do. We did a funeral a few months ago in which one of the hymns was to the tune of the Old Hundredth - you probably know it as "All People That on Earth do Dwell" - but with different words; the last verse began "I know that my Redeemer lives". And the thing is that even without being Catholic or in fact religious at all, I can recognize the important bits of the text and emphasize them in appropriate ways. I feel like that's musicianship just like knowing how to read and count and breathe and produce the right notes. ... I don't take Communion, obviously. And I never say the prayers.* In the C of E, when the psalm was spoken, I never spoke it. But I'll sing every note you put in front of me, because my job in that situation is to be a musician and a musical leader, not to be a religious leader. (Incidentally, those who are there to be religious leaders - i.e. the priests - read every word they're saying out of a book. I feel like if I know your liturgy by now, surely you must, and wouldn't it be more meaningful to your flock if you gave it by heart? Anyone can pray off a page. But hey: not my department, so I just sit up in the loft and wait for the next cue.)

( * )

Caught up with schoolwork and taking a break from work-work to let my eyes refocus for a minute, here is that age meme that's been going around, where you compare how your life was once to how it is now. kass gave me 25.

( I lived in: )


( I drove: )


( I was in a relationship with: )


( I feared: )


( I worked at: )


( I wanted to be: )

Today is my father's birthday.

( Other things. )

I will allow myself to do this meme for a very small set of reasons, or with a small set of rationales, or something. a) I got it from resonant, whom I don't see nearly enough of, so one does have to seize the moment. (Tangent: "seize" is one of those words I can seldom spell correctly on the first try.) b) I am feeling a little better after a two-, maybe two-and-a-half-day migraine - in retrospect I should have gone home when I started feeling a little cruddy Tuesday afternoon, but it was all the way until Wednesday afternoon before the nausea that kept me home on Wednesday had resolved itself into migraine awfulness, and today I was still fragile enough to want to do my work in the dark instead of in the office, so I did. Still: celebrate recovery by memeing, say I. c) Haven't posted yet in September, have I?, oh my goodness. d) I will still do at least ten minutes on the elliptical when I'm done here.

Therefore: ( questions about my home. )

Even missing #4, isn't that 61 questions?

Thanks to angevin for suggesting I look in EEBO - my previous researches had only found me sources back to about the turn of the 20th century, which wasn't helping w/r/t Herbert's original spelling etc. But ( lookie! )

So, as George intended, I will use the long s and I will capitalize nothing - hurrah! ... And I will probably abandon my semicolons and em-dashes. That's okay. But I will still substitute modern "than", because apparently that's where I draw the line.

I've been thinking for aaages about getting another tattoo - I'm not a much-decorated person, but I do have a Celtic knot on the outside of my right ankle, which I got on my 21st birthday when studying in Scotland (as well as six earrings, though I'm done piercing) - but I've never done it for the extremely good reason that I've never been able to decide what I wanted, or where.

But the past few days I can't get out of my head that what I want for the new tattoo is text, in an anklet - around my left ankle, I should think, because I don't want it to collide with the knot, which is about an inch across and lives about an inch above the anklebone, so it would be hard to get text all the way around that ankle without running into it. So the left ankle it is.

As for what text - I've been thinking about various things ("and all manner of thing shall be well"; "everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt"; "if you do not bring me a bouquet of these flowers in three days' time, I shall turn you to stone"), but what I keep coming back to is a poem by George Herbert, "A Wreath", which we sang a setting of in my chorus five years ago and which I love, love, love:

A wreathed garland of deserved praise,
Of praise deserved, unto thee I give,
I give to thee, who knowest all my wayes,
My crooked winding wayes, wherein I live,
Wherein I die, not live : for life is straight,
Straight as a line, and ever tends to thee,
To thee, who art more farre above deceit,
Then deceit seems above simplicitie.
Give me simplicitie, that I may live,
So live and like, that I may know thy wayes,
Know them and practise them : then shall I give
For this poore wreath, give thee a crown of praise.

And I've seen it printed in a wreath, see? Like this -


- which is how I would get it around my ankle in a circle. If I could work out how to do it. I think if I had the lines angled from bottom to top (or top to bottom), then the end of the last line could come in "before" the beginning of the first line ... couldn't it? I'm not doing well thinking of this thing in three dimensions. Maybe tomorrow I'll print out the lines and practice taping them to my leg to see if it works.

But for this one I do have an icon.

Day 1 - Pride. Seven great things about yourself.
Day 2 - Greed. Seven worldly material desires.

( Day 3 - Wrath. )


Day 4 - Sloth. Seven things you neglect to do.
Day 5 - Envy. Seven qualities you lack and covet.
Day 6 - Gluttony. Seven guilty pleasures.
Day 7 - Lust. Seven love secrets.

I've cribbed this meme from cordelia_v, on the grounds that the first topic is a good one for those of us who have been a little down on ourselves lately. I think the last one will be the most difficult, but who knows, maybe it will get me to finish my deadly-sins icon series? Only what color is "avarice"? (Green is, of course, taken.)

( Day 1 - Pride. )

Day 2 - Greed. Seven worldly material desires
Day 3 - Wrath. Seven things that piss you off.
Day 4 - Sloth. Seven things you neglect to do.
Day 5 - Envy. Seven qualities you lack and covet.
Day 6 - Gluttony. Seven guilty pleasures.
Day 7 - Lust. Seven love secrets.

I feel like I saw this once a long time ago. Here it is again.

( What do you call ... )

I am not depressed. Or if I am, it's in an estar kind of way and not a ser kind of way, and it will no doubt recede.

In the meantime, I'm going to bed early. Right now it seems like the best use of my time.