Kurt Knecht

The Christian Artist: Genesis

2012-02-23T21:12:00.003-06:00

A few events have occurred over the past few weeks that have shown me that there is a need to address some of the issues surrounding what it means to be a Christian artist in contemporary society. As I turned my mind toward the issue, I thought a good place to begin covering the subject would be some short essays on what we can learn about the arts from the Bible.

In Genesis we see the entire human condition portrayed in story. If biblical scholarship has taught us anything, it is that these stories were passed down through generations, told around campfires, and recounted when tucking children in at night - in much the same way as they are today. Of course, one of the well-known features of the Hebrew Scriptures is the way that they unabashedly present their heroes’ faults while making a spiritual point. If we set aside theological controversies over how the Bible was written and consider the artistic and creative aspect, the boldness with which the stories are conveyed is striking. Is there a church today where a pastor or priest gets up for the sermon and says, “For you spiritual edification today, I’m going to tell you a little story about…

Murdering members of your family (Cain and Abel)
Incest (Noah – drunk with his son, Lot – drunk once with each daughter)
Xenophobia and threatened rape (Sodom)
Sex with what you thought was a prostitute but turned out to be your daughter-in-law (Judah and Tamar)
Lying about idols that you’ve stolen, hiding them under your saddle bags, and telling your father that you can’t get up because you’re having your period (Rachel)
A jealous wife buying a night of sex with her husband from her sister wife for the price of some magical mandrake roots (Leah)

The reason that this doesn’t happen in a sermon is that many of the more sordid details of these stories are not age appropriate for the children that are often present during worship services. That the stories exist suggests to me that there is a place where we can address the full human experience in an artistic fashion. When we tell children about Noah, we focus on the animals and the ark. We tend to skip that bit where the world is fresh and new, and Noah decides to imitate his father Adam by messing it up again. Noah is given a fresh start, and the first thing he does is get drunk and have some sort of sexual encounter with his son. The point is easy to grasp. We are messed up and in great need of God. Even when we get a fresh start, we mess up in horrifying ways. God still looks after us.

If the Bible is not afraid to portray the human condition in its deepest darkness, the Christian artist should be allowed a place to portray some of the same issues. I think that the distinction is whether or not you are portraying sin in a way that glorifies and encourages it. At the same time, we have to keep in mind that Genesis is not written like a TV sitcom. The stories are often presented without commentary. The moral point is not underlined for us. This suggests to me that we can make room for artistic endeavors that portray the human experience without being overly didactic.

In some ways, the Christian artist has an advantageous framework from which to work. We don’t pretend about the depth of human wickedness. Since even the parts of us that we like to think of as “good” are in desperate need of the redeeming work of Jesus, we can boldly portray the evil that is lurking in our own person without playing around like it’s not there. We trust that in the end, our sin will be redeemed by the work done for us on the cross. That sin includes not only our lust and murder, but also our religious intentions and charity. As the Psalmist says, “before you, no one living is righteous.” If Genesis is written with such bold artistic freedom, we need to make room for the same sort of artistic freedom in our own creative work.

Maybe Go Tell It is having a comeback

2012-02-23T09:00:00.002-06:00

Here's a lovely performance that popped up by the East Carolina University Chamber singers.

L'incorinazione di Poppea and censorship

2012-02-22T00:22:00.002-06:00

This week, the Lincoln Public Schools decided not to send students to see the University’s opera production because it was deemed too controversial. Of course, some people are up in arms about censorship etc. Normally, I’m opposed to censorship, but I’m not sure that this is a case of undue infringement of rights.

In case you are wondering, the controversial opera is the 1642 masterpiece by Claudio Monteverdi L’incorinazione di Poppea. It covers Poppea’s rise to the position of Empress, the divorce and banishment of Ottavia, and Nero’s philandering. (The part where Nero eventually kicks her in the stomach and kills her is conveniently left out.) To be sure, the opera is very graphic. Perhaps one of the most explicit scenes occurs when Nero and the poet Lucan sing about a very specific sexual act with references to le petite mort accompanied by very descriptive music and Nero reaching a climax while Lucan is carrying on about Poppea’s mouth drawing pearls out of the Arabian sea. The scene is as shocking today as it was almost 400 years ago.

Now, the 16th and 17th centuries were no strangers to ribald humor and explicit material in both popular music and in art music. You do have to know the “code” to understand some of it, but once you do, seemingly innocent songs can become transformed into surprisingly bawdy depictions of intimacy. In many ways, it makes me think that we are much more prudish in contemporary society than they were back then. I’ve often pondered how many high schools sing sexually explicit madrigals without understanding the real meaning. I’ve wondered why they allow Shakespeare and come to the conclusion that most of the references are lost on younger children. To think that I read this in 9th grade at a Christian school!

SAMPSON
True; and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall: therefore I will push Montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall.
GREGORY
The quarrel is between our masters and us their men.
SAMPSON
'Tis all one, I will show myself a tyrant: when I have fought with the men, I will be cruel with the maids, and cut off their heads.
GREGORY
The heads of the maids?
SAMPSON
Ay, the heads of the maids, or their maidenheads, take it in what sense thou wilt.

Then again, we have plenty of sexually explicit lyrics in our popular music today. So, it’s hard to argue that we are more prudish. The difference is, I can’t see 50 cent performing “Candy Shop” in front of President Obama at the White House in the same way that I can imagine John Dowland playing his lute and singing “Come again” in front of Royalty.

As in most cases like this, it is probably true that nothing in the opera is covering subject material with which the average high school student is more thoroughly familiar than his/her parents wish to acknowledge. The question here is about having a deep respect for the relationship between a parent and a child. If we are going to expose children to explicit sexual material, their parents probably have a right to know before the fact. While all of it is done on a level of sophistication that so far beyond 50 Cent’s crude analogy, to pretend that it is not sexually explicit and powerful seems to me to deny the power of music, opera, and live theatre.

Another way to say it is: Opera is for grown-ups. It deals with all the real and terrible truths of the human experience. That parents should be allowed some say so in when their children are exposed to some of those issues does not seem to be that big of an issue to me – if only for the sake of their own deluded conscience.

Perhaps, a better solution would be to tell the parents before hand that the opera very graphically depicts sexual acts musically. If you want to opt out, you should feel free. If you feel that your child is mature enough to handle one of the great masterpieces of Western Civilization, let them go. In any case, we shouldn’t pretend that great art doesn’t have real power and doesn’t deal with real grown-up issues and problems.

St. Mark's on the Campus

2012-02-16T14:55:00.003-06:00

One of the great pleasures in my life is getting to listen to the lovely volunteers that make up the choir at St. Mark's on the Campus. Anyone that regularly works with a volunteer choir knows some of the frustrations that can occur. You have people of wildly different musical training and ability coming together to make art to enhance a congregation's worship - or, as we say in the Anglican tradition, "to perfect the praises of God's people."

We have the added inconvenience at St. Mark's of being on a University campus that controls all the parking. We can only rehearse for an hour each week. The members of the choir pay for parking to rehearse in the brief interval that occurs after afternoon classes end and before evening classes begin.

Still, there is something wonderful about people getting together to make music just because they love it. Somehow, even with a few intonation issues that occur, I seem to love this group more and more. I enjoy making music with them each week, oftentimes more than some of the professional concerts that occur week in and week out.

Here they are singing Heavenly Light by Kopolow arr. by Wilhousky. I got to record and just listen. There are enough talented conductors in the group to allow me to simply enjoy the music.

some more thoughts on the death of concert music

2012-02-09T23:42:00.003-06:00

In the past few days, a little vortex in the collective unconsciousness opened above my head, and a gyre of synchronicity came spinning down. Colleagues from around the country representing various academic institutions and performing arts organizations have been expressing their frustrations to me using a remarkably similar leitmotif.

Performers are frustrated that conductors are more concerned about the glory they may receive than they are about the music they perform. Academics are frustrated that decisions are made for reasons that serve their institutions reputations more than they serve the needs of the students. Arts organizations make artistic compromises to attract a wider audience. Universities are filled with bloated administrations that don’t really understand or care about music departments. Everyone complains about budget cuts.

I’ve addressed some of these issues before here. If you didn’t get the memo, our culture is changing. Serious music is no longer something that is valued by the culture at large. There are many people that are inventing interesting and practical solutions to some of these problems. I would like to take a moment to talk about some of the more personal and “impractical” solutions.

Some years ago, I was having a discussion with a younger composer friend. I said, “What is it, you want to be?” He responded, “I want to be a famous composer.” I said, “There isn’t such an animal in the bestiary anymore. Who is the most famous composer of orchestral music alive today in your opinion?” He said, “Corigliano.” I said, “OK. Let’s say I give you Corigliano. I happen to like his music. Do you know how many music majors have never heard of Corigliano? The most famous composer of orchestral music alive today is John Williams. Do you want to limit your harmonic vocabulary and write the kind of music that John Williams writes?” “No,” he said.

If, as I suggested, there isn’t such a thing as a famous composer (at least in the 19th century way that he was using the words), where should we turn for advice on how to live? In the past ten years, I have become increasingly interested in the analogies between monastic spirituality and what we do as professional musicians. There are some innate difficulties in the two paths because we practice something that is very public, and monks live in isolation. Nevertheless, I think the brothers have some good advice for us.

Thomas á Kempis says, “If thou wilt know or learn anything profitably, desire to be unknown, and to be little esteemed by man.” Practically speaking, how do you practice a public profession and “desire to be unknown”? Here are my suggestions.

1. If you are in this business, you’d better be in it because you love music. My friend Tom Trenney says, “There are people in our profession who like being musicians more than they like music.” Tom is a wise man. There are some who can still get away with this attitude, but I can assure you that it is no way to live your life. You will always be placing your worth in the opinions of others. Others are a very fickle bunch.

2. If your focus is on making the best music you can with the people around you, you can actually get to a place where you are serving the music instead of thinking about what the music can do for you and your career. A better way to say this is that our model for the present age cannot be the 19th century. I personally love the early Romantics and what they were trying to accomplish, but those days are gone. Our models have to be the Baroque musicians who wrote music for their local city and fully expected that when they died, their music would be packed up in some room in the church and never played again. Cast off the weight of posterity. Write, sing, and play with the abandon and dedication of a kleinmeister.

3. Contemplate this passage from Thomas Merton often. "A publisher asked me to write something on 'The Secret of Success,' and I refused. If I had a message to my contemporaries, I said, it was surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success. ... If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted. If a university concentrates on producing successful people, it is lamentably failing in its obligation to society and to the students themselves."

4. Part of what is special about what we do is that it is something that is intrinsically valuable and not valued by much of our culture. We are the prophetic voice calling the mass of trousered apes to seek out depth and meaning. You really shouldn’t get that upset when the monkey starts throwing his feces at you through the bars. Getting mad isn’t really going to convince him that what your doing is a better way to live.

5. Remember that we get to make music for a living. There are very few people on this planet that actually get to make some or all of their existence by assembling beautiful sounds. A bad day of making music must be so much better than a bad day of doing almost anything else.

Aesthetics: the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury and hot chicks in the woods

2012-02-08T22:45:00.005-06:00

Any time you start talking about a philosophy of beauty, it is important to ask the right questions. The 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury can bring it with some eloquent prose stylings. In a lovely little essay called “The Moralists”, he sets up a dialogue between Philocles and Theocles. They are having a stroll in the countryside and discussing art and beauty.

Master Philocles is the student master Theocles, and Philocles has grown rhapsodic about the beauty of the woods. He asks the first big question,

“But tell me, I entreat you, how comes it that, excepting a few philosophers of your sort, the only people who are enamoured in this way, and seek the woods, the rivers, or seashores, are your poor vulgar lovers?”

Why don’t philosophers like the woods? Well, if you’re like me, you might expect Theocles to respond, “For starters, you have to go to the bathroom on the ground, there are bugs, and dangerous wild beasts. It’s kind of hard to philosophize when your constantly wondering if you remembered to bring toilet paper with you.”

Theocles actually says, “Say not this…of lovers only. For is it not the same with poets, and all those other students in nature and the arts which copy after her?”

So, the lovely, dark and deep woods aren’t just for vulgar lovers. Poets and artists like it too. Maybe the poets and the artists are also the vulgar lovers. In any case, the people that like the woods are “looked upon…as a people either plainly out of their wits, or overrun with melancholy and enthusiasm.”

Well, master Philocles says that even though he doesn’t always understand it, he really does love the woods and the oceans. Theocles then says, “If you love the water so much, why don’t you marry it?” In Shaftesbury’s prose it sounds more elegant.

“The next thing I should do, ‘tis likely, upon this frenzy, would be to hire some bark and go in nuptial ceremony, Venetian-like, to wed the gulf, which I might call perhaps as properly my own.”

Theocles then basically says, “Don’t stop there. If you’re going to have a real philosophy of art and beauty, there is something even more complicated than pledging your troth to the Gulf of Mexico: What about hot chicks? Where do they fit in to your philosophy?”

Poor Philocles knew it was coming and gives a helpless response.

“I feared, said I, indeed, where this would end, and was apprehensive you would force me at last to think of certain powerful forms in human kind which draw after them a set of eager desires, wishes, and hopes; no way suitable, I must confess, to your rational and refined contemplation of beauty. The proportions of this living architecture, as wonderful as they are, inspire nothing of a studious or contemplative kind. The more they are viewed, the further they are from satisfying by mere view.”

Ah, the pretty girl! The bane of the philosopher’s existence. It's awfully difficult to think about them dispassionately. What was it Socrates said after Xanthippe dumped the chamber pot on his head? “Marry, or marry not. In any case, you’ll regret it.”

As one friend remarked, “With a name like Shaftesbury, he probably had to cover that subject.”

Aesthetics: the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury and plastic truth

2012-02-07T22:34:00.002-06:00

Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, is not to be confused with Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury. He should also not be confused with Anthony Ashley Cooper the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 11th Earls of Shaftesbury. The current and 12th Earl of Shaftesbury is Nicholas Ashley Cooper. He was the younger brother of the 11th Earl, and inherited the title whilst working as a techno DJ in New York. He had the good sense to name his son Anthony Ashley Cooper.

The 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury is a transitional figure in the history of aesthetics. He stands between the classicists and the moderns. Because he is English, he writes wonderful essays that are not attempts at systematic thought.

Following the Greeks and the early Christian thinkers, he treats beauty and truth as synonyms. His thoughts will take some time to tackle, but I think the following passages are an interesting starting point. He traces a line of Aristotle’s thought in Poetics where Aristotle says, “Poetry is both a more philosophic and a more real thing than history; for poetry tells rather the universal, history the particular.”

Shaftesbury suggests that “the best artists are said to have been indefatigable in studying the best statues: as esteeming them a better rule than the perfectest human bodies could afford.” Aside, from getting to use “perfectest” in a sentence, the cool thing about this idea is that great art always includes something universal that is better captured in a statue than in a specific perfectest body.

The artist that gets too bogged down in the particular runs the risk of producing “irregular and short-lived works”. The “higher” truth in art that is above historical truth is given the name “graphical or plastic truth” in Shaftesbury’s essays.

To my knowledge, suggesting the idea of “graphical or plastic truth” is at least a new way of writing about art at this time. It is certainly a shot across the bow of Descartes and a mechanistic view of the universe. He is staking out an area for artistic truth to have precedence over scientific truth.

I wonder, however, what sort of plastic truth he would have found in the techno music of his great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson Nicholas.

some thoughts on Leonard Bernstein

2012-02-01T10:03:00.002-06:00

Earlier this week, I played a Leonard Bernstein review show. Bernstein is a composer with whom I’ve always had a somewhat complicated aesthetic relationship. He did so much for music that I am hesitant to be critical, but the truth is that some of his writing makes me a bit uncomfortable. I think I may have figured out what it is.

I think that the Bernstein of West Side Story and On The Town is when he is at his best. It comes across as extremely interesting and sophisticated popular music. I think that the Bernstein of the Mass is less successful.

I was playing a recording of the Simple Song, and my wife called to me from the other room asking, “What are you listening to? It’s awful.” I said, “Take a guess.” She responded, “Andrew Lloyd Weber? Claude Michelle Schonberg? Contemporary Christian Music?”

Perhaps, what is happening comes from his love and respect for all kinds of music. That love manifested itself in his writing through musical choices that occasionally reference popular clichés. The danger for a composer that makes that choice is that the reference may become dated and associated with ideas that reach beyond what you intend.

I’ve experienced something similar in religious services. Occasionally, I’ve heard a religious text that uses a chord progression that has become too worn out from overuse in 70s. It is uncanny how the feelings that I have always associated with that chord progression (when I’ve heard it in a Broadway musical or a popular song) rise up and begin an argument with the text.

So, occasionally, I find that some of his music sounds kind of corny because of musical references that seem to be a little too tired to bear up under the weight of the emotional impact of the content. I find myself growing suspicious of him and doubting his sincerity. Here we have a composer who could write successful Broadway musicals and something as rich and complex as The Age of Anxiety. Why does he sometimes cross that thin line between the simple and the simplistic?

That’s usually the point when I start regretting my thought process. I’d hate it if someone started criticizing everything I ever wrote and making assumptions about my intentions. In the end, I decide to leave the man alone. I do have two problems left over to resolve.

#1 I don’t know of another composer whose output I like and dislike so much.

#2 I hate the way some of the older musicians who did one performance with him back in the 60s or 70s casually say, “Well, when I worked with Lenny…” as if calling him by his nickname is a shibboleth of one’s personal musical sophistication and excellence.

some thoughts on the death of concert music

2012-01-25T23:09:00.003-06:00

In his recent articles in The American Organist magazine, my friend Haig Mardirosian has been tackling the problem of poor concert attendance and the seeming demise of concert music. Haig always writes articles that are both thoughtful and urbane. (You can read some of his earlier entries on his website.) His articles have inspired a few disorganized thoughts in my brain.

Haig is confronting a serious question that all musicians (and artists of any sort) face today. The arts are in trouble. Concerts are poorly attended. It’s hard to find funding for music. Even in the public school system, I know of teachers who justify their position not by the intrinsic value of what they do, but by the supposed improvement involvement in the arts gives to students on their standardized tests in other disciplines. “Music class can help your math scores.”

For my part, I think we are dead in the water when we start talking like this. As my friend Lane Harder says, “Always be prepared to make the argument.” So here is what I tell my freshman. “It’s fine that we have doctors, and lawyers, and all the rest. We need them, and that’s good. In the arts, however, we are doing something that is much more important. We are about the business of changing peoples lives. We give people life changing cathartic experiences that they can’t get anywhere else. The stage is a magical place of great power. It is a high calling to be an artist, and you better work hard so that you don’t have any weaknesses because we make our mistakes in front of crowds of people.”

I was having a discussion with a colleague the other day. We were complaining about the trend of State Universities slashing funding for the humanities. I told her about a close friend on the faculty Senate. In a session, he actually heard the Chancellor of the University say the phrase, “…and that will serve to fulfill the academic portion of the Universities mission statement.” My friend said to me, “I looked around to see if anyone else was as shocked as I was. I’m mean, he said ‘the academic portion of our mission’ like it was some little boutique thing we do on the side.” She responded to my story by saying, “and yet, when something terrible and tragic happens, they always come running back to the humanities and the arts because they need someone to teach them how to live and how to make sense of things.”

It does seem like our culture is changing. I often say to my students that Western Culture is dying, and I plan on going down with the ship. There is one thing, however, that I find terribly ironic in the whole discussion. The ship has become very large.

I don’t have actual statistics to back this up, but….There are more people practicing and listening to concert music today than at any point in human history. Mozart’s Vienna had about 250,000 people, and he had a hard time making a go of it there. He wouldn’t have been able to imagine the gargantuan modern city that is home to hundreds of arts organizations. Every major city in the world has an orchestra of extremely high quality. I’m quite sure that there are more composers writing quality concert music right now than during the 19th century. To be sure, the culture as a whole does not value it as much, but the pocket that does value it is larger that the population of Paris in 1850.

I’m not sure what that means. I do know it means that we should not be without hope. Perhaps, one of the solutions is to do what my good friends in the Chiara Quartet are doing. They play in the great concert halls, but they also play in local bars. They take the music to the people instead of just waiting for the people to come to them.

In any case, I imagine that one still becomes an artist for the same reason people have always become artists. You do it because you have to. The culture might not value it, but it’s something you do anyway. You do it because it is intrinsically valuable, and as my friend said to me, “It teaches you how to live and how to make sense of things.”

Gigging stories: outhomelessing the homeless

2012-01-23T21:59:00.003-06:00

My wife has often said that I have a “European” sense of personal hygiene. My socks seldom match. I don’t iron my shirts. I stopped combing my hair around the time I successfully emerged from my 80s New Wave look. I don’t shave regularly.

It’s not that these are conscious decisions. It’s just something that slips my mind until I am rudely awakened. For example, one day last year, I got to church to practice. When I looked down to put on my organ shoes, I was greeted by this heterogeneous vision.

My fashion sense is sometimes the subject of casual teasing by friends and students. Last Halloween, a student came to the University dressed as me. She wore a wig with a frock of messy hair. Her socks didn’t match. I even let her wear my magical, ubiquitous, and coveted green sweater. The only problem with her ensemble was that she was wearing a white V-neck T-shirt. When I saw it, I said, “When have you ever seen me wear a V-neck T-shirt? I’m sure I would never do such a thing.” The reply came in a simple, honest tone. “I’m sorry Dr. Knecht, but it was the wrinkliest shirt I had.” "I see. Thank you very much." I replied.

The nadir of my apparel epiphanies occurred when I was working in a downtown church that was frequented by the homeless. We kept some food in the pantry to hand out to the needy, and at certain times of the day, I was the only staff member around that could help. One day, a handsome black man named Alvin walked in. I met him and immediately brought him into the sanctuary and played some Bach on the organ for him. I feel like if you are having a difficult time in life, you probably need some moments of beauty and not just food. Homeless people are generally very appreciative of moments of beauty and quiet.

After I finished playing, we began to chat. It turned out that Alvin wasn’t homeless after all. He just needed some extra food. I retrieved a few cans of soup from the pantry as we continued to chat. Alvin was beginning to feel comfortable with me, so he finally opened up.
“Kurt, what I really need is a ride. There are two churches that I know about that will give me an entire bag of groceries. It’s too far to walk. Can you take me there, and then give me a ride back home?”

It was just about time for my lunch break, so I agreed. When I got hired, the church had given me a used BMW 735il that was in very good condition. We drove along the bay for about 10 minutes, and soon came to a church that was a block from my old high school. I decided to accompany Alvin in on the adventure. We walked inside, and I sat in the lobby while he spoke to the receptionist. When Alvin finished speaking with her, he sat down next to me. She vanished for a few moments. To my great surprise, she reappeared moments later with two grocery bags full of food. She gave one to Alvin. The second one was placed at my feet. I looked up at her quizzically. She smiled and said, “This is for you.”
“Oh!” I said. “I’m OK. I was just here with Alvin. I wasn’t coming to get…”
Before I could finish, she smiled very kindly again and interrupted me.
“It’s quite alright. You really look like you could use it.”

I looked down and saw the unmatched socks and the wrinkled, un-tucked shirt. I realized my hair was uncombed, and my face was covered in at least three days worth of facial hair. It dawned on me that her conclusion was not all that unreasonable. So, I just went with it. I looked up gratefully and said, “I see. Thank you very much. That’s very kind of you.”

“It’s really no problem. We just need you to come over here and sign for the food. We use this system so that people don’t take more than one bag per week. You are welcome to come back next week and get another bag of groceries.”

“Thanks” I said, as I signed the form. We left the church, got into the BMW, and drove off. Alvin stopped in at another church. I decided not to accompany him inside this time. He came out with more food, and I took him back to his place in the ghetto. Naturally, I gave my bag of groceries to him.

It's a little strange to be directly and viscerally confronted with your own eccentricities. I immediately drove back to the church and practiced some Bach. It had a quiet moment of beauty in the sanctuary, and I said, "I see. Thank you very much."

For further reading on the topic of "The organist as social worker" click here or here.

Viola violets in my garden

2012-01-18T23:08:00.004-06:00

I made a little garden tonight using pencils, organ pipes, bells, and the harmonic series. The incomparable Jonah Sirota came strolling through with his viola mixing his rosin with the incense and the candles.

Gigging stories: the time I met Bob Marley

2012-01-16T16:43:00.003-06:00

There is a wonderful loneliness that can settle into a church when you have spent several hours in solitude practicing some thorny section of a Bach Fugue. The tinted light from the stained glass dances around the high ceilings with the F sharps and the B flats. One afternoon after several hours of practice, I had worked myself into an eremitical splendor. I lifted my hands from the keyboard to begin a passage again when I heard an infinitesimally quiet, “Hello” from about ten feet to my left.

I turned, somewhat shocked, to see that a homeless man had wandered up into the gallery where I was practicing. It was not my first experience combining my position as an organist with that of a social worker. (You can read one of those episodes here.) I turned, looked at the stranger, and calmly replied, “Hello.”
He was a short man of slight build. He was fairly clean and looked to be in his late twenties. He responded in great surprise, “You heard me?!”
“Well, I’m a musician. We tend to be aware of sounds around us.”
“I didn’t think anyone could hear me when I spoke that softly.”
“Um…OK. I’m just practicing here. Do you like organ music?”
“I’m Bob.”
“Hi, Bob. I’m Kurt.”
“Music is very powerful and spiritual. It has a strong affect on the I and I.” At this point, he began to mumble and I heard something about “Selassie”.

Whenever a mid-Western, white, twenty-something homeless man starts espousing Rastafarian doctrine, I get the sneaking suspicion that his mind might be more volatile than I anticipated. So, I said, “Well, this is an organ that’s modeled after a 17th century Italian instrument.” He replied with an incoherent thought that included something about “Zion” and “Jah”. I immediately decided to move our conversation to a more public area of the building.
“Do you want some water?” I asked.
As we moved toward the kitchen, I reminded myself to start locking the door that leads up to the organ loft for future practice sessions.

As we drank water, he continued to talk about how Selassie had changed the I and I. I hopelessly attempted to follow a train of thought that was having trouble staying on the rails. I offered him some food, but he said he wasn’t hungry.
“Well,” I said, “is there anything that the I and I can help you with?” playing along for the fun of it.

In a stunning display of coherence, he said, “My main problem is that the probate court has declared me incompetent, so my parents have guardianship of me even though I’m 29.”
“Really?” I asked attempting to sound as credulous as possible.
“I just want to live in an apartment by myself, but they make me live in this home. I can’t get my money in the bank without my parents because of the probate court. So, I wanted to talk to the priest about vouching for my competency.”
“Well, he’s not here today.” Unable to resist, I pressed the issue.
“Um. Why does the court think you’re incompetent?”

Here he switched to what can only be described as a terrible Jamaican accent and said, “They don’t understand, mon. Just because someone starts wearing Rastafarian clothes, starts speaking in a Jamaican accent, mon, and changes his name to Bob Marley, mon, and only responds to people when they call him Bob Marley, mon, and when he does respond, he responds by quoting the lyrics to a song written by Bob Marley, mon, because he’s memorized the lyrics to all the songs that Bob Marley wrote, mon, because they speak to the I and I…just because someone dresses like and talks like Bob Marley, and makes people call him Bob Marley…that doesn’t mean that he believes that he is Bob Marley.”

After taking a moment to process everything, I said rather haltingly, “But…you can see why they might get confused…right.” It was of course the wrong thing to say. He immediately repeated the entire speech convinced of its inexorable logic.

“Well, Bob,” I said, “I have to go practice. You’re welcome to listen.” He declined.

I walked upstairs to the loft, turned on the organ, and immediately played “We’re jammin’” on a 17th century Italian style instrument.

The absolutely inimitable spiritual wisdom of

2012-01-15T08:01:00.002-06:00

I constructed a long theological argument in an attempt to justify some selfish behavior. After patiently listening to me for 10 minutes, he simply stared and said, “You know, the Lord Jesus wouldn’t put up with all your bull shit.”

Unaccustomed to such plain speech from a member of the clergy, I immediately began a relationship that has lasted for about 25 years. During that time, I have often found myself quoting his inimitable spiritual wisdom to friends.

Here is a brief list of some of his more printable quotes.

• His advice to other clergy about hearing confession, “Here's the thing. If someone is confessing their sins to you and you start getting a hard-on, you need to tell them to get a different confessor.”

• Almost the entirety of his marriage counseling went like this, “There are no new sins. Just like monks take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. It’s money, sex, and power. These are the things you will fight about in your marriage. If you figure out a way to get past them, you will stay married. If not, you won’t.”

• On facing the inevitable discouragement that comes from working in a religious institution, he once said to me, “The Church is a bitch-whore that eats her young. Now, get in there and love that bitch-whore that calls herself the Bride of Christ.”

• Once I called him for advice on raising teenagers. He said, “I’m going to tell you something one of my elders in Christ told me when my kids were teenagers. ‘There are some aspects of raising teenagers that are difficult and unpleasant’.”
I responded saying, “Yes, and…”
He said, “That’s all I’ve got for you. Try not to let it split you marriage apart.”

• Once, when we were discussing some theological issue, he said,
“Circumcision is one of the great proofs of God’s existence. No group of men ever sat around a fire and one of them said, ‘Hey! I got an idea! Let’s invent a religion where you have to cut the end of your dick off!’ There’s no way that ever happened.”

Gigging stories: In memoriam Carter Albrecht

2012-01-11T09:54:00.002-06:00

(N.B. This is not so much of a story about an actual gig as it is an example of the colorful characters you get to meet when you live the life of a wandering musician. In this case, the specific character is Carter Albrecht who was tragically killed in Dallas. You can read about his story here.)

After the war, my grandfather took various jobs piloting planes around the Great Lakes. He and my grandmother managed to scrape enough money together to put him through aeronautical mechanics school where they literally taught him how to build a plane from the ground up. At some point, he needed a new job. When a rich, old Lutheran lady bought a Cessna to fly medical supplies from Monrovia into the jungle, my grandfather packed up his wife and two sons, and moved ninety miles into the Liberian jungle. The Cessna was packed into crates and driven into the village of Zaw Zaw. Grandpa Knecht took the pieces out of the boxes, put the plane together, and maintained it for three years flying necessary medical supplies into the jungle. My father spent almost three years of his elementary school life in the “bush”. He was never interested in hanging around the other missionary kids because they didn’t know anything about the jungle. My grandparents let him run around with the natives.

So, I grew up hearing stories of the African jungle from my father. At some point, my father had mentioned that the Africans ran around the jungle barefoot. One day, I found a book in my grandparents’ house that contained a picture of the foot of a Liberian bushman. (Apparently, if you take a picture of the bottom of their foot it only steals the sole and not the soul). It was an inspirational photograph. The thick, leathery substance engulfing the bottom of the Liberian’s foot inspired a covetousness in me, and I was determined to acquire a similar indurate cutaneous innervation. So, I took off my shoes and walked on the hot asphalt during the hot Tampa summers. Spurred on by my determination to acquire Liberian feet, I pressed my burning flesh into the hot street. The end result was something like the callus that a hippie gets on the side of his foot from Birkenstock. My callus covered only my heel and the balls of my feet. Because of my incredibly high arches, the center of my feet have never touched the earth and remain soft and smooth as a baby's bottom. The balls of my feet and my heel, however, became insensitive to sharp rocks and even flame.

When I went to graduate school at Southern Methodist University, a group of musicians set up a little watchtower on the side entrance of the school between the Meadows School of the Arts and the Perkins Theological Seminary. Donna Mayer-Martin, the local medievalist, had stretched a tightrope between the two buildings so that the ghosts of Hildegaard and William Blake could talk to each other while balancing between God and Art. I learned how to roll a cigarette and use the words of a conversation in such a way that the smoke went up to the rope and tickled Dostoyevky’s ghost's nose . I ended my speeches with a flourish by extinguishing the cherry of the cigarette on a heel made tough from my Liberian foot fetish. Carter and Matt immediately befriended me. They were undergraduate piano majors who were easily impressed by a graduate student who knew how to put a smoke out on his bare heel. We would meet up during the evening practice hours and smoke on the steps to discuss “the ten thousand things”.

Carter was tall, good looking, and he wielded his cleverness and wit with the unassuming air of a master. Girls would walk up to Carter while we were smoking on the steps and flirtatiously say, “Um, Carter, what are you doing?” Carter would simply and unaffectedly respond, “We’re smoking. In a few minutes, we are going to take a break and practice for a while, but we’ll get back here on the steps soon to do what we came to school to do. We’re paying all this money after all.”

Despite the fact that physical education was not amongst the subjects of the trivium or the quadrivium, the Southern Methodists felt it was a necessary component of being liberally arted. Thus, every undergraduate was required to take a physical fitness class of some sort. The most popular course for music majors was Tai Chi. Students would practice their forms in front of the school. The beauty of their movements was contrasted with the awkwardness of Rodîn’s statue Eve in Despair which rested by the front door. Carter was considering the Tai Chi course. Yoga, however, was also popular amongst the music majors. Confronted with the choice of Westernized Tai Chi and Westernized Yoga, Carter attempted to balance his sense of Western integrity with the Oriental philosophy most closely fitting the needs of a performing musician. So Carter brought the problem of Zen and the Art of Registering for an Oriental Physical Education Class to Matt’s feet on a night when I was absent. When I arrived on Sunday, the click of cigarette lighters signaled the beginning of the story.

“Kurt, you know how I was thinking of choosing Yoga or Tai Chi?” queried Carter.
“Sure. Did you ever decide?”
“I was trying to decide on Friday, and Matt says…”
Matt jumped in through the smoke and said, “So, I said to Carter, ‘The only thing I know about Yoga is a body purification technique that some yogis practice. You make a gallon of warm saltwater. You guzzle the whole thing down as quickly as possible, throw up, and then your body is cleansed from impurities.’”
“You didn’t actually try this?!” I gasped incredulously.
“Well…” Carter said, “it was Saturday…and there was nothing to do…so, I got some water going on the stove and put some salt in it.”
“You drank an entire gallon of warm, saltwater?”
“Drank the whole pot.”
“Did it work? Did you puke it up?”
“As soon as I finished the last drop, I immediately ran to the bushes outside of my apartment and hurled like I never have in my entire life. I vomited for almost thirty minutes straight until I was dry heaving and couldn’t stop. As soon as I regained control of my body, I went into the house and had two hours of the worst diarrhea I have ever experienced. I was literally peeing out my ass for two solid hours.”
“Really?!”
“Yup. By the end of the process, three whole hours had gone by and I passed out in my bed at seven o’clock in the evening.”
“I can’t believe that you actually drank an entire gallon of saltwater.”
“You haven’t heard the weirdest part. I woke up the next morning, this morning, at 6AM. I felt completely light and airy. I was at one with the universe. The sun was shining, the air felt great, and I walked outside. There were birds chirping, and I knew that I was a part of all things. I was at one with the universe. I felt like Ghandi.”
Truly astonished, I said, “Really?! Well, what did you do?”
“What do you think I did?” Carter responded. “I had a cigarette and a cup of coffee as soon as possible. I hated feeling like that! I guess I’m signing up for Tai Chi.”

I started laughing, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught Jesus chuckling as he dropped a banana peel on the tight-rope for Alan Watts.

Aesthetics: Ficino's quick and easy Italian humanist guide to facial proportion

2012-01-07T21:39:00.004-06:00

I have been re-reading some of Marsilio Ficino's commentary on Plato's Symposium. Ficino was writing in 1475 at the beginning of the Italian Renaissance. He is basically continuing the Platonic thought in the tradition of Plotinus. Beauty and Love are very closely related and are almost synonymous with the morally good. It is all tied up in a cosmology that is all but unusable in a modern context. He relates art to concepts like "the Angelic mind", the "World-Soul", and the "Body of the World." Of course, all love of Beauty is ultimately love of God for Ficino. That's a little different than St. Augustine's cautious attitude toward beautiful things, but they are both so indebted to Plotinus that some passages could be interchangeable despite 1000 years separating them.

One thing for which Ficino is invaluable, however, is a practical guide for checking to see if your face is a properly proportioned Italian Renaissance face. If your like me, you've already had that moment when you missed your bus stop because you were lost in contemplation over life's perennial questions:

"If I had been born in Italy 535 years ago, would my face be the sort of face that would have inspired Michelangelo, or would I have had to settle for a Bronzino or a Vasari? Is there any way to get an astrolabe or some other medieval measuring device to figure out if my face corresponds to the Fibonacci series?"

Fortunately, Ficino has given us an easier way, and you can use it while riding the bus!

1. Three noses placed end to end will equal the length of one face.
2. The semi-circles of both ears joined together will equal the circle of the open mouth.
3. The joining of the eyebrows will also give the same result.
4. The length of the nose will match the length of the lips, and so also will that of the ears.
5. The two circles of the eyes will equal one opening of the mouth.
6. Eight heads will compass the height of the body.
7. The same distance will also be measured by the spread of the arms to the side, and likewise of the legs and feet.

Of course, when I first discovered Ficino's method, I spent some time measuring my nose to face ratio with my hands. I have found that this draws practically no attention when using public transportation. People are always touching their faces on the bus, and you will likely draw more attention to yourself without some sort of eccentric behavior.

In addition to using the system, I am also proposing that we begin using his name as a verb. We can say things like, "May I Ficino you?" to ask someone before we check if their joined eyebrows are the same length as their mouth. Shopkeepers can say, "I've just Ficinoed that customer, and we will need a bigger hat size to compensate for the semi-circles of the ears."

For now, have fun Ficinoing each other, and please send your comments about other practical uses of the system and the stories of your own Ficinoing.

One of my favorite versions of "Manly Men"

2012-01-05T23:27:00.002-06:00

This performance was sent to me by Mannenkoorts, a gay men's chorus in Holland, a few years ago. It is still one of my favorite performances. I love hearing it sung with the Dutch consonants.

Gigging stories: Masaryktown New Year's Eve 1999

2012-01-04T23:37:00.003-06:00

One of the unspoken rules of gigging is helping your fellow musicians when they receive unwanted advances from listeners. If someone comes up to the stage with a song request, there are ready made phrases to thwart them. Normally, you say something like, “The next song we’re going to play has some of the same notes in it as the one you want.” If someone comes up to the stage with a more Romantic type inquiry, the musicians code requires that you assess the situation and help your fellow musicians discourage the groupie when necessary. In 1999, in honor of the new millennium, we broke the rules.

It was a New Year’s Eve gig. Baker had booked a small combo to play for a community party in Masaryktown, Florida. The band was to be Baker on trumpet, sax, piano, bass, and drums. Baker didn’t have a bass player for the gig, so I suggested we use my good friend, the J-Dog. (See another adventure with the J-Dog here. Check out the J-Dog’s music here.) The directions were cryptic: Drive thirty miles beyond the city on a two-lane road until you see a flashing yellow light. Turn left.

J-Dog and I arrived almost simultaneously and started to unload gear. The Masaryktown Recreation Center was a one-story edifice that primarily consisted of a social hall with a kitchen. As I went through the front door, I noticed a flyer that read, “Next Week: Joltin’ Joe and the Bavarians! Annual Big Polka Night!” I turned around and incredulously asked J-Dog, “What kind of place is this?” The fake wood paneling that covered every square inch of wall answered my question. In addition to the usual “book” that Baker used for gigs, I noticed several extra scores with the word “Polka” lurking somewhere conspicuously in the title.

“Baker, are you really making us play polkas tonight?” I asked. “It’s New Year’s Eve!”
“They asked for polkas. We’re playing some polkas.” He replied coolly.
I immediately launched into my polka lecture. “My mom used to play polka’s on the accordion when we were little. You know the one thing I always loved about my mother’s playing? She never smiled when she played. Myron Florin always smiled when he played on Lawrence Welk, and my mom never did. I always thought that God had a special place in hell reserved for people who looked like they enjoyed playing that instrument. You know, I’ve raised my children with two rules. Number 1: I’ll support you in whatever you want to do as long as you don’t go into politics. Number 2: Never play the accordion and the banjo together because it’s a secret formula for conjuring up the devil.”
“Kurt, just play the polkas.” Baker replied while rolling his eyes.

And so we played polkas. As the crowd gathered to dance, Baker started a polka and made it progressively more exciting by continually pushing the tempo. His strategy worked well until the tempo reached a fervor that outstripped the median age of the dancers. The youngest people at the party were in their late fifties, and many looked to be considerably older. Eventually, the tempo got fast enough to knock and an old man down. The polka stopped while we waited to make sure that the man on the floor did not require medical attention. As I considered my own responsibility in the possible hospitalization of an audience member, I imagined the conversation with the doctor.
“What happened?”
“Well, we were dancing to a polka, and the band just kept playing faster and faster. I tried to keep up, and the next thing I knew, I was on my back on the floor with pains in my chest.”

There should be some sort of Fibonacci series or Pascalian triangle trick that would allow musicians to calculate safe tempos for dancing depending on the average age of the audience. Alas, most mathematicians are poor dancers and unconcerned with such matters. When the man was safely removed from the dance floor, we began a beguine. It was around this time that a woman approached the bandstand between tunes.

She appeared to be in her late fifties. Her hair looked like it was probably ten years older than she was. It was the blond color that comes from the most expensive bottles of dye that can be bought at a Masaryktown pharmacy. There was clearly an admiration for one of the Protestant Evangelical schools of hair styling. At first glance, it appeared to be the Southern Baptist school, but, as she got closer, the vertical gymnastics and frosted highlights belied a clear influence from the Pentecostal Avant Garde. Her make-up seemed to strike a playful balance between Gauguin’s bold use of color and Pollock’s thick textured abstractions. Someone had obviously accidentally spilled a box of sequins on her dress before the party, and she had neglected to remove them.

As she approached J-Dog, and I began to jockey for position. Each of us wanted to be the first to regurgitate one of the standard lines for song requests. The woman surprised us all, went straight toward Baker, pointed her finger at him and said in an inebriated drawl, “I’m having a shlow dansh wif you before thish night is over.” We were temporarily stunned when her request turned out to be of a non-musical nature. Baker made some excuse about not being able to dance while he was playing the trumpet, and we continued playing the set.

The breaks between sets are times for trading insults and telling stories. I also take time to meet the people playing the job if I’ve never worked with them. There was an older drummer on the gig in Masaryktown. He had been playing for so long that he had gigging stories for all situations. We began by discussing the poor man that Baker had knocked down with his polka tempo. The drummer began talking about a gig when he fell of the edge of a stage. Baker countered with a story of playing a gig where someone had an actual heart attack on the dance floor. The band leader on the gig immediately called “Sentimental Journey” as the paramedics were carting the man away on the gurney. I met the saxophonist whose name was Kip. Kip was blond haired, rather heavy set, and just seemed to like to play music. Capturing the dialogue of a set break is a little tricky when you are playing with a pick up band. It goes something like this:

Kurt: Hey, how many bassists does it take to change a light bulb?
J-Dog: How many?
Kip: Oh, I know this one.
Kurt: None. The piano player can do it with his left hand.
Baker: What do you want to play in the next set?
Kurt: I’d like to play some Monk.
Drummer: Me, too.
Kip: Do you know “Straight no chaser” in F?
Baker: Sure. What else do you want to play?
J-Dog: How about, “Baker no chase-her’ in A flat?”
Baker: Ha, ha.
Kurt: Do we have to play another polka?
Baker: Yes. We’re putting at least one polka in each set.
Kip: There was a polka I used to play…What was the name…Oh yeah! It’s called the “I’m having a slow dance with you before this night is over polka.” Do you know that one Baker?
Baker: Ha, ha, ha. Now listen guys, I’m not going to dance with that lady.
Kurt: Look at you! You’re an old man, and the ladies are still all about you.
J-Dog: She was a scary one though. When she asked, I thought of saying the “We don’t know that one” line, but I was too tongue-tied by her appearance.
Baker: Guys, I’m not going to dance with her.

We went back inside and played two more sets. The food was pretty good. Being Bavarian type food, it was many different shades of brown. One of the most important features of a good gig is the food. Sometimes you take certain jobs just for the cuisine that will be served. You also avoid certain jobs if you know they won’t let you eat. My general practice is to hide about five large ziplock bags in my case for carrying home food to the family. We ate our fill and played through “Auld lang syne” at midnight. We were supposedly going to finish at 12:30am. The woman had not been seen for two hours. Finally, at 12:20 or so, she emerged from the herd of polka dancers and sauntered up to the bandstand. It was apparent from her jaunty gait that she had continued sipping the sauce throughout the evening. We were all waiting in eager anticipation when she surprised us again. She bypassed the band, went to the edge of the stage and started unhooking some of the helium balloons. “I jush wanna get some balloonsh to take home wish me,” she mumbled. She had completely forgotten about her original proposition. I’m not sure if it was the Y2K scare or a run of the mill “wild hair,” but as she was walking away, Kip and I simultaneously decided to break the musicians code. There was a fantastic manifestation of the collective unconsciousness as two voices spoke in unison, “You didn’t get your slow dance yet!” There followed a grand pause. Baker turned around to give the two of us a scowl. The wheels in her mind, being thoroughly lubricated with vodka, began to crank. “Oh yeah,” she said. “I’m shupposed to have a shlow dansh wish you.”
“Guess you better pick a song, Baker.” J-Dog said.
“Crazy,” said Baker. “One chorus!”

What Baker was saying to us (in the specialized vocabulary of musicians) was “Play the Willie Nelson standard ‘Crazy’”. “One chorus” is a term whose etymology lies in the old tin-pan alley songs. There was always a verse that preceded the song itself. For many songs, jazz musicians simply skipped the verse and played the chorus. When you are on a gig in modern times, to play “one chorus” means to play the tune through one time. This is not the normal way a pick-up band would play a song. The normal format is to play the “head” or “chorus.” Immediately following the completion of “one chorus,” musicians then take turns soloing by improvising over the chord changes. After the improvising is finished, you play the “head” or “chorus” again. That night, the meaning was clear: Play “Crazy” by Willie Nelson through one time, don’t take any solos, and get me off of the dance floor as soon as possible. Baker, however, had made one fatal error. He had already given us our paychecks on the last break.

We played through one chorus of “Crazy.” When we came to the end, I turned to Kip and said, “Take a ride, Kip.” Kip improvised through one time, and when we reached the end again, I turned and said, “Go around again.” J-Dog began to laugh. The drummer began to laugh. Baker began making ugly faces at us each time he spun the woman’s back to the bandstand. When Kip wanted to laugh, he had to wait till we began the fourth full time through the chorus. Before he started chuckling too hard, he maintained his composure long enough to turn to me and say, “Go ahead, Kurt.” As I began my solo, Baker had already been dancing with the woman for 3 minutes. By the time it was Kip’s turn to say, “Go around again, Kurt.” Baker had lost his patience. We had already played the tune six times and the “head” was nowhere in sight. Baker’s ugly faces had turned into vehement physical gestures. He would spin the woman’s back to us, raise his hand to his throat and make the universal cut gesture. When we finally played the “head”, we made sure to play the “turn around” at the end four or five times to extend the ending of the song. “Crazy. One chorus” had become a 7 minute dance.
As we were packing up our gear, the banter started again.

Baker: You guys are real funny.
Kurt: It’s the least we could do to you for making us play all those polkas.
Kip: Did you get her number, Baker?
Baker: No. I didn’t get her number.
J-Dog: Hey, Kurt. You know what next week is?
Kurt: What’s that?
J-Dog: Annual Big Polka Night with Joltin’ Joe and the Bavarians.
Kip: What?
Kurt: Yeah. There’s a sign on the door.
J-Dog: Maybe we can show up and see Baker dancing with his girlfriend again.
Baker: Next time, I’m waiting until after the gig to pay you guys.

Aesthetics: St. Augustine and the training of beautiful artists

2011-12-30T13:09:00.004-06:00

In De Musica, St. Augustine continues to refine his artistic theory in the tradition of Greek thought. Musical rhythm is related to the rhythm of the universe is related to the rhythm of the body is related to the rhythm of vegetables grown ad infinitum. The passages that are of particular difficulty to modern readers are the suggestions that the artistic process is not found solely in the manipulation of the materials of the medium. The artists needs to change him or herself. "The art is an active conformation of the mind of the artist." For St. Augustine, this means that the artist has to conform him/herself to the beautiful by moral discipline in order to create and reveal beauty. The artist has to become beautiful in order to create beauty.

Of course, he leaves a little bit of wiggle room for complicated problems. There are people who are not morally beautiful that create artistically beautiful works by utilizing the rhythms of eternal beauty. The artist that works in this way, however, will always attach too much value to their own work.

"We must not deny to rhythm...its inclusion within the works of the Divine fabrication, for such rhythm is within its own kind beautiful. But we must not love such rhythm as if it could make us blessed."

Art works may be beautiful, but they cannot make beautiful people. For St. Augustine, only God can do that.

All this is quite difficult to swallow when friends send us video of an artist creating a new work by drinking quantities of colored milk and vomiting it on to a canvas. Is there any room for this kind of thought when petulant human beings like Wagner can create some of the most beautiful music ever written? For that matter, how do we handle the case of the beautiful human being that makes mediocre art work?

The paradigm has shifted to the point where we only teach lessons in the manipulation of the material pertinent to our own artistic discipline. In the old world, they were much more ready to give advice on the shaping of the artists him/herself. I'm not exactly sure how a teacher can do that anymore. I do know that the truly great artists with whom I studied were unselfish and humble. That stuff was rarely communicated in lessons. It happened when we were eating or going to a play or something else.

I suppose all this is to say that those of us who are in the business of training young artists to master their materials also need to take seriously the obligation to mentor them as well. In spite of the rise of the modern academy, there is a very real sense in which the way we pass on our craft is through the old master-apprentice system. If all we do is teach them how to create without teaching them how to live, I'm afraid that we are not really living up to our calling as educators.

USC Chamber Singers: Go Tell It On the Mountain

2011-12-24T09:25:00.003-06:00

So, the story of this piece is, I had this thing called the "little big band" at my church gig. I was writing charts for them. One Christmas, I wrote a chart for "Go Tell it on the Mountain". After we played it, I thought it would work as a choral piece. Here is an absolutely stunning performance by the USC Chamber Singers.

Gerard Manley Hopkins: Pied Beauty

2011-12-21T22:39:00.002-06:00

Last night, my dear friend Tinsley Silcox and I were texting about TTBB rep. It reminded me that I actually did write something for TTBB chorus other than the all too ubiquitous Manly Men's Chorus.

Here is the fabulous Gary Packwood conducting the Louisiana All State Men's Chorus. This is my setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Pied Beauty". I have placed images of the poet in the video and the text of the poem below. This piece hasn't received much attention, but I think it deserves some more performances.

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;	5
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:	10
Praise him.

Aesthtics: St. Augustine and the beginning of the end of Plato

2011-12-20T21:15:00.003-06:00

In De Ordine, St. Augustine seems to be under the full sway of Plotinus when it comes to the idea of artistic creation. He argues that you can get your soul “out of tune” by immoral actions.

“For to the soul that diligently considers the nature and the power of numbers, it will appear manifestly unfitting and most deplorable that it should write a rhythmic line and play the harp by virtue of this knowledge, and that its life and very self – which is the soul – should nevertheless follow a crooked path and, under the domination of lust, be out of tune by the clangor of shameful vices.”

So, we have some old world assumptions going on in this passage that need to be clarified a bit. Here they are.

1. The universe is a rational system
2. You get in tune with the universe by seeing its beauty and practicing “virtuous habits”
3. If you are “out of tune”, your art work won’t be beautiful (i.e. rational (i.e. in a balanced numeric ratio (i.e. moral))))
4. The process of creating art is not about “self exploration”, but is, in the old Pythagorean sense, a physical manifestation of the rational and invisible nature of the universe itself.
5. Once the “soul has properly adjusted and disposed itself, and has rendered itself harmonious and beautiful, the will it venture to see God, the very source of all truth…”
6. For St. Augustine, the terms beauty, rational, moral, and God are all very closely related.

Nothing in this is very distinctive when compared to Plato and Plotinus. The curious part happens in the conclusion. He says that once you see this beauty (by “living” “praying” and “studying well"), it won’t trouble you that “one man, desiring to have children has them not, while another man casts out his own offspring as being unduly numerous...one man hates children before they are born, and another man loves them after birth; or how it is not absurd that nothing will come to pass which is not with God…and nevertheless God is not petitioned in vain.”

It seems strange to conclude a chapter on aesthetics by talking about prayer. What is most interesting about this is that prayer becomes the focus of paradoxical thinking in Augustine’s theology. He explains his view a little more fully in book 5 of City of God.

“Now, against the sacrilegious and impious darings of reason, we assert both that God knows all things before they come to pass, and that we do by our free will whatsoever we know and feel to be done by us only because we will it.”

It seems to me that St. Augustine concludes the chapter in De Ordine by referring to prayer because for him, it is a mystical process that goes beyond the “impious darings of reason”. Ultimately, the irrational and mystical elements in St. Augustine’s thought will expand and bloom (after about a thousand years or so) to provide new models for discussing creative work. The crack in the Platonic armor will eventually expand wide enough for art to be considered something that reveals part of the self and not just a manifestation of the rationality of the universe.

Gigging stories: Wedding disaster

2011-12-19T10:06:00.003-06:00

I always wanted a great wedding story. Every organist has a wedding story, and for years, I did not have one. When we gathered for our secret organist meetings to complain about brides requesting “It’s a small world after all” for a processional and grooms requesting the Texas A&M fight song for a recessional (I’ve actually had both of those requests), the stories came out. One organist could recount a bride passing out in mid-ceremony. Another would recount the time a nervous groom made it up to the altar only to violently vomit all over the floor. For many years, my best story was of a wedding where an eighty-five year old man married a fifty something woman. He was wealthy, and she was divorced. The only funny part of the story was me imitating the old man walking down the aisle. It was like watching Tim Conway as the old man on the Carol Burnett show. He walked so slowly that I had to play the Pachelbel canon about fifteen times. While cute, the story only managed to elicit a few chortles and guffaws next to the tales of weak-kneed brides and weak-stomached grooms. However, one day something unexpected happened: the fire marshal made an unannounced visit to inspect the Methodist Church where I worked at the time.

It turned out that the fire alarm system in the church was not up to code. A new system needed to be purchased and installed immediately. This was all managed quickly by a property committee. When the company finished the installation, they taught the pastor how to operate the system. While the property committee managed to move quickly on issues of fire safety, musical safety did not interest them as much. The “organ” was an electronic Allen that had been languishing in the corner of the chancel for some thirty years. It was the sort of jalopy that I normally characterize by saying, “It’s the P.O.F.S. 1000 model.” (If you are unfamiliar with that acronym, I will let you work it out for yourself.) Aside from being about as useful as my toaster for musical accompaniment, it boasted a special feature. When the power in the church would brown out for a moment, every “stop” on the organ would engage. On the old Allens, there is a set of push tabs that run horizontally above the keys that control the different sounds. When the power would flash, the push tabs that controlled the “stops” would depress by themselves from left to right like a set of cascading dominoes. This was loud enough in itself, but if you were unlucky enough to be playing at the time, the result could be cacophonous. The organ would let out a deafening electronic cry of despair that would fill the church. This was immediately followed by clacking sounds of the push tab dominoes.

The excitement of playing the Allen P.O.F.S. 1000 is enhanced by the fact that Tampa is one of the lightning capitals of the United States. With up to fifty lightning strikes per square mile in a year, power outages are a normal part of life for us in the rainy season. That was actually the main problem with the old fire alarm system in the church. If the power went out, the fire alarm system went out. We needed a new system that would engage in the case of a fire that burned through electrical wires. Much like the P.O.F.S. 1000, the new fire alarm had a special feature for lightning storms. It would automatically engage during a power fluctuation.

It was during one such stormy summer day that a couple came to by married at our congregation. It wasn’t the first marriage for either person, as I recall, so they wanted to have a rather small celebration. The pastor and I were handling the ceremony without the aid of an overly fussy wedding coordinator. The couple had invited about fifty guests. The processional went off without a hitch. They moved up to the chancel. When it came time to bless the rings, the pastor took them and held them for all to see. He began his prayer.

There are some scrumptious moments in life that you shouldn’t miss without savoring each morsel. There is the moment between the end of a piece and when the conductor lowers his or her baton. There is the moment when the needle is on the smooth part of the record before the next song starts. There is also the moment when the lightning strikes between “In the name of the Father, and the Son” and the “and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

It seems uncanny how moment may attach to moment in a continuous monogamy during periods of boredom and unpleasant activity. Moments seem to congregate in curved asymptotic lines that never quite touch the vertices of reality as they stretch toward infinity. I once wasted what seemed to be three years of my life listening to a poor public speaker eulogizing someone at a funeral gig. He combined James Joyce’s stream of consciousness style with an obsession for irrelevant detail. He packed fifteen seconds of thought into thirty-five minutes of panegyric. People whose favorite word is “and” seem to be able to execute a metaphysical miracle by transforming a moment into a lifetime.

It seems equally supernormal when moments slip by so quickly that the clock’s secondhand looks like it’s on steroids. A deadline approaches, and one wonders what happened to all the moments that seemed to be piling up around your feet when the eulogy was taking place.
When the lightning struck, a moment sauntered by at a slow pace, but it was chock full-o-events. The slowness of the passing moment was balanced by the rapid succession of sensory information hurling toward the chancel. In a few short seconds, I had a wedding story to tell.
The pastor held up the rings to bless them. As the prayer was concluding, the Trinitarian blessing was interrupted. The pastor said, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son…” There was a bright flash of light as a lightning bolt struck right outside the nave of the church. An almost simultaneous, vociferous clap of thunder followed the lightning bolt. All the lights in the sanctuary vanished leaving the wedding party standing in darkness. The organ let out it’s agonizing electronic death throe cry and the push button tabs cascaded down. It was at this point that I first got to experience the special features of the new fire alarm. As our eyes adjusted to the dimmed light, a strobe light on the fire alarm began to flash. A voice that was at once authoritative and awkwardly mechanical began to blare out from a speaker box, “ATTENTION! ATTENTION! YOU MUST EXIT THE BUILDING! ATTENTION! ATTENTION! YOU MUST EXIT THE BUILDING!” The alarm continued flashing the strobe light and repeating its warning at regular intervals. Taking advantage of one of the pauses in the mechanical voice, the pastor quickly inserted, “and of the Holy Spirit. Amen” only to be followed immediately by “ATTENTION! ATTENTION! YOU MUST EXIT THE BUILDING!”

With so much happening between the “Son” and the “and the Holy Spirit”, the momentary flood of sound and strobe light created a little pool of stillness. The happy bride and groom were disoriented and looked to the pastor for some kind of guidance.

The silence was broken by the return of the lights inside the sanctuary. All breathed a sigh of relief that was quickly re-inhaled when a booming mechanical voice said “ATTENTION! ATTENTION! YOU MUST EXIT THE BUILDING! ATTENTION! ATTENTION! YOU MUST EXIT THE BUILDING!” The pastor made a feeble attempt to continue the service. “In token and pledge,” he said. “In token and pledge,” repeated the groom. “ATTENTION! ATTENTION! YOU MUST EXIT THE BUILDING! ATTENTION! ATTENTION! YOU MUST EXIT THE BUILDING!” “Uh…look. I’m really sorry about this,” the pastor said apologetically. “We just had a new fire alarm installed, and I am the only one that knows how to operate the system. Just wait a second.” With that simple explanation, he left the bride, groom, wedding party, organist, and congregation. The pastor walked from the chancel through one of the back doors and left the sanctuary heading toward the church office. We all sat staring at each other in silence only to be regularly interrupted by the “ATTENTION! ATTENTION!” Some nervous laughter began to emerge here and there amongst the pews, but the overall mood was strangely somber. “ATTENTION! ATTENTION! YOU MUST” and the voice was cut off in mid-imperative. The pastor walked back in, stood before the couple, and said, “I’m really sorry about that. In token and pledge…”

I’ve often wondered if that couple remained married. It can’t be a good omen for your wedding when a mechanical voice keeps telling you to “get out while you still can.”

Gigging stories: Buxtehude's ugly daughter

2011-12-17T21:40:00.003-06:00

In the late seventeenth century, there was a fantastic musician named Dietrich Buxtehude. He landed a sweet gig as music director in the city of Lübeck.. He could play the organ so well that people flocked from all over Germany to hear his concerts on Sunday afternoons. Even old Bach himself (when he was young) got permission for a study leave and walked several hundred miles to hear Buxtehude play. The concerts were so exciting that Bach accidentally forgot to go back to work for four months. When the time was right, Buxtehude began to look for a successor so that he could retire. There was one problem. He wanted to make sure that his daughter would have some kind of financial security after he retired. Organist salaries have not improved that much since the late seventeenth century, so his pension would not be enough to sustain her. She needed to be married.

Back in the day, the way you picked up a good gig was by apprenticing with a master. You would fulfill some of his duties and do on the job training until he retired or died. Then, you became the master. It was also not uncommon for the apprentice to marry the masters’ daughter. Buxtehude had married his predecessor’s daughter. He decided that the best coarse of action would be to link the two items together.

So, when someone showed up to audition, Buxtehude would pull the applicant aside and say, “This is a really sweet gig. Lübeck is a great town. The congregation is very supportive. The organ is fantastic. Oh, by the way, if you want the job, you have to marry my daughter.” For many, this didn’t seem too unreasonable until they took the local tour. It turned out that Buxtehude had a big, ugly, German daughter. Soon after the applicants would meet her, they would gracefully withdraw their applications. Even Handel and Mattheson thought that marrying the daughter was too high a price to pay. Apparently, when sacrificing for your art, there are certain sacrifices that are too costly. I propose we call it the Anna Margareta Buxtehude Barrier (or AMBB).

Here is my best transcription of a conversation that I had with a choir member that left my ensemble without explanation. It’s the closest I ever came to the AMBB. I was unknowingly in the role of Anna Margareta. I showed up for a gig as a sub at a church about a week after I was fired for supposedly killing a rabbit (you can read about that here), and found her singing in the choir. She was about 15 to 20 years older than me.

“Hi, it’s nice to see you again.”
“Nice to see you too.”
“You sort of left the ensemble at church 6 months ago without explanation.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m glad you found a new place for yourself. You know I'm not there anymore.”
“I heard..…I can tell you why I left, but it’s kind of personal.”
“OK.”
“Well, you just started making me really uncomfortable.”
“Really?! I’m so sorry. How did I do that?”
“Well, I just started feeling like you were making advances toward me.”
“Like…romantic advances?!”
“Yes.”
“How…I mean, what did I do that gave you that impression.”
“Well, you know how you started asking me to meet you at the church in the evenings?”
“Um, no.”
“Yes. You started asking me to meet you at the church late at night.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about. When did I do that?”
“You were asking me to meet you on Sunday nights late in the evening.”
“Wait, are you talking about choir rehearsal for the ensemble?”
“Yes.”
“But, that was a rehearsal. There were other people there. We were all rehearsing.”
“Well, it was in the evening, and you were asking me to meet you at the church.”
“WITH OTHER PEOPLE! It was a rehearsal.”
 “Well, I just thought it was kind of weird that you were asking me to meet you at the church at night.”
“But it wasn’t just you. It was a rehearsal.”
“I know, but I just felt like you were making romantic advances, and it made me uncomfortable. So, I had to leave.”
“Um…OK. I’m glad you found a place where you are more comfortable. Do they rehearse in the evenings here?”
“Yes, but it’s different because the director is a woman.”
“I see. Well, I’m sorry if you felt that way.”

At this point, I exited as gracefully as possible. I know that as soon as I start apologizing for how she felt that the conversation wasn't going to continue well. Conversations with delusional people are usually fun, but this one came a little too close to the AMBB. I quickly switched my part to the role of Handel and quietly withdrew.

SPACE improv for Advent

2011-12-15T09:58:00.005-06:00

One of the great places of peace and enjoyment in my life is our Wednesday night service at St. Mark's on the Campus. It's filled with incense, candles, and lots of silence. We sing Gregorian chant and say old prayers in new ways. The service usually starts with Jonah Sirota and I improvising together. Here was last night's prelude on Veni, veni, Emmanuel.

To see more of our improvisations, go to our Facebook page and like us.

Gigging Stories: Adventures with Pate - part 2 Smokey Robinson

2011-12-08T21:41:00.002-06:00

(If you missed part 1, you can read it here.)

I didn’t see Pate for a few years until I received a phone call for an industrial show in Naples. “Hey Jenn,” I said. “I just booked a gig in Naples to play with Smokey Robinson.”
“Really?!!!” she gasped.
“Yeah. Who’s Smokey Robinson? I know he’s somebody.”
“You don’t know who Smokey Robinson is?!”

That is actually the beginning of many of the conversations that Jenn and I have about music. I contend that she is the worse off for not being familiar with the Beethoven Seventh or the Arvo Pärt Te Deum. She accuses me of being ignorant of the basic building blocks of American culture. This time, she was very interested in what I was doing because she wanted to go to the gig. Jennifer loves Motown. Over the next few weeks, I managed to find a recording of a Smokey Robinson. The crosswalk guard on the way to Zach’s school told me that I needed to hear “Tears of a Clown” and “I Second that Emotion.” My favorite was none of them. I didn’t like Motown because I never really understood it. My lack of understanding, however, wasn’t going to stop me from playing the gig.

We drove to the Ritz Carlton in Naples and began to unload gear. Jennifer came posing as my roadie. There was an afternoon rehearsal. I waited outside the room with a gaggle of string players that had been hired from Orlando. As I stood there, Pate came strolling around the corner carrying his gear. I was glad to see a familiar face on a gig in a strange town.
“Hey, Pate.” I said. “I haven’t played with you since the incident with the union guy.”

Smokey’s rhythm section traveled on the bus with Smokey. His music director played piano. There were a couple of guitarist, a bass player, some vocalists, and a drummer in the band. Only the music director would be attending our afternoon rehearsal. They were supplementing the band with eight string players, me on back-up keyboards, and Pate on saxophone. An “industrial gig” is when an insurance company, or financial firm, or some other conglomeration of rich white men want to be entertained at the end of their convention before heading off to a hotel room for a tryst with one of their co-workers. It has become increasingly common for companies to hire performers (that were once more well known than they are now) and pay them exorbitant sums for a brief show. While we waited for the rehearsal to begin, the string players asked if we had worked with Smokey’s music director before. When Pate and I responded negatively, they tried to prepare us. In my entire musical life, I have never experienced a more torturous and unproductive rehearsal.

He walked into the room with his ego draped around him like a large winter coat. He was truly impressed with himself, and he had an utter disdain for all of us. He set up a drum machine on a table, and the string players sat in chairs directly in front of him. Pate was off to the right, and he placed me facing the rest of the musicians immediately next to the drum machine. His ego-coat brushed up against me throughout the rehearsal. Rehearsing without a rhythm section to provide context for your part is like an unattractive person hitting on you at a party. You can tell that there is a way to handle the whole thing gracefully, but the words just don’t seem to come out right.

For non-musicians, it is like someone giving you the words “go … and … spread … out … on … a … table” with a stopwatch. After handing you a piece of paper that read, “You need to say these words at 3.5, 4.1, 4.2, 5.7, 6.0, and 6.1 seconds.” He would say, “It will all make sense later.” Next, he would proceed to yell at you for two hours about your pronunciation and timing problems. Finally, you would be brought together with another person with a corresponding list of words and times. When you put the two lists together it would say, “Let us go then, you and I/when the evening is spread out against the sky/like a patient etherized on a table.” “Aha!,” you say. “It all makes sense now. That seemed to mean something totally different when I practiced by myself for two hours.”

Rehearsing with Smokey’s music director was just like that. The first thing he said to me was, “I don’t want you to use your left hand at all. It gets too muddy with the bass player.” At the time he said that to me, I had just finished twenty years of practicing several hours a day to learn to play the piano with both hands. None of my teachers had ever emphasized the “leave out the left hand technique” or the stile senza mano sinestra as we would say in classical circles. Out of twenty years habit, I occasionally reached up and played a note with my left hand. The director had, what musicians call, “huge ears.” He could hear everything. A single note played with the left hand would result in stoppage of the rehearsal.
“How many times do I have to tell you not to play with your left hand? I’ve told you several times already! Don’t do it!” he would scream.

After being berated several times in front of the other musicians, I gave up and literally sat on my left hand to keep it from wandering up to the keys. When it came to playing some of the solo passages that he had written for me, things fell apart, the center didn’t hold, and he turned me in a widening gyre. If I missed a single sixteenth note rhythm when I sight read a passage for the first time, he would stop the rehearsal, look at me and say, “That’s a sixteenth note! Can’t you even play a sixteenth note?! Here. It goes like this.” Then, he would push me off of the keyboard and play the passage the correct way and demand that I get it right. This went on for two hours with one brief respite where he went over to yell at a violin player. By the end of the rehearsal, I was upset and had a headache. If I remembered the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle correctly, I knew that my dignity was either near my left hand’s resting spot or on Pluto.

We had a short break. Pate came up to me and said, “I’ve seen this once before. I was playing for Steve Allen one time, and he rode a piano player’s ass through an entire rehearsal in front of everyone.” We had a brief sound check. Pate and I were in the back on a raised platform on stage left. The strings were in the back on stage right. The rhythm section and backup vocals were spread across the stage in front of us. As the sound check ended, one of the tech guys approached Pate and I and asked for our full names. He wrote them down on a scrap of paper. “I wonder what that’s about?” I thought. While people ate dinner, Pate and I, along with a bass player and drummer from Orlando, played standards. Then, we took the stage and got ready to play with Smokey. Up to this point, we hadn’t seen him.

The groove started at the director’s count, and my headache vanished. Smokey took the stage and I saw his little countertenor behind swaying back and forth as he sang. He was in great voice, but the main memory I have is of his backside. I was behind him for the entire performance and only saw his face once or twice. The second song was called, and I had an epiphany. Motown strolled to the back part of the stage wearing a slinky black dress. Her hips moved with the comfortableness that pretty girls always have about themselves. I saw those voluptuous breasts that had nourished so many and the sad look she always has in her eyes. I understood for the first time. We danced together for the rest of the night. Jenn had been trying to introduce me to this sultry lady for so many years, and at that moment, I finally understood. The thing was, I had to meet her in person. The radio reports didn’t do it for me.

Pate and I had a book of charts. The rhythm section had a set list taped to the floor. When the third song came up, Pate and I both had “Being with You” up in our books. That was not the third song on the floor chart. “Being with You” starts off with a saxophone solo. I considered playing. I considered telling Pate that there was a discrepancy between our books and the set list. I chose in the end to wait and see what happened. The rhythm section started playing and Pate blared out the solo of “Being with You”. Pate was playing with all the vigor and volume of a professional soloist. Unfortunately, it was not the same song that the rest of the band was playing. The bassist immediately turned around in tandem with the rhythm guitar player and hushed Pate after two measures.

I believe it was fortunate in some senses because I learned a lot about Pate in that moment. Pate was not just a saxophone-case-throwing-witty-instrumentalist. Pate was and is a performing artist that understood the high calling of that vocation. Performing artists don’t get to make their mistakes in the privacy of the painter’s studio. When a performing artist messes up, they get their pants pulled down in front of hundreds of people. It is a high-risk job, and it is not for the weak. In the film Mr. Saturday Night, Billy Crystal tells his brother that he never had a performing career because he only had “living room balls.” That is, he only had the courage to make a mistake in front of his family. Pate has balls that drag on the ground behind him when he walks.

The song ended, and the bassist turned to Pate and said, “Now you play it.” Like everything else from the rehearsal in the afternoon, it sounded wonderful in context. In the middle of the song, Pate had his big solo of the night. The stage lights dimmed, and a bright spot came up five feet from me and illuminated Pate as he began to play. The dancing butt turned around, and I saw Smokey Robinson looking slightly older than the picture on the album that I had. He was fumbling around in his pocket for something while the spotlight was focused on Pate. Pate continued wailing away, this time on the right song. Smokey, to my astonishment, pulled the little scrap of paper out of his pocket on which the tech guy had written our names. Pate was playing so well that I started to feel some chills. As he finished his solo, the lights came up a little on Smokey. With the spotlight still relentlessly blinding Pate, Smokey knelt down and pointed at Pate. When you travel and hire musicians to supplement the band, you never know exactly what you are going to get. After hearing Pate play, Smokey’s voice rose with excitement from his kneeling position as he screamed out to the audience, “KURT KNECHT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!! KURT KNECHT ON THE SAXOPHONE!!!!”

I wasn’t sure what to do. I couldn’t rightly stop the show and correct Smokey Robinson. I took the only course of action that seemed open to me at the time. As soon as “Being with You” was finished, I leaned over to Pate and said, “Pate, I promise I won’t mess up my solo. That way when you get introduced as the keyboard player, the audience will clap just as loud for you.” When the time was right, the spotlight came up on me, and I executed the solo without error. Afterward, Smokey very kindly corrected the earlier mistake and announced me as the keyboard player and Pate as the one who actually took the saxophone solo. Despite all the nasty comments from the music director, the rhythm section came up to Pate and I after the show and said, “We play with a lot of guys in a lot of cities. You two are the best we’ve played with in a long while.” My dignity made the return journey from Pluto, and I packed it up with my gear and drove home.

About a year later, I was in a thin place in the world. There is a county park not far from where I used to live, and if you walk far enough out on some of the trails, the universe begins to get slippery and smooth. On this occasion, I was about a mile and a half out in an area where a hardwood hammock and a pine flatwood were having a territorial battle. It is wonderfully lonely spot. I was quite at peace until I heard a strange sound coming from the underbrush. It seemed too large for any of the animals that I knew about in the park. The sound continued to grow in intensity. Being that far out in the woods, I couldn’t imagine anything smaller than a bear crashing through the forest. As my fear increased, I began contemplating what my life accomplishments were. I imagined a eulogy where the words, “until his life was tragically cut short by that wild beast in the Florida forest” were used. Suddenly, Pate came crashing through the bushes and trees on a bicycle. My immediate thought was to go down on one knee, point at him, and say, “KURT KNECHT LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!! KURT KNECHT ON THE BICYCLE!!” I refrained and said, “Hey Pate. What are you doing out here riding a bike around in the middle of the woods.”
“Oh,” said Pate, “I’ve gotten into biking lately.”
“I haven’t seen you since the Smokey Robinson gig.”
We made some more small talk and parted.

There is something strange about musical relationships. Pate is not someone that I would call a “close friend” exactly. That meeting in the woods was probably only the fifth or sixth time I had seen him in my life. However, I had shared intimate experiences with him through performing. There is a camaraderie that develops from going through meaningful experiences together. It is not the same sort of friendship that you develop with your work colleagues. The contact is much more limited, but the experiences are much more visceral. It is much more akin to family relations. You may only see that weird aunt once every two years, but there is something that you both share. There is a grandparent that you both love, and somehow, it makes you concerned about the same thing. Even if you don’t see them often and are not that interested in them, you are a family. That’s what Pate seems like to me. We care about life in the pit. We care about the same sultry lady.