Ciconia and the Chocolate Factory

Once upon a time, an athletic Swiss mister fled the Nazis by climbing over some mountains and eventually landed in Issaquah, where he went into the chocolate-making business. When he was in his eighties, he oversaw the building of a replica of a 12th century Swiss chapel with a mural of a mountain climber being borne into heaven. People mostly get married there, so they might charge a lot, but I'll bet that would be a great place for some late medieval tunes. I wonder if the smell of chocolate ever wafts through....

In other news, I had all kinds of new temps stacked three deep in the testing chamber tis morning. Two computers! Three temps! Four chairs, all calibrated for maximum squeakage! Oh, so much squeakage.

This weekend, between numbers, I saw two very tiny chapels tucked away near the big sanctuaries of their respective churches. So I got to thinking of how nice it would be to have concerts there of the quiet, subtle music that is too delicate for regular halls. It would also be good for rich vocal harmony, since the space is so small and live, it would be like the audience and singers alike were inside of a corolla of pulsing sound. (...and no, I don't mean we'd be in a Toyota Corolla of pulsing sound, but given the room size, maybe it's not that far off. Yes, a subcompact sedan of pulsing sound. Not Usher.) Anyway, this has become my most recent obsession: a concert (a series? a short stack?) of music in the smallest possible spaces. Ars subtilior, hypnotic polyphony, and some soft gems that tend to be turned up or not heard at all. Moreover, there will be stained glass, and the program will be timed for maximum stained glassitude. Or candles. Or both.

The tiny things

Oh, the tiny tiny joys. The taste of my lemon lip balm. The heavenly smell of peach tea. The pretty blue of my sweater and its pleasing texture. The feeling of water on my hands. The sound of the dial tone (like the opening chord of a Ravel piece whose name I can't remember). The little round of Babybel cheese waiting in my bag. The mountains across the harbor are being snowy in pink and blue pastels today. It is icy cold outside, but the sun is being pale gold all over everything. Inside, we are being cold and quiet, and I am being anxious. I want to work on the music for this weekend. But at least there is the occassional cry of seagulls as they wheel over downtown. There is the blood moving around in my veins. There is real half-and-half in my coffee.

"Prosperity is your birthright, and you hold the key to more abundance- in every area of your life- than you can possibly imagine. You deserve every good thing you want, and the Universe will give you every good thing you want, but you have to summon it into your life. The Secret is that you have the key. The key is your thoughts and feelings. And you have been holding the key in your hand all your life."
-The Secret desk calendar

So the assumption is that we are all sort of miserable? Fair enough.

I have a new theory about asking for things. I think you can get a lot by asking. But asking is not the easiest thing in the world to do, and I wonder why that is. For me, setting goals of any substance is difficult (and get ready to be blown out of your chair by my density), but I can't think of a single person whose life I'd like to emulate. Of course there are aspects of people's lives that I envy, but I seem to have a terrible problem with commitment that way. It makes no logical sense because, of course, making no choice is also a choice. Only now I'm committed (more or less) to a job that has nothing to do with books or music. Hmmm... sounds like it's time for a montage! A slow one that culminates around April, perhaps?

"The first settlers were farmers led by Luther Collins. The Collins Party claimed land up the winding Duwamish River (later Georgetown) on September 14, 1851. A week later the vanguard of the Denny Party, from Cherry Grove, Illinois, via Portland, arrived on Alki Point (future West Seattle): 19-year-old David Denny (1832-1903) began building a cabin, John Low (1820-1888) traveled south to fetch the others; and Lee Terry (1818-1862) went off in search of a tool. The rest of the Denny Party, 22 persons, arrived on the schooner Exact on November 13, 1851. It was pouring rain. David Denny was discovered feverish inside a roofless cabin. The women disembarked with their children and sat down and cried. This was the beginning of Seattle."

-Priscilla Long (from HistoryLink.org, The Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History)

Today I began a little websigation about my adopted state's history (smallpox, land grab). I found this amusing tidbit, providing evidence that moving to Seattle has always had this effect on people. It is amazing how naturally we newcomers find one another and commiserate over our shared depression. It happens everywhere; in line at the grocery store or whatever, we sense eachother's alienness. We are all shocked at how badly we've handled the winter, we're tired of whining about the weather and we've all heard stories about how Portland is the land of milk and honey. Maybe it is.

In other news, I only want to sing folk songs in English. Okay, maybe not exclusively, but I have a powerful hunger for them.

Un secret c'est une ride*

One of my bosses has a "The Secret" desk calendar. So each day we pass around a little page of Jedi wisdom and have brief, hopeful discussions about how it might work. And I do mean hopeful, for my bosses have that gleam in their eye, and I know it's reflected by my own bleary gleam. The pages tell us to feel grateful for the things we desire, as if we had already received them. I think I've conjured a couple of things, as a matter of fact- the other night, there was good traffic against all odds, and I found a piece of music for which I'd searched fruitlessly the day before. I also imagined myself being well rested and the next morning the alarm clock mysteriously didn't go off, causing me to be an hour late for work. I think that, in order to control the matrix, one should be VERY specific.

I also think that (for a spoiled bourgeois American) wanting a thing is at least as hard as getting a thing. Deciding what to want. Deciding to really want it. Because what about the beauty of chance and the things you bypass by making up your mind? Because of the beauty of the world as a spinning blue roulette platter. Because Fate is suppposed to love you first, and if you tell her what you want, it doesn't count as much?


*A secret is a wrinkle (or, if you have a secret, it will give you a wrinkle. Supposed French saying I read somewhere. A good one.)

A few weeks ago, I watched part of the "Celtic Woman" Christmas special during the PBS fund drive. I hope I don't offend anyone by saying this, but it was almost unbearably corny, and yet I couldn't turn it off. For days, I pondered how something so simple and, in many ways, mediocre could be so compelling to that stadium full of people, and even to snobby little me in my tiny apartment with all my music degrees. So there were a bunch of nice looking (but not stunningly beautiful) gals in pretty dresses, and they sang (well, synched) a bunch of very unremarkable songs with bell trees and heavy orchestration. They all crooned; there was no real technique on display, no great emotional outpouring. Just pretty dresses and long hair and some nice songs. Oh yeah, and a massive orchestra and that bell tree. So I'm rethinking my conception of the Great Performance. Now, I'm not gonna go all Disney-princess or anything, but maybe it wouldn't hurt to put things in perspective a little. I mean, maybe it's enough to just sing a lovely song in a lovely dress. Maybe people don't always want to be dazzled...