Dylan's Grace Notes

seminary headline for the times

From the BBC comes this headline:

EDS shares up on HP buyout report

The snippet of the article in my RSS reader says:

"Shares in EDS rise by 28% on reports that it is close to being taken over by Hewlett-Packard."

And you know, I actually did a double-take before I realized it wasn't about my seminary.

Now I'm picturing seminary alumnae having to sew patches on their albs, stoles, and chasubles advertising the corporations that bought out their alma mater, and perhaps a little ticker-tape below webcam broadcasts from the chapel: "Hebrew bible reading brought to you courtesy of Staples, Inc. -- keeping parish offices together since 1974."

But no -- seminaries are too small a market for the likes of HP and Staples, I'd guess.

goodbye, Foster

In 1993, when our cat, Foster, came to live with me, she was small enough to make a baseball cap look like a full-sized jacuzzi in comparison (as this photo, taken on the day she came to live with me, demonstrates). She was my baby. I fed her with a bottle, and set up a little stairway of pillows and such so she could climb into bed with me, as she invariably did -- she liked to keep her head or neck pressed up right against a pulse point on my neck as often as she could. Indeed, she often rode around the house on my shoulder like a pirate's parrot while I washed dishes or cooked, so she could stay pressed up against my pulse, and occasionally hide in or chew my hair (the latter of which remained one of her favorite activities as recently as last night).

Foster never grew all that big, and she never lost her kittenish ways. She was a truly excellent mouser throughout her life, and I think she was somewhat disappointed that our apartment at seminary afforded her no opportunities to hunt anything more challenging than dust bunnies. She was a bundle of mischief, and even in her twilight years, a bundle of energy, through a bundle slightly dwindled over the years. When my partner came to live with me, Foster gamely (if somewhat grumpily) navigated the new family dynamics, and especially as our other two cats passed away, Foster settled on a few favorite activities: chewing on my hair and kneading my chest, licking my partner's face (my partner got a nightly bath from Foster quite regularly over the last few months), and most of all, positioning herself so that she was touching both of us, whether on the couch or in bed. I think it was within the last couple of days that I turned toward Karen in bed to say with a chuckle (for the thousandth time at least), "I have a feeling that someone has come between us," as Foster curled up and settled for the night with half of her on each of our pillows.

But Foster's kidneys had been failing for quite some time, and we suspected the nightly doses of subcutaneous fluids and vitamins were less and less able to compensate for what her kidneys couldn't do. Today Foster clearly wasn't herself, and by afternoon her breathing was rapid and shallow, and not even her favorite ear-rub could raise a purr. We took her to the hospital, and clearly the time had come for her to leave us. She died this afternoon at about 4:15, I think, with me rubbing her ear and Karen petting her as the drugs took effect. I keep seeing a shape on the sofa behind me or a shadow in the hall and thinking it's her, and it's hard to imagine going to bed without her jumping up to join us, demanding attention and affection and then settling down, touching both of us if possible. I miss her like crazy already.

Goodbye, Foster.

Photo: Foster on March 9, 2008

Grace Notes catblog archives of Foster and friends (great and small)

the Hancock UCC U2charist - televised!

As y'all know, on Tuesday evening I played lead guitar and did the vocals alongside drummer Elisa Lucozzi and bassist Roseanne Hebert at Hancock UCC in Lexington for a U2charist with entirely live music.

I didn't know until shortly before the start of the prelude, though, that the service was to be televised (on local cable) and recorded to DVD. *Gulp!* And on my first public outing as a lead guitarist too -- which I was trying to do while also doing lead vocals!

There were some additional challenges as well. Various technical issues meant that I didn't have a vocal monitor as such; we were using our monitors as a P.A. system to project the vocals and drums into the congregation. Even my guitar amps were angled primarily for the congregation to hear; the direct sound out from the amp hit me at about knee level. Guitar cut out during "Sunday Bloody Sunday." My microphone cut out during "Walk On." I missed a chord or two, I'm pretty sure.

In other words, it was rock and roll! I reminded the perfectionist part of me that U2 themselves often have things go awry, and sometimes (e.g., Bono's unplanned and very lengthy plunge into the audience during "Bad" at the original Live Aid concert at Wembley) the Spirit's worked powerfully through it.

I'm still not entirely sure I'm going to watch the DVD. I'd rather judge the evening by what I saw of the congregation's experience of it than by a recording. And by what I saw in the congregation, it was a very, very good night. A packed house pledged their voices to the ONE campaign and gave generously to Oxfam for relief of extreme poverty, and by the end of the evening, I don't think there was a single person in the congregation who wasn't on their feet and singing their heart out.

I'll be posting more about the experience and what I learned from it (yes, I've been doing U2charists for almost five years now, and I'm still learning!) at the U2charist resources page.

isn't technology amazing?

They've upgraded the computers in the EDS lab, and the results are amazing! (Click on the image for a full-sized version.)

(P.S. -- if you want to generate error messages of your own, you can do so at this page.)

good evening and a familiar tune

Pat Michaels, who does the music for chapel at EDS, had a brilliant idea this year: an evening of sung arrangements of Psalm 23. They ranged from Haitian (in Creole, thanks to a cantor who knew it; the rest of us bumbled along as best we could on the refrain) to Bobby McFerrin to Anglican chant to African American spiritual.

And there was one arrangement of Psalm 23 by Howard Goodall. It's one you can hear on this CD, but you can also hear it every time the opening credits of an episode of The Vicar of Dibley. I love that psalm arrangement, which was actually written as the theme song for the series. It's got a wonderful center section you don't hear from the Dibley opening credits, and the whole thing is just gorgeous -- simple and beautiful.

And I sang the soprano solo. It's just three brief passages, none in a particularly high or low range, but I was still a bit nervous -- I really wanted to do it justice, and I wasn't feeling in full voice. People tell me it was good.

I've only recently begun to sing things like this -- or like "Great Day," with its high b-flat I blogged about last week. I came to seminary thinking that I was an alto -- on the low side of alto at that -- and an alto whose voice was suitable for rock, blues, punk, and maybe a bit of folk (people compared me to Michelle Shocked and Amy Ray a lot). I thought my vocal range at best was pretty much the same as Bono's.

Singing in the EDS chapel choir, and with the encouragement of its director, I discovered that I'm actually a soprano. And with more encouragement, I started to find out that I could sing things not accompanied by an electric guitar, and sing them in public, and people wouldn't run screaming from the room. He encouraged me to take voice lessons, and I did, from an amazing teacher, for a few months.

I still have no real idea of what I sound like when I'm singing anything usually sung by people with classical training. I've heard recordings of my singing rock and folk and whatnot, though I have generally gone to great lengths to avoid hearing recordings of my gigs. But I haven't been recorded singing in chapel, or singing since I've had voice lessons. I've though of recording myself, but my building is just too noisy for it, EDS housing policy prohibits music rehearsal without the explicit consent of all neighbors, and maybe I just haven't had the courage.

So I know what it feels like when I sing that way. I know how my face, head, and body feel when I'm singing the way my voice teacher said was using the resonant spaces that I didn't know I had before I started singing at seminary. But I don't know what it sounds like.

I should try to find a way to hear it sometime. I do love singing!

U2charist (with all live music!) @ Hancock UCC, March 4

I'll be singing and playing guitar alongside Elisa Lucozzi, drummer extraodinaire, at a U2charist at Hancock (Massachusetts) UCC on the evening of March 4th. If you're in the area and would like to experience a U2charist with live music -- or to see how you can do a U2charist with entirely live music when you've only got two musicians -- please save the date! We're planning a session in the early evening at which anyone who wants to come to the service but isn't familiar with U2's music can learn songs we'll be singing, then have a break for my voice and Elisa's hands to recover, and then the service will start. I'll announce the exact times soon.

Blessings, and I hope to see some SarahLaughed.net readers there!

Dylan

For more info on the U2charist, check out the U2charist resources page.

lived to tell

Well, I can say definitively now that I have sung a high b-flat in public and lived to tell the tale. Furthermore, I can say that none of the hearers were driven to madness or violence by the experience.

Actually, folks seemed to think it was quite good, and while at first I suspected that everyone was just being nice, I discovered over the course of the reception after the lecture that quite a few of them were telling people who are NOT me that it was good. I hadn't noticed when I was singing that the (totally fabulous) voice teacher from whom I took lessons this summer was in the audience, but when I sat down afterward I saw her a couple of rows in front of me -- and I was immediately mortified. I'm not a perfectionist, as people who know me know very well, but for some reason music brings out the perfectionist in me. I hear anything even remotely out of tune like nails on a chalkboard, and I'd know I'd slid into some notes. And my tone ... I just had no idea what that was like -- somewhere between yowling cat and quite good, but I didn't really know where. So it was a great relief when my voice teacher said convincingly that it was good, and also when my partner -- who always tells the truth about such things (she has said things like, "well, that wasn't your best sermon" or "you seemed really nervous") -- said that it sounded good, and she was sitting all the way in the back (as was my voice teacher, come to think of it).

I do think I could have done better with more voice lessons. I miss the lessons, and hope to be able to get back to them someday.

But hey -- I stuck my neck out and sang something I wasn't totally sure I could do in front of a big group of people, and I'm kinda proud of having done that much. Maybe that's more important in some ways than exactly what it sounded like. Maybe that's why people refer to time in seminary as important formation.

And the important formation continues tomorrow in a different vein -- I'm working for much of the day as an instructor-in-training for IMPACT Boston, leading pieces of a workshop for teenager. Similar experiences, in some ways: singing and IMPACT are both about discovering the power of stance and voice and using one's whole body.

b-flat

Tomorrow evening EDS is hosting the Absolom Jones lecture. As I blogged a while ago, EDS tried something new this year at the annual lecture in honor of lecture: they added music (namely, a piece I'd written in honor of Jonathan Daniels and designed for congregational singing called "No Greater Love"). It worked well enough that EDS decided to add music for the Absolom Jones lecture, which is tonight.

Tonight, the music is a spiritual called "Great Day," in an arrangement for a choir and soprano soloist. Last time I heard the piece performed, the soloist was the absolutely amazing voice teacher who gave me lessons over the summer. I had to give them up the voice lessons, alas -- just didn't have the money -- but she did wonders for my tone and range in speaking as well as singing. I'd entered EDS thinking of myself as an alto, and the (also wonderful) choirmaster here after listening to me for a while suggested that I try soprano, which I've sung ever since. And in voice lessons, I even managed to sing a high b-flat once.

Well, the solo for "Great Day" has at its climax a nice, long (whole note with fermata) high b-flat. I haven't practiced it other than driving in my car and in two rehearsals we've had for the song, lest by singing it in my apartment I cause our neighbors' dogs to go mad and attack their owners or something -- at that pitch, and at this point in my vocal training (and lack thereof), I either have to sing at full volume or no air escapes my throat, and while my immediate neighbors graciously said they had no problem with my practicing the part at home, I just couldn't bring myself to inflict that on them. So I'm a little nervous. Can you tell?

But it was pretty much OK in rehearsal this morning, I've got one more rehearsal this evening, and I think I will be able to sing the part without sounding like a dying cat. PeaceBang deserves more than a series of UU Blogging awards (she's deservedly up for quite a few -- vote for her!); she deserves a medal for her counsel to "snarf your sinus troubles away," which prompted my honey and me to get ourselves neti pots, which let one clean one's sinuses and nose with a saline solution. It's amazing how much more those spaces in a singer's head provide resonance when they're not plagued by winter dryness and filled with crud. And it's certainly more healthy to use a neti pot to clear things out from a cold or allergies than it is to take drugs or use sprays that dry out nasal passages. So hurrah for PeaceBang, and hurrah for neti pots!

So, gentle readers, please send good vibes or anything else you might think would benefit a singer at 7:00 p.m., when I will face that high b-flat, and I hope I'll sing it in a way that honors Absolom Jones and EDS's guests for the occasion.

engaging God's mission

Lately there has some discussion in the partisan blogosphere as to whether one should give to Episcopal Relief and Development if one disagrees with one or more things going on the The Episcopal Church, or to Anglican Relief and Development if one doesn't, or if it's better to give to some other organization entirely.

I plan to update this post to offer links to the organizations I mention and to ones to which I refer, but I want to go on the record as saying immediately and unequivocally:

If you want to give to change the world, to relieve global poverty, than the theological bent of particular people involved in the organization doesn't matter much.

What matters much, in my reading of the life and teaching and death and resurrection of Jesus, God's Christ, is our giving is that we're engaging God's mission by doing so, and that means giving as much as possible from compassion for the poorest and most marginalized and as little as possible from our sense of what will accomplish any partisan church or civic political aims.

So yes, I support Episcopalian Relief and Development, and rejoice when others do. They do amazing work, partnering with indigenous ministries for maximum efficiency and sensitivity to local context, and spending as little as possible on overhead versus aid. I've looked into them, and I feel on solid ground in saying that their work is worth supporting, whether you're an Episcopalian or not, and whether you're a fan of any particular policy or other tendency of The Episcopal Church or not. Episcopal Relief and Development, as far as I can tell (and I would welcome any data I should take into account that might demonstrate the contrary), is doing important and urgent work that's Good News to the poor.

I have not investigated to the same degree organizations such as Anglican Relief and Development (which, as I understand the situation, was formed by groups seeking to break away from The Episcopal Church to provide aid especially from organizations and people who, for a variety of reasons, can't accept funding for or don't feel comfortable donating to anything associated with The Episcopal Church) and Five Talents. I hear good things about what they're doing, though.

What I encourage everyone to do is to INVESTIGATE. Ask questions about how much money goes to fund people in the U.S. (you'd be surprised at how many organizations claim to be about ending extreme poverty involved and that still spend most of their income right here, one white people better off than me). Ask them about their partnerships with organizations indigenous to the populations they serve. Personally, I don't chalk up anything I give to organizations that spend more than 15% of their total budget as PROGRAM budget OVERSEAS part of the 1% that organizations such as the ONE Campaign is advocating.

In other words, how much is my giving helping comfortable American citizens live comfortably while they talk about extreme poverty? Talking about extreme poverty is important, but does not necessarily relieve extreme poverty, and personally I prefer to fun initiatives -- such as Global Voices -- that give voice to people outside the U.S. and who work directly with if not being immediately among the populations most affected by extreme poverty.

And with respect to organizations abroad, how much budget goes to administration as opposed to program -- i.e., the program of relieving extreme poverty, as opposed to talking about relieving extreme poverty? What accountability measures are in place to assure that checks cashed are used by the organization for its stated mission?

Personally, I don't many organizations -- faith-based or no -- that match Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) in terms of efficiency, cultural sensitivity, and working to channel relief in directions that foster autonomy.

If you want to register your disagreement with The Episcopal Church in some way, though, I'm going to do something crazy:

I suggest, a la St. Paul's advice in his letter to the churches in Rome, that you strive to outdo ERD in collections gathered, in accountability offered, and in effectiveness in getting relief and means to economic sustainability to those in extreme poverty. Do that and I'll stand up and cheer at the top of my lungs.

Because in the end -- I have to say as some who takes seriously Matthew's report of Jesus' talking about 'sheep' and 'goats' -- I don't give a rodent's posterior about which organization sends which people which tax form.

I just want a world in which every child has a chance -- clean water, enough food to get by in reasonable health, enough health care to end childhood mortality from diseases we have for decades had cheap technologies to cure, enough education and a clean enough environment to make a living by their own hands.

We could do it -- not just because we have the resources (and we do -- because God has blessed this world with more than enough resources), but because, I think, there's critical mass in this world such that if those of us who believed this but aren't making a big deal about it decided to make a big deal about it, we could witness firsthand the changing of the tide that God is doing.

I'll write more about this soon, I'm sure -- especially given that this is Lent, and that I've got certain ideas (for which I'm deeply indebted to the prophet Isaiah, among others) about in what kinds of fasts God is engaged and honors -- but I wanted to go on the record about this much right now.

Thanks for listening.

U2 3D

I had a fun surprise last night -- an invitation to preview the new movie U2 3D. Spoiler alert: I'll be telling you how it ends. On the other hand, that might not be so important for a concert film.

U2 fans will absolutely LOVE this movie. I have stood at the feet of all four band members at various points (yes, including Larry -- I was in the very front row on the floor and directly in front of his mini-kit for "Love and Peace Or Else" when I saw U2 in DC). U2 fans know that if you're lucky enough to get tickets for the floor at a U2 concert, you're going to have to make some decisions. In front of Bono, Edge, or Adam, all of whom roam the stage, but have a particular spot to which they keep returning? If you're lucky enough to get into the 'heart' or 'ellipse' that forms a B-stage, are you going to try to be in the very front, knowing that you'll be closer to the band more of the time (being close enough to shout requests -- which they do take sometimes -- or converse a little is VERY fun), but might not be able to see them at all when they roam out on the B-stage?

In U2 in 3D, you don't have to decide; the camera roams. If you want to know the condition of Bono's roots (I'd advise him to lay off the hair dye and stick with his current crew cut) or Edge's pores (best skin in the band, I think), you'll be in heaven. The drawback, of course, is that you don't get to choose on whom you'll focus at a given moment; the director chooses for you. And the director isn't a guitarist, I'll wager; when the camera shows The Edge, there's usually light behind him or something about the angle that prevents you from seeing what he's actually playing. But that's the complaint of a guitar geek, and more often than not, I thought the director's visual choices were solid ones.

The musical choices I would have made differently. For starters, the film in 90 minutes long -- much shorter than a U2 concert. There's no "City of Blinding Lights," which opened most shows on the tour, and that I thought nearly recaptured the exuberance of 80's shows opening with "I Will Follow." "Mysterious Ways" got cut, I believe, as did "Elevation." And one of the most fun things about the Vertigo tour was how many old and seldom-played songs came out again to play -- I particularly loved being there for performances of "The Ocean" and "Cry/The Electric Co.," and I would have loved the chance to see U2 perform "Gloria" and "40" again in the film. But the technical demands and expense of the 3D technology made a longer movie impractical, as I understand it, and the bottom line is that this movie is a blast.

I admit I was wary of the 3D technology; the last time I think I saw something in 3D was from the children's magazine Dynamite, with cheesy glasses, one lens red and one blue, that you tore out of the magazine. The technology is MUCH better than that, as you'd expect, and the 3D contributed to the experience in ways I wouldn't have expected. There were a couple of 3D moments that felt a bit gratuitous -- I don't think I needed to have the neck of Adam's bass zoom out at my face quite as often as I found myself, and watching a 65-foot Bono reach out his hand toward me made me feel a bit like Fay Wray in King Kong, about to be carried up the Empire State Building by a gigantic rock star. And it's annoying enough in an actual concert when someone climbs up on another person's shoulders in front of you; I was even more annoyed in the few (and, thankfully, fleeting) moments when the 3D technology was used to replicate that experience in the film. But the 3D helped to convey the scale and energy of the arena in zooming shots over the crowd, and there's something about it that helped also to convey the chemistry between the band members -- how they communicate and joke around with one another during songs. And the technology was used to great effect during "The Fly," when the words and slogans that flash across screens in concerts drop down or zoom out at you in layers.

The best part of the technology, though, in my experience was the sound. The total surround sound of the IMAX theater made watching the movie feel like being at a concert, but with MUCH higher-fidelity music. The treble is crisp, so Larry's cymbals and even the subtle 'chink' sound of The Edge's trademark guitar picks (dimpled Herdim picks played with the flat end down, creating a percussive sound) came across with astonishing clarity. The bass rumbled impressively, and was brought forward in the mix particularly when the camera was on Adam, and it was the kind of rich bass you feel in your sternum. It felt loud in the ways you want a rock concert to feel loud, but with far fewer decibels; all but the most sensitive should be able to leave the earplugs at home (something that, as a musician, I NEVER do for a concert, and especially when I'm up front in an arena or stadium).

And the performances in U2 3D are classic U2 -- occasionally dramatic to the point of being maudlin or bludgeoning a metaphor, but earnest and moving. Bono's voice isn't what it used to be, but he knows how to use what he's got. The Edge's bluesy solo on "Bullet the Blue Sky" remains one of my favorites of his career. The rhythm section is tight (and Larry fans will rejoice to see lots of his bulging biceps). And this movie is about the music -- Bono doesn't preach more than a couple of sentences at a time between songs, and, interestingly enough, the ONE/Make Poverty History campaign aren't even fleetingly mentioned.

It's possible that politics (even politics with as diverse support as the Millennium Development Goals attract) were minimized in the film to maximize the opportunity posed by U2 3D to win new fans -- people who like U2 when they hear them on the radio, but who would never shell out the money and go through the traffic, crowds, and hassles of a live show. I doubt the film will do much of that. U2 is such a huge band that they're hard to avoid, and I think they've won most of the fans they'll have. That's an awful lot of fans, of course, and now fans of multiple generations (a LOT of parents bring children to U2 concerts, and in many cases, the kids know all the words too). I kind of missed those fans at the movie last night; the preview crowd was a very small one, and it looked to me mostly like executive types (grey hair, arriving in a suit and taking off their tie as they settled into their seats). The cheering and singing along was, I think, all from people in Buenos Ares, where U2 3D was filmed.

But folks, this is as close you'll get to the experience of a U2 concert without going to one -- or until U2's next tour. And that's more than good enough for the fans. U2 3D is a movie I'd be tempted to see again.