193. jigger

Now that Christmas 2013 is here and finally gone, I feel that I can finally rant to you, dear reader, about what particularly bothers me so much about the entire bloody month of December. And it’s not just because of my tempestuous history with Christianity.

Well, okay, it does have some to do with my history with Christianity.

This year, I dunno, I felt crankier than in previous years, particularly with the seeming predominance of Christmas music in places like shopping malls and on the radio. And perhaps it was because Thanksgiving came so late this year, it seemed like the Christmas music started earlier. But it also seemed so… aggressively Christian in tone. Perhaps I’m just noticing more.

I was grocery shopping a few weeks ago and heard Go Tell It On the Mountain over the PA system, and the line “that Jesus Christ is Lord.” I was at World Market two weeks ago and heard Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas with the line “if the Lord allows.” If there’d been a line in a song about how “Allah is One” or “All hail the Mother Goddess,” a bevy of angry Christians would be storming the manager’s office.

Now, I’m not trying to single out Christians here. And I’m really not trying to be one of those atheists (or, according to Sarah Palin, Joe McScrooge) who is trying to destroy people’s favorite holiday. For all intents and purposes, I enjoy this holiday season. I like the lights, the greenery, the sense of community and gathering. What I object to the blatant promotion of Christianity during the entire month of December, as if the Church didn’t already get Easter and the forty days before of Lent.

I probably wouldn’t get so cranky if we just included other religions in the cultural melange that is Christmas: if we included Pagan carols and rituals for Yule; Buddhist traditions for Bodhi day; the sharing of Jewish food and music for Chanukah; Yalda, from Persian culture, celebrating the passing of the winter solstice; and Pancha Ganapati, a 5-day festival in honor of Lord Ganesha.

Point is, why couldn’t we make Christmas a human festival, wherein we celebrate the different ways we have developed over the centuries to get through the long winter months by gathering together around fires to tell each other stories and sing songs?

… well, for the same reason that many Christians drum on about freedom of religion, but fly into a rage the moment someone else attempts to freely practice (or not practice) theirs. I don’t believe in the Goddess, or the Buddha, or any other deity we’ve invented over the millennia, but I can’t deny that belief in those things has given people hope and comfort in dark times.

On Tuesday evening, I listened to the rebroadcasting of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College in Cambridge, London. After the opening carol, Once in Royal David’s City, the dean of the college read this:

Beloved in Christ, be it this Christmas Eve our care and delight to prepare ourselves to hear again the message of the angels; in heart and mind to go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass, and the Babe lying in a manger.

Let us read and mark in Holy Scripture the tale of the loving purposes of God from the first days of our disobedience unto the glorious Redemption brought us by this Holy Child; and let us make this Chapel, dedicated to Mary, his most blessèd Mother, glad with our carols of praise…

… because this of all things would rejoice his heart, let us at this time remember in his name the poor and the helpless, the cold, the hungry and the oppressed; the sick in body and in mind and them that mourn; the lonely and the unloved; the aged and the little children; all who know not the Lord Jesus, or who love him not, or who by sin have grieved his heart of love.

When I first heard this service a number of years ago, this sort of statement wouldn’t have phased me at all. But now it smacks of the most supreme in of arrogance: the assumption that because you belong to a dominant world religion that everyone agrees with your narrative and interpretation of events.

There are people who believe in, as Bill Maher quotes more liberal defenders of Christianity, the “central story” of Christmas—that is, that an all-powerful God impregnated a very young girl without the aid of intercourse in order to set right events that he himself put in motion after he had a temper tantrum after two humans he created and imbued with curiosity and intelligence went and behaved exactly how he’d expected them to. That “central story”?

So how is this a positive story, exactly? Because you can’t accept the Christmas story without accepting everything that goes along with it. Jesus shed his godhood to become human because of what went down in the (mythical) Garden of Eden? And just so he could grow up to be tortured and killed in order to atone for a crime that was an arbitrary offense in the first place. Forget the shepherds and the wise men—that’s the real meaning of Christmas, Charlie Brown.

It’s a story that was the beginning of religious wars, inquisitions, genocide, mass murder, torture, witch burnings, child sexual abuse (covered up and allowed to continue as the Church and its leaders, including the rapist priest, are infallible and above reproach because religion), the abuse and subjugation of women and minorities, including the LGBT community, and a host of other crimes against humanity.

This is what comes to mind when I hear a line in a song like, “let’s give thanks to the Lord above.” I hear a huge part of human experience being whitewashed to preserve monotheism.

And damn—passing a horn of mead around a circle of friends sounds like a helluva lot of fun.

192. solstice

My breakfast this morning was two tumblers of whisky (neat), about three fingers each. This after getting up to feed and water the dogs I’m looking after for the month. No sense in them going hungry. I got an email last night from the University of Michigan at 11:10PM, which seems an odd hour to be sending emails. A bit like waiting until you know someone’s gone to leave a voicemail. The email read:

I regret to inform you that your application for admission to the Music Composition MA program at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance has not been approved. We are therefore unable to offer you the opportunity to audition. This decision is based on a careful review by the faculty committee of your pre-screening recording and your application materials. The staff of the Admissions Office and the Composition faculty are not able to provide individual feedback from student auditions because of the volume of candidates to consider. We ask your understanding and thank you in advance. As you continue your college search, I know that you will find another school at which to pursue your studies. We wish you continued success and every good wish for a career that will fully utilize your interests and abilities.

Basically, a “thanks for trying, now fuck off” email. This might not have been such a blow had my temp job not ended yesterday, a week and a half early than what I was planning on. It also might not be such a disappointment were I not single again for the holidays. Last year was the first time in a while that I’ve been employed during the Yule season, and the first time ever that I’ve been dating someone for a major holiday. Now I’m back to where I was in 2011, when I told my parents that I wanted nothing more to do with them for their bigotry, I was still reeling from heartbreak and my loss of faith, and I’d just been laid off from another temp job right after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. As in, thanks a lot. There are still two applications out there that might yield something, but I’m terrified now that the results will be the same there—that my work just isn’t good enough on its own to merit a place as a cohort in graduate school. A friend of mine tells me that it may have nothing to do with the quality of my application or compositions; that it’s more about finding a group of students that coalesce together. If that’s the case, I may never get into grad school as I’m really an oddball when it comes to music. And everything else. What I’m terrified over is the prospect of yet another year of living in purgatory. I’m tired of working these temp jobs that pay far below the skill level required for the work the client needs performed. I’m sick of being expendable. I’m sick of working with the 9-to-5ers, the workaday folk who go home after a long day at the office of doing something they ultimately don’t care about and aren’t invested in; who are planning to working long enough to cash in on their 401K pension and retire somewhere comfortable. This is not the world I belong in. Remember this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ofKJ6UFv60 Instead of a Shakespearean subtext, my inner voices have quite another Jungian game going on:

• Id: Running back and forth, simultaneously trying to make ends meet and bash my head against a wall to get anything artistic done.
• Ego: Uncertain about whether I’ve made the right career decision or whether my music is even good enough to pursue a career in, even though it’s pretty much the only thing I’m really good at and give a fuck about.
• Superego: Those strident subconscious voices that are difficult to shake, like Christianity:
  • Every single rejection letter or person who has rejected my music, told me that it’s too difficult, or that it’s just not very good.
  • My lack of business sense and self-promotion; of knowing how to strategize, network, who to talk to, how to talk to people, etc.
  • Frustration over my dating life and singleness; over how I haven’t found a guy yet who ultimately doesn’t disappoint me (cf, Fiona Apple); how my current scheme is to find a like-minded guy at grad school; feeling anxiety over nearly being 31 and that I’m at the age where younger guys who are into “older guys” are interested in me but not interested in a relationship.

That bloodcurdling scream the girl playing Ophelia lets out at the end of that scene? That’s the sound in my head almost all the time these days. “Get thee to a nunnery” indeed. I’ve also grown weary of the Midwest and its seemingly provincial attitude toward sophisticated art and music. I once shared the recording of my senior composition recital with a supervisor of mine, and he called it “long-haired music,” a reference (I suppose) to graduate students of the 60s and 70s being somewhat shaggy in appearance. I’ve sent pieces of mine to ensembles all over the Twin Cities, hoping to get performances, or the very least readings. No bites. If I get feedback at all, it’s usually something to the effect of: It’s really not what we’re looking for. … thanks, now go fuck yourself. It’s difficult not to think that I’m the common denominator here. What’s more probable? That hundreds of people have had the same independent reaction to my music, or that my work just… sucks? The latter is what I’m afraid of. We’ll see what happens in the coming weeks as I wait to see what happens with the Eastman School of Music and with the University of Southern California. I have a little hope, but not a lot. In the meantime, Christmas is in four days and I feel like drinking myself silly to forget that I’m single and miserable, and that my entire family is fundamentalist Christians.

191. hardihood

Last night I posted to Facebook about how yesterday evening I was mopping the floor of my apartment to music written about a thousand years ago, and imagining that someday, a guy is going to find this ridiculously nerdy trait (i.e., my interest in early music) incredibly endearing. A friend commented: That isn’t pretentious at all. 😛

My immediate reaction was to apologize all over myself, realizing how snobbish and pretentious such a statement might come across as. Instead, I replied: Perhaps… but it’s unique!

After doing a little more mopping, I came back and added: Actually, no—it isn’t pretentious at all. It would be pretentious if I’d posted this to appear more cultured or sophisticated. But the truth is, I am listening to medieval music at this very moment while mopping my apartment floor.

Merriam-Webster defines pretentious: “Having or showing the unpleasant quality of people who want to be regarded as more impressive, successful, or important than they really are.”

Here I’m reminded of a passage from C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Proposes a Toast, in which the Senior Tempter and Undersecretary of his department in Hell is remarking on the importance of reframing democracy “as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power” in order to produce in people the feeling that “prompts a man to say I’m as good as you.”

Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: “Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I — it must be a vile, upstage, la-di-da affectation. Here’s a fellow who says he doesn’t like hot dogs — thinks himself too good for them, no doubt. Here’s a man who hasn’t turned on the jukebox — he’s one of those goddamn highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were honest-to-God all-right Joes they’d be like me. They’ve no business to be different. It’s undemocratic.”

The fact of the matter is that I’m a nerd—and a very specific type of nerd at that. Shortly after my family moved from Kansas to Minnesota, my father took me to a concert where the first of Bach’s Brandenburg concertos was on the program. By the end of the piece, I was madly in love with early music.

Some of the happiest moments of my teen years were when I was playing or studying Baroque music. I nearly majored in historical performance (which would’ve required going somewhere other than Northwestern).

I’m not even sure I can explain what it is about early music that so captivates me. As I’ve been musing on what it is that I love especially about medieval music, I figure it’s probably the same thing that attracts me to history—that though most of us live in a more sophisticated world than the vast majority of our ancestors; travel about in cars, airplanes, and even into space; and have access to technology and medicine that would have made us gods to earlier generations, we’re not that different from the people who lived ten thousand years ago.

Take the song I posted above. It was written sometime in the late 12th century by a woman known as the Comtessa de Dia (Die, a county in the High Middle Ages located in the southeastern part of France), or as just Beatritz. She was a trobairitz, a female troubadour. If you remember your music history, the troubadours were composers and performers of lyric poetry, usually about chivalry and courtly love. Compare this lyric from Ab joi et ab joven m’apais to any pop song written in the last hundred years:

I feed on joy and youthfulness
and joy and youthfulness content me;
since my friend is the most cheerful
I am cheered and charmed by him,
and because I’m true to him,
it’s well that he be true
to me; I never stray from loving him
nor do I have the heart to stray.

Sure, the sentiment is a little different, just as the clothes were different and people believed that demons were the cause of sickness and disasters, or that women were conceived because of weak male sperm or the direction of the wind at the time of intercourse. (No kidding on the last one. See Thomas Aquinas’ “On how a woman is to be born a woman” from the Summa Theologica. Crazy.) But it’s clear from the lyric that Beatritz is excited about being in love. It’s like a postcard from the 1100s.

In a way, I find in early music a link to humanity by composing my own music, the same as people have been composing music since the first humans joined their voices in song. I find a link to my humanity in housekeeping through images of excavated floors of Neolithic houses that show signs of having been regularly swept, or indentations in floors where someone knelt regularly enough while tending a fire to leave permanent marks.

I’m not interested in any of this because it’s “intellectual.” I’m interested because it fascinates me and captivates my imagination and my thoughts.

So it’s frustrating when I get labeled as “pretentious” for liking these things, for being a Classically trained musician, for not liking most of what’s on television or the radio or in theaters. Because I do have a love for music, for history, for good stories, for science (even though I don’t understand most of it), and for good literature.

And I’m hoping these qualities (e.g., mopping floors to mediaeval music) will be intriguing and endearing someday to the man I marry—whoever he is. That’s one of many reasons for leaving Minnesota for graduate school—wherever that is. Because having interests in obscure subjects is not a Midwestern virtue. It is something, however, encouraged in academia, where it’s becoming clearer that I belong.

As Alanis Morissette sings, “… what I wouldn’t give to meet a soul-mate—someone else to catch this drift.”