SPRING: SEASONS BLEEDING INTO TIME

22 Mar 2021 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

TIME TO BE HAPPY

It’s springtime and it’s time to be happy
Soon it will be Easter, the happiest day in the Christian calendar
And how can I not be happy with increasingly more daylight
Longer days and I can go on a walk at 5:30PM
And, in time, way north up here there will be little night
In fact, just a dim dusk which is what we call night in summer
That will make my accustomed indoor activity difficult
For how can I write music, read W. H. Auden
When my eyes are blinded by brilliant long day light
And I don’t feel the quiet dark indoors and maybe a candle-flame’s faint glow
Even in recording-studios they play only in red light
The buzzing bright florescent lights turned off and the soft, red light bulb
Glowing to set the mood and I have a red light bulb in my floor lamp-stand
When I practice, I turn on the red light bulb for mood
And light a candle to Sarasvati when I write poems
All that dims with the rising spring sunlight, bright days and
The candle-fire yields to the sun even as indoors yield to outdoors, and
Latin music makes more sense with its outside
Percussive soul and how many different drums and percussion go into one song
And group response chanting vocals because outdoors you can gather in groups
Salsa steps in the open air, and even the piano plays percussive syncopations
And it makes no sense for me to play a mambo all alone in my apartment
Or a güiro or claves punctuate your dance steps to a Bach fugue
Which it does make sense to play all alone in my apartment
Like Bach way up in the organ loft and the congregation sitting still, listening
I live in The Festival City and in summer we congregate by the hundreds
At Bluesfest, or Folkfest, or Symphony under the Stars
And the Mandolin Coffee Shop and Bookstore will soon open its patio
And it will still be hard to read W. H. Auden in the brilliant sunlight
When it is better to hike, bike, picknick or barbecue and even bonfires
Don’t really work in the perma-twilight we call night way north up here
Sitting indoors doesn’t make much sense;–as if there hasn’t been enough of
Sitting indoors, though one does become accustomed
And springtime is always a new exploration of life way north up here
As when, a teen, one by one, I discovered Beethoven’s only 9 symphonies
Sad to discover that Vivaldi didn’t sound like Beethoven
Trying to get over the mini-skirts in the halls between classes
Or at desks while I tried to concentrate and get algebra over with
And I would play around on the piano in my parents’ living room

TIME TO BE HAPPY

09 Mar 2021 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s springtime and it’s time to be happy
Soon it will be Easter, the happiest day in the Christian calendar
And how can I not be happy with increasingly more daylight
Longer days and I can go on a walk at 5:30PM
And, in time, way north up here there will be little night
In fact, just a dim dusk which is what we call night in summer
That will make my accustomed indoor activity difficult
For how can I write music, read W. H. Auden
When my eyes are blinded by brilliant long day light
And I don’t feel the quiet dark indoors and maybe a candle
Even in recording-studios they play only in red light
The buzzing bright florescent lights turned off and the soft, red light bulb
Glowing to set the mood and I have a red light bulb in my floor light-stand
When I practice, I turn on the red light bulb for mood
And light a candle to Sarasvati when I write
All that dims with the rising spring sunlight, bright days and
Latin music makes more sense with its outdoor
Percussive soul and how many different drums and percussion go into one song
And group response chanting vocals because outdoors you can gather in groups
Salsa steps in the open air, and even the piano plays percussive syncopations
And it makes no sense for me to play a mambo all alone in my apartment
Or a güiro or claves punctuate your dance steps to a Bach fugue
Which it does make sense to play all alone in my apartment
Like Bach way up in the organ loft and the congregation sitting still, listening
I live in The Festival City and in summer we congregate by the hundreds
At Bluesfest, or Folkfest, or Symphony under the Stars
And the Mandolin Coffee Shop and Bookstore will open its patio
And it will still be hard to read W. H. Auden in the brilliant sunlight
When it is better to hike, bike, picnic or barbecue and even bonfires
Don’t really work in the perma-twilight we call night way north up here
Sitting indoors doesn’t make much sense;–as if there hasn’t been enough
Of sitting indoors, though one does become accustomed
And springtime is always a new exploration of life way north up here

VIVALDI’S FOUR SEASONS IN 1974

01 Jan 2021 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s not like I’ve seen it all before
When I was 20, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons was all the rage and it was 1974
That was when I first discovered it and bought a vinyl album
I was discovering it all and everything was new to me
I was carrying it out of my suitcase, which would have warped it
In the Detroit Greyhound Station and was talking with a girl, a music student
On her way to Oberlin College in Ohio and a young black man came up,
He sang some notes, and asked, “Is that how The Four Seasons goes?”
Everything was all new to me, like how different Toledo, Ohio is from
Livonia, Michigan, I thought, gazing absently around in the cavernous
Toledo Amtrak Station, the winter wind moaning though cracks in the doors
As I waited to ride the train’s sway and rhythmic clacks across America
East to Boston, also different from Livonia and the family I grew up in,
Discovering the big city.  I’ve heard The Four Seasons in three movies.
In my mid-40’s, I discovered the Heiliger Dankgesang an die Gottheit
In Beethoven’s A-Minor String Quartet, which I also heard in a movie.
Way back I’d asked Jimmy, a jazz sax player, about Beethoven’s string quartets
When I didn’t know much about things, and was hungry to discover it all
And was figuring things out.  Jimmy and I disagreed about Mozart;
He said Mozart was a real entertainer, but to me Mozart was all tights,
Powdered wigs, silk slippers, gilt palaces and effeminate, effete nobles
I’ve since discovered Mozart’s startling harmonies and I’m with Jimmy, now
And bought a Compact Disk Recording box set of Mozart’s “Hayden Quartets”
And heard the orchestra play the Hayden Quartets at the exec’s party in Die Hard
Or was it The Four Seasons, or both—I haven’t seen Die Hard again for a while
In Thor, the orchestra played The Four Seasons at that Embassy ball Loki crashed
I wonder why no one else has noticed that John Williams’ Superman music sounds
Exactly like Strauss’ Tod und Verklärung or Bernstein’s “There’s a Time for Us”
In West Side Story is the Adagio movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 5
Which they both studied either in conservatories or in later professional life
My eyes welled up with tears which I blinked away in the public concert hall
That evening I heard the whole Messiah for the first time and I didn’t know why
Everybody stood up when the choir sang The Halleluiah Chorus to conclude
Part II of the whole Oratorio, not just the soundtrack to so many commercials
It’s not like I’ve seen it all before.  I poke around in Auden and Stevens, authors
I don’t know, and play The Rolling Stones on my keyboard and learn about rock,
Entertain myself with Thomas Wolfe and even Shakespeare, sometimes, and
Not really watch TV.  It isn’t that I keep learning, nor like I’ve seen it all before. 
More a matter of why it doesn’t feel like everything is new to me

Religion and the Onslaught of the ’60’s

23 Nov 2018 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , ,

In the movie MASH Hawkeye observes Major Frank Burns praying, and remarks, “Have you ever seen this syndrome before?”  Duke replies, “Not in someone over the age of eight.”  That interchange captures the spirit of the late ’60’s/late ’70’s.  Irreverent, anti-authority, self-confident, free love,–and in the movie, elitist.

I grew up in the ’60’s/’70’s and feel that there is much to be treasured from that era, now gone.  Peace and love, philosophy, self-reliance, music, freedom, individuality.  But along with these ideals, this idealistic time, came the kind of spirit that MASH captures so well.  Religion is ridiculed and the religious Frank Burns is an intolerable character.

Where so we go from there?  The spirit of the ’60’s/’70’s declared religion to be childish and ridiculous, and irreverent camaraderie to be the virtue of the day.  I think society bought it, and that those values persist today.  People turn to pop-culture to find behavioral norms and proprieties.  And for some, probably a lot, there is no place for prayer, no use for prayer.

Churches are failing, even synagogues and mosques are seeing diminution in attendance.  A while back I thought we are in a “post-Christian” age.  Now I see it as a “post-religious” age.  Even the “spiritual-but-not-religious” demographic is less than half of North American culture, and only a fraction of the population in Europe.

Certainly there were bad ideas in religions.  Certainly there were abuses of power.  Certainly there was hypocrisy.  But religion also contributed some of society’s most glorious cultural artworks, literature, philosophy, and, of course, theology.  The religious and spiritual impulse is a beautiful aspect in the human situation.  It makes the psyche sing.  It gives us honesty, sincerity, generosity, care for others, the quest for truth, repentance and human perfection, and ecstasy.  Without spirituality, what are we left with?

“But on earth indifference is the least/We have to dread from man or beast,” the poet W. H. Auden writes.  I don’t know.  I fear indifference.  I can’t but feel that the indifference to religion and even spirituality is numbing society.  We’re getting bland to everything, getting bland.  And we are retreating into tribes.  Instead of spiritual community that reaches out to the stranger and foreigner, we are retreating into tribes that close off the other.  We ignore religion to the peril of the loving community that the world can be.  While religion is often castigated for causing wars, I think that the lack of genuine religion is causing us to be more xenophobic and antagonistic to the other.  Will the indifference of our age ever produce another work like Beethoven’s 9th?  Will we ever know again the peace that passes understanding?  Will we ever again sing, “Love divine!  All loves excelling!”