things i
did
in 21.
a moustache-twisting journal of the few things in my life worth mentioning
23 | 22 | 21 | 20 | 19 | 18 | 17 | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 11 | 10 | 09 | 08 | 07 | 06 | 05 | 04 | 03 | 02 | 01 | 2000 | 99 | 98 | 97
2021 being the strange year it was, I gotta start with some things I *didn't* do.
sing and pigskin
For the first time ever, I didn't do Baylor's All-University Sing or Pigskin. Live-band performances were cancelled. (Pigskin had been cancelled in 20, but of course Sing got in just by the hair of its chinny-chin-chin. We were sitting around joking about this coronavirus thing as if it were the ebola scare or H1N1. Ha!) But this last spring and fall, no 40 hours of rehearsing 100 songs, no crashing on a colleger's couch, none of it. Strange times!
get covid
All three of my ladies got it, in rapid succession. After an exemplary spring semester of the school's can't-be-too-careful policies —– at last, their Soup Nazi-ishness comes in handy! —– my eldest switched to the older-kids' campus, where a different-colored flag flies. They actually *spent* money dismantling safety measures that were in place and wouldn't have cost anything to leave up (like plexiglass on the desks). Sure enough, no joke, she got the virus on the first day of school. Five days later her little sister caught it, and five days later their mother caught it. Phooey. We were duper-careful, though, and I somehow managed to stay clean long enough to get triple-vaxed. Surely I'll catch it someday, but hopefully that'll be when it is milder and we're smarter.
Now for things I, ya know, DID.
teamed up with browning again
For the third time, I set a Browning poem to music. The first was in 87, when I was in school. The second was in 2007, twenty years later almost to the day. Last year, as I was casting about for something interesting to do for Cate's birthday, I hit on a favorite: "My Star," about the speaker's favorite star, that dartles red and blue for him but, like Michigan J. Frog, won't perform for his friends, who are drawn to the bigger flashier obvious stars anyway. The poem works as a tribute to his thorny muse. But it also works as a love-poem to his poet wife, admired shallowly by the world but with depths only he can see. And now it's a love song to mine. Those keeping score will see that I now have a 3-movement suite: I'll be shaping it up for publication.
drove a sienna
Our Pacifica finally decided to poop out on us after many years of faithful service (and temperamental maintenance). Maintenance was top-of-the-list in our new search. The decade between the two models saw innovation, and it showed: the girls were absolutely thrilled with each new spiffy feature. I'm absolutely thrilled to be back to not having to coddle a car.
accompanied the wars of independence
Mexican and Texan, that is. A historian friend sent me some sheet music to record for him, and I had the best time researching performance practices, getting a piano tuned to an authentic tuning, getting just the right amount of starch in the sound. You'll hear 'em soon.
got away
Once in the spring (as an anniversary gift) and once in the fall (as my brother's family's birthday gift to Catherine), we went to nice hotels in lovely downtown SA and just got away for a bit. By that time the lockdown had been locking us down in emotion and patience, so it was really nice to just unspool and have a bit of us-time. Thanks to everyone who made it possible —– including the grandparents who took the kids for a few days.
engineered some ragetime
Not a typo: this is the work of a present-day twenty-something composer who writes in an incredibly authentic but turned-up-to-eleven ragtime voice. The incredible pianist Bill McNally got me to record his performances of this stuff for an upcoming album. It was a nice challenge to capture the nuances of his playing and make them into ones and zeros. Look for the release soon.
dipped my toes in the machine
My parents-in-law had a foot-massaging gizmo they couldn't use, so they donated it to me. Boy did I use it. I even think it's made a difference. Certainly it's brought some relaxation.
got frozen out —– for 6 weeks
The big freeze took its toll on our eleventy–one-year-old house. Pipes burst, rooms were unusable, the whole bit. So we threw ourselves on the hospitality of my parents, octogenarians who suddenly had a household of six. And remember this is when school was done by Zoom, so that's six solid weeks of companionship. Hey, it was fun! There were dominos and hot chocolate and neighborhood explorations and good conversations all round.
sang through the presidents
Can you list all the presidents in order? You sure can, if you sing the cute little ditty I wrote and recorded, Washington through Biden, in February. The girls joined me for vocals. It got more views, quicker, than any other youtube song I've done. Go ahead! Sing along!
lightscaped
A cool family gift from grandparents: the SA Botanical Gardens' Lightscape, which we did on the winter solstice. Well-conceived and superbly executed. There were screams of delight and sighs of wonder: a glowing winter marvel.
wrote some more harp music
I got the urge to add another piece to my Dickinson Inklings series. The poems of Emily Dickinson are so much fun to bounce off. Odd, and oddly modern, thoughts that sound like "Poetry," but sometimes sound like a Shatner spoken-word turn or your emo roommate, all the while speaking straight to the heart. This time out, it was "Syllable from Sound," a response to her "The Brain—– is wider than the
hung in austin
With Becky and Abraham, Clara's godparents. For an entire week, we rested, talked, visited the Capitol, ate, laughed, strolled around the neighborhood, and had a restorative week in a season when human contact was at a premium.
experienced calvary
Joshua Benninger's oratorio Calvary, that is. Josh is the all-cylinders composer/arranger/director/minister at Christ Episcopal. In the midst of a tough cancer battle, he conducted the premiere performance of his searing new oratorio. I got to record it. The recording was challenge after challenge: a covid-necessitated outdoor performance, high winds on mics, a comically florid nosebleed that hit me an hour before downbeat, the fun but flummoxy puzzle of how to achieve recording balance with an orchestra and chorus in a churchyard. It ended up less like a Dali Crucifixion, in the silence of space, and more like a Brueghel Crucifixion, with dogs barking and birds twittering. At one sensitive point, a siren goes by in the distance, seeming to say, "This, the real world, is where He died, and what He died about." Josh's music, film-score-accessible and concert-hall-polished, rose to the occasion.
watched some volleyball games
And went to some practices. Greta re-entered the volleyball world again last year, and loved it. There was also soccer. This year she's doing track. And you know something? She's really good.
81'd it
The Shure SM81 microphone, a late-70s masterpiece, is like a magic window: utterly clear and almost invisible, but it somehow makes everything prettier. I'd always heard about it but it was low on my list until that Vegas gig in 2020, when the venue had one for Darren's drums. (I know. Nice venue. Vegas, baby.) My generous family laid one on me for my birthday, and I've been putting it through the paces ever since. Man, it's gorgeous.
welcomed a new neighbor
Olive has been a heart-friend to Clara since the day they met, at two years old. After a rough couple of years of upheaval, how nice for both of them that Olive's new home is only a few houses down from ours! Both girls squealed and squealed with delight on move-in day. Since then they've been popping back and forth, walking the sidewalks, trampolining, finding secret places in the neighborhood, and all the girl-best-friend stuff.
\ - / - \ - / - \ - / - \ - / - \ - / - \ - /
What a year. Dedicated to the glory of God.
so, what did you do?
23 | 22 | 21 | 20 | 19 | 18 | 17 | 16 | 15 | 14 | 13 | 12 | 11 | 10 | 09 | 08 | 07 | 06 | 05 | 04 | 03 | 02 | 01 | 2000 | 99 | 98 | 97