Why the Rests?

I grew up in a non-musical home. We were, however, a church-going family, and there was always music in church. I must not have been more than six-years-old when I told my parents I wanted to be a song leader when I was grown. They probably responded with, "good," spoken with no note of interest, excitement, or encouragement in their voice. That was my earliest ambition, and it faded within the year. My wife, Carol, grew up in a home that sang all the time. With no musical training they found it easy, almost natural, to harmonize together. My love of music intensified over the years. I loved to sing, and did all the time. However, after marriage, I learned that I could not remember the correct notes to sing, couldn’t get the tune right, nor did I did I have the slightest sense of rhythm at all. Our daughters were born with the same abilities that Carol had. I was not encouraged to sing.

I was in my mid-fifties when Dr. Nancy Jo Humfeld joined the faculty where I taught. Among other things, she taught voice. Her first semester, Carol heard her singing at a performance of "Amahl and the Night Visitors." She was so impressed that, without my knowledge, they conspired to teach me to sing. Now, I have taken six or eight college music courses, and live in a brand-new world. Not only am I a much better singer, I now understand music very well. Almost everything that interests comes under philosophical consideration. My mind turns naturally and easily to philosophical analysis, as well as attempting to set things in a larger context in order to get them in perspective. My singing can now be endured (thought not invited for public performance). On the piano, however, folks would quickly tire of my inept performance. So with the violin, the saxophone, the trombone, th guitar, the recorder, harmonica, or pennywhistle. I have become, according to some definitions, a musician, but of what kind? Neither performer, composer, conductor, nor teacher. I was, and am, convinced that I am a musician, but it took me a while to find my niche in the musical habitat. But when I began investigating the idea of philosophy of music, I learned that I am a musicologian (I’ve never heard the word used; musicologist is the academically accepted term). The field is called "musicology." Musicology has many sub-divisions. It is commonly the term used for historians of music. But in the broadest sense, I am an amateur musicologist. Now, after narrating my entire musical history, I come to the point of this post: Why does musical notation have "rests?" There are quarter-rests, half, whole, an entire measure, and rests of many other kinds. What function do they fulfil? When I first began the study of music, mostly voice, I knew little about it, but early on, I got to wondering about the rests. So in my ignorance I stopped a music professor walking across campus, and asked him about rests. I suggest my own naive answer. Do they mainly serve to give singers and other musicians a moment to catch their breath before proceeding? "Well, there is a little more to it than that," I was informed. Once more, my wonderment sought a new direction might lead to satisfy my insatiable curiosity. I asked most musicians that I knew, and most answers were variations on, "I’ve never really given that much thought." Well, I have. Finally, I thought it through and came up with the answer, or at lest the core of the answer. Rests provide opportunity for assimilation and anticipation, for reflection and readiness for more. I will grant that musical rests seem much too brief to fulfil either of these functions. No, there is not enough time for the rational intellect to assimilate and/or anticipate, but the emotional intellect, the aesthetic intellect can handle. They operate much more rapidly than the pondering movements of logical analysis. Certainly you are free to disagree. If so, I would like to know your suggestions or critiques. However, I was much encouraged when, at a Baylor University "Faith and Art" conference, the keynote speaker was a world-class British composer and musicologist. The next day he gave me several minutes of his time while I asked my "rest" question, and offered my answer. He immediately agreed, and led me into the depths of these two functions. The mainest thing he did was to was to confirm my own musicological thinking. Upon further reflection, I have provisionally concluded that "rest" has the same core meaning outside the world of music. When we are tired, we rest, if possible. Our body now assimilates the labor that we have just been engaged in. At rest, the internal workings of the body work very actively, repairing, strengthening, and calming nerve centers. After adequate rest, we, mind and body alike, begin to anticipate what is to come next.

The Things I Carry

These days, I am reading Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, one of the most highly acclaimed books about Vietnam. He talks about the things they carried with them in Vietnam. They carried malaria tablets, love letters, 28-pound mine detectors, dope, illustrated Bibles--and they carried each other. The more I read, the more my mind drifted back to the title (the book goes far beyond the title). Then one day my thoughts took off on a tangent from the title. I got to thinking about the things I carry, not that anyone should care. I found that I carry much more than I had realized. I am wonderer, a thinker, a writer. Ideas, insights, just plain old sights, quotations, all kinds of things occur to us every day, but most of them quickly evaporate from our mind and cannot be recovered. So, I always carry pen and paper of some sort. I don’t trust my unaided memory. Along the way, I find all other sorts of uses for carrying a writing instrument of some kind, and a notebook or note cards. Ever since I received one as a birthday present when I was eight, I have carried a pocket knife. And I keep it sharp. I spend a lot of time outdoors, where I find the knife to be invaluable. Most men, it seems, and many women, carry this small tool in their pocket or purse. I don’t carry a knife on airplanes. A pocket comb. My hair is very fine and the wind, even a mild breeze, tosses it around until I look like mad man. In old age I am worrying much less about my hair; I no longer need each one to be always in place. My wallet, for obvious reasons. Almost everywhere I go, I carry a book. If, for any reason, I have to wait for any length of time, I have something to do: read. I can always entertain or educate myself. In the car, and in the pickup, I always carry a book of light reading and a book of serious nonfiction. Also, a Bible, a dictionary, and a hymnal. These, along with a notebook, pens and pencils are in each vehicle at all times. Time spent waiting is never wasted, never boring. In each vehicle I try always to have a stash of almonds or dried fruit. When I begin to fade, these help recover alertness and vitality The vehicles stay stocked with boots, shovel, gloves, plastic bags, a trowel, an old towel, and an old jacket. Frequently I take time out to dig a plant or gather wildflower seeds. In recent months I’ve added a couple of small, modern technological machins: a cell phone and a digital camera. There is so much I see that I don’t want to forget. Out with the camera. I am amazed that it does not run out of film, and that if I take bad pictures, I don’t learn it too late, after they’ve been developed. Although they are appropriate, indeed almost essential for some people and situations, I’ve never wanted a cell phone. Almost, I’ve said that I would never have one. I like my privacy, don’t want to be available, on call. But life circumstances change. Often I go on walks with no definite route. Sometimes I find opportunity to roam and explore the semi-wild. At times I have taken some bad falls in remote places where, if I were to break a leg, no one would know where I was and it would be unlikely that someone would come that way, perhaps for weeks. I am seventy-two-years-old. I hear that bones get brittle with old age. My wife has diabetes. A daughter alerted me to the need to carry a cell phone, everywhere I go,just for emergencies. So, I carry a cell phone. I pay for the minimum minutes. It is only for emergency use. Only family members know the number, so others can’t invade my privacy. I hope it, like insurance, never gets used. Finally, only three or four times a year might I be found outdoors without carrying, on top of my head, a hat or a cap. Until I was about thirty-years-old, until Jack Kennedy became an American president who did not wear a hat, the vast majority of men in this country wore hats. They would be just as likely to go without underclothes as to go outdoors bareheaded. I wear a hat as part of my heritage. I wear a hat because it keeps the wind from making a straw stack out of my hair. I wear a hat because it takes only about five minutes of unshaded sun before I have a major sick headache. I wear a hat in cool or cold weather because it keeps me warmer. I keep hearing that most of our body heat escapes through the top of our head. Whether true or not, I know the hat insulates my scalp from the cold. After a funeral, at the grave side in winter, I respectfully remove my hat during the committal service. It makes me uncomfortably aware of the difference the hat makes. In truly cold weather, I am amazed to see men bundled up in coats and scarves, but bareheaded. Especially those who do not even have hair covering the top of their head. What do you carry? I suspect it reveals a good deal about who you are.

Humans or Vidiots?

I don’t watch TV. Do You? Really? Why? What do you get out of it? Don’t you have anything else to do with your time. No matter what you are doing at this moment, what you are really doing is doing your life. Your one and only, over before you know it life. Are you going to use up your precious limited time watching and listening to a bunch of actors "playing" out the lives others have scripted for them, in order to amuse (origin of term: OF amuser ‘entertain, deceive’, from muser, ‘stare stupidly’), entertain (From French entretenir, from Latin tenere 'to hold'), divert (our attention from things we should be attending to), sell (is this what tv is really about; I read that the average American, by the time they are sixty-five, has seen 2,000,000 commercials). I have to accept the truth: Americans are addicted to it. Someone said that we are a nation of "vidiots." But why? Can we not read? Are we afraid of contact with reality, so we watch virtual reality, hyper-reality, sort of like when movies changed from black and white to color? The color was called "technicolor." Technicolor was more intense, more brilliant, more vibrant than life in the quotidian. It was an escape from reality into fantasy. Meanwhile, our life is slipping away. We all are facing a "dead"-line. "No matter how long you’ve been traveling down the wrong path, turn around." Don’t allow the tube to steal your life as you mindlessly watch and allow the robbery go on. Get acquainted again with real people, people you have said you love. Love is not a once-for-all thing; it must be maintained. What is it I hear people saying these days, "Get a life?" Well, God has already given us one. The question is: Are we going to live it, or . . ..?

Former Students & Present Readers

The old saying is "Them that can, do; them that can't, teach; them that can't teach, teach teachers; and them that can't teach teachers go around the country giving lectures." I first heard this from a traveling lecturer. It has some element of truth in it. I am a teacher for three reasons: Divine calling, because I enjoy it more than almost anything, and because of the nature of my personality, I am a thinker and teacher, not a doer. I do have a quarrel and an argument that thinking and teaching are, in fact, doing, but that is another issue. That third reason means that in the realm of human society there are many things that I believe need to be done. Urgently and desperately need to be done. Most of that doing means changing from the conventional wisdom, the status quo, the politically, socially, and ecclestically correct. I don't know how to be a public change agent. I am a teacher because many of you are "can do" people. I know a lot of you and look up to you. I teach so that, perhaps some of you will catch a vision and effectively, persistently pursue it. That is what my teaching is about. That covers all three of my reasons for teaching.

Link to My Blog on Another Site

http://aintsobad.typepad.com/ikant/

Good Morning

It is after 6:00 a.m. and the banty roosters have been crowing for a couple of hours. I need to go let them out of the coop. I am attempting four separate blogs, and considering a couple more, but have been told it is hard to keep up with more than one. We'll see. The fellow who told me that has a more than full-time job. I am no longer on any payroll, don't have to report in, am accountable only to God and my wife, and thus just may be able to do considerable blogging. Having left my teaching position at HPU, (where I now have a new title--as someone called it--Professor Emeritorious), I am now teaching in a new classroom, The Blog Room. The potential class size is much larger, there are no tests to grade, no committees, none of all the rest of that stuff that is necessary to keep a university operational. Now all I have to do is love my family, care for the quotidian, and write. Now it is 6:30, so I'd better get dressed, eat breakfast, and be at Starbucks by 7:30 for a one-on-one session, much like I did in the office or hallway in the past. Don't get caught without something to write with and something to write on. And, keep a dictionary handy at every location where you read. Library discards and garage sales make it easy to own several.