Generosity

Term has started so I've been busier than during the summer.

I'm settling into the house alright. The excess furniture has been moved around enough that we can live with it. Sharing my home with Sweetie and with Intrepid Anthropologist is a joy. We have our wobbles, and our disagreements, and so far we have managed to negotiate them with warmth, respect and generosity.

My finances are very poor at present. The plan is to get some teaching work locally, which will eventually enable me to abandon my time-hungry commute to the Wilds of North London where I currently teach two evenings per week; once that happens I can get even more teaching locally. At the rates I charge it should be possible to live on relatively few hours of "work" in terms of contact time, but building up a class of students is likely to take a few years. Everything is word-of-mouth in this business.

In the meantime I am trying to keep my spending low. That's hard when my biggest expense is rent and my current income doesn't cover it! I am very thankful that Sweetie is supportive and generous; he has been making up the gaps. That isn't always comfortable but it is a better alternative than trying to do office work (which would destroy my mental health in about two months), assuming I could even get such a job in the current economic climate.

Something I have thought about before and want to explore again in more depth is the idea of creating a sort of artificial stipendiary situation. I would like to live with more security and a higher standard of living than I did as a student, but I'm well aware of lifestyle creep, the ease with which one can spend more and more and more and then end up needing a higher and higher salary to support that spending. I don't want to be on that treadmill. I know I tend to be a bit of a spendthrift, impulsive about buying things for myself or others if I have the money to hand, and so it seems that perhaps the best way to do this would be to limit the portion of my income that I can access easily. The rest could be donated to charity, or perhaps held in an interest-bearing account and the interest donated (I have ethical concerns about usury and need to research this more), or simply spent on others when I see they are in need.

There are some obvious benefits of attempting to live this way, of un-hitching my spending from my work. One would be that as long as I was earning enough to cover my stipend I could do my work without having to worry about whether it would be efficient financially. I could participate in voluntary collaborative projects more freely, without worrying about whether it would impact my paid teaching work. I could take on students who otherwise could not have lessons. I could choose one-off projects based on whether I like them, rather than constantly needing to assess whether they pay enough.

Another major benefit of this type of working pattern would be a certain amount of financial simplicity. I don't mean just the fact that I wouldn't have a lot of spending money and so wouldn't be able to buy too many shiny things... though that is definitely a factor. But as a freelance musician, my actual earned income is always going to be scattered, hit-and-miss. If you've always had a regular salary (at least while you've had regular outgoings) you might not realise how difficult this can be: I can't predict from one month to the next how much money I will have. This is not comfortable. I think it does contribute somewhat to my tendency to spendthriftiness, actually: if there is something I need or want and I do have the cash to get it, I tend to purchase right away because I know I may not have the funds later. Knowing how much I have to spend, even if it's only a little, seems pretty attractive. Even if I were not inclined to give away my spare money, I would need to do some sort of income-leveling exercise anyway.

But I think the real benefit to imposing a structure like this will be that when I find that someone else really needs money I won't be thinking "darn, I could have done without that book I bought last week if I'd known so-and-so didn't have the money for such-and-such" but should be able to be more generous. Maybe that would also be achievable by much more mindful spending on my part, and of course there will still be conflicts (easy example: Person A needs some educational material and Person B needs shoes that fit but I've already spent it all on train tickets for Person C to go visit an ill family member), but the hard thinking about what I actually need vs what I want, and how to balance that against the needs of others, will already have been done.

For now this is all pie in the sky, and it will remain so until I am earning more sustainable amounts on a regular basis. In the meantime I am trying to keep spending low and also to keep track of what I do spend so that I have some sort of guideline as to what is reasonable. I'm also thinking about the logistics, about how much I sensibly need to save before I can just give the rest away, about how much I might try to donate even now. I'm thinking about whether it would make more sense to allocate funds as I usually spend them -- impulsively, based on what comes to my attention -- or whether it would be better to make a commitment to a cause over the long term (something like short-term, interest-free loans for local families having trouble). Perhaps a little of both is the obvious answer there.

If you could choose your own stipend, how would you do it? How would it change your working life if you could be paid enough to live on (but not much more) and be told "Now go do whatever work you think needs doing"? Do you think you'd work more, or less? How would you decide what "enough to live on" actually is? Does this strategy sound at all manageable on an individual level, or does it require big bureaucratic structures? (Remember that I'd have to do most of the paperwork myself anyway!)

If you are already on a stipend, what is the best thing about it? What is the worst? Am I completely bonkers? Oh wait, we all know the answer to that last one.

At least I have my health.

It's amazing the number of specialists it takes to keep me ticking over and functioning: psychiatrist, endocrinologist, various physiotherapists and rheumatologists (though I don't need to see them regularly now), among others. Thanks be to God for the NHS.

I had a little chat with the endocrinologist on Tuesday.

There were no surprises in my bloodwork. This is good.

The endocrinologist would deny me the drug I had originally asked for, because it might harm an unborn child. This despite my taking other measures and having no intention of trying to conceive anytime in the next two years, and seeking treatment for a condition which has 'reduced fertility' in its list of effects. I'm not sure what to make of this: exactly which hypothetical unborn child is going to be harmed? Why is that worth more than my health now, and indeed my future fertility? At what point is it his responsibility to advise me of the risks and at what point is it his responsibility to refuse to prescribe something? But I did not have the energy or the eloquence to debate with him. Perhaps at the next appointment, though that doesn't seem the time or place. Perhaps I can write a Politely Worded Letter.

As it happens, the drug I am being prescribed instead is actually far more appropriate given the results of the blood tests. It won't deal with the superficial symptoms so quickly but it will do much more to protect my long-term health from the rather serious side effects of the underlying problem. It's very good news to be treating this so early, but it's a bit scary, too. That's only really starting to sink in now. And the lifestyle modifications I've long been meaning to make are going to have to be taken more seriously, as the drugs will only do so much. Bother.

I'll have to go back to my GP for a prescription. I'll start the new medication after my exams, because it has some potential side effects that I simply cannot risk this close to a major performance.

In other news? I met with the chaplain at Academic Institution the other day, and it was useful, and I have an even longer list of things to read now. Sekr1t Pr0ject continues. The cherries are tasty and plentiful this year, and various other fruits are nearly ripe. I'm playing with Petite Violinist in her Big Final Exam Recital on Monday, and I'm really looking forward to it--she's making a really beautiful sound these days, and our rehearsal today was a joy. I had my first exam yesterday and I think it went okay; one down, two to go. Then housemoving and parental visits... it's going to be a while before I can start reading as many blogs as I'd like to.

still alive

Had an assignment due in today, got it in on time, but at cost of sleep and a rehearsal.

I've got exam tunnel-vision and will continue to have for a while. Please include in your prayers all those burdened by academic pressures, to borrow words from a friend who has done just that.

Yesterday in a break I was playing Brahms to an empty room, perfectly happily... not really practising as such, just playing. The conductor (also a player I respect very much but do not know well) walked in and my playing fell to pieces with self-conscious nerves. This time it was partly that it was unexpected, partly that I don't know the piece as well as I'd like. But it's something that can happen no matter how well I prepare, no matter how well I know I can play, no matter what steps I take beforehand to familiarize myself with the situation and remind myself why I am there. And that is what I fear most about these exams: trying my best and failing to connect. It's enough to make me want to slack off so at least I can blame not having worked hard enough for the sloppy performance, instead of having to face the fact that even when I do my best, my very human brain-body-spirit system is too complex to be consistent. But that same vulnerability is part of the flexibility that can make live performance something special.

No news yet on housing. Still playing stop-and-go with medical appointments but there's no cause for alarm there.

Sekr1t Pr0ject continues. I might share it with some of you when it's finished.

Wow... and a serious invitation.

So. Future Housemate, Sweetie and I went to view one house today.

It's... well. It's not perfect. But I don't think we'll find something that suits our needs better, not at that price. It's... Future Housemate referred to it as dignified, and that it is, with a bit of history and character. It's in reasonably good nick. The amount of storage space is wonderful, and will be even better once we get bookshelves in. There's room for my teaching studio. There's one more bedroom than we were looking for. The location couldn't be better, literally around the corner from one of my dearest friends, with a wonderful grocer at one end of the road and ancient parkland at the other. I can't tell you more than that without sacrificing anonymity.

I know it's hasty to rent a place without having looked at other houses in the area. I know it's a renter's market and we have the clout to find something really spectacular. I know they may decide not to replace the shower, and might balk at our request for a gas hob rather than electric. I know the kitchen is a bit smaller than I'd like (but there is an Actual Dining Room, something I've long yearned for, and I think that will make smallish kitchen okay). I know the rent is a teensy weensy bit higher than we'd planned. I know the garden is north-facing and not as large as I'd hoped for (though it is not without promise... the roses, jasmine and honeysuckle can all stay, in any case).

But I'm rather smitten. I know what houses in that general area are like, having visited a few friends, and this one does feel special. It seems to just be begging us to move in and fill it with life and music. It feels like somewhere that will become home. Future Housemate feels the same. Sweetie likes it too, especially the flexibility of having the extra bedroom.

I may not make it to Evensong tomorrow at Default Option Church. Last week I had a rather dismal and discouraging experience there involving sexist comments, being accused of stealing a hymnal and another sermon I couldn't quite follow (not all the same incident I might add!), but that's not the reason for staying away. I have a friend who had surgery last week and the only time I can get up to visit her is going to be tomorrow night after I'm teaching, so if she's feeling up to visitors I will be going there instead of to church. I figure God understands these things.

That said, I didn't want to miss it entirely. So today I went to St Paul's Cathedral for Evensong there.

The tube was running late of course and I arrived just after the last stroke of five, almost too worried about disturbing things to have the nerve to go in at all. I've lived in London for nine years but for most of those I was chasing Judaism or not really engaging with any structured spiritual practice... I'd not been to a service in a cathedral before. I needn't have worried, it was full of tourists. After I sat down I realised there was an area nearer the front where people actually had service sheets and so on, but I was feeling a bit too shy to go up and join them. So I sat, and I stood, and I sat, depending on which part of the service we were in--I could hear enough of the music to keep track and the spoken prayers were on a speaker system. It's also very echo-y in there and I didn't hear everything clearly, people around me were talking a lot which didn't help much.

But I'm very glad I went, and I'm glad I participated on some level.

Once in a sermon at Leafy Suburb Church, the vicar mentioned a blog I read and comment on. I had a slight panic and then realised that no, she probably doesn't follow back to commenters' blogs and read them all, she might not be able to identify me for sure from what I write here, and even if she did I don't mind her knowing who I am. And it struck me today in St Paul's that I wanted to write about being there, but any number of you lot could have been there too. Do I identify myself or not? I'm trying to remain somewhat anonymous here because it gives me a freedom in my writing that I do not think I could have if my professional life and my blogging here were to overlap much. I'm less clear about where my social life and my blogging are allowed to overlap, and how comfortable I am with the people I meet on my in-person spiritual explorations having access to my more vulnerable, private musings. Do I say that I was there, I was the rather tall lady in the purple skirt and dark blue top and the rather dirty light blue hat? What are the chances? This is London... chances are rather high. I'm undecided. Only I've gone and done it now, haven't I?

This leads into a slightly knottier problem.

One of the things that is very much a part of who I am, no matter which online identity or personal or professional role I'm stepping into, is my work as a student and a performer of music. It's unavoidable.

Not too long after my Big Final Exam Recital I'm having a more personal, celebratory recital. I don't want to put the place and time online, but it'll be in London, at a church reasonably close to a central location. I've struggled somewhat with making this event personal but not exclusive; I don't want to turn away anyone who would like to come, but I want it to be clear that this concert is primarily for me to have the opportunity to play for colleagues, family, teachers and friends, new and old. As concerts should be, it's a gift I'm making to the audience, not a product I am selling. So I've invited pretty much everyone I know, though I'm late getting invitations sent out. And every time anyone says, "Oh, can I bring so-and-so along?" I say yes, of course.

I have been surprised and delighted by the guidance, support, encouragement and, yes, friendship, that I have found through blogging here. So if you are in London, or think it might be possible for you to be in London during the summer, and you would like to hear me play: please contact me, and if I recognise you and trust you not to blab all over the internet about who I actually am, I'll send you invitation details. I mean it. I am absolutely serious about this. My getting this degree (okay I don't have it just yet, but you give me a few more weeks...) has been very much a group effort and I am honoured to include some regular readers here in that group. You might not think you've done much but a kind word here and a bit of encouragement there have been lifelines, and then there is everything that I have read... even when I can't keep up, these words on screens are important, are necessary. It would be a joy and a privilege to play for you. It's the closest thing I have to sacrament, in this line of work.

I'm happy to give you the option of remaining anonymous yourself. I know lots of you have higher stakes in the anonymity gamble than I do, and I respect that. Lots of people at this concert will be people I primarily know online, though many have gone on to become wonderful in-person friends; everyone there will understand if you say, "Oh, I know the performer from conversations we've had on the internet". For that matter, you don't have to talk to people at all if you don't want to, you can leave the second the music stops or even slip out early. Hiding in the vestry for the entire concert is another option, although of course if I get many of you all wanting to do that it won't work very well as a hiding place!

But please, if you read this regularly, consider coming if it's at all practical.

Free time

I haven't much of it right now. Yes, I know, blah blah blah if-you're-so-busy-stop-blogging-and-get-on-with-doing things. But the first house viewing of the day has been canceled and so I don't need to leave as early as I thought.

Medical appointment on Wednesday went well, with fewer blood samples needed than I had expected. I even got some work done in between. Now I wait for the next appointment to discuss results.

I had an essay back this week, I got 68% on it. Slightly disappointing to be two marks off of a First but on the whole a better result than I had expected. I may be in with a chance at a solid 2:1 for this degree after all; it's very hard to say as we've had very little feedback on some of the major work. I have two more pieces of written work to hand in, and then a crack at re-doing one that was done very poorly in December. I've started to count the time to my Big Final Exam Recital in days rather than weeks, though there are still more than two weeks to go. I'm mostly feeling tired. I had some admin fail to deal with earlier this week and it isn't resolved yet, and I'm hoping there will be progress over the weekend; right now it is out of my hands.

What else? Househunting. Today's first viewing was canceled; I didn't really like the sound of that house anyway. The second viewing is more promising. I don't want to say 'yes' to a house without seeing more than one, but I've done househunting a few times in my life now and this one could not be in a more perfect location, near to friends, transport and wide open spaces. Hopefully the inside will meet requirements and I'll have a new box to live in. I've been feeling quite pot-bound recently, in more ways than one.

Three of my four parents will be visiting this summer. Even thinking about this is such a mixture of anticipated joy and impending doom that I'm not going to try to explain it. I've realised that I have become more religious than any of my parents, or perhaps more practical about my spirituality would be a better word. That could get interesting.

I am cat-sitting for a friend. This is delightful. Cats are wonderful. And their kitchen has decent storage space which means it is full of food which means I don't have to think about food shopping at all until it's time to go back to the flat I live in at the moment.

I forgot to order the cheese for making cheesecake... I started making cheesecake every year for Shavuot when I was exploring Orthodox Judaism and I haven't really dropped the habit. But this year it will have to wait, as it's quite a time-consuming recipe and I don't really have any more free afternoons before my exam. Perhaps something alcoholic is more appropriate for Pentecost, in any case.

Still singing, praying, hoping; still thinking of you lot far more than I had thought I would when I started this lark back in February. Not reading blogs as much as I'd like; when I do comment I often abandon halfway through, as I nearly did with this post. Too much wittering, no real content. Still using twitter (I am song_in_heart there, but to follow my updates I'll have to know who you are, I'm still trying to protect some anonymity) more than anything else but if it's not your thing, fair enough; you don't miss much, the time that I spend there isn't time that I could use to blog properly. I'll get back to content sometime this summer, I hope.

Miscellany again, and some links

Another tiring week full of long days. They do seem to keep coming and coming. Each day pours out its song to the next... and Sweetie tells me that I talked about kittens, last night, in my sleep.

One month from today I will be playing Big Final Recital Exam. I don't feel ready. This is fairly normal. I will keep practising, and it will be okay--or so I keep telling myself. I still have some coursework to do. After the exam I'll be moving house, and I have househunting to do. And the interminable medical appointments continue; this coming Wednesday is a bit of a doozy with the vampires sticking their suckers in for samples every 15-20 minutes for two and a half hours. Hopefully I'll be able to get some of my coursework done while they're at it.

So, I'm not likely to be posting much in the next month. I'm way behind on reading blogs, too, and responding to posts. Have a some links, instead.

I'm very pleased to have happened across this metrical psalmody resource. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet.

FranIam is posting a between-Ascension-and-Pentecost Novena, the first post in the series is here. I've not had time or the right words to respond as I'd like to. This promises to be worth reading, if you're into the prayer end of things.

It's also a period of prayer for Christian Unity in the southern hemisphere, but you don't have to be in the Southern Hemisphere or even a Christian to pray for Christian unity during this coming week.

This week at Academic Institution I've seen some people treated rather shabbily by the official machinations of academia; I'm hoping there is a way, within the official rules and regulations, to find some redress and restore a bit of balance. I've spent no small amount of time and energy attempting to do what I can to restore hope and confidence to one friend and colleague who has had the wind blown right out of her sails. Relatedly, Adrian Worsfold writes excellently about the problems of a culture of rules. I think that this relates to what Nick Baines wrote on media neutrality. Both are about a culture of accountability and responsibility which some would say seems to have evaporated in recent decades in the UK. I think we need more ways of building that back up than just voting; what do you think? What, to you, builds up community--online or in person? What fosters care and responsible action? And how can you, I, all of us or any of us, act in good faith to do this while protecting ourselves and those we love from the rotten, rule-bound, opportunistic policies of the punctilious paper-pushers who mistakenly think that if you can't quantify something, it has no quality? Serious questions, and I'm seriously interested in your answers. There's another post in here somewhere.

Speaking of community, and of building up: what is marriage, really? Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG writes well about Biblical definitions of the institution marriage. In the comments he writes: "Those who cloak bigotry in the language of faith are guilty of nothing short of blasphemy." I heartily agree. It's a harrowing time for the LGBT community in America, waiting for a decision in California, and I hope and pray it will end with joy.

It's been a harrowing and joyful time for others, too. I'd fast run out of space if I posted a link and description to every person or situation deserving of prayer, attention and concern or celebration this week. The usual prayer lists from MadPriest and Grandmère Mimi are a good start. But they're only really a small cross-section of one community I'm at the edges of; there are ever so many more, and everything is so interconnected... I find it difficult to keep track of all those I would like to pray for and frequently tack on a sort of catch-all, a sort of intercession for anyone I happen to have missed or simply didn't know about to begin with. Since I'm not omniscient I know that I'll never be able to pray for every specific situation separately, but I still feel sad if I find I've forgotten someone. I wonder how others keep track; I know that some people keep a written-down list on paper, or use various structures to remember to pray for people in certain categories of relationship (family, friends, wider community, government etc). What, if anything, works for you? And how do you decide what goes on your prayer radar?

Josephine's post on photography and prayer, and Doug's post on truth and art, seem to me to be connected somehow.

For today I am resting. So far this has meant lazing on Sweetie's sofa for the better part of a day. I am thinking a nap may be in order. If I'm feeling particularly energetic I might go for a walk. There is a party this evening I wish to attend if I am not too tired, but I mustn't stay out late as I'm teaching tomorrow as usual. I've had enough of staring at a screen for a little while, in any case.

Celebrations and Concerns

What a week it has been!

In some ways a bit of a rough week: it's just That Time of Degree, I'm afraid, there is a silly amount of paperwork to be done and I've been put into a performance project which is eating serious amounts of time in rehearsals that are, quite frankly, rather tedious at best. I've had a bit of a cold which always saps my energy and makes my chronic health problems more symptomatic; there's not a lot I can do about that but rest more, but see above re: scheduling. It's all rather overwhelming and discouraging if I think about more than one bit of it at once. And Sweetie is away this weekend, so I am at home by myself facing a very messy bedroom and wondering whether to use my 'rest' day to try to make it a little more livable.

It has been a very hard week for various friends of mine for reasons I'll not discuss here. They have been very much on my mind and in my prayers. At times this week I've also felt quite overwhelmed by the sheer amount of pain and hardship in the world. There's so much I can do so little about, and so much I should do something about but fail to do, and I don't quite know where to start. It's the typical save-the-world-before-breakfast problem.

The good, though, far outweighs the bad.

Monday's post basically wrote itself and I don't really feel like I can take much credit for it. But the positive response to it has been cheering me all week, partly because it's flattering to my ego to be told I've done something good but partly because I so desperately hope that the vision of the world I put forward in that post is actually true... having so many of you affirm the truth of what I wrote feeds that hope.

On Tuesday night I was gripped by a different sort of creative inspiration (or maybe it was the fever I had?) and got some composing done; I shouldn't really be working on non-degree stuff right now but this would not let me go to sleep until I wrote it down. It isn't finished, and won't be for a while, but I've been agonising over another composition project (for which I still have not found an appropriate text) and the reminder that yes, I can write music, was very welcome.

Wednesday night (after coming home early from my studies to drink soup and feel sorry for myself) I had a meeting with Sweetie and Future Housemate. Dreams and vague hopes are becoming plans: we have a budget, and a timeline, and a plan to find somewhere to live. This is very, very exciting for me: I've never lived in any house longer than three years, I've spent the last few years in various fairly transient housing, and putting down roots somewhere is looking very attractive. I will have a home, not just a place where I sleep and store my things. I've hoped this many, many times before, but I think this time it might work, because Future Housemate is looking for so many of the same things I am.

Sweetie has been unemployed for some months; last week he was offered a job but the contract did not turn up right away. Thursday he got the contract! Much relief all 'round: this lifts a load of worry from him and makes our future plans much easier. It means I will be able to take a long-term view of building up my paid employment to levels that will support me (and eventually others) well financially, instead of having to grab something short-term that actually hinders my ability to work on long-term plans. It means we can afford for me to take some rest after my degree, which will be much-needed and may lead to significant improvements in my physical health. It's just wonderful news.

Also on Thursday night was a rehearsal with Petite Violinist just for fun--no pressure, no deadlines to work toward, just reading through Handel and having a good time of it. What sheer joy! Of course by the end of the rehearsal we had a performance shoehorned into another concert, so the deadlines are back but they're manageable deadlines for both of us and it is always rewarding to play with Petite Violinist.

By Friday I was pretty wiped out by all of this and spent far too much time struggling with feeling rather miserable, but my last lesson of the day was just plain inspiring. And I realised that I do seem to be making some new friends, online and in person, and this was a great comfort despite feeling rather rotten for most of the day. And really--what day that includes Bach, Brahms and Tallis can be all that bad? Not to mention a bit of Ella Fitzgerald.

Today I am free to rest and that is what I will try to do. Tomorrow I get to teach, and weary as I am the thought still makes me smile. And I've managed to juggle my schedule so that I'll be able to get to Leafy Suburb Church for Evensong; it will be great to catch up with Deacon Friend and if the transport is good I might even sing in the choir again.

and breathe

Got the assignment in, but a day late, for which I will lose 10%. It's not as if I really think the numbers have much to do with the learning any more, but I'd like to jump through the assorted hoops as well as I can and get the bit of paper at the end that says I am a competent musician. And for this, I have to do paperwork. 44 pages of it today.

Might post something sensible tomorrow but for this evening I am going to have dinner with Sweetie and look at cat pictures on teh internets, and chase up a few threads of new and shiny things to learn...

Placeholder post

Too many things to think about, let alone to post about! My brain, at the moment, is all about big ideas, general concepts, broad careless strokes of a chunky brush dipped in searingly bright colours. It's in my practising, my teaching, even composing (such as it is) is coming at me in big forms and harmonic structure rather than melodic line and fine nuance.

Typical, then, that this week in my academic work I need to write a report on Big Project, a meticulously detailed report of what I learned and how I learned it, complete with appendices, tables and charts. As someone who normally does that sort of learning in a more organic and intuitive way, I'm struggling a little to identify these things, but as a teacher and a musician I can do self-scrutiny well enough; as someone who thinks the structure of the assignment is not actually that helpful to the learning process I'm resentful of having to jump through the hoop. But the biggest problem is really that I keep getting distracted by big ideas.

The way I usually work through ideas is to talk about them or write about them.

Things I would like to write about, right here and right now, but for which I really haven't got the spare brain cycles:

-How my spirituality/beliefs relate to teaching music; how I can be more generally supportive of the families I work with, through music teaching and not in any overtly religious framework; how to pray about teaching
-I've touched on it a bit before, but more on music performance and spirituality and my current understanding of the relationship between the two
-Chronic pain and how I deal with that and various other physical and mental health difficulties. I'm not actually sure I can do this without turning it into a whinge-fest or completely destroying the fragile anonymity I'm trying to maintain here.
-Words and meaning; images and meaning; sounds and meaning. In the beginning there was the Word, we're told--but do we mean the word, or do we mean meaning itself? And how does this relate to our being made in God's image, and being creators of meaning ourselves?
-Psalmody and how/why it seems to work so much better for me when chanted or sung; the line between speaking and chanting, and between chanting and singing. I'd quite like to do lots of research into chanted/sung psalmody in the Jewish tradition and how that relates to the worship patterns of the early Church. And I'd like to get to know it all so much better, and find or help create an authentic, aesthetic and accessible sung/chanted Psalmody for English translations. Yes, lots of work is being done on this already; I'm essentially playing catch-up, in an academic sense. Meanwhile I keep singing them in Morning Prayer, and one day indeed pours out its song to another as in Psalm 19 this morning.
-Material poverty (of others) and asceticism (the temptation to it in myself, and a certain pointlessness). I really haven't ironed out my thoughts on this.
-FaceBook, Twitter, blogging, other ways of keeping in touch and building communities online and how I see (and how I use) these various tools.
-Food and prayer and (especially shared) meals, and an assortment of thoughts I've been having on these recently; Eucharist and sacrament within and without standard liturgy; this also relates to creating a welcoming home, and to being spiritual/religious in a pluralist/secular society, creating rituals that can be shared and meaningful without excluding anyone or making them feel uncomfortable.

The assignment will have to come first, I'm afraid. And I've got a busy week in other terms as well, so need to be careful not to commit to too much yet. But I might be able to write about one of these by Saturday-ish. Which would you like to read?

of appointments and Appointments

I have a hospital appointment tomorrow. This is for a relatively minor chronic condition for which my GP cannot prescribe me appropriate medication (what she is allowed to prescribe makes me depressed, and I'm not willing to put up with that side effect). I've waited some months for the appointment, by the time I've been referred to one place and another. I really hope they can help, otherwise it's more referrals and more waiting.

I've been having career-related thoughts today. My plan for some time has been to keep teaching music, and also do some arranging and composing, some education and outreach projects with friends, get involved in the local community. Eventually I want to do a Master's, though the list of possible subjects is so long I daren't look at it. It has also been my plan to eventually get to the point where my private teaching is all done from my home, and none of it on conventional weekends; this will take a while as right now about half my income is generated from the work I do on Sundays.

I learned that the music director at Leafy Suburb Church is going to be leaving. A small part of my brain filed that information away on Sunday and then presented it to me today as the daft notion that I should apply for the position.

There are many very good reasons why I am not going to do that; I'm not going to list them here. The main thing is that the timing and location are all wrong.

But... I do have most of the basic skills I would need. Okay, I'm not an organist, but I could learn it: the trick is to remember that it isn't a piano. My choral conducting skills are rusty at best but they'd improve fast with regular use, as I found out when I was doing some conducting every week for Big Project. Moving every two or three years as a child and singing in as many choirs as I could until university (when I had to cut back to one) means I'm familiar with most choral problems, if not the solutions to all of them. I don't know much about C of E liturgy and I'm unfamiliar with much of the standard repertoire in this country but that's nothing that can't be solved, in fact nothing I wasn't planning on learning more about anyway. There are issues around making things accessible to a younger generation without alienating those with more traditional tastes but I'm going to encounter those in all areas of music teaching and performance.

Most of my life I've wanted to teach and write music; to my great joy, that's what I've ended up doing. Most of my life I've been aware on some level that music is an important or even essential part of worship, for me, and singing especially so. Why it has never occurred to me (despite, looking back over the last year or so, a few suggestions from various directions) to take seriously the possibility of combining these two, I'm not sure. Pursued carefully it fits around my existing career plans rather well. And maybe nothing will come of this, but it's an interesting nudge and one that I'm not going to ignore.

I'm not going to do much about it immediately, either. Right now I need to get through the last bits of my degree. Then I need to move house and spend some time building up a class of students in the new area, and adjust to being an impoverished music teacher rather than an impoverished student.

For now, about the only thing that changes is this: when I'm looking for a church to attend in the area I'll be moving to this summer, I won't necessarily discount or reject communities that don't have a strong, vibrant music program. I can always help to build one after I get there.

Help? and Five Miscellaneous Items

Can you help me do my coursework?

I want to get my hands on as many different translations (into English) of the Psalms as I can. I'm setting one of them for some of my academic work, and I want to find just the right words. I don't know enough Hebrew to be able to work directly from the original text so I'm thinking if I look at lots of different translations I can either choose one if it speaks to me particularly strongly, or somehow blend them together. So please tell me your favourite Psalter, and for bonus points, where I can find the text online.

Miscellaneous Item the First:

The Archbishop of Canterbury says in his Easter Sermon:

When all's said and done, the call is to every one of us. We need to hear what is so often the question that's really being asked when people say, 'How do you know?' And perhaps the only response that is fully adequate, fully in tune with the biblical witness to the resurrection is to say simply, 'Are you hungry? Here is food.'

I think this is another way of saying that the way to communicate the existence and indeed love of God to the world is to act as if God exists and loves us, take responsibility for acting for God in the world, teach ourselves to act with lovingkindness. Maybe I am reading too much of my own bias into it. I don't know how I managed to miss this when I was growing up.

I do tend to get caught up in the small details at times. It feels like I need a certain amount of structure and ritual to stay focused on the bigger goal of acting with lovingkindness.

Earlier in the sermon the Archbishop discusses two common responses to the "How do you know God exists?" question. One is to make it so personal, so much a matter of opinion, as to be irrelevant. The other is to try to depersonalize it through a sort of real-world prooftexting. I have often said, when asked about my belief in God, that it is the surest thing I know and yet I will concede on an intellectual level that I could, theoretically, logically, be wrong.

I think I need to qualify that. I know, theoretically, logically, that it's entirely possible that the sun might not rise tomorrow (or that the Earth might stop spinning if you want to be accurate). I know, theoretically, logically, that I could wake up and find that all my life so far has been a dream. Both of those are so unlikely that we simply discount them in everyday life. And yet both of them to me are more likely than God not existing. I know that God lives! I know this through a lived experience, a perceived sense of God that is more reliable than any of my physical senses (after all, sometimes I don't hear things clearly the first time, my sense of smell is quite patchy, and my eyes aren't trustworthy at all until I put my spectacles on in the morning). I've tried to explain this before. But I can't really explain it to anyone who hasn't also experienced it, and everyone's experience may well be slightly different. All I can do is try to show it. I don't think I'll ever get that quite right but it's worth it to keep trying. And somehow I'm paraphrasing the sermon again. Repetitive blog is repetitive.

Hat tip to nearly everyone who linked to the Easter Sermon, but particularly to a certain restless bishop who pointed it out specifically in comments on one of his posts.

Miscellaneous Item the Second:

This is a very beautiful poem.

Miscellaneous Item the Third:

I was up too late last night but still got some academic work done today. Go me! Am determined that tomorrow will be still more productive. It's a little over two months until Big Final Exam. This gives me the Fear. I hope that by then I'll find the love, which is stronger. I almost don't care whether I pass or fail as long as I give an honest and loving performance. But passing would be good, too. Failure would be inconvenient and impractical on a number of levels.

Miscellaneous Item the Fourth:

I had a wonderful conversation with an online friend yesterday about trying to change the world from the current competitive system to a more cooperative one, trying to be an agent for good in the world, trying to show people that they can love and trust, while still acknowledging and mostly avoiding the dangers of the world as it currently exists. I wish now that I'd kept a log of it, because it was the sort of conversation where we were typing nearly on top of one another, nearly identical sentences. And I've had some good online exchanges here and there on other topics (not least in comments on some posts here), and some good, life-and-love-affirming conversations in person about teaching and living. Having friends who agree with me doesn't mean I'm right, of course, it's just the peer selection effect, but it does make me feel quite a bit more hopeful at times. Given how contagious grace can be, it seems to me that maybe together we can make a difference, each in our own little way.

Miscellaneous Item the Fifth:

If I don't go to bed now I'm going to have another painful and unproductive day tomorrow. Can't be having with that.

Goodnight, friends.

Otherwise

I'm still quite a bit more tired than I thought. And today is not a great day pain-wise. I don't seem to be dealing with either of these very well.

Today I appear to have:

-done one load of laundry, which I am having to do again because the washer did not work right and the soap did not go in.
-written a self-indulgent blog post that is too long for anyone to want to read
-failed to do any academic work at all
-failed to do any tidying, which I was meant to be doing this morning, other than the laundry
-been a wittering, mind-wandery, silly fool in comments on other people's blogs

Bah. I don't like how this post is going.

Good things I have done today:
-thought about my Sekr1t Pr0ject (shhh!) and realised some of what I was trying to do is just prevarication and I need to go ahead and make a decision already
-prayer
-got dressed
-ate food

And I will keep making it better:
-will shortly go for a walk in the glorious sunshine; it is a nice day for prayer in the park, I think
-will teach later, which I'm looking forward to.

So there.

Fear, love, courage and performance

Today has been rather long. Nearly six hours of it was spent in an orchestra rehearsal.

As a musician I feel like I've been put through a wringer. The conductor is very good. He has a lot of good things to say, he is trying to encourage us, trying to get us to take risks and play from the heart as (I feel) true musicians ought to.

The difficulty is that he also expects, nay, demands, a very high standard of performance. In the long term, this is entirely compatible with his desire for a heartfelt, musical performance from all of us. The way to get to a point of taking risks and giving a committed and heartfelt performance is to take the risks in a safe environment, to discover that yes, we can do this well and no, the odd technical problem really doesn't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things.

The problem is that it isn't a safe environment when we're being encouraged to take risks and then chastened when the results of those risks are perhaps less technically brilliant than they might be. We're all nervous already--because we care about the music, we care about getting things right. There are two responses to that. One is to love the music all the more, pour heart and soul into performance and accept that, oh, we might miss some notes. The other is to switch off. The conductor doesn't want us to switch off, but he also doesn't accept the missed notes.

All day it was like this. We played, perhaps a bit too nervously, certainly too woodenly. He begged us to play properly, play the music not just the notes, get off the page and into the soul of things. We responded, and then someone messed something up--usually something small, something we could fix given another time or so to go over it. And then he stopped, to tell us we shouldn't really be making those mistakes, we should have better technical skills, focus, control than that. And the defensive walls in our hearts went right back up and we repeated the whole thing again.

There are a lot of reasons we're not playing at our technical best. Some of it is to do with the way the orchestral projects are run at Academic Institution; in order to give a fair chance at orchestral playing to rather unbalanced instrumentation, there isn't a set Symphony Orchestra with set players in it; rather, players are chosen on a project-by-project basis. This means we aren't used to playing together as a group and haven't had time to really start to listen to one another the way a good ensemble should, or to iron out the worst of the (inevitable) problems with intonation and with starting and ending notes together. The conductor can do only so much for ensemble issues.

For my part, I've had a very very busy six weeks. A lot of my own playing is not at the technical standard I would like because I have had to skimp on practice time in order to get everything done; my 90-minute technical maintenance routine has had to be shoehorned into 45 minutes far more often than I would like. The result is a lack of consistency in my playing, and of course that inconsistency is in itself disconcerting enough to cause problems. But there's very little since January that I've been in a position to turn down, and I know several of my colleagues are in a similar position of wanting to do better at the music but straining at the limits of their physical and mental capacity to do more work.

For the most part, though, I think the biggest problem is that we've all spent a few years now trying to improve our playing. Musicians have to be self-critical: if we can't hear our own mistakes we won't be able to improve without help. Every slight indiscretion is noted, to be examined later in the practise room or in a lesson, and when we're playing together with others and for a conductor we don't know that all gets magnified.

I hope that we can find the generosity and love for the music that we will need to create an honest and courageous performance. Playing it safe, being driven by fear, is not my preferred mode of performance.

This isn't unlike some of the issues I've looked at before here. I think there's an element of this love-vs-fear problem for any performing artist.

I think there are broader applications, too: are we judged by our intent, our efforts to do right, or by the results of those efforts? Is it better to take a risk on something that might improve the world, or to play it safe and do no harm?

I'm still pretty tired so it's off to say my prayers and go to bed. Maybe I'll have time and energy to discuss this stuff further at some point.

Halfway through the week already!

Exam today was okay. Not amazing, but it could have been worse.

I've regained some perspective about some of the administrative stress from earlier in the week. I'm not necessarily happy about it but I've accepted that the Big Project I've been working on is not going to go as I'd hoped it would. This doesn't make it a failure, just something to learn from. Even if what I learned is "no, projects on that scale are not a good idea while in the final year of a degree."

Choralgirl writes of the Charter for Compassion, a project of Karen Armstrong financed by the TED Prize. I'm curious about how this will turn out. Compassion does seem to be increasingly important to my own understanding of faith and life.

That in turn relates back to Loving Your Enemy.

I find it very difficult to love or find compassion for people who are in a position where they can hurt me, in situations where an imbalance of power leaves me feeling vulnerable and afraid.

That doesn't mean I need to wrest power from others and try to take control of situations. Oh, sometimes that is probably the right thing to do. But many times dealing with these situations in a loving manner means figuring out why I am afraid, thinking about what a loving response would actually be and how to do that, and then taking the risk.

That's not an easy task, but it gets a whole lot easier when I feel loved, myself. I can talk about therapy and medication and how much those helped me to recover (to an extent) from depression. I can talk about the physio exercises I do most days for my joint problems, to keep me mobile and relatively free from pain. But I know that none of that would even have been possible without the care, concern, compassion and love that others showed me.

That love transformed my life. It taught me that I want to love others.

Maybe it can also teach me how to do so.

That'll teach me to count blessings...

This week was already going to be a very heavy week in terms of academic and performance work; several deadlines at once have decided to gang up on me. Next week is also pretty bad but at least some of the worst deadlines will be past by then.

The last time this happened, and some other life stuff was happening as well, I ended up handing a written assignment in two weeks late and woefully undercomplete. That's not bad compared to some previous assignments when I was significantly less well; some of those were seasons late, even though they were much smaller assignments. I did the prudent, responsible thing and spoke to people about it before it was too late. I filled out a mitigating circumstances form, detailing the various mitigating circumstances (which were multiple), and handed that in too. I rectified one of the worst mitigating circumstances (which was actually something Academic Institution should have done at the beginning of October, and failed to do because of administrative problems and understaffing). And I've set aside time, after this particular knot of deadlines is over, to re-do that assignment so I actually learn the material.

Today, at the end of a long and exhausting day in which I lost more time than I can afford to travel and was already wondering how I would make it through the rest of the week, I opened my post to find a letter from Academic Institution saying my claim for mitigating circumstances has been rejected. Apparently, it does not relate directly to the timing of the assessment affected. Without wanting to go into too much detail, I don't see how that can be the case.

The person at Academic Institution who was my greatest advisor and advocate has moved on. I could ask her advice, and she'd gladly give it, but she has her own personal and far more serious sorrows to deal with right now.

I'm trying to keep a sense of perspective about this, and rather failing. This is my final year. I had to take a year out already when I was ill, and I started six years later than most, also due in part to illness. I've worked very hard to put my life back together, and I've had a lot of help from people I don't want to disappoint. I want to finish. I am doing the best I can. This couldn't have worse timing: I can't take the time to respond properly to this letter, to appeal this decision, without sacrificing some other deadline.

I am going to say my prayers and go to sleep now, because there is nothing about this situation that is made better by me being exhausted. But I don't think things will be any different in the morning, except that it will be seven hours later and I will still have just as much to do.