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Olivier Latry at Church of the Ascension, Knoxville

On Sunday night Friends of Music and the Arts presented an organ concert by Olivier Latry, one of the titular organists at the Cathedral of Norte-Dame. I am really not particularly knowledgeable about organ music, and although I always enjoyed listening to it in a church setting, I have to admit that when I was young I was not always thrilled when George dragged me off to organ concerts. I suppose that, over time, he changed my mind, just as I too broadened his musical horizons, and I now look forward to organ concerts. I was particularly looking forward to hearing Latry, as George and I had heard him play in Paris and I adore his recording of the complete Messiaen organ works. Although I did not expect Messiaen, I figured there would be at least some organ music by French composers and I have learned that my taste, in organ music at least, runs mostly French, with my favorites being Couperin, Messiaen, Alain, Vierne, and Widor.

The concert opened with Couperin's "Offertoire sur les Grande Jeux" from the "Messe des Paroisses". I was not disappointed. The music of Francois Couperin always speaks to my heart, and this piece was beautifully performed and seemingly perfect for the season, as it spoke to me of spring and new birth and life, a perfect piece in a world filled with the birth of new green leaves. The contrapuntal texture of the final movement, gigue-like, reminded me of dancing, a dance of the Holy Spirit if you will, an idea perhaps more familiar to audiences in Couperin's time than those who follow the more extreme of the modern protestant practices.

There were some other lovely pieces by unfamiliar composers, some Bach, about which I feel inadequate to comment, and an improvisation by Latry, very much in the French manner, which was gorgeous, but probably tedious to those who are less appreciative of the French school of organ performance.

Not surprisingly the other pieces that really stuck in my heart were the two pieces by Jehan Alain, the "Litanies" and the "Postlude pour l'office des Complies". Admittedly I have only heard these pieces in recordings by Marie Claire Alain, another great French Organist and sister of the composer. Latry's performance was subtly different to my ears, and this difference was more than just the distinction between a live and a recorded performance. Alain plays the opening movements with a lighter and brighter touch, almost airy, whereas Latry's touch was heavier and slower. I liked the weight he gave the opening and the way its fullness seemed to fill the space. However the final movement, although still faster and more furious, did not quite seem to take on the frenzy I expect of the conclusion of this piece. Overall, I enjoyed it however, and it brought a new appreciation and understanding to the music.

It was the performance of the "Postlude pour l'office des Complies" that I found particularly moving. Again, I found this performance to be quieter and richer than I expected, almost sonorous at first before lifting and lightening. The music seemed to fill the space in a series of ever expanding circles, almost like bubbles, growing out of the sound and encircling and enclosing us all. Bubbles within bubbles. A magical experience.

I will be off for blog break for the rest of the week and will return with a post next Tuesday.

April 29, 2015
Iris Season and Garden Update

Finally! I love my yard.

It is nothing special. Since I live in a PUD, there are constraints on what can be done, especially in the front. But working within those constraints allows for breaking out of my pre-set patterns, and thinking of gardens in new ways.

It is still very much a work in progress. It is very different from my previous yard as both the climate, landscape, and neighborhoods are all very different. But it no longer looks like a dead mass of packed clay with scattered patches of sickly grass and weeds. For this I am grateful. I am happy also that not everything has been planned out. There are plenty of empty patches, spots I can fill in with assorted annuals now while I dream and plan what they may be in the future. No point in rushing that though. The best gardens, like homes, and like people themselves, grow and evolve with time.

I am seriously thinking about some irises though. None of the irises pictured here are from my garden; they are from the gardens of my neighbors, snapped during my morning walks with Tikka. But they remind me of how much I miss the tall bearded irises form my garden in Hyde Park.

And so I am planning an iris bed, specifically a spot for reblooming tall bearded iris. Louisiana and Siberian irises have already been planted in the back, and I am looking forward to their season, but I miss these Grande Dames of the iris world as well.

And so the search is on. I can admire my neighbor's irises, I can gaze at the irises on display, begging to be planted, at my local Lowe's, and still wait until I find exactly what I want. I still haven't toured local independent greenhouses and nurseries, and it is possible that I will find something I love, but if not, I know of good Iris breeders from whom I can order for fall planting.

April 28, 2015
Spring Green

When I was little I loved the Crayola color called Spring Green. I'm not convinced that I truly understood the origin of the name at the time. I remember thinking that I never saw green so yellow and bright in the spring, just as I remember thinking that grass wasn't really the same color as the crayon named "grass green". But perhaps that was just a matter of location. My Texas grass wasn't the same shade of green as grass green, but I now realize that grasses come in many shades of green.

Yesterday I was entranced by the new leaves on shrubs and on trees. They bright color of new growth, the velvety softness, like new skin. I couldn't help but touch, stroke, caress the new leaves. Even the prickly leaves of evergreen shrubs are silky smooth and tender those first few days. And the new leaves on trees, limp, soft like down.

Already this morning they are firmer, meatier, and you feel the texture of the leaf, the veins in the tree leaves, the coarsening. But the memory of that tender gentle new growth remains.

April 27, 2015
Oops.

Ahh, sinus season is upon us. And I've lived in Knoxville long enough now that I've caught it.

The past couple of days I've felt like my eyeballs were about to explode out of my head like projectile missiles. The sinus situation has taken its toll on my energy levels. Perhaps I am allergic to something other than mold and mildew, although it has rained so much it is difficult to tell.

It is raining again today. The Louisiana Iris are sending up shoots, even the one in flats, the ones I was worried about, the ones I complained about to my landscape angels. They thought they were planted. Ends up it was totally my fault. The bare-root plants had been sorted out in bowls by color, and I had grown tired of going outside and tipping the water out of the bowls, so I planted them in flats and left them on the porch. The nice young man who came to plant them couldn't find them and thought they had been planted already. Mea Culpa.

No the photos have nothing to do with sinuses or mildew, just captured my fancy. If the rain abates and my sinuses remain somewhat in remission, I shall go outside and plant this afternoon.

April 26, 2015
My bags are packed…

One week from today I'll be heading off for a long weekend with a group of fiberly-minded friends.

I'm not actually packed, physically that is. Nothing is in the suitcase. But everything is ready. That is part of my planning mindset. As soon as the tickets were purchased the mental packing began, and as soon as the planning began, so did a schedule. I can no more put everything off to the last minute than I could skip brushing my teeth.

A few years ago the suitcase might have actually been packed weeks in advance, but I don't need to be ruled by organizational fetishes. Apparently the mental disorganization of the last two years has been necessary. Before, I would have fretted over every detail, I would have packed and repacked, worried about every possibility. That much worry leaves you no happy place: you either organize yourself to the point of missing life, or you put off making decisions to the point that disorganization drives you into a panic. I don't want to be either of those persons.

I just want to have fun.

April 23, 2015
Lonely Tulip

I've been walking by this pile of brush awaiting pickup for a couple of weeks now. This past weekend an errant tulip, near the top of pile, about 2 1/2 feet above the ground, made a last ditch effort at glory.

April 22, 2015
The Joy of Small But Functional Spaces

When we were looking for a condo in Knoxville, there were a couple of primary considerations. Whatever we bought had to have two bedrooms and two full baths onto the main floor, and it had to have a laundry room with a sink. In the end it was the laundry room that was most problematic. The house we ended up in was the only house on the market at the time we looked that met all the above criteria, and the only house we looked at with a sink in the laundry room.

It became evident after we moved in that the laundry room must also double as utility closet and storage. So shelves were installed and many bottles and baskets and piles of rags and laundry and what-not accumulated on those shelves, to the point of becoming an unholy mess. After George died I straightened up and reorganized a bit, but never really pulled it together. It got to the point that I hated the laundry room, hated having to do laundry, hated getting anything out or putting anything away.

It was a pretty sorry state of affairs.

Then about six weeks ago Lisa posted about refreshing her laundry room and I was inspired. That very week I decided to clean up the laundry room. I took everything off the shelves, eliminated things that were no longer used, and started to rethink how items were stored. This is the view of my laundry room, in mid transition, from the door. As you can see, it is small and there are no windows or spaces for pretty posters, but at this point it is beginning to work well.

I realized that I didn't really like bottles lined up on shelves, especially miscellaneous small bottles, and the plastic bins I was using were not only ugly but actually impractical. Small bottles of cleaning supplies could be more effectively grouped in baskets, as could mop heads, cleaning clothes, and other miscellaneous items so I went to Cost Plus World Market and bought baskets. (Thank you Lisa.) The fabric boxes on the top shelf were already in place, and store items that are needed infrequently.

A fair amount of planning went into what is stored where, based on frequency of use and ease of access. Various attractive boxes found in the house were also used to corral small items, like batteries, and small white rags (in shoe boxes).

After I had gotten everything organized on the shelves, I addressed the countertop. I originally asked that the counter top be installed so that I could fold laundry as I removed it from the dryer without having to carry it to another room in the house (another downside of my previous house). But the height of the surface, perfect for me, was too tall for most of our caregivers, and they did the majority of the laundry in the house. We also needed far more space for rags and dirty laundry than I need now, so the pull out mesh baskets had been installed at the bottom of the shelving unit.

I realized that I didn't need the amount of laundry space offered by those mesh baskets, and I missed my folding space. It took me a couple of weeks, to get back to that project, but I eventually took them down and bought a pretty basket to hold the dirty rags. And now I have a laundry room that actually works.

And yes there is still a bottle of vodka in the laundry room.

April 21, 2015
Looking at Photographs: Matthew Pillsbury

When I took my short jaunt to Atlanta, two weeks ago today, it was, ostensibly, to see an exhibit of works by Matthew Pillsbury. It was well worth the effort for that reason alone, but of course the trip proved fortuitous on more than just that one level.

I had seen Pillsbury's work before, black and white photos taken over a long exposure period, sometimes of family and friends in a fixed room, sometimes in public spaces, photos much like the one shown above: Main Staircase, Kunthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 2014. This was the first thing I saw when walking through the door into the gallery. And it is stunning. It captures what I love about the artist's work, the contrast of the space and the grand edifice in this case of the works of art made by human hands, shown in conjunction with the blur of human movement, and the struggle of humanity between our heroic struggle to be and create something lasting and permanent combined with the ephemeral nature of our own lives.

But this was only the beginning, for when I turned into the room, I was stunned by the exuberance of color. I love Pillsbury's black and white work, indeed I have a fondness for black and white photography, but the color works seemed to bring an entirely different perspective and dimension to his work

.Although there were more photos of people looking at works of art, and photos of peoples in gardens that seemed almost otherworldly, two photos particularly captured my imagination. The first photo, Morning Rave, Judson Memorial Church, 2014, virtually buzzes with life and energy, and energy that seems to flow off the paper. I love the contrast of the stained glass, the architecture, the joy of the many young people blurred together and moving, a mass of joy, and the sharp contact of the modern electronic equipment in the foreground. In fact, it is almost too busy for me, too jangly to my nerves, but that is its very essence, and its beauty. It seems to capture a sense of the high-speed overstimulated aspect of modern life, and aspect made ever more poignant by its setting within the calming edifice of this church.

This second photo, Grande Palais des Glaces, Paris, 2014 is much more my speed, less jangly and more contemplative, and yet in no way passive. Once again there is the massive structure, but this one is filled with light, with hope with promise, and a fragile permanence, as if we can de defy fate. Once again there is the blur of humanity, almost like a fog, figures occasionally emerging and almost disappearing again as one looks on, reminding us that nothing is permanent, nothing is as it seems, nothing except light and fog, and yes, perhaps hope.

I also looked at many black and white proofs. Two in particular have remained firmly planted in my memory:

This one, Inflating the Balloons, American Museum of Natural History, 2011, once again capture something essential about modern life and culture, about the mix of pop culture, the edifices and structures of society upon which everyday life is built, and both the lasting impact and fleeting nature of every moment. What seems so important in this moment may be lost to the next generation that passes by, and yet each and every moment has its effect on us, and others as we joint the flow, acknowledged and understood or not.

But this is my favorite: Patrice Boissonnas, Monday, December 1, 2008. What appeals to me is the artist captures the sense of the public and the private and the way the artist captures the essence of our inner, intimate worlds, and our relationships with the great world through the glass, or through our eyes and beyond our hearts.

Matthew Pillsbury's work is in the collections of many museums. I have previously seen his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I am sure there are many other places to see his work as well, and aside from the show in Atlanta which ends in 2 weeks, there is currently a show of his work in Vancouver, of different pieces than I saw in Atlanta, which I believe closes at the end of this week. If you find yourself so inclined, I highly recommend seeking out his work and taking a look. The physical presence of the originals is far greater than what is captured in these photos.

All photos courtesy of Jackson Fine Art, here.

April 20, 2015
Small Treasures

The old and the new. Last year's crape myrtle, with a background of new spring growth. That is one of the glories of spring, how everything fades in its own time, grows in its own time, blooms in its own time. We should remember this when we fret that we don't learn, grow, recover fast enough. There is always time.

A rare day with nothing on my calendar. That of course doesn't mean that it is a day where nothing is being done, but that those things that are being done can be done free of schedules and external impediments. Well, almost.

These small flowers are a gift. We didn't plant them. They have sprouted in an area filled with mud and rocks where there is still work being done, where their presence is both a joy and an inconvenience. One must take care not to trample them, and so we do, take care that is to not trample down such precious gifts.

It seems like our most valuable treasures often come at times that are inconvenient. But that of course, only increases their value.

April 18, 2015
Tiny Tulips

Tiny Red Hunter Tulips

I had despaired of these. Just as the leaves were coming up the neighborhood landscape crew mulched the front beds and the initial burst of leaves were all scorched. The bulbs need leaves to store food for next year and I feared they would need to be replaced. The flowers aren't necessarily a sign of health, as a dying plant will throw out flowers in a last-ditch effort to reproduce itself. Yet there has also been new leaf growth in at least some of the plants and I can enjoy the show with a somewhat lighter heart.

April 17, 2015