How Marvelous

This place seems to be quickly becoming a music blog these days, and I hope that isn't alienating any of my three readers. I guess music is easier and faster to think about than most anything else in these hectic days.

But I noticed recently that the 'recordings' tag over there on the right looked a little pathetic with a meager (1) sitting behind it. And then I noticed the link on that lonely 1 recording wasn't even working. So I fixed that, then set out to find old, unfinished recordings to add to the collection, since time and space to record is hard to come by these days.

This version of "How Marvelous" was recorded in the dining room (listen for the clank of a dish coming from the kitchen at the start of the second verse) of our beloved Bethlehem apartment in September 2007 and was finished being edited and mixed last night. I guess that means it's almost exactly four years old.

You can stream it here or download by clicking the little down arrow on the right. Free of course...take your $0.99 to 7-11 and drink a slurpee in our honor, telling them we'll return someday soon.
How Marvelous by nshorb

Men and Old Dandelions

I found her in the bathroom, cutting her hair again.

N: "Is this therapy?"
E: "No, just trying to look like less of a man."

I looked at myself in the mirror and winced.

E: "You need a touch-up too?"
N: "No, just wishing I looked like less of an old dandelion going to seed."
E: "Maybe we should start getting professional haircuts."

Et toi, tu es

It's a blessed Sabbath when I can understand the sermon in French. I'd say it happens about 40% of the time. This is my loose short-form interpretation and expansion of yesterday's.

"But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church..." Matthew 16:15-18

Simon Bar-Jonah confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah. As God the Father has revealed it to him, he proclaims the true identity of Christ. "You are the Christ."

Curiously enough, Jesus returns the gesture, immediately turning around and proclaiming the true identity of Simon Bar-Jonah. "Yes, and you, you are Pierre...and you are une pierre, a rock. In me and because of me, you will be solid, firm, and steadfast, a leader in building my church."

"You are the Christ." Tu es le Christ.
"And you, you are..." Et toi, tu es...

When we come to confess that Jesus is Lord, we too like Peter receive a new identity, our true identity in Him. He calls us by name, our new name, with a purpose and a place. A name lovingly given, chosen before the beginning of time. Abram becomes Abraham the father of many nations. Jacob becomes Israel the one who wrestled with God and prevailed. Simon becomes Peter a foundational rock in the start of the church. And you?

The old you has passed away, the new has come. As you confess Jesus is Lord, hear him say to you, "Yes, and you are..."

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." 1 Cor 5:17

"But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine." Isaiah 43:1

And we now bear his name, his family name, adopted as his secure, loved, and cherished children.

"See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" 1 John 3:1

"Bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the ends of the earth—
everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.” Isaiah 43:7-8

"For he chose us in him before the creation of the world...In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace..." Eph 1:4-6

And like Peter, this new identity in the family of God is always meant for bringing him glory, unifying and edifying the body, and growing the church. After all, we have brothers and sisters in this new family.

"For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully." Romans 12:4-8

And you, you are...

Mix Tape: The Sound of Trading Dreams for Cubicles

I was walking through the old part of town towards the train station when this song came on. The sun shone brighter, a bounce in my step. I sent it to my sister when I got home just in time to amp her up for her half marathon run.

2010 was the year of albums that had to grow on me. The National's High Violet was one. It took me a while to like these fellows, even before this album, but it helps to know what they're about. They're about rich texture, layers, building thick walls of sound, fuzzy and forceful soundscapes, long crescendos founded on an impeccable sense of rhythm. They are about taking your feelings of melancholy, regret, and wistfulness and giving them a definitive soundtrack. Some days it's not what I'm looking for, other days it's exactly what I'm looking for.

But I've often wondered why they are as wildly popular as they are. Not that they don't deserve the recognition they're getting, they mostly do, but to be selling out huge theaters and taking over the blogosphere and being praised by people outside the usual indie-hipster circle just generally surprises me. They are a long shot from Dave Matthews Band, after all.

I wonder if it's music for the working man. Take, for instance, the singer's everyday-joe personality, a deep-voiced and bearded commoner persona. Especially with the suit he's usually wearing, he's the guy you spent 9 to 5 around the water cooler with, and then after a few beers at happy hour he saunters onto stage. Something about this strikes a chord with grown up emo kids who have traded dreams of their band finally hitting big for the reality of being stuck in a dead-end cubicle. It's a sort of vicarious release for all of us.

So, thanks, The National, for giving us something to mope to during work and something to run to after work. We know life is tough for you guys too with the daily grind and all, the boss on your case, another year without a raise. But hang in there, we're all rooting for you.

This is The National, "Bloodbuzz Ohio," a song for walking or running or driving home from work on the first sunny day of vacation or just starting your long-awaited weekend.

Antiphony

The kid listens to music when he falls asleep. It just so happens the other kid has taken quite a liking to music as well, perhaps from the constant iPod stream during his first few days in the hospital; turn it on and he eerily instantly settles.

So bedtime is an interesting experience. Hymns from one room mesh with Chopin from another. Mozart overlayed with Icelandic. Lullabies and Six Parts Seven.

But just now, sitting in the middle room, "Be Still My Soul" came drifting in on one side, and seconds later from the other side too. It was a beautiful little polyphonic experience, echoing one another in antiphony, almost forming some sort of twilight zone canon.

If you haven't heard this version of the hymn, you need to. It's a favorite around here, calming all four of us down and often putting us right to sleep. I recommend opening and playing it in two different browser windows to get the same experience I just did.

Early Advent

A New Year's Resolution way back in 2008 was to pursue becoming "published" in some form other than Blogger. The closest I got that year was submitting anecdotes to Reader's Digest which, I've sadly deduced, were all rejected. After that year, I moved the goal to a list with a more attainable timeline--the Bucket List. (For the curious, I'm pretty sure it's the only thing on my Bucket List so far.)

Looks like I won't really have to wait so long. With a little generous nudging from friend and writer Dan Schmidt, I've been invited to join the ranks of several others submitting reflections to a guide for the Advent season. It'll be out and available..well..sometime around the Advent season. For those who still like feeling the texture of print on paper like my brother-in-law Wes, there will be a paperback. For those who've fallen prey to the sleek design of a Kindle like my brother-in-law Mark, there will be an e-book. Everyone wins!

If you're one of the three faithful readers around here, you may have caught on to the fact that I've been doing a fair amount of my own Advent reflecting in the past several years. And now that I think about it, that may have started around the time Dan passed on his own little informal Advent guide several years back. From then on, putting together some sort of collaborative Advent writing project in a church context has been a little dream of mine. That's on the bucket list, too, I guess. Better to let Dan do the unwieldy work of gathering, editing, prodding, refining, organizing for now.

Needless to say, I like this idea, excited to see the final product, glad to be a part of it.

I'll probably expound on this a bit more in weeks to come, but for now, you can take a peek of (or give your input on) a few of the potential covers.

Good Question

After eating chocolate cake, watching Thomas the Train, taking a bath, and getting his PJs on, the kid ran around the house some more and into his room, where he asked us earnestly,

"Where did the time go?"

After marveling nearly every minute of every day lately at just how much he has grown, it's a good question. We told him he'd be asking it over and over again, with us, for the rest of his life.

Art Museums with Kids

Musee de L'Orangerie may have become my new favorite museum in Paris. Much, much more manageable and digestable than the Louvre, and full of beautiful work. Of course, it is most famous for housing Monet's huge "Nympheas" the wall-to-ceiling water garden paintings hanging in two oval rooms, and for good reason.
The only semi-problem is we visited with two small children.

E had the other kid in a sling, and the security guard asked to put it through the x-ray machine. He was a bit embarrassed when he discovered the baby, and his colleague laughed and laughed as though this were the funniest thing to have happened in a long time. The lady at the bag check did the same thing, and then fawned for several minutes.

The kid loved the echo-inducing acoustics of those large oval rooms more than the huge paintings of water lilies. Unfortunately, the rest of the public loves basking in that beautiful grandeur in complete and utter stillness and silence.

The other kid settled down with me and looked at art quietly while others spent more time looking at him than Renoir. But something happened to make him explode into tears shortly thereafter, and we had to wonder if this museum ever heard so much noise.

The kid loved running through at rapid pace, hurrying us along. We kept trying to pull him back and circle around, but eventually even the security guards shushed his little stomps. I'm sure we're overly sensitive, but it definitely seemed like at certain points those guards were more stressed out about us than we were.

And so we learned the hard way that most art museums are not really meant for kids and babies. And yet I'm not quite willing to give up; I call it only a semi-problem because I think there is something wonderful about exposing kids to great works of art--especially when it's so easy to do in Paris. (This is me hoping my boys turn out to be like my astute fifth graders when visiting the Met.) Perhaps it would be prudent and productive of us to find those days when they do guided family visits.

And we learned that you must go at their pace. The kid ran through pretty much the entire thing, looking but looking quickly, until he got to one huge piece of Harlequin and Pierrot by Derain. Two clownish characters carrying guitars: what's better for a three year old? Sure beats fuzzy water lilies. He stopped, looked, pointed, sat, gazed, asked, and camped out for a little while, showing it to each of us, resting for several minutes. I liked that.

For us, on the other hand, we were forced to gaze in passing, with sorts of double takes, one eye on the kid, half an eye on the painting, and another half an eye on the name of the painter. It was an exercise on taking notes of where we will want to gaze the next time we visit without kids, whenever that might be. I was excited to discover some new names that I hadn't known before. I can't tell you what I liked about them and their paintings, really, other than the rushed feeling of "Oh! I like that!" and quickly letting go of the little one's hand long enough to scribble names into my notebook: Laurencin, Derain, Utrillo, Soutine.

And that leaves me here alone with Google Images, trying to remember what I saw and what I want to see again someday. And all in all, that's not a terrible place to be.

Mix Tape: Balkan and Neo-Balkan

The four of us were making our way through the main metro station in the center of Paris, catching a transfer to head home. We turned into the tunnel we needed, but heard some amazing music from the other direction. We froze, all together, and almost without having to say anything to each other, turned around and followed what we heard.

There we found two guitars, two accordions, a bass, a violin, a trumpet, and a hammered dulcimer: 8 men. All of them singing at some moments as if their lives depended on it. Maybe it does. The first song made us smile and dance. The second song took our breath away, literally giving me chills. Now I regret only taking 58 seconds of video, and yet I can still sing the melodies without it, they were that memorable.

What struck me funny is this: I instantly recognized the sound. That’s because the band Beirut has been described as “Neo-Balkan.” I’ve always thought that’s a ridiculous label for a genre of music at all, let alone indie music manufactured in Brooklyn, especially because 9 people who are using it out of 10, including me, don’t know where “the Balkans” are nor do they know what Balkan music sounds like. But I immediately knew this subway music was Balkan. It sounded like the grandfather of Beirut. Neo-Balkan isn’t so preposterous after all. And it's no wonder it's so painfully beautiful; it resembles its grandfather.

Sure enough, this band is from this Eastern European region. And the entire experience made me like these gentlemen more, made me like Beirut more.

With that, I leave you with this song, “The Penalty” from Beirut (live in Paris). Maybe not the best example of Neo-Balkan, but still my favorite of his. If you’ve received a mix tape from me in the past, there’s a good chance this song was on it. I’ve been rehearsing it on my ukulele to play in the metro someday. Maybe I’ve found my backing band now.

But if you're more taken with the original, authentic version of Balkan music, as I think I may be, I've found a bit more about them here.

(And incidentally, Beirut has a new album coming, currently streamable here.)