many happy returns

It's been nice to return to Longwood Gardens again and again. In a sense, that's where things started for me and the carillon. During my college visits as a high school senior in 2000, my family and I stopped by to visit the gardens. I saw the little Italianate tower and looked wistfully through the gate barring the entrance; there was no admission and nothing in the tower, but I still wanted to climb it. As a freshman, I returned to Longwood with the Yale Guild and suddenly found myself atop the tower laughing and waving at startled tourists, and playing pieces for them on the newly installed bells. That carillon and I were initiated into the campanological world around the same time.

The carillon keeps leading me to strange coincidences. I'll never forget how we left Mechelen after our first Eurotour, and I thought I'd never see the quaint town again. Three years later, I was Mechelen's newest resident, exploring the city and stumbling upon the same sights I'd drunk in years ago, when I was sure the opportunity to look was a one-time deal.

architectural form

Chip was right... it is quite telling that amongst the renderings and floor plans for the Eastman Theatre addition (still questionably called "completing George Eastman's vision"), a full photo of Doug Lowry takes center stage. A highly architectural photo, I might add.

Rock The Bells

Thanks to Seth, I now know of the classic "Rock the Bells" (released when I was three) as well as the eponymous festival, which is coming to San Francisco. There must be room for a traveling carillon in there somewhere.

Tower iconography

Artist Ji Lee is photographing all the logo representations of the WTC around New York (storefront signs, truck logos, printed shopping bags, etc.) before they gradually disappear. What a tremendous project.

I've always thought it would be an endless project to collect all the things that depict the carillon towers I've played (just try searching in ebay on "Harkness Tower" over the course of a few weeks and you'll see it never ends), since towers tend to be a strong informal aspect of the graphic identity of universities. It's a luxury to be able to buy memorabilia for your instrument that you never had to commission. But what a peculiar link -- I always assumed that the carillon tower is different from other towers, but this semester in Steven Feld's class I've been realizing how conceptually related it is to all sorts of other towers. The semblance of the belfry to lighthouses particularly excited me while Andrew and I were at Point Reyes. Which leads me back to my fascination with ephemera... there are plenty of postcards on which all these tower typologies are depicted (did Walker Evans collect any?). Other collections of towers, such as those by Bernd + Hilla Becher, have had a significant cultural impact too. I can think of quite varied academic disciplines that could be interested in Ji Lee's archive of logos and Evans' massive postcard collection, from visual studies to geography. How does the carillon play into all of this? Feld mentioned that someone wrote a history of high buildings. Time to look it up.

A number of my seemingly unrelated curiosities have started to merge, albeit bumpily, into a convoluted train of thought. Perhaps some meanings will emerge from it soon.

O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden

Palm Sunday's service was the most beautiful I've played at St. Joseph. The congregation sang the final hymn, which Bach used for the St Matthew Passion, in harmony, and that hymn moves me more than any other. I don't often think of myself as a church organist, but if every service were like that, I wouldn't mind it at all.

There is an interesting carillon event coming up:

CARILLON 2009
A Special Program including Lou Reed’s “A Perfect Day”
The Riverside Church, 91 Claremont Avenue (at 120th Street), New York City
April 30, 2009 at 11:30am-12:30pm

The Riverside Church carillon is the largest in the world and made partly by Dutch craftsmen. On Koninginnedag, it will be called into service by the Dutch mastercarillonneur Sjoerd Tamminga, who has played “A Perfect Day” by Lou Reed for the past ten years in at the Maria Magdelena Church in Goes. This will be the finale to a series of carillon performances beginning in the Netherlands earlier in the day and ending at The Riverside Church at noon, where Lou Reed will be in attendance.

It reminds me of Doug Henderson's bell installation, Requiem for a Penny (2005). They both seem to imagine a worldwide synchronicity and sounding of bells for a "third listener" up in space.

Walker Evans and the Picture Postcard. Possibly the most modest and most fascinating exhibition I've ever seen in a museum. Evans and I had a lot of important things in common. Photography, postcards, ephemera. Did I mention postcards? Evan's commentaries sound strangely reminiscent of Paul Groth's in our cultural geography survey. Art + academia. It's so rewarding when the parallel. (And it happens a lot with CG.)

Apparently I lapse into not being a photographer if I stop wandering around just to look at things. My photographic eye then shuts down. I'm glad I took off on my bike today headed west. Artisan studios, beautiful strange additions to buildings, quaint office areas, hip yet surreally still residential developments, ironworks, artistic scrap metal yards, presses, fountains, pedestrian paths, travel libraries, dead ends overlooking water and sunset, extraordinary houses, hippie vans, gorgeous indian furniture, forgotten and newly discovered restaurants... somehow it all opened my eyes to the tree right outside my house. I think the twilight photos of it worked out well. And to think I never saw the soaring, complex tree as photogenic before.

beginning of the end of the semester

Beginning work on Davitt's manuscript "Recueil d'airs Choisis" has been intimidating, but is it not a good sign when you discover two concordances within five minutes of beginning your search for concordances?

Studying the MS tired me out today however. I was so desperate for a break that I even deigned to walk into American Apparel (the thought of walking in had never occurred to me) and Wet Seal. I should really go window shopping at University Press Books or the Musical Offering, but that involves reading and thinking (about academics)... I need to find more hobbies that involve neither.

At 10 pm...
Bam. Thirteen concordances/sources or leads. Mostly cross-eyed, and very behind on the rest of my work. The pros and cons of OCD...

Does music really express that which is beyond words? (At least music of the Wagnerian brand.) Or simply that which is beside words, but which does not supersede them?

rochacha

Easy as it is to dismiss my former hometown, there are definitely things I miss about it. Not about living there, but the delightful parts of living there. Most of these aspects of Rochester have their corollaries here, but to my surprise that doesn't make them replaceable. Most of all, of course, I miss the organ culture. That can hardly be replaced anywhere.