Happy Birthday, John!

It's the birthday of my brother John Kennedy, of Santa Fe New Music, father of Jasmine and Jade, husband of Rozella, sister to Kathy in Australia, and only son of Joyce and Wally. Here he is on the North Shore of Lake Superior, swimming in the Temperance River.

Does your head swim? That's one of my favorite questions, perhaps because mine so often does, swimming or cascading with memories, images, sounds, and ideas. Cascades: it's a word for a musician like John, someone who hears things.

1. A waterfall or a series of small waterfalls over steep rocks.
2. Something, such as lace, thought to resemble a waterfall or series of small waterfalls, especially an arrangement or fall of material.
3. A succession of stages, processes, operations, or units.
4. Electronics: A series of components or networks, the output of each of which serves as the input for the next.
5. A chemical or physiological process that occurs in successive stages, each of which is dependent on the preceding one, and often producing a cumulative effect: an enzymatic cascade.

John has done many remarkable things, not least of which is the pulling-out-of-thin-air of musical concerts and compositions year after year, first with Essential Music in New York City, and now with Santa Fe New Music in New Mexico. He also organizes and conducts the Music in Time series at the Spoleto Music Festival in Charleston, South Carolina.

If you are new to the sounds of New Music (not to be confused with New Age Music), the Santa Fe New Music site is a good place to learn: you'll find archives, a page with links to the composers featured over their first seven concert series, and a "listen up" list of recommended CDs. John has been influenced by the aleatoric or "chance" music of John Cage, whose memorial service he organized as a musical tribute (with Merce Cunningham, Yoko Ono, and others) in New York City.

You can hear clips from John's own One Body here (click on "Listen to Samples" under the CD cover): it's a composition featuring poetry by Joy Harjo, Gary Snyder, Kenneth Patchen, Walt Whitman, and others, set for the unique voice of countertenor/baritone Bruce Rameker. (Amazon has Rameker incorrectly listed as composer.) Here is more information about One Body, and the libretto. The beautiful CD cover is by painter Nancy Ortenstone, of Taos, New Mexico.

I can't listen to One Body without it bringing tears to my eyes, recalling the way my brother helped "conduct" the recovery of our father, Wally, when he ended up (almost by chance) in an intensive care unit a few years ago. John came to spend days and nights in the unit, watching the machines with intense sensitivity and intelligence, talking quietly with the night nurses. He was adept at tuning us into those moments when Dad needed us to talk to him, and he lead us in the reiki that helped prep him for the surgical procedure that saved his life. At night, in the background, this music played, providing comfort and connection for Wally. Listen to One Body, especially if you are in need of healing: it has great spiritual power.

Much love and gratitude to John on this day!

Taking the Long View with Walt Whitman

I was thinking about children reading, and my friend Nor mentioned Dutch writer Kees t'Hart's book, Kinderen die leren lezen/Children Learning to Read. That made me think about Kees's book of poetry The Road to Camden, about a journey he made to Walt Whitman's home, pictured at left. (If you click on the image, you go to the publisher, Rain Taxi, and can learn more.)

I heard Kees read from this chapbook about a year ago now, at Nor's birthday celebration, so there were memories of that, too. Then Lenni, our German exchange student, needed something to declaim in his English class, and I suggested Leaves of Grass.

That's how it works with the poetics of daily life: one thing leads to another, and sometimes you have a rhyme in time.

So today, instead of musing about greed (after watching a few moments of the Senate oversight committee grilling CEO Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers about the half billion or so he made in compensation: "Was that fair?"), I'm turning to that portion of Leaves of Grass that Lenni chose to read in class:

Great are the myths . . . . I too delight in them,
Great are Adam and Eve . . . . I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors,
rulers, warriors, and priests.

Great is liberty! Great is equality! I am their follower,
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft . . . . where you sail, I sail,
Yours is the muscle of life or death . . . . yours is the perfect science . . . .
in you I have absolute faith.

Great is today, and beautiful,
It is good to live in this age . . . . there never was any better.

Great are the plunges and throes and triumphs and falls of democracy,
Great the reformers with their lapses and screams,
Great the daring and venture of sailors on new explorations.

Great are yourself and myself, We are just as good and bad as the oldest and youngest or any,
What the best and the worst did we could do,
What they felt . . do we not feel it in ourselves?
What they wished . . do we not wish the same?

Great is youth, and equally great is old age . . . . great are the day and night;
Great is wealth and great is poverty . . . . great is expression and great is
silence.

It seems timely. I like that line about reformers, their lapses and screams . . .