Musical Musings

 

This was a strangely unsatisfying football weekend, even though both Wisconsin teams won. As I mentioned, the Badgers really beat up on the depleted Wolverines, and then today the Packers barely beat the Jaguars, who are having a lousy season. It seemed strange that they had such a tough time, like they weren't really trying. Right before the game, Travalon and I took the two big plants we had rescued over to Rich's, then after the game we took a walk, but it was so cold and windy that we didn't take a very long one. I had my second Irish class, and then after that I walked with my neighbor, so I just barely got my steps for the day. It's hard to walk five miles when the weather is so uncooperative. We even saw little snowflakes swirling in the wind!

This evening I was saying that it seemed random when Steely Dan mention the Alabama football team in the song "Deacon Blues," since they don't seem like football aficionados, and Travalon found on Wikipedia that the song was actually built around that theme: "They've got a name for the winners in the world/and I want a name when I lose/They call Alabama the Crimson Tide/Call me Deacon Blues." Donald Fagan and Walter Becker were talking about how winners always have catchy nicknames, like the Crimson Tide, so why shouldn't losers have cool nicknames too? And then they wrote a song about it.

Speaking of classic rock, we were listening to that station in the car yesterday (since the 40's station is sadly all Christmas music until the day after Christmas), and to my surprise they kept playing songs I liked. I realized that this was because they were all minor-key songs, and while classic rock songs tend to be major key, there are enough in the Aeolian mode that I could make a whole playlist of classic rock songs I like. I'm a simple creature, and I like minor key music, and so must the woman DJ who was spinning the discs yesterday afternoon. One song was that one by the Moody Blues that goes: "I'm just a singer in a rock and roll band," and that got me to thinking. To me, making music with others is one of our highest human callings, so he's not "just" a singer, he's a musician doing something complicated and, dare I say, sacred with other people. Maybe classic rock isn't that sacred per se, but music is a gift from God. Today I was listening to a bunch of sacred music I was lucky enough to sing in various choirs, like "O Sacrum Convivium" by Byrd, "Duo Seraphim" and "Jerusalem Gaude" by Gallus (Handl), and "Angelus Domini Descendit" by Gabrieli. And of course anything by Victoria. I will never get over my amazement that we disgusting, violent, self-centered creatures can sometimes cooperate enough to produce something so beautiful and divine. But that's the key - we have to work together. If one person gets egotistical, the whole thing falls apart. It's like music is the closest God has come to letting us see creation as He sees it.

Famous Hat