Category: Arts & Letters

When did I first discover that symphony?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Two Charles Ives quotes had me remembering that I borrowed the 2nd symphony from the Binghamton public library, but think it was the same Bernstein album of introduction I had perhaps taken out at my dorm’s library in Bloomington earlier or even before that from the Dayton Public Library while still in high school. It had a cool collage for a cover, which I’m unable to find online. Push Pin Studio? Oh, the days of vinyl, scratches and all!

I do remember being disappointed when the Cincinnati Symphony’s scheduled performance of the work conducted by Max Rudolf, which I could have heard on spring break, was instead replaced with a young James Levine at the helm in a different program, which a dear friend steered me away from. I still wish I had gone.

I would still love to hear it live, though that’s highly unlikely, at my age and remote location. It and its siblings should be in the repertoire of every American orchestra, the way Beethoven, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky are.

Still, I’ve had a custom of listening to the four symphonies each October, a private festival that usually spreads into the string quartets, piano sonatas, and so on. And I can even admit how much fun performing the songs in public can be.

~*~

As you can see, I admit to being a big Ives fan. He was not just a pioneering American composer but also a giant in the emerging insurance industry. If you want to know more, check out my longish Reflections at Chicken Farmer I Still Love You.

Apart from fame or fortune

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Found myself thinking about pastors laboring much of Saturday to craft a sermon heard by a congregation and then likely forgotten, something that was a more common occurrence when I was growing up and everybody went to church on Sundays, back when Blue Laws were in effect. It was “important” and discussed over the dinner table.

It also had me also thinking about long letters, back in the day, the kind that are more likely to get published as a book today.

So here we are in an era when going viral or having blockbuster sales or ratings is the goal of so many. What a contrast to work that’s done in loving detail for a limited audience. Not just that Sunday sermon. A passionate teacher within a classroom. A doctor, just one patient at a time. A concert performed for a few hundred people. (Perhaps after months of rehearsals.) A single piece of art, to be prized by a single collector.

It sets a different measure of success, along with self-worth.

Now add to that jobs done one-to-one, say caretaker in a seniors residential facility. Or even gardening, with only the universe as a witness.

These don’t reflect in economics reports or, when they do, they’re discounted as marginal. Not so, I’ll argue. Besides, how much does joy weigh?

Noah only had to take them two-by-two via an ark  

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

One of the struggles I had as a writer was in trying to keep abreast of the riches presented me in my wider world despite the upheavals of my professional life. Just as I would be getting centered into one landscape, I was yanked into another, as if being dropped into yet one more planet. The sources of inspiration kept changing faster than I could record them in any depth. It’s a wonder I didn’t drown.

Among the drafts I’ve uncovered in my journals review, the ones now available as free PDF downloads at my Thistle Finch digital bookstore, please consider these Chronicles: Buddha Notes, Endless Prairie, and Thunder Cloud.

Welcome to another Rabbit Hole on the Internet.

 

Can we categorize gallerygoers and the like?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Fine art is, after all, an extension of religion. Just look at museums, concert halls, theaters, even arenas as temples.

That said, here goes:

Proprietors: Middle-class or desiring to move up, the kulcher-seekers. Subcategories those seeking familiarity with the old, beside those with “taste,” a little knowledge of “masters.”

Those dragged through: Spouses, dates, children.

Those seeking Experience: Usually modernists with “taste” but possibly those seeking play within art, qualities antithetical to where art must be “serious.”

Fellow practitioners: Usually too poor to collect new work except by trading, but also the most critical and appreciative, depending.

Now, for atheists and agnostics?

After drafting this, I see parallels to dining out for fine cuisine or attending concerts, live theater, even cinema.

Care to add to the list?

 

Along more than artistic lines

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Canadian Opera’s Marriage of Figaro at the Capitol [theater in Yakima]: well done yet I’m perplexed by what makes a performance exciting and vital rather than merely competently technical …

I’m sure I enjoyed it all the same. It is one of my favorite operas.

~*~

By the way, in reviewing my journals, I see there were more musical performances in my life during those years than I’ve recalled.

 

Have you ever got stuck playing with rubber stamps?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My hand these days may not be as reliable for sketching or painting as it once was, but my eyes are still alert. In our downsizing on our remote island in Maine, as I chanced upon our collected rubber stamps and inks, I started playing. Add to that some related artistry.

Do take a look for the results at my free digital bookstore, Thistle Finch editions.

The albums are Inked. Stamped, Pressed, Visual Twists, and Shore Things (collages arising from beachcombing findings).

You might even what to download and print some of the images. I humbly think they’re great.

 

Let’s catch up on recent releases

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

My weekly offerings at my free digital bookstore, Thistle Finch editions, include some remarkable new entries gleaned from our ongoing journals review.

There’s the Chronicle, Antiques Dealer, profiling a woman who saw deeply into the landscape she adopted. I do miss her.

Another Chronicle, Shakers and Me, has me now reflecting on a late friend who had held extensive conversations with Eldress Bertha, one of the last Shakers; I urged him to set the exchanges down on paper, to no avail. Yet a few he mentioned still echo. What I present here could be a prelude.

Still another Chronicle, On the Rock Wall, underpins the petroglyphs and petrographs I would later see firsthand in the Pacific Northwest.

I am fond of Scenes From a Life, prose sketches of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

And then there’s Sue’s Bread Recipe. Yes, learning to bake loaves was one of my lessons in the yoga ashram, one that led to hundreds or maybe thousands later. Here’s what Little Sue introduced to me.

If that weren’t enough, there are the poetry broadsides Within a Bigger Order, Kansas and Kyoto, and Bronx to Brooklyn (about someone I’d still love to talk to once more).

Put them together and I think you’d have a great magazine. Well, I am open to letters to the editor.