A Portrait of the Organist as a Young Woman

I was guest organist at the First Presbyterian Church this past Sunday.  Currently, I am fortunate enough to have organist gigs booked at various churches until the end of August. I am usually pretty brimming when I finish a Sunday service—little descriptions and observations and feelings rising up wanting to be written—but there’s something extra brimming about this church.

Maybe because I’d come there as a wee granddaughter object, holding the hands of my grandparents. 

Or maybe because it is a tremendous echoing edifice, all bell towers and stony outcrops (I don’t have architecture terms for those things), and inside there are PILLARS. I’ve not played in churches with pillars very much. Tremendous marble pillars.

Or maybe because the instrument itself is over a million-dollar affair, with five manuals, and more buttons, levers, and stops than I actually know how to process. I’m waiting to push something and have a small genie come out and tell me off. I did push something the other day and a continuous tinkling of bells sounded, like an angel assemblage, and I realized the zimbelstern was in decidedly good working order.  

So I feel a little compelled to write about this church and my organ-izing within it.  

I slide onto the bench in this empty huge place before the people come in, flip the magic switch, and a huge beast breathes to life. You can hear the blower of its lungs taking a rich inhale, then the air moving through the entire length of its body, the little clunks and audible shudders and twitches that happen with this.

I realized I’ve built a mental association (just like my cat: an approach to the lower cupboard means food).  The sound of over a hundred people sitting down—slightly rustly and with subtle groans of the pews, maybe a few deep inhales after the singing—this to me is the sound of triumphant success and relief.  In a smaller space with a smaller crowd, this is much less magnified. But in this huge space it is echoey and majestic. It means I just finished a hymn, held the last resounding chord for as long as necessary for the weight to plumb deep, and then let off the keys to a wash of relief at having gotten through the thing, and these Sounds of Sitting.  

You see, this is not an unapologetic instrument, and I do not spurn the loudly encompassing foot pedal stops. But that means that if I do make a mistake, it is undeniable.   

The anthem for the choir this week was no insignificant affair, even on the piano, a lyrical rendition of Be Thou My Vision in 4 sharps (and then the occasional A-sharp thrown in for befuddlement). I had only a few days to learn it, and I had to work. I was marking sharps, practicing page turns, writing “aim!” over the unmanageable chords, singing lines to try and get them into my head. There were triplets, there were large hand-stretching chords.

But I did it. Having the perfectionist gene (or at least a similar one) means that this work is not always a choice for me.  (I guess I could get better at Faking Things and have more time for other pursuits…)

And then: Sunday morning, the choir sounded sublime, I didn’t burn my triplets, I remembered my sharps, I aimed my “aims”. And the final chord hung beautifully in the air…. and the thing was done. Over. Never to be played again.  The manifestation of all my work had 3 minutes of existence and no more. 

I think about it like its making a Mandala. Creating a thing with insistent carefulness for the sake of creating it, all those fine grains of sand in place, a practice, a focus on being present for a task. Others enjoy it for a bit, and then wipe-wipe-wipe its over.

And then the next Sunday you work for something else.

After the service I skittered downstairs to eat cookies (playing makes me undeniably hungry) and drink church-basement coffee.  Before I could escape the organ bench a few people approached, thanking me for playing, asking what year I was at the Ithaca College music school (“uhm, nope, I am a soil scientist at Cornell….”) and a Mrs. Norma Stevenson to send her regards to my grandparents. 

But I didn’t get a chance to chat with the pastor of this formidable church (a positively charismatic young woman, much beloved, incredibly positive and thoughtful). I had listened intently to her sermon about change. How change HAPPENS for us as people; we can become someone perhaps even nearly unrecognizable to whom we had been before. And this is natural and ok.

But later this week I was playing late at night in the pitch of the black space, just the organ overhead light on. I heard movement but could see nothing, blinded in my little orb of organ light. Then, like a radiant specter, she appeared by the bench and I could see it was Pastor. “I just wanted to say, I love it when you play,” she said. “It is so expansive. You obviously are not afraid of the instrument.”  This raised me about 3 feet off the bench, and I blustered a blushing thank you….and explained that once I had been afraid of it. Which is kind of why I felt I should learn how to play it.

After some thinking, I realized I have three levels of Organist within me. The first level is Faking It But Making It. These are the mornings where perhaps the night before was a little longer than probably proper, or where the week was busy and I didn’t have practice time. I can play hymns, I keep everyone in tempo, but perhaps I hit a few off-pedal notes. Perhaps I miss an entrance. My first few years of being a church organist were this level, whether I liked it or not.

The second level is Yes Right. Things aimed are landed accurately, music sounds good, it’s right. After a few years this was the standard. I focus and effectively make tidy neat music.

Now I’m realizing there’s a third level. It is called With Soul. This has been happening more and more lately. Where I am playing, and am able to take in and hear the music, not just play it. Where I can play a piece I’ve played 49 times before and suddenly here a phrase in a new way. With Soul is more likely to happen on sunny days, after beautiful bicycle rides or a special human interaction. I tend to play this content into my music. That phrase is the sunset view; this next phrase is being in love. I’m more liquid when I play this way; I can hear the congregation getting quiet for the prelude, or maybe singing more lustily on a hymn. If I sense this beginning to happen I get even more in it and thus begins a positive feedback loop. The Leo in me would argue I’m blissed out on the power of my own power. The humanist would say I’m grateful to be contributing something beautiful to the universe. Who knows.  I love it.  It’s also rare and I want to be wary of trying to control it. 

Biking With....

Biking with…..

(reflections on the strange loads I’ve carried on bicycle)

A fish tank. I was in Pennsylvania, the early college years. It was a small fish tank, plastic with purple top, found sitting roadside after someone’s cleanup venture. I’m not sure why I thought it necessary to collect it while on my bicycle ride, maybe because It Was There and I was stretching my newly-left-home wings and displaying feathers of my father. Growing up he’d routinely pull over in his...Mercedes to pluck through a beckoning roadside pile.

I remember balancing the fish tank between handlebars and seat post, hugging it occasionally with a spare leg. It was mostly downhill. I think I really enjoyed the stacked feeling of collecting resources in a resourceful manner.

Dessert plates. Pedaling out one night for pipe organning, and someone must have purged a kitchen. Sweet dainty china pieces in a dusty box, none of them matching, their intricate roses and gold trim and little stamps on the bottom (“made in England” or “made in occupied Japan”) appealed to me all Victorian.  So after rummaging around and making an attractive mismatched selection, I stacked them ill-fittingly in the corner of my wire bike basket (I was on the van) and pedaled sedately off.

I don’t think I’ve EVER heard anything so loud coming from my bike before. Clanks and crashes, miniature China cymbals, vibrations of the road magnified by the plates’ odd sizes, resonating off the houses. This was horrifying. How could plates make so much noise? I scooped them up to mediate this nonsense. Thus I continued through downtown Ithaca cradling a palmfull of plates.  (I’m eating chocolate off one of them now, as I write this. They really are very charming.)

Kitty litter AND potting soil. They were both at the bargain store and I couldn’t pass them up.  The heaviest saggiest bags of weighty material possible. And since I am now car-free, I hefted one bag into the front basket and wheedled the other under the back rack-strap. The suspension gave a visible uff and I laughed and mounted the rig. Stopping was a delayed and thick experience and turning could be magnified into a giant sudden swing of direction due to the weight in front. But no matter, I treated all with care and great awareness. (maybe one thing I especially love about biking, and also Biking With Items, the amount of focus and awareness necessary. Its almost a sort of balance meditation) I took empty back streets, plowing along like the Queen Mary. The laws of physics—namely inertia: that an object in motion stays in motion, no matter how massive.

Then: OH GOOD what impeccable timing to meet my sophisticated and attractive Downstairs Boys neighbors as I roll weightily home on this ridiculous rig. I couldn't really stop properly or turn around for a sufficient greeting, so I just yelled out something idiotic and incomprehensible as an explaination.

Bread. Why it is nice to have friends at the bakery, for day-old giveaways. Again, from the college days. Talk about voluminous though; bread is certainly, erm, spacious. Both back panniers full and a big poof of a bag strapped to the back rack. I then distributed to friends and neighbors.

Compost. This makes me feel very Ithacatious, biking my compost up THE HILL to the greenhouse compost collector. Especially if I’m wearing plaid and a vest.

Vegetables. Cabbages, kale, carrots, flower bouquets, garlic, and tomatoes. All at once.

Also are all those things so routine they’re barely worth mentioning: a clanky six-pack, a houseplant, half a batch of muffins, waaaay too much organ music, a tall curvy mirror, hefty much boots, a left-over sheet-cake. This number was in a clear plastic container on my back rack left over from church. All colored frosting right at child’s-eye level.  I pass a mother and daughter. “CAKE!” observes the little girl, all wistful and recognizing, as it rolls through her world-view.

I take an undue pleasure in all this. I don’t know where this pride in being resourceful and slightly unorthodox comes from, but I think I might cite my father. I’m grateful that I can see this transport of objects as an amusing challenge, rather than an inconvenience and reason to pine for a car.

We Are Now Four

We are now four. Which qualifies as a household. (A two-bicycle household.) We are: one organist/crop and soil scientist; Oliver, one ancient fish who’d previously been overtaxing my parents’ welcome (a residual from when I left for college and Mum would take care of him until he probably died 6 months later—6 years later he’s still with us); Otto, Oliver’s live-in cleaning service; and now Hildegard Von Bingen, someone of the feline persuasion from the local shelter.  

Last night was Hildegard’s first night as Mansard roof-mate.

I’m hesitant to become one of those people who rattles everlasting about her pet as if her pet were somehow The Most charismatic or eccentric creature. And if one hasn’t met the star of the story then you just may not quite get it, but wait patiently to glowingly tell your own pet stories.  Pets bring us such comfort and entertainment this way, that we want to share about them. But I’m realizing this is not a unique feeling.

(I only really like hearing Daddy talk about Myra. Because both of them are into the next universe of strange. For instance: my Dad made me a bed that fog-horns and Myra eats...items. “Myra ATE my yoga pants” my Mom stated, in full disgruntlement, and I could only laugh because of the ridiculous nature of those words.)

Hildegard is named after the first female composer (back in those men-dominated days) from 1081. She wrote beautiful chants and poetry. I’d been explaining her origins to my crop and soil science friends, and just about everyone else. Except I met with Awesome Musical Alyce yesterday (the soprano of the “AaaaAAAaahhhh-shit!-Aaaaaaaahhhh!” singing) and I said, “Her name is: Hildegard” and before I could finish Alyce jumped in, “VON BINGEN!!!”  Yes.  

Hildegard is small, in mid-life, rescued as a stray from Trumansburg, and has Tabby-Tortoiseshell markings. This looks like someone painted stripes on her, became disillusioned with that style and went swipe-smear-swipe to smudge them out. She has a tiny spill of orange, a little chest-plate of white, and the rest is that romantic gray mottled fog of an English countryside.

I was groggily lying in bed last night and it was almost surreal to see a cat sitting there regarding me, then pushing her head into my hand. Having a cat in my Mansard Roof is like trying to develop a relationship with someone you don’t even know yet, but doing so in your own previously-determined space.  There’s a few things we need to decide terms on: for instance scratching, and the popcorn popper, and walking in each other’s ways. Right now she is my writing co-pilot, sitting by my feet and looking serene.

She curls back and forth around my hand and head-butts it, occasionally standing like a kangaroo to gain improved leverage.

It’s fascinating to feel what it feels like to not be alone in this Mansard roof, that my movements now influence another creature. She watched me with composed regard as I grated beets and chopped onions last night. Thankfully she did not flatten in abject fear when I fired up the popcorn popper (because that is integral to existence here) but only sat in the hall looking wide-eyed and small. Then she watched me dance. 

"That toy is not enticing but YOU sure are."

Head-butts in action make difficult photographs.

The Stapler

Today at work my boss tasked me with the consequential task of….buying a stapler.

(day in the life of a crop and soil scientist, right)

As Cornell is a large, important, and unwieldy entity, the act of purchasing something using institution or grant money is no straight forward business. But I am authorized to officially deploy lab funds for purchases. So my boss appointed me the stapler (which we did need) as a fairly innocuous purchase to attempt before moving on to more advanced items. 

The purchasing system is a convoluted website with too many links, too many icons, unobvious codes, and hidden tabs. Cornell, as its own veritable planet, has such a large demand for everything that it has special relationships with many suppliers for bulk and discount purchasing, thus the convoluted special purchasing system. 

But, it’s just a stapler, right! No problem.

WELL.

The variety of available stapler breeds was astounding. I scrolled through pages of half strip staplers, full strip staplers, Modern Grip staplers, compact staplers, an antimicrobial stapler (?!?)…. Also one Medical Skin Stapler for $568.  (Hm, maybe I’ll get that number for our cover crops)

I used my executive decision and bought a neon green one.

Then came the actual assigning of funds to the thing: opening links, hitting “submit” and “calculate” hopefully and repeatedly, only to be returned some perplexing error symbol. Finally I got to enter an account number.  And a business purpose. One can’t go buying staplers (or plot flags, or legume inoculant) without proper justification. 

But to justify a stapler?

I got out my best academicese: “Necessary for fastening together informational sheets of paper to promote laboratory organization, drafts to be reviewed by PI, and printed journal articles.”

I wonder how I would have justify the antimicrobial option…

A Dinner Party

I hosted my first dinner party last night.

I've hosted jointly before. But this one was in my Mansard roof, in my kitchen. For my new Cornell lab group and boss.



Perhaps it was not a standard dinner party. It was mostly brassicas. And the justification of this party was a Website Launch Party. Specifically, one of my first tasks as employee was to revamp the website, hosted by wordpress. I got rid of the tall office buildings of text, the stacks of links, unburied the interesting photos lost in the depths and brought them accessible. I bugged my teammates for details about their projects and made little profile pages for each. I learned how to navigate wordpress platform and read countless well-designed blogs about designing blogs well.

(Please visit our site! https://scslabcu.wordpress.com/)

I was wrist-deep in bike grease and crud on the front porch, changing my rear flat, when Professor Boss arrived lugging two potted plants and plenty of beer.  How strange it is to have one's boss out of context like this. And good. So we opened beers with a bike tire lever and talked about things that weren't perennial grains, rolling soybeans, or collecting soil samples. I bumbled around my upside-down bicycle and he remarked how nice it was to have an expansive porch.

Then the rest of my lab group arrived. I am extraordinarily blessed by getting to work with a group of clever, motivated, interested and interesting young people. Their partners are lovely too. Tall Sophia arrived with her big plume of hair, wearing heels and saying she refuses not to not wear heels because of her height. Sweet Mariah told stories of the cats at the humane shelter where she volunteers. We laughed about the brassicas, gossiped a bit about some faculty and local growers, and dreamed of agronomy conferences held in Puerto Rico.

And it was indeed brassica night. "P.S. Remember it's Bring Your Wok To Work Day" I'd reminded my boss in the bottom of a logistics email; I was needing to borrow his wok so I could make Sichuan Pepper cabbage stir fry. Everyone leaned around my kitchen, talking animatedly, beers encased in my strange coozie collection, while I sprinkled and poured ingredients in the wok, making up a cabbage recipe. Professor Boss chopped a kohlrabi (more brassica) and Soil Master Chris had brought a kale-lentil salad (the final brassica).

I felt duly-dinner party-ry because I served my cabbage stir-fry in my cut glass bowl (gift from dear generous Aunt Marge) AND I had enough chairs and plates for everyone. We fit around my estate-sale special table.

It takes me halfway through the meal, however, to remember to offer out yellow cloth napkins (gift from dear Grandma June). Oh well, better late than never.

I noticed later one of those napkins sticking out of Soil Master Chris's back-pocket, exactly like the soil sampling rag that had been back there this morning.

Having them in my Mansard Roof was a pleasure; I'm learning I thoroughly enjoy hosting people. And I got to "play" (i.e., "sound") the organ bed and introduce everyone to Oliver the Fish and his efficient little cleaning service (algae eater). I had Celtic music playing on my Dad's boat-sized ancient boom box and evening sun cascaded into my Mansard. It was lovely.

The First Ride and A Good Sing

Two excellent things happened this weekend. But I should say these were normal happenings, perhaps, but the canvas for them was the weather for the past week: a dungeon of sodden greyness, turbulent wind, shrinking into hopeful spring coats that weren’t nearly warm enough. The skies were monochrome, unceasingly deep blankets under which we were all hidden and morose. Occasionally a maverick cloud might dart uncharacteristically quickly past its role of sun obscuring, and a weak ray of gold would grace us. But then, after 15 seconds, snow would begin on some sort of cruel whim.

And there’s a deeply concerning draught in California. (oh climate change)

But coming back to the local. Today. Today was Spring. Glorious sun leapt me out of bed, permanent sun, sun all day. My quads and lungs and soul have been waiting for this day. Waiting to go bicycling. Bicycling in celebration, not in stoicism. Not a rainy buzz out for eggs or soymilk, but a glorious revel of exploring new places.

Cleaning my chain, pumping my tires: it was like getting ready to go on a date, all eager and anticipating and a little nervous maybe. How would it go? Would I still have it? It had been so long, so long since I’d roared off on two wheels; which shoes do I normally bicycle in? Which shorts fit the best? I had to step back and remember these things.

And then: oh, it was like reconnecting with a love after a long time separate. The previously delicious comfortable things now unexpectedly new and exciting. How my feet fit in the pedals, the balance and grind of standing into the handlebars to climb a hill, the brakes that do squeak, darn it.

I opened the Tompkins County bicycle map and arbitrarily chose to head towards Dryden. A small town separated from Ithaca by fields and trees and shabby houses and hills and streams. I took Whispering Springs Actually-A-Killer-Hill Rd, or something like this, and began to climb. And climb. I down-shifted. I took off my over shirt. Then rolled down my knee socks. Then took those off completely. I was doing something I hadn’t done in ages: I was sweating in the sun. Digging into my long-lost legs. Chipping the crusty layer off my lungs. Suffering and glory all churning together. It was amazing.

And, after rounding many forested turns---believing to finally be at the victorious crest only to thwartingly find there was more---I did reach the highest bit. One of those yellow road signs of a truck riding down a triangle indicated it would be a great descent. And oh my: that descent went on long enough I got to move past the adrenaline of it, to sit with this descent, to be in it for a long delicious time. The unexpectedly long climb was winter, which when I was in it I never believed it to end (must work on Faith), and this descent was the giddy glory of spring.

The descent was so fantastic and jostedly that I noticed an undue amount of clatter happening after I landed. Upon inspection, I realized my bicycle had lost a bit of hardware connecting my back-rack and rear-fender to the frame. Poking tentatively around Dryden, I realized this town failed to have content on a Sunday, and I had to be all clever with a bit of wire scrounged roadside and some electrical tape purchased at Walgreens. But this mending held and I was pleased.

The descent into spring. It took me all the way to that valley.

28 miles. My First Ride of the season. I feel so happy. I have mild sun addiction, perhaps, and when I get a fix life is so much improved. I’ll see how I am once I inventory the legs tomorrow morning.

The other excellent thing was music. The Christian Scientists have a soloist instead of a choir, and as organist my task is to learn their piece and accompany them. This week a soprano. I was expecting some flimsy demanding blonde thing, but this girl, Miss Spunk, was tall like me and indeed a presence. She was young, irreverent and driven, quick sense of humor, fast to laugh; we hit it off immediately. We had just met and were creating music together, like a dance.  Rehearsal Saturday morning, though it was technically “work” I suppose, was really fun.

There was a bit where she got all high and belting and I was playing smooth arpeggios beneath. To hear this striking operatic voice, resonating these wide notes, “aahhh”—rolling up into the registers—“aaaahhh”—all like an aria—“ahhhh”—and here I was accompanying under it!—“aaaaahhhh”—and then: “aahhhh-shit-aahhhh” as she expressed some unwanted musical aberration. I started giggling, then laughing, then had to stop playing. Then in my agile keyboardist grace I flail out and knock over my metal thermos, which is a veritable gong. To have such a crash follow her operatic expletive sent us both into a full train wreck.  We had a blast.

But oh did we do well Sunday morning. I was giving myself chills while she sang.

In Warm Rain

Forgive me as I write about Spring....at least a whiff of Spring. This was from last night.

The world smelled of warm rain, a delicious smell indeed.  One of those smells as important as Grandma’s Cookies. I felt that flutter of spring, the rising of that beautiful thing which is human hope. I was the bike-riding version of a fawn prancing among crocuses.  Only in the dark. And the rain. Coming back across town from the organ church. It was that affirming feeling, maybe there were still piles of filthy snow, maybe the reminder of the weekend’s weather was grimly gruesome. But it was that affirmation that you could remember this feeling, what spring was. Feeling the feeling of the feeling, if not the feeling itself. Like feeling how it felt to be in love, remembering what that felt like, even if you weren’t actually in it. But faith that it—spring, love, whatever—will happen.

This feeling made me want to DO THINGS: bake cookies, host parties, go hiking, ride my bicycle many miles, have guests, go dancing, eat more Thai peanut sauce, adopt a cat. 

And I felt happiness to be in Ithaca….not just resigned or tolerant, but actively happy. Maybe because I was on a bicycle. (You can keep your little hardy northern mouth shut, Sylvia Klassen, but I was too blasted by this terrible winter to ride my bicycle.) And being on a bicycle again, finally, was as delicious as that smell of warm rain.

Today I took the scenic way home from Cornell, curving around the roads in the Plantations, sitting tall and looking delighted and gazing off into the trees. I became duly muddy after some off-roading activities thanks to a slightly disorienting turn, which seemed appropriately fitting.

Spring makes me stupid with glee. I end up grinning at passersby and bum-bumming to myself. Add to this the bliss of relieving release from the world’s tallest basement (my office building), and the extended frisson of flying down THE HILL on bicycle (not just a single hill, either, but it comes in stages, so you have moments of being present before the next ripping descent) at the end of a productive workday and I could quite possibly become airborne by the time I’ve reached downtown.

I reached downtown Wednesday and bought myself a charming little epiphyte tillandsia plant to keep me company in the kitchen.

Otherwise, it’s The Fish And I, living in this Mansard Roof.

I was wearing as many clashing versions of teal and green as my wardrobe would allow (disregarding the neon pants): teal sweater, neon green vest, blue-teal scarf, my sister’s every-color-teal-blue hat. Two clashing colors is unaware; more is intentional. It felt playful and good.

So I came into my apartment after playing that beautiful tracker instrument, just now, remembering with fondness how my organ music was sitting primly in boxes, all organized. Even though some of it was being deployed and was in circulation, left by the organ at the church, not in my prim boxes. 

Then I made a metaphor joke in my head, so nerdy, yet so applicable to my personal circumstances….remembering from Soil Fertility class how soil organic matter has an active fraction and a passive fraction (i.e., not biologically active, aka humus) and how my pipe organ matter was likewise. The books that actively transferred between apartment and church, de-composing (oh dear) and then the books that were not available to soil organisms for consumption.