The Australian Voices and...

6/26

Welcome Australian Voices, Ralph Farris and Joseph Twist

Hours required dealing with Facebook. Even though I understand that this person’s response to feeling hurt is to launch a broad based public assault on virtually everyone connected with our building, it is nonetheless spiritually draining to deal with. It is so easy to use social media to attack people, so much more difficult to actually engage real human beings. The saddest of all is to realize the person doing this actually believes what they are writing. And that they are somehow righteously serving the public instead of realizing that what they are doing is seeking to hurt and embarrass innocent people. Publicly. With no proof. I’m breaking my number 1 rule, trying to have a rational engagement in an irrational situation. Makes me sad. Hurts my heart. There’s also this...to know someone believes something bad about you, even when not literally true, hurts because the fact that someone believes it makes it true in at least one head. One place in the universe.  And that is draining. And sad. Got to disengage.

While in the sanctuary, the Australian Voices are filling the house with beautiful sound. ...and champagne...again. (http://west-parkpress.blogspot.com/2012/09/and-champagne.html)

Lots to catch up with Stephen. But I need to go speak to RL. Again, his story is his to tell. But I again marvel at what each of us has to deal with. There is marriage. There is love. There is years. And  as Paul Simon sang,

This is a lonely-lone, lonely life 

Sorrows everywhere you turn 

And that's worth something 

When you think about it 

That's worth some money 

That's worth something 

When you think about it 

That is worth some money 

Jeremy can’t come to the concert so he drops by for the pre-concert rehearsal. Hears the earthy sounds of Kalkadinga Yurdu rooted in indigenous song and Lisa Young’s Indian based Other Plans. He nods in appreciation. It's been great,their living with us.

Back again. Time for the Australian Voices concert fast approaching. Time to run home, change my clothes. Run back. On a hot and humid night. 

On my way in, Sergeant Keith wants to talk. Wants to do a project. Still working in getting it together. 

The concert came up with short notice. Not much time for publicity. Still the turn out is decent. The Australian consul is here as well as a number of ex-pat Aussies and a New York Times reporter. Friends of the string quartet Ethel and musicians like Carman Moore of the Sky Orchestra, my friends Beppe and Ric and West-Park and Sanctuary NYC folk.

                                                     Toy Story 3=Awesome


I do a welcome. Introduce my friend Ralph of Ethel. And the concert begins. Conductor/director/composer/arranger Gordon Hamilton

Gordon Hamilton and Bob

has created a musical exploration of his country, covering every base. From indigenous to folk (Waltzing Matilda)  to pop (Joseph Twist’s decon/reconstruction of Like a Virgin, Ave Madonna) to sacred (Biebl’s Ave Maria) to social media digital age (Toy Story 3=Awesome and Initialese) he hits it all. Including throat singing and mulitnote overtine vocals. 

The night ends with composer Joseph Twist joining them for the encore. It feels good to have hosted them in their New York debut as we previously hosted guests from Iceland (Graduale Nobili), Japan (Renato Ito and Emiko Iinuma) and Serbia (Zeljko Mircovic). 

Encore

It’s been a good night. As Beppe and I prepare to go to the B, the lost boy comes up and offers to help. I direct him to Danielle. It’s been a long day.

Australian Voices and Ralph Farris and Dorothy Lawson

That is worth some money

3/15

Kimberley and Kristen are waiting when I arrive. Kristen is one of our long standing artist friends. She is a singer-songwriter Union Seminary theological students. She was part of Amanda’s women’s singer-songwriters concert back i the Bridge concert series. And performed in our second Balcony Music Festival. And when I was in Berlin, did her own showcase concert at West-Park with her folk chamber group, Songs in the Key of Redemption.  

Krisren Leigh at West-Park

She looks around the office. Smiles. Laughs. Says I love this place. She’s brought the video of her concert. Wants to do a DVD with interviews of key Center people. We talk about the emergent church. And our mutual dislike of contemporary Christian music in all its saccharine didacticism. The church of transformation deserves music of transformation. I talk about my affection for the theology of Rubem Alves, from Brazil,  the former liberation theologian, now transformation theologian. His concept of Warrior, poet, priest. 

St. Cecilia

Kristen is off to Portland. That damned city again                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              PDX.  I tell her she’s got to talk to Amanda while she’s there. Who helped conceive and birth the center. Who knows its soul center. Kristen is looking for St.Cecilia. She brought her along and then left her at her concert. I found her, thought she was well, a bit disturbing, quasi s&m like. But then I heard her story, how they tried to behead her and she sang for three days and became the patron saint of musicians.

And I think of Paul Simon an the lyrics of his song, The Coast:

A family of musicians took shelter for the night 

In the little harbor church of st. cecilia 

Two guitars, bata, bass drum and tambourine 

Rose of jericho and bougainvillea 

This is a lonely life 

Sorrows everywhere you turn 

And that's worth something 

When you think about it 

That's worth some money 

That's worth something 

When you think about it 

                                                      The Coast

I return St. Cecilia to Kristen. Both seem happy with the reunion.

Anna is rousting el borracho. I notice he’s got a rather fancy looking IPhone. What’s up with that? Anna says, Don’t you know? The drug pushers use him as a drop off point.

Stephen on the other hand, posits that drug dealers wouldn’t leave valuable drugs or large sums of money with a drunk man. I will not pass judgment on what I know not of. 

Friends from the Trilingual School are back. They’re still interested.But I have to tell them that wan’t really talk. But I connect them with Martin. Need a back up plan, just in case. 

Nancy and Bob at the opening

Nancy has come to go for a beer at the B and talk real estate. She and Cara are deep in conversation. We go to the B then return for Berik and Leila’s latest New York Realism exhibit opening: Fantasy of Dream and Allegory. They’re back from a successful show in Montreal. As usual, the artists span the globe. 

Artist David Pullman and Cara

Soon I must leave to see Melisa’s play, Pit, about the 1984 Welsh miners  strike. It’s colder than I expected. 

                                                          Kristen Leigh sings