Laurel Massé

Last night I dreamed of Elvis

I am on a film set, working; there is a catering tent (like Harrod's Food Hall, but smaller) where the tea is plentiful and good. There is also a Cathedral set, and an airstrip. A small turbo-prop lands, a little stairway is wheeled to the door, and out comes Elvis, who sees me, and turns to English actor Bernard Hill. "Look! There's Laurel!", he says, and they smile big bright sunrise smiles, and come down the stairs.

Elvis looks great. He is older, of course, as he should be, and a little stout, but healthy and happy, and full of life and laughter. We've been friends ever since Bernard first introduced us.

Now, my babysitters were Elvis fans. I was a little too young, and then my family moved across the Atlantic to Solihull, England, and it wasn't until the Beatles were on the telly there in 1962 that pop music came into my life. I've dreamed of Paul McCartney many times over the decades since then, but this is Elvis' first appearance. What a great guy he turns out to be!

 

On set with director Cornelia Moore (wearing headset)

And how interesting it is that we are neither in a recording studio, nor on a concert stage, but on a movie set. A concert takes an evening, a recording, a few weeks or maybe months (for most artists), but movies are long projects. They take time, and require a vast number of people to work at a vast number of specialized tasks, some seen, some only felt. But everyone focuses on a common goal, everyone serves a vision.

 

While with the Transfer, I did a lot of TV, but I've only been on one film set as a performer (rather than a visitor), and only for a day. Cornelia Moore, director of Camilla Dickinson (a screen adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's novel, Camilla), called me to be a nightclub singer in a scene, and so off I flew to Spokane, WA, for a day of location shooting. As soon as I arrived on set, I felt that "thing", that magic, in cast and crew. Shared purpose, connection, speaking a common language - it was in the air. And at the end of that one day, when I heard "that's a wrap for Laurel Massé", I was knocked over by a wave of sadness. Time to go? Already? Oh. I wanted to stay, to be part of the story, because of that "thing".

I am a sucker for that thing. It is what I loved about doing King Lear with Project Rushmore Theatre Company. It's what I love about Ashokan, and why I would often rather see a band in rehearsal than in performance. It's the shared purpose, the collaboration; it's a participation in the Beloved Community, and it's the story we tell. 

Here's an image that gives the sense of what I am talking about. It's The Quilting Bee, by Grandma Moses. In this painting, every stitch is a story. Elvis has not yet arrived...

 

And here is a link to an article about Cornelia, in which she talks about her film, her writing, and her godmother.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's the little things

My local PBS station shows Downton Abbey in a most helpful way. Every Sunday, the preceding week's episode runs an hour before the current episode, so I get to see each one twice. This really works for me, because I can watch once for the story, and once for the craft of of how the story is presented (acting, direction, set dressing, costuming, and most of all, the writing). I often notice small details I missed in my first enthralled swoon.

The same thing sometimes happens with books. You may know that I reread Little Women every year in Christmastide. I am too embarassed to tell how many repetitions it took before I noticed all the homeopathic remedies the March family used, or that Marmee was "a born singer".

I miss things all the time in scripture, even though I've read the Bible more than once over the years, and in different translations. I have a strong sense of the arc of the stories, but bits I could swear were not there the last time I looked keep appearing, little word-bomb epiphanies.

(Which is why I don't have a Kindle. With that kind of inattention to detail, when would I notice that They have changed what Jane Austen wrote?)

And hearing the story is so necessary to me that I have taken to solitary reading aloud, coming full circle 'round to the kids to whom I used to feel so superior in elementary school because they moved their lips and whispered when they read. Mrs. Peel stares at me. My comeuppance is here.

It's when I hear it "for the first time" that I notice what I missed.

For instance: on at least three occasions. recorded in the gospels, Jesus is goes away from or ahead of the crowds and of most of the disciples, taking with him only Peter, James, and John. They were the witnesses when he raised Jairus' little girl from the dead, they were the witnesses to his mountaintop conversation with Moses and Elijah, and they were with him in the garden at Gethsemane, where they gained their reputations as the sleeping guys, because when he said "stay awake," they fell asleep, and not just once.

Last Sunday's gospel reading we Luke's account of the Transfiguration, that meeting of Jesus, Moses and Elijah. I noticed two things. First, the same guys who were later going to sleep through Jesus' deepest despair almost missed his transfiguration because they were "heavy with sleep". I had not caught that before. Second, there is a pretty big difference in translation between the RSV (Revised Standard Version) which is what I read at home, and the NRSV (New RSV), which is used in The Episcopal Church and others.

Here is the RSV: And as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, and when they wakened they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

Here is what I heard in church: Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

Well, then! They got sleepy, and either did or did not fall asleep. I rather think they did. Getting sleepy would not be such a big deal, but falling asleep is worthy of mention. Either way, their heavy-liddedness in the garden was clearly not without precedent. I love Luke for including this detail (even if it didn't happen that way) for what it gives to the story.

Putting belief aside, as a writer I am often taken by the stylistic differences between the four gospels. Matthew is almost professorial, Mark is immediately-suddenly-at-once breathless, Luke inserts little details the way Madeleine L'Engle puts the making of peanut butter sandwiches into her stories of interdimensional travel, and John is swept away by light. In fact, one of the reasons I prefer the RSV at the moment is that these differences seem less smoothed-out in translation.

And translation is always the rub, isn't it? Events translated into memory, memory into words, words into different languages, languages altered by time. Add cultural differences and editorial slant, and wow, it's amazing any two people sitting next to each other on a church pew can agree on anything about scripture. We don't even need non-believers in order to get into arguments and have schisms. I once lived in a small country town that had a First Baptist Church on the main drag, and an Independent Baptist Church up the hill.

It doesn't take a historian to figure out what happened. Some little thing, I'm sure, that hadn't been noticed before.

 

 

 

 

Still Jo's girl

So many years ago that this is almost a story that could start with "once upon a time", my family lived in a very big house, a legacy of the days of grand families and grand architects. The realtor called it a mansion. My family still calls it The Big House.

The first floor was indeed very grand. There was a parlor for company, and a library with built-in shelves. A dining room that overlooked a formal rose garden. A ballroom. The second floor had the good bedrooms, big as New York City studio apartments, with much nicer baths than I have ever had since.

My spirit's home, though, was up one more flight, in the small third floor servants' quarters. There, in a little monk's cell of a room with one window, I had a desk, a chair, a box of onion skin paper, my Sheaffer fountain pen, and a box of ink cartridges. And my companion, Jo March. I wanted to be just like Jo March, and to that end I scribbled page after page of - what? stories, probably, and perhaps some poems. I don't remember, and as my family moved a lot, nothing remains of all that ink except the memory of the texture of the paper, and the sound the pen nib made as I wrote line after line after blotted line. Oh, I wanted to be a writer.

Singing turned out to be easier, and my dear Lord is aware that I rather enjoy the spotlight. But this "words thing" never went away. I care about lyrics, I read aloud to people whenever I can, I do inspirational speaking, Shakespeare's King Lear leaves me sobbing on the floor, for Jo's spell has never worn off. And particularly at this time of year, the connection I feel to this fictitious character and to the extraordinary woman who created - or released - her is especially strong. It has long been my Christmas season practice to read Little Women again. Every year, somehow, it seems a better book.

My pretty little red leather-bound copy is currently in storage with the rest of my things, so I went to the local library. Their copy is for in-library use only - can you imagine? I'd have to wear shoes! But I found another treasure that I could take home: Marmee and Louisa by Eve LaPlante (2012). As far as I know LaPlante is the first author to explore the relationship between Lou and her mother, Abigail. Ever since her death in 1888, conventional wisdom has held that Louisa was her daddy's girl through and through, educated by him, inheritor of his gifts, beneficiary of his attention. That never set quite right with me. If the Alcott family was the model for the March family, why was the father absent for most of the book? Well, as it turns out, Bronson Alcott was also much absent in real life, and he never made a living. His mind on higher things, he seems to have been content to let his wife and daughters do all the work for the lowlier purposes of rent and food. Unlike his wife, Alcott did not particularly believe in the equality of women, and he came late to the abolitionist's cause. It was Abigail (Marmee) who encouraged her daughters to live full, good lives and to work to utilize their gifts, Marmee who wrote volumes of journals. And it was Marmee who worked until her health was ruined, as did Louisa, whose writing supported the family until she died at 56 (her royalties did so thereafter). The relationship between mother and daughter was deep, and necessary for both women. LaPlante's is a beautiful and calmly fierce book, well-researched and well-written, sad in many ways, but ultimately inspiring. Abigail was left out of history; Eve has fixed that.

You can buy the book through LaPlante's website, to which I have inserted a link above. Amazon has it, of course, but if you possibly can, please get it from an independent bookseller.

 

 

 

I sing because

...it is in my DNA. Both my parents had fine voices, and though as a teenager I was embarassed in church because they sang so loudly, theirs were the best voices in every choir they were in.

But the singer line runs primarily through my mom. Her father, Leonard Kranendonk, is the man standing on the right in this photo. From him, my mother and my uncle (on the left) inherited their voices; from my mother, my sister and I inherited ours.

Mom was a coloratura soprano of astonishing range. She now sings tenor with her choir. My Uncle Bob, a true musician-singer, has a rich smokey baritone voice, and my sister's is a contralto as sweetly dark as buckwheat honey. But we did not all become professional vocalists; only my grandfather, my uncle, and I followed that path.

My grandad was for many years the lead baritone of Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, an internationally-renowned glee club that started in the late 1930s. My uncle also sang with them for a time. You may not have heard of them, but there would be no Glee TV show without them (and possibly no Robert Shaw Chorale, since that's where Shaw got his start). Waring had a weekly radio and then television show, and they are considered, I learned last year, to have been the original Show Choir. English was my grandfather's second language (he emigrated from The Netherlands), but his own perfectionism and Waring's Tone Syllables, a diction technique, resulted in what you will hear on this opening track from his only solo album.

Leonard Kranendonk The Lord is My Light

My grandfather and I did not agree on the role of improvisation, but I think he was proud of me, and I feel him with me every time I sing in church. And because he sang sunrise Easter services on a mountaintop, and blessings at the Thanksgiving table, I reckoned I could, too. Singing anytime, anywhere, without accompaniment was normal.

It's autumn in upstate NY. As winds tug at the leaves of gold and flame, the trees simply let go, and drop them (you want lessons in attachment and non-attachment? Look to the deciduous trees). It's getting colder. Both my grandparents lived into the 21st century, and I lost them only 11 years ago, my grandmother Elsie (who sang alto) in October 2011, my grandfather the following spring. I feel them, and feel the pull of the old songs that are my my most valuable inheritance, and the voices that carried them. All these years later, I'm the one singing loudly in church. But really, whom then shall I fear, when I never sing alone?

 

Summer, sweet summerrrrrr...

Writer Henry James said the two most beausiful words in the English language are summer afternoon, and lovely they are, evocative, leaves rustling in a soft breeze.

But I am partial to James Joyce's riverrun, all vowels and voiced consonants. In fact, river is one of my favorite words to sing, along with forever. Why? Because, blithely ignoring conventional choral tradition, I think R's are beautiful in the mouth.

And why is that? Because I had the very good fortune to attend Fred Waring's Youth Choral Workshop one summer, when I was fourteen. There, I was taught how to pronounce words naturally and clearly, so that the audience could understand them. I've used what I learned there in every line I've ever sung.

I balk when choir directors tell their singers to drop the final r - in "father", for instance - because "it's an ugly sound" - insisting it's better to sing "fawthuh", because a musical tradition born in England in the 1600s should sound English. I'll do it, because the director is the director. But I don't mean it.

In fact, research suggests that the English we hear today on the BBC is quite different from that of the 17th century. I have heard Shakespearean verse spoken in a way that is closer to how it would have been spoken when new, and let me tell you, it is o'erbrimming with Rs. Big, rich, juicy Rs. Fat, piratical Rs. And they sound delicious, and quite like some of our American regional Rs.

This, and other differences between the English accents in the Renaissance and today's received pronunciation, reveal rhymes that have been lost. Loved and moved and proved used to rhyme. So, when Willie (I call him that because I love him sooooooo much that he makes me howl like a wolf) used some combination of love/move or love/prove as the final rhymes in Sonnets 25, 32, and (most famously) 116, he hadn't suddenly decided, "oh to heck with it, close enough!" They did rhyme. Then.

In Sonnet 61, he juxtaposes -where and near. In 66, gone and alone. So these words, too, may once have rhymed.

Why does this matter so much to me? Two reasons. FIrst, because there is no point to put on, for the sake of "tradition", the fake English accents I hear in some choirs, especially in the Episcopal Church, if the tradition isn't accurate. Second, rhyme scheme is part of how I remember a lyric (the overall story of the song being the other part. That will be another post). I am accutely aware of a missing rhyme where there should have been one. If, when I'm grabbing a Johnny Mercer lyric off the internet, the established rhyme pattern suddenly disappears for a line, for no reason, and then returns, something's wrong.

I wanted to post a YouTube clip that illustrates what I am talking about, but an evil cabal of choir directors is interfering with my internet connection today, and my eight-year-old laptop has jettisoned its Flash drive in its confused dotage. I therefore can't watch video clips any more, and am flying blind on this. But here are two links that should take you there...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt7OynPUIY8

and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s&feature=related

If they don't work, let me know. If they fail, go to YouTube and look for ... oh, try Shakespeare authentic pronunciation.

Mrs. Peel has thoughts on packing

Lost in a good book... or two...

I live in an incredibly noisy place. And I have a noisy brain. There is nothing I can do to influence the former, no plea I can make to my neighbors, no legislation I can enact or enforce.  All I can do is be quiet myself, and that sometimes requires assistance. Long hours of sleep can help, though the outside noises make that impossible here. Getting sick can force it. Going away to a calmer environment (if there is time and money for the trip) can give brief relief. But the best way for me, is, and has always been, to read.

My folks taught me to read before kindergarten, and I was fortunate to start my schooling in a district that focused on reading and writing skills. Very fortunate. Because the habit had already taken hold by the time my family moved, in the middle of my second grade year,  to a different state, a different school, a different teacher.

Mrs. Kelly.

The new school put its attention more on arithmetic skills in that grade, and mine were not as advanced as was my reading. WIth a little extra attention, I probably could have caught up. And I did get extra attention. Mrs. Kelly focused on my deficient math skills, bringing her primary teaching tools in to the fray. She lavished ridicule and humiliation on me so effectively that, 40-odd years later, when I was finishing my B.A., I almost blacked out in the class I took to fulfill the mathematics requirement.

But she couldn't similarly cripple my reading, because I already knew how to do it. But she could punish proficiency. In the silent reading period, she snatched the book out of my hands when she discovered me "reading ahead" to the next stories while the other kids were still stuck in the single one she had assigned. "Just who do you think you are?" she demanded. "How dare you read ahead?" The other kids turned to stare while she stalked away, leaving me to sit at my desk, bookless, still, and silent.

I don't know what she thought she was teaching me, but here is what I learned: it was dangerous to not be good at something, and equally dangerous to be very good at something. Unacceptable to fall behind, offensive to leap ahead. Stupid - did I mention she called me "stupid"? -  to be slow, and punishable to be fast. Though she was not the only adult whose bullying I would endure in my life, her "lessons" were long-lasting.

But she never cured me of my addiction to stories, to tales, to dreaming in print. In fact, she probably drove me to take that drug more often. I became one of those girls who "always has her nose in a book".

Now, some of you have been sweetly scraunching at me, wanting to know why I have not written more, or posted more on Facebook, or on my website. Well, I have needed to be Elsewhere. Here is the list of my recent - and exquisite - shelters from the storms.

One of our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde (newest installment of the Thursday Next series, catnip for literature lovers)

Moonwise by Greer Gillman (A Child ballad in prose. No one else writes like Ms. Gilman. I finished it, ensorcelled, and promptly read it again)

Little, Big by John Crowley ("the greatest fantasy ever written by an American"

The Underground Church by Robin Meyers (what might happen if what Jesus said to do, and what he did, was what we do)

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman (how we hurt the earth, and what would happen here if we simply vanished)

Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper (a joyous and true cat story)

My profound thank you to the authors, to public libraries, to independent booksellers and those who sell used books, and to my sister, who loaned me Homer's Odyssey.

Hi. I'm back.

I love the book of you, the lure of you...

Recently I noticed that the blogs I read most faithfully are the work of writers. Book writers, I mean, not (for the most part) Facebook posters. I don't know how I initially found some of these blogs. I'll start chatting with Mr. Google about something I want to know, and end up learning something utterly else. Perhaps I have been picking up some feline traits from Mrs. Peel. No sooner have I spotted and pounced on a falling leaf, than, hey! there's another one, further away. Pounce! But wait! Something's rustling over there! Pounce!

I'm like that in the library, too. Yes, yes, of course I go in with something specific in mind, some single book. But when I emerge an hour or two later, dazed and blinky-eyed, my arms are full of books, most of which are not at all related to the one I came in to capture. You know. The one I have forgotten about.

When I come back to the apartment, I greet Mrs. Peel, put on the kettle, and start to look at my literary plunder, hoping, hoping. If I am lucky, if I have chosen well, one of the books will be as good a portal as the book in this video. and that will be very, very good indeed.

Because this is what a real book can do.

 

 

(For those whose French is rusty, the subtitles say more or less this:

At the beginning:

Adult: So kids, again with that book?

Child, reading book: You who read these lines will discover the mystery of Georgian legends...

At the end:

Adult: Let's go, kids. Finish playing with the book. Time to eat).

Beyond words, and yet

Myth isn't about primal urges; it's about how the world works, about the relationship of things. Metaphysics. As above, so below. If blood, then bread. Up kills. Time was, time will be. This way in. No way out. It's patterning and metamorphosis. It's why. Or so I think.

Greer Gilman, novelist

 

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

 

 

Metaphors be with you.

Larry Kerchner, songwriter

Gaga din

I have always been a Beatles fan. Always. I remember the first time I heard them, and from that moment on, as far as I was concerned, they were The Ones.

But I had friends, tin-eared and delusional, who thought the Rolling Stones were The Ones. Poor dears! Their sonic worlds were clearly different from mine, and they were clearly wrong. 

One thing was certain: nobody liked both. In fact, it was tacitly understood that one was not allowed to like both.

Which meant that I deprived myself, on principle, of the raucous splendor of the Stones music for many years. I still like the Beatles best, and probably always will. But I know now that there are times when only Keith Richards' guitar tones will do.

Over the years, I watched heated arguments over whether Kiss was categorically better than Alice Cooper, jazz better than rock, fusion indisputably better than swing, countertenors better than female altos. Yikes! Either/or, either/or. Choose or lose! Yes,  it's necessary, to a certain extent. But it's also choose and lose. The best musicians I know listen to everything, and borrow from everything. Both and all would seem to be their motto, and I think this is the best way to be.

I bring this up today because I am tired of hearing wonderful musicians and singers (including me) complain about Lady Gaga. I think we should stop doing that. Most of us can't do what she does, and there are a lot of folks who really love what she does. Fair enough. Her music and performance style are not to my taste, and so they're not part of my daily life. What does seem to be part of my life is the ceaseless growl of negative comments made by some of the artists I do like.

Most of us are old enough to know better. I think we can do better, if only when in front of other people.

Let's lighten up on each other. Let's speak with a greater measure of grace and dignity, and stop flaying the girls in the meat dresses and the short dresses and no dresses at all. Let's stop muttering about J.K. Rowling's wealth, too (you know who you are). Success does not ensure a trouble-free life. Things can happen. The Wheel of Fortune can turn very quickly. Believe me. I know this very well.

Benjamin Disraeli is credited with having said, "Never complain, and never explain." I'm going to try that, at least for the rest of the afternoon.