These Are the Raw Materials

12/21/2006 – 11:22 pm

As this entry goes live, it is the southern solstice; in the northern hemisphere, it’s the longest night of the year. In tribute, I’m playing Over the Rhine’s The Darkest Night of the Year.

In writing about the new Over the Rhine Christmas album, Jeff wrote this:

Ten years ago Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist produced a Christmas album, The Darkest Night of the Year, as their band, Over the Rhine, began to dissolve around them. Over the Rhine persisted but the album marked a distinct ending of an era with the departure of guitarist Ric Hordinski and the subsequent construction of a six-piece band.

[Jeff certainly knows OtR's history better than I do.]

The dissolution of the first era of Over the Rhine is what leads to the album’s character: dark, moody, and plaintive. To quote Linford Detweiler from when I saw OtR in concert earlier this year: “Sad music makes me happy.” It does the same for me. I’ve often sought why this is true for me; the only answer I’ve really come close to with it is that profound expressions of sadness or dismay are rooted in valuing things that we should love and cherish. Great breakup songs must lament good times, whether they’re the 80s power ballad begging the girl to come back or Ben Folds wanting his black T-shirt back (you bitch). You don’t mourn unless the loss has value.

I think that my two favorite tracks off of TDNotY are “Coal Train“, which evokes all the imagery of being in Linford’s childhood country church in southeastern Ohio, having to pause as the coal train comes by, and “Amelia’s Last“. Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” brings a sense of scope and purpose to the protagonist’s life at the coming of the solstice: a moment of contemplation before moving along to carry forward. That’s a common sentiment as the end of the Gregorian calendar’s 12th month draws to a close, as we turn weary eyes to a new year.

Similarly, I think “Amelia’s Last” brings a sense of understanding of our place in this world, albeit with a slightly different perspective. Where Frost is quiet and contemplative, Detweiler is troubled and restless; the liner notes comment that “This record is for … anyone wrestling with their own dark angel this Christmas.”

these are the (whose are the?)
these are the raw materials
you and me
these are the (whose are the?)
these are the angels’ inferiors
who
someone breathed this breath in us
“oh amelia, we’ve so far to go
oh amelia”

these are the (whose are the?)
these are the ordinary clothes
you and me
around extraordinary flesh and pulsing madness deep and close
who
someone breathed this breath in us
“oh amelia maybe we’re not that far
oh amelia is this who we really are
my amelia”

Someone breathed this breath in us, and we are in His woods. This is who we really are, and we have miles to go before we lie down our last.

By Geof F. Morris | Posted in Introspection, Music | Comments (0)

Where My Head Is

11/2/2006 – 10:31 am

I’m aware that I’m censoring myself for so many reasons. Like most anyone who writes about their life and publishes that online with very little, if any, barriers to reading it, I struggle with where to draw the line. Lately, I’ve drawn that line farther and farther from myself, for reasons I both do and don’t understand. [Did I freak out a bit when I heard out-of-context discussion of things that I'd written about on another Weblog? Yes, yes I did. Nothing ever came of it, though.]

Also, let’s just put it this way: November starts my fourth month of working proposals at the office. Solid. My output of non-work things was great early in that run—for example, I was driving to Nashville every Tuesday, bootlegging concerts, and getting them up in under a week—but that’s radically curtailed now. It probably hasn’t helped that church responsibilities have ramped up, as chancel choir has been doing a lot of things—fundraisers, extra practices, etc.—that have just left me with not a lot of “me” time if I don’t cut out activities. Two examples: at the beginning of October, I started a “When’s your birthday?” topic on the mailing list of our local friends, and here it’s November and I haven’t compiled anything. Sad. Sadder still, I have a concert bootleg from mid-September that I’ve done nothing with [to say nothing of two more shows since then, and ... I can only remember what the latter show was. Really. I can't remember the show before that clearly].

I want to say that things are bad, but they’re really pretty good. All the work stuff has been hard but very rewarding. As my boss noted yesterday, I could print out the corporate annual report when it comes out and point to items that I actually had a hand in bringing about. Ummm … awesome! I’ve been very blessed to have had all the opportunities that I’ve had lately, even when they’ve left me very, very beaten down.

But I think what’s messing with my head this week is that one of my mentors recently had a health scare, one the doctors are still working to figure out but one which would be easily expected to be stress-related. My mentor is fine and back at the office now, but … I won’t lie, it’s freaked me out. I’m far more concerned about them than myself, but I will admit to concern on my end. I know myself and my family enough to know that, while we’re darn talkative, we still tend to bottle up all the truly stressful things and hold them fast to us as if they’re comforting.

So if you run into me and get the thousand-yard stare, grab me by the shoulder and shake me back, would you? I find myself going into that state a lot.

The end of all this is coming by the end of the year, and the responsibilities will just shift around in different ways, for sure. I’m telling myself that it’s growth, and that growth is hard. It’s worth it, though.

[I started this with the hopes that it would help, but I've intentionally put up so many fences of vagueness that I'm not sure if it has.]

By Geof F. Morris | Posted in Introspection | Comments (1)

Using Time-Shifting for AWESOME

10/5/2006 – 7:49 pm

Okay, so I look at my pathetic progress on my 2006 New Year’s Resolutions and weep. But that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t do something about it.

What am I doing? Well, after reading that weekday TV and video gaming seems to lower students’ educational endeavors, I got to thinking: what do I do at night when I get home from work? Well, I usually sit down, watch ABC World News Tonight, then sit down to scarf down whatever my TiVos have recorded for me. That sucking sound you hear is any chance that I will get much done going out the window.

Now, I get a fair amount done at night on the things I choose to work on, but the things that I choose to work on are not really the things that I’d value—reading more, especially my Bible in preparation for teaching Sunday school classes, maybe a little programming, Web work, etc. Instead, I half-watch TV while I piddle aimlessly on the Internet. It’s … bad.

So, I’ve decided that, for the month of October, I’ll timeshift all my non-news TV watching to the weekend, when I really don’t have much concern in the way of goofing off. That’ll add a few hours each night not spent wondering what TiVo has for me and maybe I’ll, you know, clean my office, or work on some bookcases, or any of the number of reasonable projects I could knock out…

By Geof F. Morris | Posted in Foofiness, Introspection | Comments (2)

No Seven-Year Itch

8/25/2006 – 2:00 pm

Seven years ago today, I in-processed as a new employee. As this entry becomes public, I’m in a conference room about 30 yards from where I started on that fine August day, but instead of first-day work jitters, I have first-pitch-as-proposal-manager jitters. This has been my life this week, but it has been worth it.

If you’d told me seven years ago that I’d have “manager” next to my name in any way, shape, or form, I would have laughed at you. [I might have laughed at you two years ago on this date as well.]

I have been blessed: with opportunities, with support, with mentoring. The people who were a large part of my decision in continuing employment here after graduation continue to make that happen now.

Let’s win, baby.

By Geof F. Morris | Posted in Introspection | Comments (2)

Signposts

8/2/2006 – 10:12 pm

There come times in most everyone’s career—well, at least for those of us who have careers where we stay in one field, anyway—where things change, for the good and the bad. [Insert hokey observation about the kanji for "crisis" being a superimposition of "danger" and "opportunity" here.] Often times, you don’t recognize these signposts until they’ve passed; sometimes, though, they come with huge neon acoutrements, blinding you with the message, “Don’t screw this up, kid!”

I believe that I pulled up to such a sign today. Now: which way will I turn?

[Yeah, I'm hopelessly vague here because I don't wanna get dooced. You may feel free to call/email/flag me down/invite me over for dinner.]

By Geof F. Morris | Posted in Introspection | Comments (1)