Q: Has there ever been a more handsome Friedrich in musical theater history?
A: NO!

Our oldest son, Christian, was absolutely adorable (don't kill me, hon) in his high school's terrific production of The Sound of Music last weekend. Stay tuned; I'm hoping to upload a video of him as "The Lonely Goatherd" as soon as technology will allow. Thanks for the photos, Mary!

**UPDATED** Here it is (the sound problems resolve themselves after a few seconds):

I've mentioned before that one of the great perqs of Patrick's job is that we often get invited to the openings of Broadway shows. Last night was such an occasion: we saw the much-herald revival of West Side Story.

I had high hopes; Bernstein's brilliant score and Sondheim's genius lyrics are some of my favorite in all of the musical theater repertoire. I adore the tragic story (Arthur Laurents's retelling of Romeo and Juliet) and its gritty setting (mid-1950s Manhattan). Jerome Robbins's choreography is iconic, as are the rival gangs the Sharks and the Jets. I wanted to love everything about this production.

The show had some truly great moments. Laurents, who directed, took some inspired liberties with his 52-year-old book. He had most of the Puerto Rican characters' dialogue translated into Spanish; "I Feel Pretty" and "A Boy Like That" were also sung in Spanish. This worked beautifully (with the help of some fabulous body language), giving the Sharks and their women both dignity and irony; the characters are more fully human now.

Josefina Scaglione was so lovely and convincing as Maria that I found myself thinking, "Natalie who?" Karen Oliva was nothing short of smoking hot as Anita; she went from sardonic to sexy to tragic with incredible ease and grace. I wish I could sit and watch her fantastico "América" over and over again. All of the Sharks were delicious to watch--whether they were mamboing or rumbling--ai, caramba!

Would that the Jets had fared as well. Matt Cavanaugh's Tony was my most bitter Broadway disappointment in many a moon. I could have forgiven how mousily unattractive he was (though you know it's bad when Chino, Maria's intended husband, is miles more handsome than her star-crossed lover is).

I have no such mercy in me for his wobbly, nasal singing or his brick-like delivery. I had hoped that "Something's Coming" or "Maria" would make me weep; instead I cringed as Cavanaugh dog-paddled through each of Bernstein's treacherous intervals and modulations. Bernstein's music is horrendously difficult, but you never want performers to make it sound harder than it is. The last thing the audience should be thinking at the end of the show is "Maria, honey, you can do better," but there it is.

Almost all of Tony's gang buddies were also lacking in charisma. Only three of "los Américanos" came through: as the tomboy Anybodys, Tro Shaw may have been channeling Susan Oakes (who played the character in the 1961 movie), but she chanelled well. Curtis Holbrook brought a 21st-century hyperactive viciousness to his portrayal of Action; he transformed "Gee, Officer Krupke" from slapstick to harrowing social commentary. Finally, as Kiddo, Nicholas Barasch sang "Somewhere" so angelically that the tears I'd been saving for Tony welled up unbidden.

To sum up, large portions of the show were thrilling; unfortunately, that meant that the awkward and flat moments stood out in greater relief. This revival wasn't the triumph I had hoped for, but maybe I've just gotten too picky.

Speaking of which, after nearly 15 years of opening nights in London and New York, we are now so jaded that being invited to the cast party after the show is no longer a thrill; we opted to drive straight home afterwards instead. But that didn't stop us from reaping one of our richest crops of celebrity sightings in a long while. Among those present in the theater last night were Christie Brinkley, Kathleen Turner, Vanessa Williams, Taye Diggs, Spike Lee, and Keith Carradine; celebrity couples Phil Donohue & Marlo Thomas and Diane Sawyer & Mike Nichols; and Sondheim and Laurents themselves.

I'm a lucky, lucky girl, I mused as we drove in the dark up the Palisades Parkway on the way home. I fully realize what a luxury it is to attend such events on the arm of a handsome man who loves me. I'll try to get over my guilt at not being able to pronounce the evening an unqualified success.

I've been pondering all things meta this week.

Well, not all things. But definitely many things meta-related-to-the-arts.

I've been playing a game inside my head as I've done the dishes or driven people to sports practices or tried to get back to sleep in the middle of the night after going to the bathroom for the fourteenth time.

(It's just one of the many crazy games I play all alone in this head o' mine, another being "List all the adjectives with the suffix '-id.'")

The game is this: list all the films about film. Now all the songs about songs. Now all the poems about poetry. Now all the theater about theater. And now (my favorite part) all the fiction about fiction.*

Ready? Go.

Films About Film
(or TV About TV)

The Player
Singin' in the Rain
The Truman Show
30 Rock
Studio 60
The Simpsons
Stranger than Fiction (borderline: a film about fiction writing)

Songs About Songs, Singers, and/or Singing

"Hey, Mister Tambourine Man" (The Byrds)
"Thank You for the Music" (ABBA)
"Sing a Song" (Earth, Wind, and Fire)
"I Write the Songs" (Barry Manilow)
"If Music Be the Food of Love" (Shakespeare/Purcell)
"Piano Man" (Billy Joel)
"Rock and Roll Band" (Boston)
"Killing Me Softly" (Roberta Flack)
"The Day the Music Died" (Don McLean)
"This is Not a Love Song" (Public Image, Ltd.)

Poems About Poetry

"Essay on Criticism" (Alexander Pope)
"Don Juan" (parts of it; Lord Byron)
"Ars Poetica" (Archibald MacLeish)
"The Uses of Poetry" (William Carlos Williams)
"There is no frigate like a book" (Emily Dickinson)
"The High-Toned Old Christian Woman" (Wallace Stevens)

Theater About Theater

All That Jazz (Well, okay. It's a film about theater.)
Kiss Me, Kate
The Taming of the Shrew
The Producers
A Chorus Line
42nd Street
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Hamlet
Picasso at the Lapin Agile
The Mousetrap

Fiction About Fiction (and this would be my wheelhouse, people)

The Princess Bride (William Goldman)
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (Susanna Clarke)
Little, Big (John Crowley)
Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)
The Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio)
Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes)
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (Italo Calvino)
Anything written by Jasper Fforde
The Neverending Story (Michael Ende)
English Music (Peter Ackroyd)
The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
An awful lot of Kurt Vonnegut
And a whole bunch of that Pratchett genius
Leaf by Niggle (J.R.R. Tolkien)
A Series of Unfortunate Events (Lemony Snicket)
Atonement (Ian MacEwan)
The Dark Tower, etc. (Stephen King)
Possession (A.S. Byatt)
The Book of Three (Lloyd Alexander)
A Princess of Roumania, etc. (Paul Park)

What about you? Can you add to the lists?

*LDS readers, here's a fun study topic: revelation about revelation. And extra credit: revelation about Revelation.

Today I'm taking a page out of thrifty Brillig's book and re-posting something I wrote back when I only had a tiny handful of readers. For those of you who have read this before, you have my apologies; I wanted to participate in Music Monday this week, and I didn't have a minute to write something new. The following is from February 2007.

Last Friday night I was driving home from Book Group. It was late and it had been snowing for several hours. I love being alone in a black night with snow; it always reminds me of one of my favorite paragraphs in the world, the last sentences of James Joyce’s The Dead:

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It
had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark,
falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on
his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over
Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless
hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly
falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every
part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay
thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the
little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow
falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of
their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Karen, Melissa, and I had carpooled to Book Group over at Camilla's house in Golden’s Bridge, chatting the entire time. On the way home, after I dropped off my two friends, I turned on the radio. I had for company someone playing the piano. I half-recognized the piece, but there was something so different about what I was hearing that I didn’t make the connection for a minute or two. Then it hit me with a flash: it was Bach’s Goldberg Variations. And played on the piano, not the harpsichord—but it didn’t sound like Glenn Gould.

I find it particularly appropriate to listen to this piece of music when the rest of the world is asleep. Bach wrote the Goldberg Variations for a Count who struggled with insomnia; the Count had asked Bach to write some clavier exercises to be played in the middle of the night, something to soothe and cheer him through long, sleepless hours. The Variations are named after the Count’s talented young harpsichordist, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg; I imagine the poor young man being roused from slumber on any given night to play for his patron, because the Count apparently never tired of hearing them.

The Variations were published in Bach’s lifetime, but for many years afterward were regarded as dry, rather difficult pieces to be played on the harpsichord. In the middle of the 20th century, however, a brilliant young pianist changed popular opinion of Bach’s piece forever.

I know Gould’s landmark 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations as well as I know any piece of music. I’ve listened to it hundreds, maybe thousands of times. It has been a great friend to me, as the Variations were for the Count who commissioned them. But what I was hearing Friday night was so alien: haunting, personal, almost painful in its execution, where the version I know—lively, technically flawless—evokes a detached, peaceful mood.

Puzzled, I drove on and thought about our Book Group meeting earlier. We had had a intelligent and compassionate dicussion of a modern classic: Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner. Its main character, Susan Burling Ward, has chronic myopia when it comes to the life she has chosen; throughout her life, she compares her situation unfavorably to that of her best friend, Augusta. She doesn’t realize that she has within her grasp all the ingredients for a wonderful existence.

Her interpretation of herself, the reader easily sees, is faulty. She has, in fact, married the better man; her life of ‘exile,’ as she terms it, has defined and refined her work as an artist, not limited it. One woman in our group raised a question: How do you know when to be content? In other words, when you are in the middle of living one of life’s countless challenges, how do you stop looking over the fence at seemingly greener grass? It’s a good question, and an old one, one that has given philosophers pause for centuries.

After a lot of thought on the topic myself, I think the secret lies in our interpretation of what we’ve been given. Happiness is a choice; for some it’s a harder choice than for others, but it is there all the same. One need look no further than Victor Frankl for proof of this truth.

I myself have been given all the components for a perfect life: good health, every temporal comfort, lovely friends and children, meaningful work, and a dear man who loves me. But if I’m not careful, I can take the route Stegner’s heroine takes. I can focus exclusively on what I see as being wrong: my weight; brain chemistry that defaults to a baseline level of melancholia; the current state of our yard; the child who is misbehaving on any given day: the list could go on for quite a while, if I let it. But that interpretation of my life is a sure path to misery; I believe this is one of the points Stegner is making in his beautiful book.

Once home, I sat in my dark car in the driveway for few minutes so that I could discover the identity of my mystery musician. At the stroke of midnight, after the last few notes of the Aria died away, Bill McGlaughlin came on the air and informed me that it was, indeed, Glenn Gould playing the Variations—but that this was a performance recorded shortly before Gould’s death in 1982.

This was the same music played by the same artist I thought I knew so well. But the interpretation was so different that it changed the piece completely. Older, wiser, at the end of his life, Gould let his life inform his art and transform it; he put himself wholly into his work, and both were changed thereby.

Stop looking over the fence and start doing all you can to green up what you’ve got. Take plenty of time to rejoice in its verdure, and take plenty of time pay respects to the Source of all that is good and green. It is advice simpler to write than it is to live, but the secret to happiness is in the interpretation.

For more Music Monday, visit Soccer Mom in Denial!

1) All credit for the blog's new look goes to the über-gifted Kim of Temporary? Insanity. She's got a fun thing going with her Template Tweakings website; go check it out if you are feeling the need for a spring makeover. Thanks, hon! I love it. I'll figure out how to put my blogroll back on the sidebar eventually....

2) Christian got his braces on this week and played his first lacrosse games today. We had to get him some gear this week in preparation. His new cleats? Men's size 13, thank you very much. They look like Jaredite barges, I'm telling you.

Christian is loving lacrosse and looks very manly trotting around the field in all his armor while brandishing the 6-foot-long defensive stick. Ahh, my little boy. I'd better stop before I start crooning "Sunrise, Sunset."

3) All debate over the next presidential candidate should end now. Why? Because Tess has the perfect platform, set forth in a school assignment for Presidents' Day last month:

Here's the transcription, edited for spelling:

"If I were president I would help the poor people and I would give the poor food and I would give the poor children toys. And I would stop the war."

We're still working on spelling and punctuation, but note her correct use of the subjunctive. Now we just need to get an amendment passed changing the minimum age for a presidential candidate from 35 to 6.

4) I've been waiting for two years for iTunes to acquire Wire's 154. I checked today, and they finally had it! What a fantastic album; I'll have to do a "Music Monday" on it at some point.

5) The pregnancy is progressing miraculously well, I'm thrilled to report. Tomorrow marks the end of Week 28; by this time with both Tess and Daniel, I was on bed rest. Not so this time; I'm getting around with no pain, and while I'm tired, I've had enough brain function to write consistently and to make it to Day 81 (and counting) of the Read the Bible in 90 Days study program I started back on January 2nd.

6) I'm still racking up the rejections as I shop The Holly Place and ZF-360 around. In the meantime, I've been writing short stories and sending them out to various genre periodicals. This has been great fun! (The short story part, not the rejection-of-my-novels part; that part is really lame.) For anyone interested in writing sf/fantasy short stories, you simply must check out Ralan's fabulous website. It has been an invaluable resource for me.

I don't think I'll start another novel anytime soon; the short story groove is working well for me (for the first time in my whole life), and I don't want to commit to anything longer until after we settle into some sort of routine with the new baby. So, you know, that could be this time next year (or the year after), for all I can predict.

I guess that's it for now. I missed you all during my bloggy break; I think I'm back on board for the moment. Oh--and the post title? This is post #250 for me. Wow. Happy Easter!

Let me just get this out of the way: I don't love Bob Dylan's voice. I appreciate it on classic folk hits such as "Like a Rolling Stone," but his voice doesn't get me all goosebumpy the way Brian Stokes Mitchell's, Bryn Terfel's, and Alan Doyle's do. Dylan purists, feel free to sue me (be warned: I have a fabulous lawyer).

But as a pop songwriter? Bob Dylan is unparalleled in both quality and quantity of output. My respect for him approaches worship. It never fails to amaze me how great his songs are, how outstanding his genius is. I'll give you a couple of examples.

I absolutely adore the bluegrass band Nickel Creek. These kids are amazingly talented writers and performers, hopefully with a very long and successful career in front of them. But when their album Why Should the Fire Die? came out, what was the best song on it? Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow is a Long Time," by a country mile.

Solas? One of my favorite Celtic bands. They write great stuff, and they can jig and reel like nobody's business. But once again, when I first got their album The Edge of Silence, one of the two stand-out tracks was Dylan's "Dignity" (the other was Jesse Colin Young's "Darkness, Darkness").

Plenty of top-tier songwriters seem to agree with me. Joan Baez, June Carter, and Bono aren't exactly slouches when it comes to crafting a great piece of music, yet they've all chosen to record Dylan songs. Fabulous performers like Hugues Aufray, Robyn Hitchcock, Bryan Ferry, and The Hollies have recorded entire albums of Dylan covers. The breadth of Bob's appeal astonishes me: from Echo and the Bunnymen to Earl Scruggs, from The Dubliners to Waylon Jennings, they've all done some Dylan in their time.

There are SO many from which to choose, but after some soul-searching, here are my top ten favorite Dylan covers:

10. Olivia Newton-John: "If Not for You"
9. Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash: "It Ain't Me, Babe"
8. Bryan Ferry: "Positively 4th Street"
7. Buckwheat Zydeco: "On a Night Like This"
6. Felicia and the Hotheads: "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"
5. The Byrds: "Mr. Tambourine Man"
4. Sting: "I Shall Be Released"
3. Solas: "Dignity"
2. Nickel Creek: "Tomorrow is a Long Time"
1. Jimi Hendrix: "All Along the Watchtower"

Here's a Youtube 'response video' with Nickel Creek singing my second favorite. The melody and words are so very lovely; the song is pure joy. See what you think.






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I love to sing. Rock, opera, euro-synth-pop, bluegrass, and just about everything in between. I sing in the car, the kitchen, and the shower. I sing while weeding, knitting, and rowing.

But I think I love best to sing at church. One of my favorite memories of my mother is her playing the hymns--from the LDS hymnal and Sing With Me, the children's songbook at the time--on the piano for what seemed like hours on end, night after night. Because of her love for those pieces of music, I have a lot of our congregational repertoire memorized. This makes it easy to sing along in our church meetings even without looking at a hymn book, convenient for times when I'm rocking someone, helping with a sticker book, or passing out those cheesy goldfish crackers.

For my non-LDS readers: there's no paid clergy in the LDS/Mormon church. We all take turns serving in various 'callings,' or church service positions. Patrick and I have been married for 18 years as of a few days ago; for all but three of those years, Patrick has served either as a counselor to the Bishop or as Bishop himself, as he is now. Part of the requirements of Bishopric callings is sitting up on the stand, near the pulpit, and presiding over and conducting the worship services.

So I've sat alone for 15 of the last 18 years. Well, not alone for the past 14; I've had the kids with me, which is mostly great. Teaching children to be still for a 70-minute meeting is something of a task; there were a couple of rough years in there. But we've pretty much got the drill down at this point, thanks again to sticker books, paper dolls, and goldfish crackers--and the fact that the three older kids have actually sat and listened now for several years. So I'm not complaining about the way our Sundays are structured; we've made choices that I live with happily.

But I do miss singing with Patrick on Sundays. I'm glad to live in a ward (Mormon lingo for a geographical 'congregation' or 'parish') that sings out loud and strong; this worship through music is often a high point of our services for me. But as much as I love it, twice a year it gets even better: I get to sing with Patrick at my side.

(I have a basic, serviceable, soprano voice with decent intonation; I can also 'switch-hit' and sing alto, if needed. Patrick, however, has a beautiful voice: a clear, rich tenor-to-baritone, with lovely, dark color to it. I remember the first time he sang to me when we were dating; I was pretty sure I'd never get him out of my system, and I was right.)

Twice a year, we have meetings called 'Stake Conference.' (Wards are organized in groups of seven to ten into larger groups called 'stakes.') The designated wards get together for special two-hour meetings; sometimes leaders called 'General Authorities' fly out from Church headquarters in Utah to speak. At Stake Conference, the 'Stake President' presides and conducts, and the Bishoprics of the wards get to sit with their families.

This past weekend was Stake Conference. Joy! His arm around my shoulders, Patrick sat with me and we sang together, trading parts back and forth: melody-alto-tenor. We sing hymns at home with the kids regularly, but singing in a group of 1,000 or so people, with a great organist accompanying and the love of your life at your side? Pretty incredible.

Here's a video of the famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing an arrangement of "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing," one of Patrick's and my favorite hymns. We once sang this arrangement together in a choir for a special meeting in the Kirtland Temple, one of the most treasured LDS historic sites--so this video brings back another great memory of singing with my BFFP.





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In 1984, I don't really know who I am. I'm 17, so maybe that's normal, but I've been out of high school for a year and still have no idea what I want to do with my life. My high school friends are all away at university now; my sense of identity seems to have left with them, and I'm not getting much in the way of new direction in my classes at Modesto Junior College. I'm very, very lonely.
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Eleven months ago, I celebrated the fact that our family had finished reading the Old Testament aloud together in this post. This morning, we read Revelation Chapter 22, completing our reading of the New Testament.

This year, because of Christian's high school schedule, we have less family scripture time in the mornings than we did last year: only 10-15 minutes most days. But a little bit, done consistently, goes a long way. As Zechariah says, "For who hath despised the day of small things? For they shall rejoice..." (Zech. 4:10)

I treasure our morning time. The family sits at our kitchen table bathed in the soft lamplight; Patrick, the older three kids, and I take turns reading verses, while Daniel and Tess look on in their picture Bibles. Hope's reading has improved most dramatically in the past two years since we started Genesis, but all the kids read with more expression and facility, making the beautiful passages come alive for the whole group. Jacobean English isn't easy for modern tongues and ears, but it has become much more natural for all the children since we began our journey.

I hope, however, that our scripture reading has been more than a daily elocution lesson; I hope the words are sinking deep into the hearts of my children, giving them daily sustenance and equipping them with divine tools to handle life's many challenges.

I can't read the last few verses of Revelation without thinking of the following piece of music. I've been lucky enough to sing it a few times; it's gorgeous.

"There [is] a feeling of recognition, as of meeting an old friend, which comes to us all in the face of great artistic experiences. I had the same experience when I first heard an English folksong, when I first saw Michelangelo's Day and Night, when I suddenly came upon Stonehenge or had my first sight of New York City – the intuition that I had been there already."
--Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958)

It's late November 1989. Patrick and I are sitting in my room at my mom's old house in Orem, Utah, making wedding plans. I've got my little pink clock radio tuned to KBYU; Bach Partitas and Chopin Preludes play softly in the background. We're busy figuring out logistics for the ceremony itself (to be held in Salt Lake City) and our two small receptions: one in Provo, Utah, and one in Englewood, New Jersey.

All at once, I become distracted from our conversation by the most beautiful piece of music I've ever heard. Patrick and I sit and listen, bewitched. The gorgeous waves of sound transcend the poor radio's tinny speaker and wrap us in a bubble of timelessness. When the piece ends, we both exhale at the same time; it seems as though we've been holding our breath for several minutes.

The announcer, in the mellow tones cultivated by all classical radio DJs, informs us that we've just heard Ralph Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 5, and I am officially in love. I must learn everything I can about this mysterious British composer. I've never heard of him before, yet there is something in his music that awakens deep recognition--what Plato calls 'anamnesis'-- within me.

Remember, it's 1989. In the dark days before Teh Google, I have to hunt down information on Vaughan Williams on foot; fortunately for my compulsive research needs, Patrick returns home to New Jersey, where he has his musicologist father's extensive library to hand. In my Christmas package, Patrick includes a cassette that features Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 2 and the piece that follows this post: "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis."

The Fantasia captures my devotion in the same way the Fifth Symphony does. Based on a hymn tune by Tudor composer Thomas Tallis, its modal antiphony evokes the stark beauty of an ancient church. I listen to it again and again, and over the next several years collect recordings of as much of Vaughan Williams's work as I can find. I love it all; it's as if this composer wrote music specifically for the desires, needs, and tastes of my spirit, all decades before I was born. I appreciate and enjoy most classical music from the past thousand years (with some notable exceptions), but in Vaughan Williams's music, I often feel that I hear the voice of God Himself.

In 1993, a friend and I hear the New York Philharmonic perform Symphony No. 5 in Avery Fisher Hall under the baton of the great André Previn. At the end of the Fourth Movement (the Passacaglia), we enter the same kind of trance Patrick and I experienced years before, nearly forgetting to breathe, then gasping and flinching in unison as the audience around us breaks into thunderous applause.

Not long afterwards, I learn that a prominent NPR radio personality listens to the Fifth Symphony before every airplane trip, because if he dies in flight, he wants it to be the last piece of music he's ever heard. I can understand why; for certain people, the music of Vaughan Williams is potent magic indeed.

I went to Youtube to see whether any of RVW's music was to be found; it was an odd coincidence that the very first link that popped up was that of an old friend, Christiaan Crans, conducting Indiana University's Ad Hoc Orchestra playing the Tallis Fantasia. I remember hanging out with Chris late one night discussing our deep, almost religious fan-love for Vaughan Williams. I haven't seen Chris since we both moved away from Manhattan nearly seven years ago, so tonight I had a double delight. I expect very few of you will sit through all 17 minutes of the piece that follows, but as Emperor Joseph II is fond of saying in the movie Amadeus, "There it is."


For more Music Monday, stop by the fabulous home of Soccer Mom in Denial.

Dawn did a fun meme on her blog the other day; I couldn't wait for a chance to do it myself. It seemed like a great choice for Music Monday, and it goes like this:

I'm sure you'll remember in the movie Elf, when Buddy says, "Santa's coming! Oh, my gosh--Santa! I know him! I know him!"

Yeah--that was pretty much my reaction this morning as I watched the video that follows this post. Patrick and I were there at the world premiere of the opera (on my birthday in 2005), so it was both a thrill and a fond reminiscence to watch it again.

It's a short scene from a gorgeous opera called The Book of Gold. I know the composer (Murray Boren) and the librettist (Glen Nelson); I know the soprano singing the role of Emma Smith (Metropolitan Opera star Jennifer Welch Babidge) and the baritone singing the role of Joseph Smith (her real-life husband, Darrell Babidge). Oh, the stories I could tell you about these four. They are all astonishingly talented people, and I feel blessed to call them friends.

If you have a spare 6.5 minutes, watch the video; I can almost guarantee it will give you chills.

True confession: I own over forty Christmas CDs. That may seem excessive to some; this I acknowledge. Whenever I feel tempted to judge someone for his/her shoe fetish or other acquisitive hobby, I remember my drawer of Christmas CDs and realize that I live in a glass house. I'd be hard pressed to give up any of my CDs, but if forced at knife point, I would whittle the collection down to the following ten (not in any particular order).

Mariah Carey: Merry Christmas
No, Mariah's not my favorite person; I wouldn't want to be her pen pal, or anything. But this album is genius. Brace yourself: I can only abide the songs "Silent Night" and "O Holy Night" as sung by two people; Mariah is one of them. (Who is the other? Read on.) I defy you to be in a bad mood after listening to "Jesus Oh What a Wonderful Child."

Black Christmas: Spirituals in the African-American Tradition
This album would still be worth its weight in gold if it boasted only the four tracks sung by Thomas Young. His butter-rich tenor voice on "Rise Up, Shepherd" and "Sister Mary Had-a But One Child" gives me chills each and every time.

Handel's Messiah--Helmuth Rilling and the Oregon Bach Choir
After many long years, my quest for the perfect recording of Messiah has ended. For a time The Academy of Ancient Music's version worked okay, and Leonard Bernstein's recording with the New York Philharmonic has considerable (if quirky) charm.

But these days I'm blessed to be friends with a member of the Grammy-winning Oregon Bach Choir, and she gave me this CD a couple of years ago. Rilling is a stickler for diction and precision; his discernment and discipline serve the intricate counterpoint of Handel's masterpiece beautifully. Thomas Quasthoff, one of my favorite singers in all the world, is the glorious bass. And soprano Sibylla Rubens's cadenza at the end of "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth": unqualified perfection.

Ralph Vaughan Williams: Hodie/Fantasia on Christmas Carols
Oh, how I love my Ralph. He is to Christmas music what Dickens is to Christmas literature.

Benjamin Britten: A Ceremony of Carols
Otherworldly. Transfixing. Gorgeous.

Stephen Cleobury and The Choir of King's College, Cambridge: A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols
There is nothing more satisfying to my rampant anglophilia than this double CD. Highlights include "Riu, Riu Chiu," Thomas Adès's "The Fayrfax Carol," Boris Ord's "Adam Lay Ybounden," and David Humphries's reading of The Fourth Lesson.

Ella Wishes You a Swingin' Christmas
Though at times I enjoy me some Bing and Nat, some Donny and some Harry, I'm not really much for secular Christmas songs in general. This album is an exception; Lady Ella can do no wrong. The purity of her tone, her flawless style: she slays me. I can only hope that if I'm very, very good, in the next life I'll be able to sing like Ella Fitzgerald.

John Denver: Rocky Mountain Christmas
I've loved this album since I was about ten. John Denver's crystal-clear voice and gentle guitar arrangements are infinitely soothing. He's the only other person who, when he sings "Silent Night" and "O Holy Night," makes the experience enjoyable rather than mind-rendingly torturous for me.

The John Rutter Christmas Album
John Rutter has been writing and arranging brilliant Christmas carols for decades; he is surely one of Britain's national treasures. He conducts The Cambridge Singers and The City of London Sinfonia on this CD, a compilation of many of his best-known compositions. A favorite of all in this house is "The Donkey Carol," written in 5/4 time to symbolize Mary's bumpy ride to Bethlehem.

Andrew Parrott and the Taverner Consort: The Promise of Ages
Andrew Parrott rocks my world. Who else could weave together an album of carols spanning 600 years into a cohesive whole? The Consort goes from ethereal to rollicking with nary a blink. Favorites include "I Wonder as I Wander," "Staines Morris," and "Lo! He Comes With Clouds Descending." Can't get enough.

Here's my Christmas wish: for Brian Stokes Mitchell to release a Christmas album next year. I actually just went to his website and sent him an email with that very request. Just color me fannish, 'cause I'm crazy like that.

Today, Jhianna wants me to write about a song that has significance for me. Anyone who has seen my crazy eclectic profile might wonder how I could pick just one.

Should I go with Brandenburg Concerto no. 3, the piece that introduced me to the ineffable joys of Bach when I was in eighth grade Orchestra?

Or Symphony no. 5, which Patrick and I first heard on the radio as we were planning our wedding, and which began my 18-year, still-going-strong love affair with British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams?

Or maybe I should reminisce about the first time I heard Thomas Tallis's Lamentations of Jeremiah sung at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, when the voices of the choir seemed to wind round one another in gorgeous and mysterious patterns as they ascended into the nave during the service of Tenebrae.

I might explore the above options in the future; Soccer Mom in Denial has just started Music Mondays, and I've got fodder for at least the next ten years. Today I'll go in a different direction: Led Zeppelin's "Misty Mountain Hop."

It's mid-November, 1978. I have just turned twelve, and I am deeply in love with Ian Richardson, a lanky, black-haired, blue-eyed boy with a sharp mind and a sardonic sense of humor. We have several classes together; there is only one Gifted & Talented track in Albert Einstein Jr. High's eighth grade program.

Though I am a mere girl, Ian is willing to be friends with me because we have one huge thing in common other than our schedule: we are both obsessed with Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It's not just that we've read the trilogy several times; we have taught ourselves to write in Dwarvish runes and have absorbed every bit of dry backstory we could winkle out of The Silmarillion.

Despite his inner geek, Ian is a clown, making him immensely popular with students and (oddly) teachers alike. Since my nerdiness has never known the bounds of any closet, I am fully aware how privileged I am that Ian even takes notice of me. Of course, I want more; I hope that Ian and I will eventually get married and raise a passel of kids with names like Galadriel and Faramir. But I wisely keep this to myself.

One day, as Ian and I are discussing whether the soon-to-open Ralph Bakshi adaptation of LOTR will be any good, he says something that gets my attention. "I know this band that does some songs about Middle-Earth."

Really? I must know more.

(At this point, I own exactly two records, both soundtracks: Grease and Saturday Night Fever. I'm not completely culturally illiterate; my parents are huge Beatles and Beach Boys fans, and I listen to the same top-40 radio station as most other kids my age, grooving to timeless classics by Hall & Oates and Earth, Wind & Fire.)

Ian makes me a cassette tape that includes Led Zeppelin's "Misty Mountain Hop," "Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp," and "The Battle of Evermore." I am instantly hypnotized by this strange new music, and my life is changed forever.

I'm not being dramatic. I set aside my quest to learn Quenya and let my obsessiveness autodidactism follow a new muse. Soon I've spent all my babysitting money acquiring Led Zeppelin's first four albums and subscribing to Rolling Stone magazine.

A single year later, with a little help from my friends Rolling Stone and the radio station KZAP, I've branched out into all kinds of hard and progressive rock: The Who, Boston, Yes, Foghat, Genesis, Rush, Jethro Tull, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. I've worked my way backwards to fill in the gap left after the Beatles' break-up: The Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and The Doors.

Led Zep's heavy blues influence also leads me in that fabulous direction: B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughan's Double Trouble, then somehow to Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald.

Which means when we move from Rancho Cordova (generic suburb of Sacramento) to Truckee (last bastion of Lake Tahoe ski bum hippiedom) in the middle of ninth grade, I hook up with a whole different crowd. I've gone from this (eighth grade, and picture the gaucho pants and knee socks that complete this particular ensemble):

to this (ninth grade).Way cooler, yes? Led Zeppelin: better than What Not to Wear. Who knew?

Has my post given you a hankering for more Middle-Earth? Here are two gems not to be missed:

1) Recent discovery Phil's live-blog of his experience watching the Peter Jackson trilogy in one marathon session. Love it; can't get enough.

2) More compelling than a train wreck: Leonard Nimoy sings his "Ballad of Bilbo Baggins." As Spock would say, "Fascinating."

Recently I heard a song on the car radio that I had forgotten even existed. However, I could immediately sing along with its every word.

She's young now, she's wild now, she wants to be free;
She gets the magic power of the music from me...

Ah, yes. The Canadian power trio Triumph accurately captured me in lyric form back in 1983. I was 16 and graduating from high school. I had a great boyfriend, a regular D&D group, attention-getting hair, a library card, and a functional stereo. I had my whole life in front of me. What more did I need? Life was good.

Fast forward 24 years to the other day. Even as I belted out "Magic Power" along with Rik Emmet, I laughed at the incongruity I have become: a 40-year-old woman driving a mom-style vehicle complete with two car seats in the back, with XM Radio's Big Tracks channel blasting so loud that people in other cars look over at us involuntarily at stoplights. Am I now ridiculous? I wonder.

Only my mother terms me 'young' anymore, and this knitting, pie-baking, classics-loving, church-going woman I've become is not anyone's definition of 'wild.' And would I want to be free of my hot spouse, my fun kids, or my weed-infested garden? Not on your life. On the surface, I've become the epitome of The Establishment against which rockers have been railing for decades.

Yet loud rock music continues to be a joyful indulgence of mine on a daily basis, Sabbaths excepted. My kids love singing along to songs they've learned at my knee; it warms my heart to hear their clear voices joining in on "Sweet Home Alabama" or "Baba O'Riley" or "Roxanne." Rock is somewhat of a family affair; we had a great time exploring the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a couple of weeks ago, admiring relics like John Lennon's report card, the pieces of Paul Simonon's smashed bass guitar, and Jim Morrison's Cub Scout uniform.

My love affair with rock is not limited to the music of my (or my parents') youth. Through friends and the sorcery that is iTunes, I've discovered new treasures like Foo Fighters, The Fratellis, and Coldplay. But would The Veronicas or The Arctic Monkeys be happy to witness me, someone old enough to be their mother, dancing around my kitchen to their latest hits? Or would they run, screaming in terror? I rather suspect the latter.

Here's a highlight from my trip to Utah last week. I sat reading in my hotel room after attending the first day of a mission conference. Suddenly I heard music I recognized coming in through the large plate glass windows that overlooked downtown Salt Lake City's Gallivan Square. I opened the drapes to see a huge crowd gathered around the amphitheater ten floors below. I quickly did a web search on 'Utah Free Concerts,' which confirmed that I wasn't dreaming: Calexico was playing. I opened the metal window louvers so that I could hear well, ordered some Room Service nachos, and sat back in my private sky box seat to listen to one of my favorite new(-er) bands. I reveled in my good fortune, and couldn't wait to tell my kids that the group was even better live than on recordings.

Will it always be this way? I have a vision of myself as a 90-year-old great-grandma, driving a powder-blue Lincoln Town Car with the bench seat scooted way up, and The Raconteurs or Great Big Sea roaring through the sound system at a decibel level high enough to compensate for my faulty hearing aids. And maybe then, if Triumph comes on the radio again, I'll let my quavery, old-lady soprano soar along to celebrate that I am young at heart, wild about life, and free from any concern of what others think about my long-standing affection for the magic power of rock and roll.

So I thought I'd cheer myself up and play a fun game I saw over at The Electronic Replicant. It involves mucho technology, and you all know that I, like Kip Dynamite, love technology.

Here's how to play, according to Erik: "If you load your music player with your entire collection, then set it for random play, it will somehow predict the soundtrack for an imaginary upcoming film about your life."

Well, my entire collection won't fit on my iPod, so I went with what was there. (Note to self: it's probably time for some purging in that arena.)

I find the results of this little experiment very interesting--some might say spooky. I don't think I would say that. But some might.

Opening Credits: Renee Fleming, "Ombra mai fu" from Handel's Xerxes
Hmm, yes, suitably somber and ethereal for an aerial shot of our darling little village nestled on the edge of the mighty Hudson. It's good that nothing a cappella-boys' choirish came up first, because then we'd know it was going to be a horror flick.

Waking Up: London Symphony Orchestra, Vaughan Williams's "Fantasia on Christmas Carols"
Oh, goody! It's going to be a Christmas movie! If you set at least part of your film at Christmastime (The Family Man, It's a Wonderful Life), you pretty much guarantee that I'll like it. And no movie of my life would be complete without a little RVW.

First Day of School: Queen, "Somebody to Love"
Pretty perfect for summing up not just my first day of school, but also my entire school experience. Melodramatic, yet with a strong 6/8 beat; that call-and-response bridge full of irony. Yes. We can work with this.

Falling in Love: Rhonda Vincent and the Rage, "Heartbreakin' Old Achin' Blues"
This plucky bluegrass ditty is a perfect foil for all the bitter, unrequited crushes of teenagerdom.

First Song: The Police, "Message in a Bottle"
My iPod is a mind-reading genius. More irony, folks.

The first time I saw the Police in concert (CA State Fair at CalExpo, 1982), I was 15. My boyfriend David held me on his shoulders so that I could have an unobstructed view of my tripartite obsession: Andy, Stewart, and the lovely Sting. Heavenly memory, marred only by this: on the way home, we got into a fight because David was jealous of Sting. I rubbed salt in his wound by laughing incredulously when he admitted this fact and saying something like, "Dude, that's like a streetlight being jealous of the moon--totally pointless." We broke up pretty soon after that.

Anything by the Police also serves well to underscore the crucial scene in the movie where, bored out of my mind in Senior Civics class, I indulge in an endless daydream about flying to Montserrat so that I can more efficiently stalk said Sting.

Breaking Up: Rush, "Closer to the Heart"
Uncanny, since the above-mentioned David was obsessed with Rush.

Prom: Bryn Terfel, "Younger than Springtime"
Ahhh, Bryn. Would that you had been my prom date. If you had, perhaps I wouldn't have had that nearly fatal asthma attack that landed me in the emergency room for the better part of the night. The incredibly kind male nurse pinned my gardenia corsage to my hospital gown. Come to think of it, he looked a bit like you, Bryn, though he had neither your darling Welsh accent nor your swoonworthy baritone voice. Ironic coincidence: that night was the first time I'd ever heard The Police's song "Every Breath You Take."

Driving: Sister Sledge, "We Are Family"
Baby, not only do I have this song on my iPod, it's the extended play version--what we used to call a 12-Inch Disco Mix. It's a good driving song, especially because many of my best road trips have been either with my fab sisters or with really good girlfriends. Love it.

Flashback: Mariah Carey, "Joy to the World"
Poor Mariah. Such gifts, yet such a mess. But she does know how to put together a darn fine Christmas album. This is a great one to put on when doing Christmas party prep chores. The brilliance of pairing this standard carol with the chorus of "Jeremiah was a Bullfrog" is alone worth the price of the CD.

Starting a New Relationship: Natasha Bedingfield, "Unwritten"
My dear sis Steph introduced me to this fine pop anthem on a recent road trip. Can't get enough of it. It's a perfect metaphor for shaking off the chains of old hurts and being willing to jump into love again--of course this time (in the movie, as in life) with my peerless husband.

Wedding: Ben Harper, "Church House Steps"
Hmm. Though I adore that delicious Ben Harper, at first listen this would appear to be a bad omen foreshadowing problems for our young couple. But when the Blind Boys of Alabama start crooning the bridge, "If these wings should fail me/Meet me with another pair," I take it to mean that the young lovers will triumph over any challenges by meeting them together, clear-eyed and hand in hand.

Birth of a Child: "In the Merry Old Land of Oz"
"Ha, ha, ha; ho, ho, ho/And a couple of tra-la-las...." All that false joviality rising to an unbearable crescendo, only to be interrupted by the Wicked Witch of the West sky-writing "Surrender, Dorothy" in the air above the Emerald City--what portent can this hold for the poor new baby?

Final Battle: Hem, "Betting on Trains"
It's good to have some Hem in my movie. Because when Hem goes to see it, they'll realize that as lovely and talented as Sally Ellyson is, I should really be their lead singer instead.

This song works for a battle scene only if it's one ripped off from the end of The House of Flying Daggers. Come to think of it, I should have been in that movie, too. Maybe the American remake is in my future....

Death Scene: The Wailin' Jennys, "Firecracker"
Oh, so perfect. Those Jennys, with their tight harmonies and artless melancholy. The lyrics work, too: "It's late night getting into morning...." Come to the light, baby.

Funeral Song: Alison Krauss and Union Station, "The Road is a Lover"
And we restate the trope of bouncy bluegrass as counterpoint to deep mourning. Symmetry: me likey.

End Credits: Willie Nelson, "Shall We Gather at the River"
Good, good. Contemplative, but not beating us over the head with it. If I had been in charge instead of Apple's random number selection subroutine, I would have chosen Michael Andrews's cover of "Mad World." Oh, wait--that's Donnie Darko, not my movie.

Well, random is as random does. I was disappointed when none of my beloved uber-geeks (They Might Be Giants, Cake, Elvis Costello) made the cut. Same goes for those obscure Celtic folk (Niamh Parsons, Danu) I love, and for all the punk/metal/Goth I have in running mixes with titles like "T-Shirt of Pain" and "Endorphin Junkies." But no movie can be an accurate portrait; they always have to leave some stuff out. And you can't expect decent coverage when you are looking at 16 songs out of 2,060.

Thanks, Erik! I'm feeling much better about my day now.

*We do love Nick Sharratt at our house.