‘How shall the summer arise in joy,
Or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?’

An album I’ve recently listening to as a sort of sublime, relaxing mid-day music is the three-disc orchestral adaptation of poet William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, composed by William Bolcom, conducted by Leonard Saltkin, and performed by the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra and quite a divers cast of singers. In my wild machinations to make the baby the most intelligent person on the planet he shall be listening to quite a lot of this.

NPR’s Morning Edition interviewed William Bolcom about the project back in October.

It’s been some time.

Nathanael and I were married on July 31, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at Diamond Lake Lutheran Church. Fr. William C. Sisterman of The Anglican Church of St. Dunstan, St. Louis Park, Minnesota, presided. We used the Order for Matrimony from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, and used the unabridged version of ‘The Lorica of St. Patrick’, and ‘Be Thou My Vision’ for congergational hymns. The reception was at the Fort Snelling Officers Club. The first song we danced to was Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ ‘No More Shall We Part’. I danced with my father to The Magnetic Fields ‘Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing’. After being stranded in Detroit, Michigan at the airpirt Westin for lack of identification, we honeymooned in Old Quebec City and stayed in a local hotel, a socialist hotel, another local hotel, and an old Victorian hotel across from an Ursuline convent. I was reading Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain at this time; it did quite a number on my head. There exists a picture of me trying to escape to the convent from the roof top of a Victorian hotel, but I doubt it shall ever get published. We did a lot of exploring the old city on foot, eating at various restaurants and pubs, went to a low mass in a cathedral (which was boggling) and bought some local art, a painting of nuns in the winter street, and a miniture etching of the Ursuline convent, a dark red vase, and an admirable black hat which I’ve since lost in a pub in Atlanta. We flew back to Mobile, Alabama, and drove down to Valparaiso, Florida, which exists in the middle of nowhere. ‘Exists’ might be too strong of a word. Valparaiso’s exsistence, I find, is nothing very definite.

We live in a two bedroom cottage that we’re renting from Nathanael’s step-grandmother. Nathanael works at Eglin Air Force base as a contract engineer, working on ‘defensive’ weapons of some sort, but that’s about all I’m allowed to know. Bi-monthly, in an attempt to keep him honest, I make him promise that he’s not doing anything violent and evil, and he gives his word. He started his masters a week ago at the University of Florida; we’re looking at moving in about five years: we’ve discovered I belong to the city and the cold. I’m a housewife and do the usual, along with reading, taking long walks by the bayou and incessantly debating in my head the whether to write, working on finishing Latin, drinking a fair amount of tea, and correcting the jail’s Bible study assignments to help the chaplin (which is something we’ve just begun). After Latin is done away with, I shall, I think, take a masters in medieval history, with an emphasis on the church. We attend Trinity Presbyterian Church, where N. has gone all his life, which is close enough to walk to some Sunday mornings when the weather is not too muggy and otherwise disheartening. I honestly cannot remember what denomination of which they are a part, but it’s something outrageously small.

Speaking of N., he shall be home soon and I ought to get lunch ready. Wedding photographs to come soon, tonight, I hope.

Other: Here is a collection of religious sonnets, Raised in a Barn 4, edited by Masha Poyurovsky, Jerah S. Kirby and Matthew Kirby. In other words, what J. Campbell described as “The great iamb versus the great I AM.”

So, my beloved has been diligently buying iTunes to play at our reception. We’re now trying to arrange the songs into about an hour and a half of danceable tunes, but that is a bit of a daunting task… so, we turn to you, Dear Readers, for your suggestions:

• And No More Shall We Part, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
• It’s Only Time, The Magnetic Fields
• Love Is Blindness, Sixpence None the Richer
• Extreme Ways, Moby
• Midnight Train to Georgia, Gladys Knight & The Pips
• Town Called Malice, The Jam
• Fields of Gold, Sting
• San Diego Serenade, Tom Waits
• Moonlight Cocktail, Mel Torme
• It’s Oh So Quiet, Bjork
• Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley
• Gentle On My Mind, Johnny Cash
• Fade Into You, Mazzy Star
• Remember the Mountain Bed, Billy Bragg and Wilco
• 1,000 Oceans, Tori Amos
• Wonderful Tonight, Eric Clapton
• Sea of Love, Cat Power
• Make You Feel My Love, Bob Dylan
• Where Did We Go Right, Johnny and June Carter Cash
• Coney Island, Baby Tom Waits
• Tom Traubert’s Blues, Tom Waits
• Wild Horses, The Sundays
• I’ll Be Your Mirror, The Velvet Underground & Nico
• Alice, Tom Waits
• Satellite of Love, Lou Reed
• Lifelong Fling, Over the Rhine
• God Only Knows, The Beach Boys
• Time, Tom Waits
• California Stars, Billy Bragg and Wilco
• Waltz, No. 2 , Elliott Smith
• Harvest Moon, Neil Young
• Faithfully Dangerous, Over the Rhine
• Cruel and Pretty, Over the Rhine
• Sweet Baby James, James Taylor
• Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes, Paul Simon
• Under a Killing Moon, Echo and the Bunnymen
• Nobody Loves Me, Portishead
• The Pearl, Emmylou Harris
• Michelangelo, Emmylou Harris
• In a Little While, U2
• One, Johnny Cash
• You Belong to Me, Patsy Cline
• Love Is Here to Stay, Harry Connick, Jr.
• Moon Dance, Van Morrison
• Mac The Knife, Bobby Darin
• It Had to Be You , Harry Connick, Jr.
• Moon River, Audrey Hepburn & Henry Mancini
• Bam Thwok, Pixies

Those are really in no particular order, except that “And No More Shall We Part” will be played for our first dance. Any comments, Dear and Gentle Musically-Inclined Readers, would be greatly appreciated.

(Thanks for your suggestions. I’ll have to look them up. More additions of my own:

• The Night, Morphine
• We Are in Love, Frank Sinatra
• What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye
• Moonlight Becomes You, Bing Crosby
• I Could Write a Book, Frank Sinatra
• At Last, Etta James
• Summertime, The Sundays
• The End of the World, The Cure
• Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing, The Magnetic Fields

Sarah.)

Does anyone have the sheet music to the unabridged Cecil Frances Alexander/Charles V. Stanford version of The Lorica of St. Patrick St. Patrick’s Breastplate/The Lorica/I Bind Unto Myself Today/The Deer’s Cry)? We’d like to have it in our wedding and are having trouble locating the full version.

SMiLE!