April 18: Job Satisfaction, Out Loud, Church Musicians

Arthur and Ford have just met Marvin the robot, who just expressed his disdain for the programming of the Heart of Gold spaceship . . . 

Marvin regarded it [the door] with cold loathing while his logic circuits chattered with disgust and tinkered with the concept of directing physical violence against it.  Further circuits cut in saying, Why bother?  What's the point?  Nothing is worth getting involved in.  Further circuits amused themselves by analyzing the molecular components of the door, and of the humanoids' brain cells.  For a quick encore they measured the level of hydrogen emissions in the surrounding cubic parsec of space and then shut down again in boredom.  A spasm of despair shook the robot's body as he turned.

"Come on," he droned, "I've been ordered to take you down to the bridge.  Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge.  Call that job satisfaction?  'Cos I don't."

He turned and walked back to the hated door.

"Er, excuse me," said Ford, following after him, "which government owns this ship?"

Marvin ignored him.

"You watch this door," he muttered, "it's about to open again.  I can tell by the intolerable air of smugness it suddenly generates."

With an ingratiating little whine the door slid open again and Marvin stomped through.

"Come on," he said.

The others followed quickly and the door slid back into place with pleased little clicks and whirrs.

"Thank you the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation," said Marvin, and trudged desolately up the gleaming curved corridor that stretched out before them.  "Let's build robots with Genuine People Personalities, they said.  So they tried it out with me.  I'm a personality prototype.  You can tell, can't you?"

Ford and Arthur muttered embarrassed little disclaimers.

"I hate that door," continued Marvin.  "I'm not getting you down at all, am I?"

Marvin is comic relief.  A depressed robot that hates his job, knows he's smarter than everyone around him, and yet still worries about people's feelings.  He's a metaphor for every person who has ever worked at McDonald's or retail.  Underemployed and underpaid and underappreciated.

Now, I know you're thinking I'm going to launch into a long rant about my current employment situation.  I'm not.  Yes, the pay stinks.  Yes, the hours are long.  Yes, I get yelled at a lot on the phone by dissatisfied patients.  It's all part of working in healthcare.  Sick people are frightened, angry, and lost.  Like Marvin, they have very few outlets for these emotions.

No, I'm going to talk about what I'm doing tonight.  It's my monthly dose of Out Loud at the Joy Center.  Out Loud is an event where poets, writers, storytellers, and artists come together to share their thoughts and work.  Every time I attend Out Loud, I walk away somehow uplifted and enriched.  Rolling into Easter weekend, I need that.

If you have never been a church musician or involved in music ministry, you probably don't understand the stress of Holy Week.  It's the most important time in the entire Christian year.  The Big Show, if you get what I mean.  There are liturgies followed by more liturgies followed by side liturgies followed by a small nap followed by liturgies.  It's stressful and beautiful at the same time.  In the next four days, I will be involved in five separate Masses and church services.  

All of this wouldn't cause me so much stress if I were a truly gifted musician.  I'm not.  I'm a hard-working musician, requiring a lot of practice.  I have already spent many hours at the organ going over music for this weekend, and I still don't feel prepared.  Gifted musicians practice as much as I do, but that practice is so much easier and more joyful for them.  

No, my gift is writing and poetry.  It comes easily to me.  Working on a poem is not stressful.  It's a wonderful challenge.  I enjoy it.  A lot.  Practicing music, on the other hand, is a chore for me.  I love the results, but the process is incredibly difficult.  By noon on Easter Sunday, I will be brain dead.  That is a guarantee.  

Thus, I need Out Loud this evening.  To charge my batteries for a long weekend of holy stress.  Poetry may not pay much, but it's where I feel most alive.

Saint Marty hopes you all hug a church organist this weekend.  They will need it.

December 24: Christmas Wrapping, Church Musicians, "Bigfoot Noel"

Question:  What do English majors call Santa's elves?

Answer:  Subordinate clauses.

Okay, I couldn't resist that one.  My son is reading me Christmas jokes from an iPhone.  That one tickled my fancy, for obvious reasons. 

Last night, my wife and I wrapped Christmas presents.  And we wrapped and wrapped and wrapped.  We wrapped long enough for us to watch Miracle on 34th Street twice (I was too lazy to get up and pick out a different movie).  We finally crawled into bed about 2 a.m.  It was a long night.

I have already received one panicked phone call from one of the members of my band, desperate to find a piece of music that she's misplaced.  The life of church musicians at the holidays is not easy.  While everybody else is getting dressed up and ready for Christmas Eve services, we musicians are practicing and arranging and practicing some more.  Until about noon on Christmas, my work will not be done.

And then, it's all gravy.  Well, actually, it's all baked ham and turkey and hot chocolate (doctored with a little mint Bailey's Irish Cream).

I wish all of my faithful disciples a blessed Christmas Eve, full of light and hope and music.  And, if you like a song you hear tonight at a church service, thank the musician.

Bigfoot Noel

by:  Martin Achatz

He slouches through this night,

an eclipse of hair and muscle and foot,

guided by some wild nova

in the chambers of his Neanderthal

chest.  It’s an ancient story,

Precambrian even, about ice,

juniper berry in the deadest of winter.

Digging through dermal frost

to root and worm.  Mushroom

caps in frozen moss, strips

of pine gnawed into sweet paste.

And moon held in knuckles of sumac.

Yes, it’s about need and hunger,

a bottomless lake carved by glacier.

It’s wilderness, the blind

sound of nebulae exploding seventy

million miles a day.  Ice Age.  Meteor

rain.  Seraphim screaming hosannas

over panicked rams.  Starlight and manure.

The coming of Something

ferocious, untamable.

He knows all this somehow,

the way he knows where salmon leap, spawn.

He stands at the edge of a clearing,

stares up, into the hills, toward

an empty cave.  He tilts back

his head, opens his throat, sings a song

for the evolution of love.

Please vote for Saint Marty:

Vote for next Poet Laureate of the U. P.

December 19: Sobbing, Church Musicians, Stress

He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call.  He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.

Scrooge is still a mess on Christmas morning, after his night with the Spirits of Christmas.  He doesn’t know what to do, where to begin.  He’s laughing, crying, dancing, sobbing.  He knows he’s still a broken person, but he has the chance to redeem himself now.  He will make mistakes on this road to redemption, but he will always have a Christmas carol in his heart.

This time of year for church musicians is stressful.  I have been an organist/accompanist for nearly 27 years now.  That’s 27 Christmases, with an average of two to three worship services each year; two children’s programs a season; and at least two or three extra rehearsals per week, from November through December 25.  That’s a lot of hours.  By the time I sit down with my ham sandwich on Christmas morning, after I have played my last carol and sung my last chorus of “Joy to the World,” I’m sometimes drained of cheer.  I get through the rest of the day on eggnog and the TNT marathon of A Christmas Story.

My biggest worry this week is the upcoming Christmas Eve/Christmas Day church services.  There’s this whole pressure for music to be extra good, extra special on those days.  I have a children’s program at 8 p.m. on December 24, plus two solos that were just handed to me in the last week.  No matter how much I practice the music, I never feel quite good enough for the occasion.  After close to 30 years of being a part of this yuletide insanity, I still suffer from low self-esteem when it comes to my musical abilities (or is that low elf-esteem at Christmas?).

On the flipside, I know that, come noon on Christmas, nobody is going to remember a single bloody mistake I make at the organ or piano.  Unless I become catatonic at the keyboard or decide to do a bad Jerry Lee Lewis impersonation, I should be fine.

I think we put way too much pressure on ourselves at Christmas.  We strive for perfection.  Perfect music.  Perfect gift.  Perfect card.  Perfect mashed potatoes.  It’s an impossible goal.  I willscrew up on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  I will probably duplicate a gift with someone.  I will burn the sugar cookies.  I will forget to send a card to Uncle Ned in Arizona because I thought he was dead.

Christmas is not really about perfection.  Christmas is messy.  Mary was an unwed, pregnant teen.  Jesus was born in a barn, with dirty animals and manure.  The shepherds probably drank out in the fields; they certainly didn’t shower.  Herod sent out soldiers to kill babies in Bethlehem.  The nativity narrative is full of unpleasant smells, unpleasant sights, unpleasant people, and unpleasant events.

The true miracle of the holiday is that, out of this whole broken mess, came the Son of God.  So I’m not worried too much.

Saint Marty will take care of the mistakes this Christmas.  God will take care of the perfection.

Time to get dirty