The Hildebrandt Organ, Naumburg

Today we made the trek out from Leipzig to Naumburg, to play the Hildebrandt Organ there. The weather being unseasonably warm for this part of the world, the trip was unpleasant: today is Pentecost Monday, which I understand is a public holiday in Germany, so trains were full of vacationers returning home after the holiday weekend. (I am, at least, appreciative that Germans are generally quiet when using mass transit.) But despite the oppressive heat and crowded trains, it was well worth it. Indeed, to describe the experience of playing Bach on this instrument so closely linked to the master requires hyperbole. Let me skip that and merely describe. It exceeds in size and variety all other Hildebrandt or Silbermann instruments. So far as we know, it is the one surviving instrument that most closely accords with Bach's ideas about organ design. Every stop on the instrument, I thought, was beautiful. (Other organists in the group largely agreed, though some considered some of the Rückpositiv stops to be less pretty. I have found that Rückpositiv and Brustwerk stops, if present, must be assessed generously by the organist at the console, for they always sound better out in the room.) It seems almost too obvious to say, that every stop on an organ should be beautiful, but in fact that is hardly ever the case: builders include mediocre stops, or even ugly stops, so that they might be combined to make better sounds — if that makes sense! But let us not consider other organs, at the moment. The stops on today's organ were each extraordinary alone, yet also worked well together. (Worthy of special mention are the 8' Hohl-floete on the Oberwerk, the 8' Spitz-floete, and the full Cornets found on both divisions. But I could listen to even just a single 8' Principal all day.)

I should admit that I find organ scholarship, and most Baroque scholarship in general, to be far too Bach-centric. We cannot see all music as merely prefiguring or echoing Bach; this is a disservice to countless composers of great talent. (Perhaps Buxtehude, Walther, and Krebs have suffered the most in this way.) In the same way, we cannot praise the Hildebrandt Organ of Naumburg merely because Bach inspected it and said it was very good. (Besides, he almost certainly had a conflict of interest due to his friendship with Zacharias Hildebrandt.) But it is remarkable, nonetheless, that such an instrument has survived, and it is probably not coïncidental that it happens to be so very special. Peter Williams notes that "Alas, it is simply not true that fine organs are inextricably related to fine music; many times over the centuries organs have been 'better' than the music they were built to play[.]" But we see in this Hildebrandt, I think, an extraordinary affinity between the finest of composers and — surely — one of the finest organs in the world.

(Oh, and, like many important instruments over here, there is a guestbook for organist visitors to sign. There are, of course, many big names in it, with observations and thanks. Perhaps my favorite was that of Thiemo Janssen, the organist at the Ludgerikirche in Norden, with its magnificent Schnitger: "Herr Schnitger grüßt Herr Hildebrandt." Isn't that cute?)

Scandinavia; Return

Two days ago I returned from the temperate summer of Europe to this uninhabitable (ten months of the year, anyway) climate. I am not yet sure whether I would advise two-and-a-half weeks in Europe to anyone. It was, for the most part, a wonderful experience, but I have hardly begun to process it. Real travel, the kind that necessitates closer inspection of a society and people than one can get from the train window, requires a good deal of careful observation. I am not altogether certain that I was worthy of the task. But let us dispense with such quibbles. Allow me to describe Scandinavia, in my deficient manner.

Copenhagen did not make an ideal first impression, as the train station is directly across from Tivoli Gardens. (I have, once or twice, seen people quite literally "falling-down drunk" before, but that was always on a college campus, where one, unfortunately, has come to expect such a thing.) Having read about Tivoli as a child, I pictured it as more of a city park with some attractions; in fact it is simply an amusement park, and I find such places to be tacky and loud, even in the best of circumstances. I suspect the atmosphere in the city owed much to the time of year, for it was right around St. John's Eve that we were there. (I did, in fact, observe that odd Danish custom of burning an effigy of a witch on a bonfire. The men in charge of lighting our particular bonfire were incompetent, and resorted to spraying the feeble flames with lighter fluid. I don't know whether the Danes have a custom of keeping burn-unit nurses on hand at such events.) Roskilde and Hillerød were both far more pleasant, and both have remarkable historic instruments. The 1610 Compenius at Frederiksborg Castle, in Hillerød, is especially stunning.

It appears that the Danish language is, in fact, a conspiracy perpetuated by the entire nation, for nearly every Dane speaks flawless English. Danish has but two phonemes, the glottal stop and the schwa, and these bear no relation to orthography. How anyone manages to speak, much less understand, the language is a most vexing matter.

After less than three days in Denmark, it was on to Sweden. Stockholm appears to be a very pleasant city, if one can judge a place by its smell. Every city has a smell, you know. Many American cities stink chiefly of polluted air, be it from factories or from our all-too-beloved automobiles. Vienna's smell, as I remember it, has an earthiness — perhaps that is the Wienerwald — atop which is a mixture of other, more acidic, smells: cigarettes, the Danube... I cannot identify all the components. Czech and German and Danish cities have their own smells. Stockholm is perhaps the nicest-smelling city, for more than anything else one smells Lake Mälaren. Perhaps it is different at other times of the year, or when the wind is from other directions. Unlike the Germans (who, as far as I saw, are utterly incapable of dressing up), the citizens of Stockholm dress well. The city is particularly expensive, though I suppose it was the height of tourist season this past week.

Uppsala, though it perhaps does not smell as nice, was far more agreeable to my tastes, being far less busy and with far fewer tourists. The city is dominated by the Domkyrka. (A note on Swedish orthography, which is at least a bit more sane than Danish: it appears that, after nasal consonants, "k" becomes an unvoiced post-alveolar fricative, that is, "sh". Thus, domkyrka comes out something like "domshirkah", as I am not in the mood to look up the IPA exactly.) In most respects it is a college town, which is perhaps what appealed to me, besides the cathedral. The Church of Sweden, though now it is just as empty on Sundays as any other European church, at least had the good sense not to dispense with all high-church frippery. (Apparently this is due largely to Laurentius and Olaus Petri.) The dom-museum in Uppsala has an impressive collection of vestments, altar-ware, and other historical churchy artifacts.

Perhaps appropriately, the very last place to visit was Leufsta Bruk, a tiny village at what feels like the end of the world. Leufsta Bruk is a surreal place: here, in the taiga of northern Uppland, is a perfectly preserved eighteenth-century settlement, with manor house, workers' quarters, and a church. It is the church that is of primary interest, for it houses a virtually unaltered 1720s Cahman organ.

Is it worth even attempting to describe what makes certain instruments so much better than others? I fear it is not. I could not have understood it myself before hearing, and playing, a historic instrument. Suffice it to say that, on historic instruments, the music makes sense in a way that it does not make sense on modern instruments. Sweelinck, and Buxtehude, and Bach, and all the great geniuses of organ composition, knew their instruments and wrote accordingly for them: everything, from touch to phrasing to registration, just seems to work on a historic instrument. There are difficulties, of course. Historic pedalboards are all flat, of course; that is not really a problem. (My teacher at Notre Dame notes that a curved AGO pedalboard conduces to "cookie-cutter interpretations", and I think he's right.) But historic pedalboards are also not standardized. Most have considerably shorter compasses, and many are wider — that is, the space between pedal notes is wider — which can be quite disorienting. The winding of certain instruments is downright difficult. These problems (and several others) notwithstanding, it is very much worth it to play historic music on historic instruments.

Broken German

Perhaps the first thing any tourist must overcome is the fear of being seen as an utter fool. (I use the word "tourist" in the sense of a person who wishes to visit a foreign culture — not just hang around with other insufferable Americans at a resort; if there were a lower genus than "tourist" I should assign such cultural troglodytes to it.) Irredisregardless of how well one knows the language and mores, one will make mistakes. Foolish mistakes. In a larger city, like Vienna, they are at least accustomed to having ignorant tourists frolicking about, but in the hinterland the things we do can come across as genuinely peculiar.

The chief barrier to communication is, of course, the language. While I have taken a German course in college and spent ten weeks previously in Vienna, my German is still, one might say understatedly, inelegant. My vocabulary is limited, yes, but far more limited is my knowledge of German grammar and syntax. The greatest problem posed by the German language to the amateur speaker is not (only) the word order but mostly the articles. German, as you may know, has three genders, with corresponding articles. It also has declensions, and while some nouns are declined, it is mostly the articles that bear the brunt of this process. It is thus difficult to even represent the sort of mistakes the English speaker is likely to make in his forays into German. There are two options for the ignoramus who would nonetheless have himself understood: (1) omit articles entirely. I suspect this comes across a bit like cave-man language. Or (2) attempt articles with the knowledge that most of them are incorrect. This was my strategy, and, though my sins against the German language were many, it seemed I got my point across. A good many conversations have been conducted in both broken German (on my part) and broken English, for while English is spoken by some Germans, they learn it a bit like Americans learn Spanish: for a few years in school, perhaps, then to be mostly forgotten. It is work, maintaining a language.

Grinzing

Sie sind uns nur voraus gegangen,
und werden nicht wieder nach Hause verlangen.
Wir holen sie ein auf jenen Höh'n
im Sonnenschein, der Tag ist schön,
auf jenen Höh'n.

It being an overcast and rainy day, I opted to go out to Grinzing. (A note about rain here: like everything else in Vienna, it is far more polite than back home. Perhaps less extreme weather conduces to a more civilized people.) It's a pleasant enough ride by the excellent mass transit system (take the U-4 to its end at Heiligenstadt and get on bus 38A; for variety's sake I took the Straßenbahn back into town), and thanks to the weather neither Heiligenstadt nor Grinzing were overrun by groups of Americans or Japanese visiting Beethoven's house (as if there were only one; he moved constantly) and stumbling out of the more touristy Heurigers.

I had not come for Beethoven, anyway, but for Mahler. Up the hill, pretty clearly marked, is the Grinzinger Friedhof, one of Vienna's smaller cemeteries (certainly much smaller than the Zentralfriedhof). Mahler is buried there. After some searching (for there was a small map by the gate, but it would be poor taste to label only famous graves, I suppose), I found the grave. Nearby were two other tourists come to pay their respects, as I had. (They had a Vienna travel guide in English, but neither their faces nor their accents suggested they were native speakers.) We shared a few kind words. I believe they were genuinely kind. For a short moment, at least, we shared a kinship, united in the love of the works of Mahler, this man who died more than a century ago. Music speaks to the souls of those who hear it; some souls respond. It is gratifying to meet a like-minded soul: "Ah, so I was not the only one!"

Vienna

Greetings, dear reader, from Vienna! We arrived here late last night, after a full day of travel. "Life is a journey", it is said, tritely. People say this to remind us that it is not so much the destination that matters as what happens along the way. I do not entirely agree with this. The destination matters quite a bit. In our case the travel was far less pleasant than the arrival. After a transatlantic flight, we had a layover of six hours in Copenhagen's Kasterup Airport. The Danish are an exceptionally attractive people who speak a barbaric tongue not fit to be understood by man or beast. While Kasterup is pleasant, as airports go (it has a sort of streamlined Scandinavian aesthetic), six hours in an aiport is about five-and-a-half hours more than I wish to spend in an airport. We finally reached Vienna around ten, after a much shorter (albeit delayed) flight. (We flew over Germany's Baltic coast, but couldn't see most of the country due to heavy clouds beneath us. Fortunately, it's fairer weather down here.) At the airport I managed very efficiently to get us lost, having to rely on the worst sort of German: discomfited American tourist German. ("Bitte, wo ist der Zug?") We did finally find the CAT (City Air Train), making it to Landstraße-Wien Mitte, and thence to the Kolpinghaus, finally getting to bed after midnight.

Today we first walked around the Ring a bit, making it into Stadtpark, over past Café Prückel (which I am resolved to visit tomorrow), and from the Stubentor stop on the U3 over to the Zentralfriedhof. I'd been there already, the last time I was here, but it's a much more pleasant place to visit in the summer. I noted with some satisfaction that more flowers were placed on Brahms's grave than on Schubert's, though Beethoven had them both beat. Schoenberg, rather unfairly, had none. (No accounting for taste, I suppose.)

Back in the city, we went to Doblinger's, where I purchased several books of chorale preludes by obscure Viennese composers. (My rationale is that I should purchase things published by the Doblinger press, as they're a local product and I may not find them elsewhere.) I had Schnitzel-King for lunch, and it was glorious beyond words. And yet, just as no man steps in the same river twice, no man eats the same Döner sandwich twice. I don't remember there being cucumbers in it before, but I think they make a fine addition.

Travel, Memory

When, in a few days, I leave for Europe, I am sure I'll be very excited. But for the meantime I am still rather apprehensive about it. This stems mostly from the number of things I still must do before I can depart (in peace, anyway). Experience suggests that most things are better anticipated than experienced, but I suspect that this is not the case with travel. I look forward to travel with a sort of dread. Perhaps this is because I have developed such an ingrained distaste for being late: the idea of missing a connecting flight or a train distresses me as few (ultimately) trivial things can. And on this particular journey, there are an awful lot of trains one can miss.

Nevertheless, I am optimistic that travel may yet improve me (despite the many ways in which it probably will not). Playing historic instruments will be instructive. We've spent several months trying to line up time on various organs, and it appears we'll be playing instruments in Tröchtelborn, Magdeburg, Niederndodeleben, Hildesheim, Gifhorn, Clauen, Schellerten, Norden, Roskilde, Frederiksborg Castle, Leufsta Bruk, and Östhammar. Besides organs, we have set aside several days to explore Vienna, Prague, Magdeburg, Hannover, Roskilde, and Copenhagen. I hope to write about things on this web-log as much as is practical; while I hate the idea of spending an entire vacation trying to remember said vacation (taking pictures — which still strikes me as asinine, especially in churches — and writing web-log posts), I suppose I should produce some evidence of travels.

This makes me wonder about the nature of memory. Why would anyone devote so much time and effort encasing experiences in amber? Well, pictures and words, in one way, have a sort of sacramental aspect. No, then again, they don't at all: a sacrament is by its nature a tangible object, whereas images and words are the opposite of tangible objects, unless I engrave them like Job. (19:23-24: "Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!") Pictures and words on the internet, are, I guess, a sort of memorialist understanding of the past: we recall times gone by, but we lack the Real Presence, as it were.

Rückkehr nach Wien

It is now fifty-four days until I will be leaving for Europe. As of now the itinerary includes several days in Vienna, then Prague, Erfurt, Tröchtelborn (a tiny town outside Erfurt where an organist friend of mine will give a recital), Halle, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Hannover, Norden (another small town, but home to perhaps the greatest Arp Schnitger instrument in the world), Hamburg, Roskilde, Copenhagen, and Stockholm. (I am also optimistic that we may be able to visit Lövstabruk and Östhammar, towns north of Stockholm, each with fantastic organs of their own.)

The organ-tour portion of the trip (basically everything from Erfurt onwards) will be a lot of fun, I don't doubt — I am attempting to reäcquaint myself with all of my North German repertoire that has proven less-than-ideal in Dixon — but at the moment I am especially excited to return to Vienna. Though by now I have surely forgotten nearly everything I learned about how to survive in that city, I remember it fondly. I am resolved that I shall catch a concert at the Musikverein, eat a Hot-Dog at my favorite stand in the Naschmarkt and some Döner at Schnitzel King (whose proprietor, though his brain is surely addled by a multitude of plum schnapps shots taken with visiting American students, is a very pleasant fellow), and visit the Kunsthistorisches Museum. (Holbein awaits!) Perhaps the only downside is that I will be horribly jet-lagged all the days that I am in Vienna, for we'll only be there three days and I am quite sensitive to such things. (Even the one-hour switch to South Bend time throws me off.) But no matter: it is Vienna. It will be glorious. And even if the weather is miserable — as it was for more than half the time, last time I was there — I will enjoy simply being back there. At the very least, it will give me an opportunity to write about it in my Vienna travel log.

Chicago, Briefly

I am just returned from a brief trip to Chicago. The traffic was pritnear unbearable, but was, I hope, justified by my destinations. Besides attending a quite tolerable concert (the rather-unfortunately-named band Balmorhea), I was fortunate enough to visit Powell's Bookstore (which, indeed, is a sister store of the venerable Portland institution I visited in January); I purchased Mann's Doctor Faustus and an old edition of Chesterton's biography of St. Francis, which I think will someday make a fine gift. (Yes, I have begun to buy second copies of some books, the mark of an irredeemable bibliophile. But my excuse is that I do intend to give them away, eventually.) Best of all I went to a Meinl Kaffeehaus, where I had the first proper Eiskaffee and Palatschinken since I returned from Vienna (now several years ago). "O Memory, hope, love of finished years!" The great pleasure of such fare was counterbalanced by the reminder that I will likely not be able to visit Vienna for some time still. Nevertheless I recommend the place highly.

Washington, D.C.

Greetings, dear reader, from Our Nation's Capital. Though this is apparently the very worst time of year, weather-wise, to be here, I have found it a pleasant-enough place during this past week's vacation. Well, it is not technically a vacation, as I have been put to work: this morning I served as organist at Luther Place Memorial Church, which is on Thomas Circle, in what is a nice — if terribly gentrified — part of the city. The organ is a 4-manual Möller that has undergone several renovations, but it's not as bad as I feared. The reeds are surprisingly robust, but the mixtures emit a rather awful shriek, like some examples of less-fortuitous Orgelbewegung design.

The more places in this world I visit, the less inclined am I to see the sights everyone is enjoined to see. This is chiefly because one is always surrounded by tourists in such places, and tourists — especially, I have noted, American tourists — are almost always insufferable. (Perhaps this amounts to a measure of self-loathing on my part?) At the National Gallery of Art — which is a fine museum, though rather disappointing compared to my beloved Art Institute of Chicago — my experience was severely hampered by obnoxious tourists talking loudly and ignorantly, with art-school-reject tour guides shouting to be heard over them ("Now, the art in this room is a style known as Byzantine!"). Despite the ambiance, the collection is a good one. I find I am drawn the most to late medieval painting (Giotto is a particular favorite, and he has a wonderful Madonna and Child there) and to early Renaissance Netherlandish paintings: there's a spiritual richness there that one doesn't see in many other times and genres. Some things (e.g. American colonial art) leave me entirely cold.

Whilst in the city I have availed myself of various things one cannot do (not well, anyway) at home. I have discovered several excellent restaurants: perhaps the nicest surprise has been Julia's Empanadas, on Connecticut Avenue between M and N. (An empanada is, apparently, the Hispanic equivalent of the Cornish pasty: it is very tasty, indeed, at least at Julia's, and they are quite reasonably priced.) Today I took a yoga class: it was at a level a bit above my current skills (that is, none), but enjoyable nonetheless. And I have been wandering around various parts of the city. From what I have seen D.C. resembles far more closely a European city than its American counterparts: there's a sort of Hausmanesque plan to the streets, and indeed some impressive Second Empire architecture down closer to the Mall. The strict guidelines for building height make it a cozier — if more congested, traffic-wise — place to live. The metro and other mass transit services are not nearly as convenient or ubiquitous as those of Vienna, but one mustn't complain about such things.

All in all, it's not a bad city. No, indeed.

Ars Itineris?

Seneca, Ad Lucilium epistulae morales, XXVIII. "On Travel as a Cure for Discontent":

Do you suppose that you alone have had this experience? Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate. Though you may cross vast spaces of sea, and though, as our Virgil remarks: "Lands and cities are left astern," your faults will follow you wherever you travel. Socrates made the same remark to one who complained: he said, "Why do you wonder that globetrotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? The reason which set you wandering is ever at your heels." What pleasure is there in seeing new lands? Or in surveying cities and spots of interest? All your bustle is useless. Do you ask why such flight does not help you? It is because you flee along with yourself. You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.

Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to his nephew Peter Carr, 10 August 1787:

[Traveling] makes men wiser, but less happy. When men of sober age travel, they gather knowledge, which they may apply usefully for their country, but they are subject ever after to recollections mixed with regret — their affections are weakened by being extended over more objects, and they learn new habits which cannot be gratified when they return home. Young men who travel are exposed to all these inconveniences in a higher degree, to others still more serious, and do not acquire that wisdom for which a previous foundation is requisite, by repeated and just observations at home. The glare of pomp and pleasure is analogous to the motion of the blood — it absorbs all their affection and attention, they are torn from it as from the only good in this world, and return to their home as to a place of exile and condemnation. Their eyes are forever turned back to the object they have lost, and its recollection poisons the residue of their lives. Their first and most delicate passions are hackneyed on unworthy objects here, and they carry home the dregs, insufficient to make themselves or anybody else happy. Add to this that a habit of idleness — an inability to apply themselves to business — is acquired and renders them useless to themselves and their country. These observations are founded in experience. There is no place where your pursuit of knowledge will be so little obstructed by foreign objects, as in your own country, nor any, wherein the virtues of the heart will be less exposed to be weakened. Be good, be learned, and be industrious, and you will not want the aid of traveling, to render you precious to your country, dear to your friends, happy within yourself.

Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness, p. 43:

[T]he world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home."

Festina Lente

Yesterday, eager to leave South Bend for a while, I undertook an excursion to Chicago. The first parts of the trip — the Cathedral District, Giordano's, the Art Institute — were successful, but a visit out to Bucktown provoked in me a terrible fit of melancholia. It may have been partly the rain, which was cold and constant, but moreso it was the idea that people who live in such a neighborhood — educated liberated young professionals of comfortable means, not beholden to anybody — can still manage to be so unhappy. How unutterably dreary a life of material satisfaction and nothing else! Even when free of the obligations and petty bigotries and irritating stupidities of small-town life, how wretched existence can be!

What I am saying, here, is that a life of real freedom is not An Easy Thing. It's not so simple as merely removing societal constraints and then hoping for a flourishing of aesthetic, philosophical, spiritual awareness. Housewives in the suburbs with three children and an SUV in the four-car garage are unfortunate. But even worse is the young bohemian who has cast off the shackles of the bourgeois life, only to find himself further enchained; what liberation is there to be had from this second, self-imposed imprisonment?

For a while now the phrase "Festina lente" has been running through my mind. "Make haste slowly", yes. But towards what?

Portland & Seattle

Late Saturday evening I returned from a trip to the Pacific Northwest: the Notre Dame Liturgical Choir went on tour, and I joined them. (My instinct, before we left, was that spending a week with a crowd of undergraduates would be insufferable, but it turned out to be quite enjoyable. One is always pleasantly surprised with Notre Dame students.)

In Portland I got so far as writing the first draft of an entry (dated 12 January), which I present here.

I suppose I might as well send you, dear reader, greetings from Portland, Oregon, where I am currently on tour with the Notre Dame Liturgical Choir. In many ways it is a pleasant city. The climate is at least comfortable: today a dusting of sleet was considered sufficient cause to shut schools down early. (The day we left South Bend, two feet of snow had fallen, with talk of more to come.) I spent several hours at Powell's Books, and suspect that I could've been there considerably longer. (Among the eleven books I purchased were the Bainton biography of Luther, a memoir of Antarctic exploration, a book about Prester John.... I suppose I shall have sufficient reading material for a while, now.)

I'm not sure I saw enough of Seattle to judge it properly, but from what I saw it seems a beautiful city (near-constant rain notwithstanding). Both cities are replete with two extremes of people: hipsters and yuppies on one end, and the homeless on t'other. (A more waggish observer than myself might observe that the only difference in attire between hipsters and the homeless is that hipsters choose to dress that way.) In both cities an awful lot of the people are from Somewhere Else.

There is an undercurrent of desperation in the major cities of the Northwest. For a century-and-a-half now, these cities have been the final destination in that great exodus from points eastward (Europe, New York, Iowa): all those people, leaving home in hopes of a new and better life in the West, find themselves facing the open Pacific, with nowhere else to run to. What is the end result of an incurably mobile society? We might observe it first in the cities of the West.

And yet Portland and Seattle are in several ways quite pleasant. People there are at least aware that recycling and public transit are Good Ideas. The seafood is excellent (a welcome consolation for one who views red meat with increasing — though not yet total — distaste). Though chain restaurants and cafés are ubiquitous, there are also some very good local places to be found nearly everywhere. There are some simply excellent organs to be found in that part of the country: we visited Paul Fritts's workshop and he took us on a tour of several important instruments in the area. (Fritts has the beady eyes and quiet demeanor that are apparently required for organ-builders, but he seems a nice fellow.) All in all, I can't say I've firmly made up my mind about either Portland or Seattle. While there is much to criticize, there's much to admire as well. I hope to travel to both cities again.

Indianapolis

Greetings from Indianapolis, capital of Indiana, seat of several dioceses, city of broad streets, numerous beggars, limited green space and, at least on the Fourth of July, lots and lots of traffic. I was here to play a wedding (it went well enough). Yesterday I attended church with the Episcopalians downtown, which was pleasant: excellent instrument, choir (all-male! one doesn't hear that sound much anymore), and sermon.

Indianapolis is a nice enough place to visit, but I wouldn't live here. It's too big: urban areas of a certain size inspire me with neuroses. Modern life in these United States, and urban life in particular, requires a profound amount of trust in people one does not know: architects, elevator-builders, policemen, food safety standard-setters and inspectors of many sorts, motorists, even fellow pedestrians. In the city one must count on everyone else not to be crazy. This confidence is sometimes misplaced.

At the same time, I think it's important that the Church is present in the city. There's enough emphasis in the Bible on helping the poor that it is more than negligent to avoid them. (Are you ever bothered by thoughts of your sins of omission? I certainly am. I'm banking on the idea that this "God" fellow is the merciful sort.) I had planned to attend a Lutheran church yesterday, but there is not a single Lutheran congregation, ELCA or LCMS, in downtown Indianapolis: they've all moved to the suburbs. Where would Jesus live, I wonder?