Constraints

 Constraints limit freedom but generate invention. So, for example, if I had to translate a poem into English without using the letter e, I would be obliged to find inventive solutions instead of translating as I normally would.  

"Let the bride awake

the day of her wedding"

Most of these words have an e.  

Now, let's consider a more normal case: translating a sonnet into a sonnet.  Here the constraint is formal and metrical.  Lines will be metrical, and there will be a rhyme scheme.  I'm still trying to translate the semantic content.  These constraints will generate more semantic slippage. It is unlikely that a literal translation will automatically fall into metrical form! 

For many centuries in the English-speaking world, verse translations were almost always governed by metrical constraints: sonnets became sonnets, romances became ballads.  

This, I would argue, is the main driver of verse translation, not what Venuti says, the translator's invisibility.  

Retirado en la paz de estos desiertos, con pocos, pero doctos libros juntos, vivo en conversación con los difuntos y escucho con mis ojos a los muertos. Si no siempre entendidos, siempre abiertos, o enmiendan, o fecundan mis asuntos; y en músicos callados contrapuntos al sueño de la vida hablan despiertos. Las grandes almas que la muerte ausenta, de injurias de los años, vengadora, libra, ¡oh gran don Josef!, docta la emprenta. En fuga irrevocable huye la hora; pero aquella el mejor cálculo cuenta que en la lección y estudios nos mejora.

Plateau

 My piano playing is at a plateau.  When I thought about why this was so, the answer was clear: I practice the same way every time, so I am reinforcing everything I am doing now including whatever bad habits I might have. I might get slightly better at what I can already do over time, but there is not really any improvement.  

So yesterday, I practiced what I normally would, for 30 minutes. 

Today, I will do something different. I think I will play blues in Db.  I never do that, so it should stretch myself somewhat.  

[update: a plateau is not a bad thing.  When I switched back from the unfamiliar blues to what I normally would play I noticed an immediate gain in fluency. The Blues was noticeably stiffer. The good thing about a plateau is that it is stable. Still, the stretch is important as well.  I can alternate between plateau days and stretch days.] 

Dream of Monk

There was a jazz club where you could visit the past. I went in and noticed it was Monk playing in the corner. I went there to see what he was playing, something that would give me rare insight, I thought. He was playing these chromatic or whole tone runs very fast.  I tried to get my phone out so I could take pictures of it. There was sheet music with titles I didn't recognize.  I was invisible at first to the people there, but then people started saying "excuse me" to get by me. I went out into the street and explained to someone there about the magical nightclub where you could visit the Five Spot of yore. They disbelieved me or didn't care and the dream morphed into something else I don't remember.  

Religion

 I went to two funerals on my trip to California. We buried my sister on Friday. She had chosen her funeral program (the music) while she was still lucid, about 10 or 11 years ago.  

On Monday, my brother, mom, and I drove to Palo Alto for the service for my aunt Mona Jo, in an architecturally similar Mormon church there. I had been in that church for a service for Orval (husband of Mona Jo and brother to my mom, twelve years ago). We sang one of the same hymns, "All Creatures Great and Small."  My four Ellsworth cousins (son and daughters of Mona Jo and Orval) had driven to Davis for my sister's service as well.  There were also four cousins from one of my mom's sisters, Dorothy. Dorothy is seven years older than I am and my youngest cousins could the age of my children, if I had had children young. 

Anyway, most people there at both funerals were processing the deaths through a religious mind set--one I don't share. My sister was also deeply religious, and spent her entire professional life as a church musician, or "minister of music." Her husband Norbie had also converted to mormonism, fairly recently in fact. Mona Jo, from all evidence, was also religious. 

Though I don't have that framework, I tend to believe that we are all processing our grief in analogous ways. In other words, it doesn't make any difference. It is still a loss. We can all have our little rationalizations, like 'she's in a better place.'  Or, in my case, 'her suffering is over.'  

Deborah Mayhew Memorial

Trader Joes & Cousins

 My daughter works at a Traders Joes in MD.  I talked to her today on the phone and asked her to recommend some prepared food from there. (I am in Davis, CA for my sister's (and my aunt's) funeral, so I am here with my mother, brother, brother-in-law, and niece,) Eight of my cousins came for my sister's service!  

***

 I walked to our local TJs and picked up some frozen veggie gyoza and the vegan Korean rice balls my daughter recommended. My brother is mostly vegan so it was a good call. My niece made some squash. We have all just been scavenging from the fridge so it was good that I did this, even if my initial motive was selfish: to have something different and more savory  to eat tonight. We still have "Mormon funeral potatoes" in the fridge. 

Tomorrow, we drive to Palo Alto for my aunt's memorial service. I will see multiple cousins, including two more who couldn't come for my sister's on Friday.   

***

My family is religious.  I am not. Everything is filtered through that lens for them, but not for me. My sister planned her whole funeral while she was still able, with the exact hymns she wanted. Its made me think I should do that too. I know I want "Lonely Woman" and "Monk's Mood." I don't want a fucking "Celebration of Life"; I want everyone to be very sad, disconsolate. 

Fritz

 Fritz, my SO's father, will have a memorial service on the same day as my sister.  On Friday. I can't attend both. I will be going tomorrow to be with my own family in California.  

 Fritz liked Monk (something I didn't know before he died), so I recommended that they play "Monk's Mood" and "Reflections" at his celebration of life.  I want "Monk's mood" at my own funeral! I'd also like Ornette's "Lonely Woman" at my own memorial.  

Fritz was a funny guy.  He could crack us up even when his short term memory was mostly gone.  He was a graphic designer, and taught that at KU for many years, while designing books for U of Kansas press. He retired when he got cancer, and also as his field was shifting to computers which he was not as comfortable with.