Kelly MIller

A few journal entries:

Sitting in the window above the street I am remembering the great conversations we had in the van on the way up here, to Birmingham.  It was good for so many reasons.  We covered religion, dating, sex, education, and some other topics I donÕt remember.  We slide and danced through the topics in a way that can only happen when you are stuck with another person for a long period of time with little else to do but talk.  It was intelligent and spontaneous conversation.  I love conversations were people really share ideas and "talking space."  I think it drew some of us much closer.  WE can't just learn about each other in the context of race relations, we have to learn about each other through other experiences that make up who we are and therefore indirectly effect our views on race.

However, right now I am watching people.  The way people walk, stand and gesture and always intrigued me and with the darkness and the lights it is really phenomenal to see.  I found a public radio station with some Debussy prelude on and the glass is cold and I am a little bit melancholy.  I lam melancholy in a way I often am at this stage in getting to know people.  You break ground so fast but then comes painful moments were the depth of your unknowing is thrown up fast in your face!  It will passÉ

February 14, 2001

Lee asked us to write about a artistic event that moved us- here is the first one that came screeching to mind:

The second semester my sophomore year MSO (Muncie symphony orchestra) played Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in C "Resurrection".  I had heard only the 4^th movement of Mahler 5 at that point but I knew I wanted to go- not because it had 2 difficult harp parts but because so many cynical theory teachers looked like adoring 4 year olds when they spoke about Mahler.

I remember I sat between 2 guys, band guys, who normally left symphonies alone.  They were good friends of mine but I would not take them with me, where I was going,  that night.  We sat about 1/3 of the way back form the stage on the left side in those ugly turquoise chairs looking at those horrible false sound walls in burnt orange and I left my body.

The symphony takes about 2 hours to play.  The first moments lead me into intellectual interest.  This music was trying to say something, but it wasn't merely a picture.  The soul was in torment and the torment was slow and horrible and sub-conscience and perfectly real- no melodrama.  There were moments of happiness and then they disappeared, I remember at intermission asking on of the boys if this could possibly get any better.

The final movement is set for a huge orchestra and chorus (ala Beethoven only completely different)  They sang about hellish angels and monotony and humanity and faults and God and Faith and disbelief- they sang  philosophy in German with the translations flashed up on the wall.  I never read it; I just knew what they were saying.  My harp teacher and my dear friend Ingrid sat behind their harps on stage and sobbed- on stage they were sobbing.  I remember think quite clearly that I didn't really want to live when this ended- and being frightened by how serious I was.  I didn't want the awful everyday noise to touch me after all this- I just didn't think my mind would be able to handle it.  It might kill my mind.

It didn't- it ended, my hands and dress were wet from my crying.  I never heard the clapping but my hands were red from it.  My theory teacher held my hands and looked hard at me and all he said was, "Now hear the silence."

I heard it- the "resurrection" sound were hidden inside the milling and talking and clanking, were all the sounds I had just reached a state of ecstasy over from the stage.  The "silence" was were it all lived, not on stage.

They clapped when I finished reading this is class and they said they didn't think they could feel this out of music.  I pray that isn't true.  I will morn if there is not something that brings them to this level of life at sometime for them.  Strange, but even now this memory scares me and exhilarates me.  I think I was very close to the edge of something, what I have no idea, but perhaps some day I will see over it and that will beÉ..?  dying?  Really living?  I don't know.

26 Feb 20001

I had my greatest lesson in race come tonight at the hands- the notes- of 6 great jazz musicians.  If the music can obliterate and define race at the dame time we can learn from that and emulate that- listen and imitate- they said "Learn about life from jazz- jazz teaches life!"

Needless to say I came out of the concert flying.  There was so much soul on the stage, surging over us in the music.  I thought how lucky I was to have spirituality, God, given to me so clearly in so many facets of life- I can never doubt his presence in moments such as those.  If the world would really learn from the notes what kind of paradise would we live in?  Just in the issue of race- jazz (goo pure love of the notes and the music) reaches across the color line.  The music was not ever to make money- it was to minister to the soul, to say something - there was never a huge patronage system to force the music into what the elusive "people" wanted to hear- instead the music sat on old wooden porches , mixing with the Arcadia and choosing it's vernacular from the downtrodden ad hopeless.  It slide and rolled around in their mouths, hands, heads saying, "Listen, I will teach you."  So if the music is a gift to you then ego had little place on stage- the wonderful practice of  great jazz musicians bowing to each other- acknowledging the music, the wisdom sitting in the other person.  I was deeply honored to hear such great wisdom tonight.

This was given a complete antithesis by going to hear Patricia Barber at the Green Mill.  The pretension and smoke were choking and the lack of sound was deadening.  Technically , there were not any blues or jazz chords or notes- just minor drudgery.  It was poorly executed jazz from a textbook. With one huge chapter missing- the chapter on life!

Oh well, I will float on hearing real jazz for a long time.

April 5, 2001

I "wrote" the first draft of a choral reading section today.  It was heady and strange.  I had forgotten the feeling, like all the tendons that tie your muscles to your bones had been cut and you had no line of definition in space, that's what it feels like to work in this medium for me.  I wrote a play last year for a history class and the feeling was like this but no nearly as intense.  I lined up all the newspaper article clippings in front of me and they did this little jig and started to take on personalities that naturally wanted to talk to certain other ones.  They wanted to fight, to yell, dance, kiss, slam fists, hold hands, so I let them.  Honestly, the fact that they have little personalities marching around down there o n the paper reminded me of when I was trying to learn multiplication and I made up little stories about all the numbers to explain why certain ones went with certain ones to create say 10.  You see 5 is an incredibly self absorbed number so it made sense that only the dear angelic two could get it to equal the great regal 10.  Silly, but true.  However, today was about history, or rather humanity charging around in my head, faces I didn't know but called by name and hands that reached into my, now undefined, person and pulled me up next to them or was it into them?