Olympic Orange

It’s 2024.07.01 on the lunar calendar today.

Are you watching the Olympics? I was watching clips with my mom and sister when the Baby Bean asked whether Korea had ever hosted the Summer Olympics. It was one of many reminders that she and I are of a totally different generation. I recall vividly the bag my dad used to tote to and from the gym—a gray duffle with royal blue trimming, branded with the Olympic rings, from when he was a translator at the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988. It makes me think the bar for English translation must have been low back then if my dad, who had limited working proficiency at best prior to moving to the US, could have be an official translator. My mom said the summer games in Seoul is what made Korea famous.

It’s entertaining seeing various characters emerge (e.g., pistol shooters) and inspiring to watch the US gymnastics team when I think about how hard they must train day in and day out. If I knew a gymnast, I would have asked for a video clip for my “Spin” music video below, which is filled with all kinds of things and people spinning.

There are a series of solo-choral pieces on “Orange Hour.” I made videos mapping out each vocal part using scans of photos Gianina took on black & white film on our album shoot. You can listen to the album on the usual platforms, including YouTube.

Now that the music to “Orange Hour” is out, I am prioritizing completing the album book/journal so that it can be printed and distributed by the holidays. There is a lot of work to do. Wondering if I should also include graphic scores of the choral pieces …

I’ll be back at Tuesday Night Cafe this week—this time with Brandon playing guitar. In order to write an intro to our brief set, I was looking back at our first emails and was reminded that we used to meet up in grocery parking lots with some frequency.

What else is on my mind? I was reading a short story by James Baldwin and have been reading and re-reading the excerpt below. It breaks my heart.

“After departure, only invisible things are left, perhaps the life of the world is held together by invisible chains of memory and loss and love. So many things, so many people, depart! and we can only repossess them in our minds. Perhaps this is what the old folks meant, what my mother and my father meant, when they counseled us to keep the faith.”

By the way, did you watch Celine Dion close the Opening Ceremony? When it started playing, I wondered why they were playing the Shirley Horn tune and had no idea it was an Edith Piaf song, originally in French. It’s a beautiful song.