deeanndmathews 3Speak Podcast

I enjoy walking through Golden Gate Park ... every day is a little different, and never without its charms! This was a simple summer day in August that I loved, and I delight in sharing it with you at about the pace I was walking .... time to take everything in and see the most remarkable things that I saw through a set of photographs. All of these were taken on my generic Android phone, and these were the best of what was about thirty minutes of walking and snapping! On Hive I often write of my deep thoughts about life, music, and faith while walking in the near meadows of Golden Gate Park, but the near meadows to me is actually the Panhandle section on the maps in San Francisco!

I cannot compose music quite fast enough so that you can hear all that I hear as a composer -- someday when I have more time to write but thank you to composer Liborio Conti for the use of his wonderful music to provide the relaxation vibes!

I read the week's theme and the song came to me:

Let's go for a coffee,

Right after a walk,

The espresso is frothy

As we sit down and talk.

It's a beautiful morning

And a beautiful day,

Another great dawning

To love you always!

Had it been "Let's Go for Gelato," I would have been able to make it a perfect match to the years I spent walking with the love of my life ... but I got the meaning across in this way anyhow!

I want to thank @justclickindiva for letting me know about the Creative Sparks Community, and I'd like to let @tegoshei and @bleujay know about it!

Life has been lifing since 2022, and something happened to me in the past few years that I thought never would: I am a composer and pianist who has never lost the ability to compose and arrange at need, but just for the joy of music and the joy of sharing it ... not so much.

But this weekend, I sang for a mentor's 83rd birthday ... he and his wife had a Zoom celebration, and I was able to bless across the country because the allergies just ended the night before -- I literally noticed the night before that I was getting better.

My mentor said to me, "I felt like I was in Heaven!" and no one seemed unhappy!

Afterward, I cried ... that reminded me of why I am a musician ... I was gifted by God to gift others, and when all the trials and pains and struggles are stripped away, *I still have the gift, and it is still available to bless, all around.*

That unlocked the joy I had lost, and that unlocked me ... it was like suddenly turning the clock back to before the pandemic ... the joy of music came back.

I recorded a quick demo at the piano of a song I am offering a singer I know -- I'm reconnecting with other musicians I know, calling the studio -- it all came back and there was enough to move forward on all the things I have been slowly working on by sheer force of will, knowing I was called and thinking "If I can just keep going ... I know this is what I am supposed to be doing, and I am built for it, even though right now I can't feel it." There have been flashes of that "joy power" during these projects to keep me going, to let me know I was on the right track and should just keep going

But there was still one last thing to see ... could I improvise again at the piano, just compose on the spot for no reason except that @justclickindiva told me about this?

Let's find out together!

(Spoiler alert: YES! Thank God!)

This is a random, hilarious moment of me getting ready for a church concert, with a lot of history attached ...

African music in North America is a long story of triumph over great oppression ... beginning with my enslaved ancestors taking the music they brought with them and keeping it although blending it with new ideas from English-language hymns and folk songs. This is the origin of the Negro Spiritual, the sweetest music out of the greatest human oppression of the modern age. Chattel slavery sought to destroy the humanity of the enslaved down to the soul. The Negro Spiritual is the first evidence of the failure, the deepest body of music produced in the Americas, and one of the parents of jazz, blues, and gospel music.

But the other parent, the work song, is very much neglected, and although the Negro Spiritual and its more elevated themes and souns made it to the concert hall and the admiration of Europeans and their idea of a Christianity that allowed for a Sunday to be holy and peaceful and calm and devoid of any reminder of the suffering their choice of enacting colonialism and slavery , the work song and its closer connection to the African chant and drums was not embraced as readily ... and thus, as Black people embraced Christianity and at last began to hope to be accepted into Eurocentric Christian circles, Black Christians began to be afraid of both jazz and blues ... as if Africa itself and all its contributions that could not be pigeonholed as chattel were unholy.

It is 2025. I am 44 years old, and still having conversations with frustrated people who get scared when younger musicians use jazz chords and blues scales in church ... churchiness does not include five-note chords and flat fifths and progressions of that sort ... although both Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk played for church groups, and if you really listen, the only major difference between traditional gospel and traditional blues is really the lyrics...

I am free of the old prejudices because I am studied enough as a musician and a Christian to know that God loves every sound in music that Africans in America brought here, and that all of it can be used for His glory ... so I tickle myself sometimes doing traditional gospel progressions and listening to the great jazz musicians I have studied coming right on out in a harmonious blend. This was such a moment!

"Trouble In My Way" is a big-time traditional gospel song, and as an arranger I have been looking at the chant section in it on the phrase "Jesus, He Will Fix It" ... as both arranger and composer i look at repetitive phrases from the bass side for variety ... I always start out traditional but things can get interesting in a hurry when one has Jelly Roll Morton and Thelonious Monk under one's hands too... and because I am not afraid of my full musical heritage, what happens is what happens!

I've been thinking about "Autumn Leaves" for months, but then I thought about my actual feelings ... I ran into an old love on the second Sunday of the autumn ... the love is still there although the time has past for it to be what we wanted it to be ... but the love is still there ... I choose to remember ... and that is how this song came to mind, on a day in which my allergies were saying, "You can't even sing!" But that gave me time to work this out, for a Hive world premiere in Hive Open Mic!

Lyrics:

When summer's brightest hopes and dreams and gone and passed away,

And darkness seems to creep up more and more on every day,

I remember the love!

I remember the love!

(The photo is from a walk I took on Sept. 23, 2024 ... that flaming beauty in the middle of all that green stood out to me ... like a vivid memory)

I did not know Hive had its own Hive Onboarding Committee until I sat down with @bitcoinman to tell him my Hive story -- and did I ever learn from him! I'm looking forward to future collaboration, and I'm also going to be adding the HOC templates and onboarding guide to the next edition of Things Ms. Dee Likes, my Hive newsletter!

One of my favorite hymns ... one of the favorite hymns of all time ... full of more meaning for me now because literally, through many dangers, toils, and snares I had to come this year ... but the grace of God never has failed me!

The two verses of thirteen available (1) I chose to sing:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now I'm found

Was blind, but now I see!

Through many dangers, toils, and snares

I have already come

'Twas grace that brought me safe thus far

And grace will lead me home.

So often as I am writing I hear music ... and sometimes music around the music ... Strauss's song took me through 31 years of emotions and realizations, and the tune is absolutely fabulous ... so, as bonus material to my longer writing coming up, I went on and recorded myself singing the added verses in the appropriate keys, singing both ends of my range to do it.

This song has a bit of complicated history ... the original was written by Jeremiah Rankin in 1882, but it looks like Mahalia Jackson did her own version which is still a bit different than the version I learned ... such is the nature of gospel music, given 141 years for people to work on a song ... here is my contribution to the work, and, because I am not sure of the copyright issues around this, I am also declining rewards, so, SAVE YOUR VOTES PLEASE, and just enjoy -- God be with you, and just enjoy the blessing!

God be with you, God be with you,

God be with you until we meet again!

God be with you, God be with you,

God be with you until we meet again!

If we never more shall meet you,

If we never more shall greet you,

God be with you until we meet again!

Keep on trusting in the Master --

He'll be with you, here and after!

God be with you until we meet again!

Sometimes I get flashes of music while working on fiction, or remember musical flashes for the past ... this cliimax for a gospel song is beyond the scope of anyone I am working with now (including ME, really, most days as a contralto) has been rolling in and out of my head, and it fit the freewrite I am about to finish in Freewriters Community on Hive today -- so I will share this snippet on Hive, and at the right time, come back, get it, finish the song, and, when the Lord grants me the singers and choir, put this all the way out!

The context of this in the freewrite is Capt. R.E. Ludlow, a military veteran, recalling all the things he has been through in his life, and realizing that he would not have made it unless the Lord had kept him ... so, when he hears Sallie Stone singing this bridge, he connects spiritually and emotionally to it in a way that gets through his emotional scar tissue at last:

Lyrics:

It could have been me, sleeping in my grave,

But You made old Death get back and behave –

There's no kind of lost that I could not be

Except You, my Lord, keep on keeping me!

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!