Mo

moses loves that his birthday falls in the luckiest of lucky charms months.  green is his favorite color.

Moses turned nine this week.  Here are two things about him:

more shamrock-themed birthday times.

1) Three weeks ago, he discontinued kissing me on the lips.  Some of you will be relieved to hear this.  He at first cloaked it in the excuse that he didn't "want to make me sick," but it was pretty obvious that he's finally figured out that kissing your mom good-bye isn't super cool.  I realize it's time for him to move on, but I can't help feel a bit sad.

lucky rainbow sans pot o' gold.

2)  When he was born, i was convinced he would be dark haired and olive-skinned.  i don't know why. when i first saw his blonde hair and blue eyes,  i think i said something like, "wow, he looks like brad pitt!"  

he's a handsome little dude, and looks almost identical to his father.

composer, singer, mother margot glassett murdoch

i met margot ten years ago, as the soprano lead in the opera my husband, composer christian asplund, and i were producing with seattle experimental opera.  margot has a meltingly, mind-blowingly beautiful voice.  and then there's more.  she's also a composer and composer/performer who pushes boundaries, works in electronic music, and does the hard, hard job of raising three little boys.  any one of these things is impressive, of course, but margot does them all.  and, i think female composers are even more rare than female film directors.  correct me if i'm wrong.  definitely check out her music and her performances whenever you get a chance!

Margot Glassett Murdoch, composer and extended vocalist, received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Brigham Young University and received her Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 2011.  Her dissertation included an analysis of Luciano Berio’s Sequenza III and a cataloging of extended vocal techniques, as well as a piece for electronics, soprano and string quartet.  She has written for a wide variety of ensembles and written most extensively for voice, harp, and electronics.  An enthusiastic teacher, Margot has taught everything from toddler music classes to music theory and ear training at the university level.  As an extended technique vocalist, she has performed with Seattle Experimental Opera, Uba, a Utah based improvisation group, and as an independent soloist performing her own works as well as works of Cage and Berio.  Margot is currently involved with the Salty Cricket Composer’s Collective in Salt Lake City and sings with Ars Nova, a choir dedicated to performing new music.  She is the mother of three young sons and currently resides in Utah.    

You can listen to some of Margot’s work at http://www.margotglassettmurdoch.com/listening/

What do you hope to accomplish this year?

I hope to run a couple half marathons, to have a successful premiere of my piece “Omni Voice” for Loop Machine and Extended Voice, to visit the ocean, and to be able to say at the end of the year that I’ve made good progress in helping my children to become well adjusted and educated.

What inspires you?

In the past, I have been inspired mainly by other art forms, but lately I find the most inspiration in the sciences.  The scientific method has been informing my work lately and I’m particularly enthralled with particle physics.  I’m not going to pretend that I understand the math of such a tough subject; I’m more of a Nova/National Geographic/podcast kind of science fan.  Hearing scientists talk about their quest for the recently confirmed Higgs Boson or hearing about different scientist’s positions on string theory is inspiring to me, because these scientist have a logic and process driven faith in their theories.  It motivates my own thinking to be more critical, and to be more process oriented and skeptical about my work as a musician. 

Are you in a tight place, and if so, what are you doing about it?

In some ways, things are great right now, but I recently found myself on my way to run errands singing/composing pointalistic, Webernish twelve tone rows with the phrase “How am I going to get through this time in my life?” so I guess my place is a bit tight.  This particular moment in the car was preceded by an afternoon with a teething baby, a tantrum throwing preschooler and a hyperactive kindergartener.  Motherhood and I aren’t always harmonious and raising three boys is a tall order.  At times, I do enjoy that I am able to imagine, meditate, and mentally organize while I am doing housework.  I appreciate the brain space the job allows and I feel really centered.  Other times I find the day to day tasks of house keeping and dealing with children to be mind numbing.  I’m bothered that I’m not as eloquent as I used to be or as well read as I’d like to be.  I’m worried that having three kids will have put an irreversible stall in my career and that I’m losing my chance at doing what I love, since academic jobs in my field are hard to come by for even candidates who have it all together.  I know there are seasons to life; I’ve had lots of women tell me this and it is true that my kids won’t require this intense level of care forever.  I know this, but I just have a hard time settling myself down and being OK with now.  I have a hard time trusting the future. 

What I’m doing about my tight place is 1) continuing to compose and staying current in my field 2) participating in “therapy sessions” in the form of running and making music with other people.  Running helps dissipate anxiety or aggression I feel (I feel these often), making music cleans out and organizes my brain, and having regular social contact with other adults combats the isolation induced social awkwardness that, for me, is a bi-product of motherhood.  

What is your favorite legwear?

My favorite legwear is super-light running shorts with the underwear built in.  Not only are they a 2-for-1 clothing garment, which is admirably efficient, but I feel they are my legwear mascot, my clothing metaphor.  They were engineered to serve a purpose without feeling like they serve a purpose.  They stay out of your way, but you can trust them to keep you modest.  I wish it were socially acceptable to wear them all day.    

a faint cri de couer

i think that, buried somewhere in the ridiculous number of posts i've written this year, is something about the viral article from the atlantic from anne marie slaughter, but i don't feel i've yet articulated what has bothered me about the fervent discussion of slaughter's piece, so here it goes again.

today i read a response to this article that moved me, that was salient in so many ways, but that i also feel compelled to rebuke just a little bit.

marie myung-ok lee, a writer and professor at columbia university (not exactly a slouch) talks about the limitations she lives with because of her severely disabled son.  here is one of my two favorite parts of her article (the other part is when she talks about how incredibly adequate her '69 hotpoint stove is for cooking three meals a day, despite her realtor's insistence that no one would cook on that stove.  i really hate renovation fever more than almost any of the other insane white middle-class trends of the 2000's):

When I look at friends and acquaintances, many with perfectly beautiful children and wonderful lives, and see how desperately unhappy or stressed they are about balancing work and family, I think to myself that the solution to many problems is deceptively obvious. We are chasing the wrong things, asking ourselves the wrong questions. It is not, "Can we have it all?" -- with "all" being some kind of undefined marker that shall forever be moved upwards out of reach just a little bit with each new blessing. We should ask instead, "Do we have enough?"

i completely agree with her on this.  .  

what should we be asking?  

how do we know when we have enough, or, how can we re-train our collectively disordered thinking to appreciate our blessings rather than despairing out lacks?  

i don't know.  i suck at that, especially today.

but, 

i can't leave without also speaking in defense of slaughter, whose work has been mischaracterized too often, in my mind.

so many responders, including myung-ok lee, seem to think that slaughter mostly cares about the individual woman's ability to fulfill her personal potential and live a life she feels deeply satisfied with.  certainly individual liberty is very important. but

i think slaughter makes a much broader, more encompassing, and more important point:

when we don't have women in the highest echelons of power, all women of all classes suffer.  and so do all men.  and so do all children.  and trees.  and animals.  

without the female perspective in the halls of power, something crucial is missing.  and, if i may be permitted to generalize, one of the things women seem to bring to the boardroom table is bigger, more communal or collective thinking.  thinking that takes into account the needs of the whole as much as if not more so than the needs of individual parts. there seems to be a world crisis looming, if not already here, because we have not been working holistically enough as a human family.

check out the work of valerie hudson for data that convincingly bears up this assertion.

i just wanted to say, and this is today's cri de couer, that getting sisters up there is more than a matter of individual fulfillment. it's necessary for community survival.

it's late, and i've had a rocky day.  a rocky couple of months, really, so 

hope i made any sense, 

or said something meaningful today. 

deep breath

tonight in my (all female) book club we're reading the conflict: how modern motherhood undermines the status of women by elisabeth badinter.

i'm taking a deep breath.

reading this book was extremely trying.

sometimes i felt affirmed because badinter makes a good point:  the expectations placed on bourgeois mothers can seem (needlessly) herculean (asking us to go well beyond our biological imperative of procreating and surviving), and when the outcomes of your efforts don't match the (herculean) efforts you put forth, you're left wondering

what?

i breastfed!

i used cloth diapers!

i didn't put my kid in childcare!

i hated every minute of doing puzzles on the floor/pushing them on the swings, but i did it anyway.

& now that i have raised a couple of kids, i wonder how much anything i ever did mattered anyway.

was i right to forego a full career?  was that to their benefit or detriment?  would they have benefitted more from seeing me happier and more empowered?

would i have been happier/more empowered with a full time career?

& how about some of the incredibly demeaning experiences i had trying to work and breastfeed, or trying to work in (many!!!) workplaces where bosses and co-workers thought i would be uncommitted/flaky because i had (too many!!!!) children.

oh the tales i could tell.  maybe i will when i'm not feeling so bruised.

(and also guilty for feeling bruised--after all, i have a lot less to complain about than most mothers who have ever walked the earth.)

so, i'm really interested to hear what my peers have to say about this book.  they're all mothers, and several of them have high-powered careers while others have done beautiful full-time work creating homes and being great parents.

(i've done part-time, semi-crappy work both at home and in the work-place.)

and one of them is french, so she can give insight about badinter's assertions that french women have a legacy of separating maternity from motherhood that makes them less prone to be oppressed by cultural expectations of motherhood (as evidenced, in large part, by their low breastfeeding rates in spite of the large presence of la leche league ((those "ayatollahs of breastfeeding", as badinter calls them)) in france.)

so i'm interested.  i really am.

but i'm also a little scared, a little reluctant, and a little nauseated, frankly, by the lacuna--the void--the realization that there seems to be no answer, no solution, at all.

mothering in a tight place, t.v. writing, & vintage brunch time

1965 vintage barbie brunch time outfit= so many wonderful things:  barbies, vintage dresses, cooking & brunch.  and orange heels.

today i had brunch with some fabulous ladies (and one rad dude), cousins of my mother, my aunt bonnie, and my grandma beth.

my mom's cousin c. is legendary in my family, though i didn't meet her until my wedding day (almost 23 years ago).  my mother talked about how glamorous she always was,  how smart.  aunt bonnie told about the breathtaking figure she cut whilst lounging in a 50's rosemary reed black bathing suit by the family-run homestead resort pool.  she was a pioneer in television writing, around the time when television was just beginning, and she was one of the first female television writers.  she wrote for the walton's and falcon crest, most notably.  she also (simultaneously)  spawned and raised up five insanely successful children, including computer programmers, musicians, a deejay with a star on the hollywood walk of fame (and the longest running morning talk show in radio history), and a show runner.  i'm sure they also do other things that i don't even know about.  one of the characteristics of that family is that each of them can do more than one thing at a professional level.

so c. and i had a chance to talk (i fear i hogged her attention) at a brunch for her ??th birthday at the homestead in midway today.  (she lives in santa fe, but was in town for the holiday weekend).  so how do you do it all, she asked me.  i almost choked.  it was the secret i had hoped to pry from her today.  i guess i do a lot of things rather poorly, i said. i suppose i try to be consistent on a few things and let everything else go.  just be barely good enough.  she came back with, well, i suppose i was a bad mother because i was very ambitious.

i love to hear a woman unashamedly and unabashadly admit her ambition.  when she said that, i realized i've almost never heard a woman utter those words.

we talked about whether or not a happy, self-actualized, ambitious mother could be equal to the more attentive, devoted types of mothers.


well, my kids saw me writing on the dining room table, she said, so i think that was good.

sadly falcon crest was thought to be too sexy for teen viewing in my home growing up.  but now i can & will watch as many episodes as i want!!!!!!!

this is one of those questions with no single answer.  what makes a good mother?  i suppose, whatever kind of mother you are, you sure as hell shouldn't feel guilty about it.


i mean, it's a complicated endeavor and it has to take so many forms given the variety of mothers and children, the variety of abodes, cooking methods, birthing methods, safety, and medical care, levels of education and opportunity and freedom available to mothers and children around the world and throughout history. i tend to bristle at any pronouncement on best practices for motherhood, though i do feel as if i've arrived at a decent, certainly not perfect, mothering practice for myself and my children.

(they can tell you their side of the story.)

that's mine.  and i hope to get a lot more out of cousin c. some day.

(in fact, i plan to beg her for a GITP interview some day soon.)

i'm grateful for a chance to know these people, and for the kind attention they've paid me and my family.  

a barbie installation in anselm spring's boulder, ut. garden.  i heart barbie in all her incarnations.