My back hurts like a complete bastard right now. It hurts because I was trying to bribe Sophie and Emma (my dogs) with hot dogs and dog cookies to stay in place while fashioned baseball hats on their head for a "photo shoot."
Good morning.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
i like cleveland
Objective: do/see/eat something interesting in each of the cities I'm auditioning for grad school in, regardless of how the auditions go.
Friday, January 29, 2010
nothing at all to do with this, but i once met pete best and shook his hand
I first heard of J.D. Salinger much like I first got into guitar—all because of Green Day. On their second album the band wrote a song, “Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?” Their singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, said he wrote the song after reading Catcher in the Rye, a book he read only after dropping out of high school. Naturally, in an effort to do everything I possibly could to emulate my hero, I read Catcher, slowly wading my way through a well-torn copy from the library. I still remember book, how the laminated dust jacket and bulletproof hardcover was almost too much protection for the yellowed and tattered pages it ironically failed to protect from disrespectful readers. I checked that damn thing out twice before I finally finished it, falling down both times because my prepubescent self couldn’t relate to 1950’s teenage angst.
The irony of having to read Catcher again in high school was not lost on me. The state-mandated curriculum required students to read a book about a protagonist, not unlike the students themselves, railing against the phonies who didn’t care or want to understand. I used to pretend that schools assigned the book because it’s a classic and that’s what you do with the classics in high school—you read them. Because they’re classics. Personally, I thought Catcher was thrown in the curriculum blindly because it was successful and stood the test of time rather than for its content. No matter how many papers about symbolism I was forced to write, to me Catcher was about figuring out the world on your own terms, seeing and accepting the ugly but still wanting to hold on to something you still thought true.
Of course, high school is the perfect time to read Catcher in the Rye. The themes of innocence lost and growing up are paramount to high school students as they face reality/college/the last years of mandated school. I always associated Catcher with Green Day and the notion of facing reality on your own terms, of taking on whatever may come with that strip of innocence or whatever you wanted to call it bolted firm over your heart. That idea of holding on to innocence was apparently something Salinger never let go. Being literature’s most famous recluse (held up in a secluded rural cabin in the middle of nowhere) gets people talking. Salinger denied interviews, damned any and all press and sued family members’ who wrote autobiographies about their childhood. It’s one thing to be an enigma, but Salinger’s extent made it obvious he had something he didn’t want to give up, that he didn’t want to give anything more of himself away than he already had with his fiction.
I just read an article that hinted at Salinger’s obsession with young girls, but it clearly stated that it wasn’t sexual but actually more about the innocence they had. Less Lolita and more Marsha (Marsha Marsha!) Brady. The thing is you reach a point where you can’t afford to be innocent anymore. Salinger was, I think it’s safe to say, loony tunes style, bat shit crazy (but that’s ok). Still, I can’t help but think that his nature was part of his desire for innocence. He wanted what was his to be his alone, never to be tainted by leering public eyes. It’s almost as if he fell victim to one of his greatest ideas.
When I was in Los Angeles last week I saw an exhibition of a photographer’s portraits of famous people. He did a photo of Hemmingway, looking far more like a rugged, world-weary seaman than an author. This, the same man who put a gun in his mouth because he couldn’t take the critics.
I don’t know…I guess we’ve all got our secrets.
The irony of having to read Catcher again in high school was not lost on me. The state-mandated curriculum required students to read a book about a protagonist, not unlike the students themselves, railing against the phonies who didn’t care or want to understand. I used to pretend that schools assigned the book because it’s a classic and that’s what you do with the classics in high school—you read them. Because they’re classics. Personally, I thought Catcher was thrown in the curriculum blindly because it was successful and stood the test of time rather than for its content. No matter how many papers about symbolism I was forced to write, to me Catcher was about figuring out the world on your own terms, seeing and accepting the ugly but still wanting to hold on to something you still thought true.
Of course, high school is the perfect time to read Catcher in the Rye. The themes of innocence lost and growing up are paramount to high school students as they face reality/college/the last years of mandated school. I always associated Catcher with Green Day and the notion of facing reality on your own terms, of taking on whatever may come with that strip of innocence or whatever you wanted to call it bolted firm over your heart. That idea of holding on to innocence was apparently something Salinger never let go. Being literature’s most famous recluse (held up in a secluded rural cabin in the middle of nowhere) gets people talking. Salinger denied interviews, damned any and all press and sued family members’ who wrote autobiographies about their childhood. It’s one thing to be an enigma, but Salinger’s extent made it obvious he had something he didn’t want to give up, that he didn’t want to give anything more of himself away than he already had with his fiction.
I just read an article that hinted at Salinger’s obsession with young girls, but it clearly stated that it wasn’t sexual but actually more about the innocence they had. Less Lolita and more Marsha (Marsha Marsha!) Brady. The thing is you reach a point where you can’t afford to be innocent anymore. Salinger was, I think it’s safe to say, loony tunes style, bat shit crazy (but that’s ok). Still, I can’t help but think that his nature was part of his desire for innocence. He wanted what was his to be his alone, never to be tainted by leering public eyes. It’s almost as if he fell victim to one of his greatest ideas.
When I was in Los Angeles last week I saw an exhibition of a photographer’s portraits of famous people. He did a photo of Hemmingway, looking far more like a rugged, world-weary seaman than an author. This, the same man who put a gun in his mouth because he couldn’t take the critics.
I don’t know…I guess we’ve all got our secrets.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
another idea
Part of reading travel books—the essays and stories type, not the guidebook type—means that I’m often confronted with the theme of “leaving.” Not necessarily escaping; unless you’ve literally coated your black and white striped garb with dirt during a daring venture, I feel as if the word escape has been co-opted by cruise line companies and vacation adds, encouraging middle America to “escape” their jobs and lives back home for a short period of time. False—it’s not escaping if you eventually come back. Escaping is a tricky proposition.
Leaving, on the other hand, is more attractive. Leaving takes you away under your own terms but leaves the option of coming back open. You leave school, but you can go back to visit. You leave things for safekeeping precisely so you can come back to get them later. With escaping the implication is once you come back you do so to the same grind, the same routine, your “escape” essentially amounting to a prolonged diversion. With leaving, as well-worn saying imply, things are different, having moved along one way or another while you were away. Even if things haven’t inherently changed since you’ve left you come back with new eyes, understanding things—for better or worse—differently. Leaving isn’t as dramatic as escaping—it’s more casual. Escaping is drastic; leaving is calm.
I just finished reading a book about an Aussie leaving London for Paris for a new job, itself the result of blind, dumb luck and chance. I’m reading a book right now about a twentysometing ditching a Manhattan law firm for Brazil. Both deal with the quarter-life crisis dilemma (just like a midlife crisis but swapping male-pattern baldness for hip clothes), both document the authors absolutely clueless as to what the hell they’re doing, and both have that brilliant epiphany where both authors ruminate that they’d rather wake up near destitute and hung over in their new adopted homeland (which they often do) than suffer another day in the former life they’ve left.
Ladies and gentlemen: the new American Dream.
-
My generation is entering what could quite possibly be the worst time imaginable for work. The economy and the job market are in shambles. CEO’s, the glorified position we once aspired to work ourselves up to be, make headlines in controversy and jail sentences. Business school and MBA graduates are applying for entry-level positions alongside recent lay-offs in their mid-50’s, almost mirrors of the future. Today it’s entirely plausible be asked that time-honored query, “When will you get a job?” and respond with blank eyes, “what jobs?” While not utterly hopeless, times, unquestionable, suck.
Maybe the thing to do is the exact opposite of what we’re expected to do. Maybe we need to leave for a while, leave in our own way then return when the world around us is ready. When, eventually, we’re ready.
Leaving, on the other hand, is more attractive. Leaving takes you away under your own terms but leaves the option of coming back open. You leave school, but you can go back to visit. You leave things for safekeeping precisely so you can come back to get them later. With escaping the implication is once you come back you do so to the same grind, the same routine, your “escape” essentially amounting to a prolonged diversion. With leaving, as well-worn saying imply, things are different, having moved along one way or another while you were away. Even if things haven’t inherently changed since you’ve left you come back with new eyes, understanding things—for better or worse—differently. Leaving isn’t as dramatic as escaping—it’s more casual. Escaping is drastic; leaving is calm.
I just finished reading a book about an Aussie leaving London for Paris for a new job, itself the result of blind, dumb luck and chance. I’m reading a book right now about a twentysometing ditching a Manhattan law firm for Brazil. Both deal with the quarter-life crisis dilemma (just like a midlife crisis but swapping male-pattern baldness for hip clothes), both document the authors absolutely clueless as to what the hell they’re doing, and both have that brilliant epiphany where both authors ruminate that they’d rather wake up near destitute and hung over in their new adopted homeland (which they often do) than suffer another day in the former life they’ve left.
Ladies and gentlemen: the new American Dream.
-
My generation is entering what could quite possibly be the worst time imaginable for work. The economy and the job market are in shambles. CEO’s, the glorified position we once aspired to work ourselves up to be, make headlines in controversy and jail sentences. Business school and MBA graduates are applying for entry-level positions alongside recent lay-offs in their mid-50’s, almost mirrors of the future. Today it’s entirely plausible be asked that time-honored query, “When will you get a job?” and respond with blank eyes, “what jobs?” While not utterly hopeless, times, unquestionable, suck.
Maybe the thing to do is the exact opposite of what we’re expected to do. Maybe we need to leave for a while, leave in our own way then return when the world around us is ready. When, eventually, we’re ready.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
an idea
"We practice to create space. This is true for playing a musical instrument, but applies to everything else as well, I think. Practicing creates familiarity. Familiarity creates intimacy.
When we practice playing a piece of music or a scale, we train our brain by using our body. We scrub those neural pathways by moving our fingers. And that creates space. If moving from this note to that note has been trained and ingrained, we no longer have to think about that move and are free to consider other or additional moves. If moving from point A to point B has become utterly natural, then I have established space between those two points in which I can make additional moves. Or, imagine jumping from a rock to another rock. Once that jump has become easy, we might add a turn, a twist or a salto. In music, we might add a new note, a trill, a tremolo, a vibrato… We have created space (or time) in which to make additional moves – or choose not to! The more natural that jump or that piece of music becomes, the more space we have created. Then we have more time and more choice.
I find it important that the space we have thus created should not necessarily be filled with additional notes as we can use that space to embue the sound with more intent or emotion instead. When we no longer have to work at getting to the next note or musical sound, we can enjoy playing the current note with complete conviction."
-Ottmar Liebert
(stolen from his blog)
When we practice playing a piece of music or a scale, we train our brain by using our body. We scrub those neural pathways by moving our fingers. And that creates space. If moving from this note to that note has been trained and ingrained, we no longer have to think about that move and are free to consider other or additional moves. If moving from point A to point B has become utterly natural, then I have established space between those two points in which I can make additional moves. Or, imagine jumping from a rock to another rock. Once that jump has become easy, we might add a turn, a twist or a salto. In music, we might add a new note, a trill, a tremolo, a vibrato… We have created space (or time) in which to make additional moves – or choose not to! The more natural that jump or that piece of music becomes, the more space we have created. Then we have more time and more choice.
I find it important that the space we have thus created should not necessarily be filled with additional notes as we can use that space to embue the sound with more intent or emotion instead. When we no longer have to work at getting to the next note or musical sound, we can enjoy playing the current note with complete conviction."
-Ottmar Liebert
(stolen from his blog)
Saturday, December 26, 2009
sponsored by Tecate
For the past few weeks I’ve been studying the music I’m preparing for grad school auditions by listening to recordings and watching countless guitar videos on youtube. A few nights ago I worked my way through a few recordings of Mexican composer Manuel Ponce’s Sonatina Meridional. I’ve always been curious about Mexican composers—how many can a music student/lover name? True, there’s Silvestre Revueltas, but smart money says his name is just a blip in most music history textbooks, somewhere towards the back of the book in a desperate attempt chapter to balance out the dead white Europeans with the rest of the world. There’s Cesar Chavez, although his name is probably just as popular. Both have symphonies and assorted works floating out there, but how often do you really hear them?
Anyway. Mexico, guitar…right. I was listening to Cuban master Manuel Barrueco’s recording of Sonatina, and a certain passage in the first movement stood out like a knife wound. This one bit is brief and simple: a single note line running up and down, connecting two contrasting sections, a flight Ponce seems to dare the guitarist to showcase and sculpt in some way. Barrueco, for whatever reason, unceremoniously rushes through the line like a child doing chores, as audibly romantic as binary code.
The next morning I scoured youtube for videos of the same piece and found Croatian superstar Ana Vidovic’s interpretation (illegally?) nicked from her new DVD. Same single line passage, nearly identical passionless run through. I have the music (with dynamic markings, I add), I’ve been coached on the piece before, and I’ve heard other recordings, enough to know that there isn’t just one way to interpret the line—it’s just as open to lush imagination as I think it is. Barrueco’s and Vidovic’s versions are separated by a good twenty years, so it can’t be some sort of “in vogue” interpretational statement of the times. What strikes me, however, is the fact that Vidovic studied with Barrueco, and it’s entirely safe to say she didn’t touch this piece until she began working with him.
I shouldn’t be surprised—study with someone and you’re likely to take on their characteristics, especially in music, especially if you’re studying with someone as renown as Barrueco. Still, well on my way to grad school auditions, there’s the unavoidable fact whomever I study with will have an outcome on how I play. Influence aside, I’m reassessing the idea that it’s a matter between processing the lessons like an apprentice or coming out a clone. The legacy of Segovia disciples, in my mind, casts an ominous shadow on the teacher/student relationship (for those not as nerdy as myself, Andres Segovia was/is the granddaddy of classical guitar, and his famous students carry on his romantically rich/archaic style of interpretation with fervor, scolding anyone who doesn’t submit to His style).
Then again, this has always been my skewed view on classical music. I’ve never been one to admit I’m the best student, and I know I’ll never be, but it’s odd to think that for some musicians there’s just one set way to interpret a piece of music—more freedom dilutes the “point” and more conservation stifles the “artistic intent.” What that interpretation may be and what taking it too far in either direction is always up for grabs, but the notion that there is just one way of doing it “right” is, well…
Naturally, not everyone thinks this way, and for me to imply this is the norm throughout the spectrum of classical music is a bastardly generalization. However, I know the totalitarian mentality is out there, and I don’t mean to imply Barrueco thinks this way (although Segovia, notoriously, did), but I’ll play my irresponsible, reckless youth card and say it’s dangerous. I just finished Rob Kaplilow’s brilliant book All You Have To Do Is Listen, and in his chapter about the artist and interpretation he makes the claim that while certain dynamic guidelines are written in for a reason, an artist’s interpretation of a piece will constantly change back and forth to their matured voice, no definite statement solidifying until the piece is finally recorded. I’d like to go a bit further and wonder if, once it’s recorded, pressed and sent off to the stores for sale, isn’t the way the musician played that piece nothing more than just how they felt it should be played at that moment? Just because it’s out there for the public for good doesn’t mean that’s how a musician will feel about a tune for the rest of their career. Things change, attitudes towards gestures, motions and “that one damn note” have every right to flip like a bipolar’s whim.
I hope I get this whole classical music thing sooner or later. Even if I don’t…it’s still kind of fun.
Listening: Imelda May—Love Tattoo
Everyone should own this.
Anyway. Mexico, guitar…right. I was listening to Cuban master Manuel Barrueco’s recording of Sonatina, and a certain passage in the first movement stood out like a knife wound. This one bit is brief and simple: a single note line running up and down, connecting two contrasting sections, a flight Ponce seems to dare the guitarist to showcase and sculpt in some way. Barrueco, for whatever reason, unceremoniously rushes through the line like a child doing chores, as audibly romantic as binary code.
The next morning I scoured youtube for videos of the same piece and found Croatian superstar Ana Vidovic’s interpretation (illegally?) nicked from her new DVD. Same single line passage, nearly identical passionless run through. I have the music (with dynamic markings, I add), I’ve been coached on the piece before, and I’ve heard other recordings, enough to know that there isn’t just one way to interpret the line—it’s just as open to lush imagination as I think it is. Barrueco’s and Vidovic’s versions are separated by a good twenty years, so it can’t be some sort of “in vogue” interpretational statement of the times. What strikes me, however, is the fact that Vidovic studied with Barrueco, and it’s entirely safe to say she didn’t touch this piece until she began working with him.
I shouldn’t be surprised—study with someone and you’re likely to take on their characteristics, especially in music, especially if you’re studying with someone as renown as Barrueco. Still, well on my way to grad school auditions, there’s the unavoidable fact whomever I study with will have an outcome on how I play. Influence aside, I’m reassessing the idea that it’s a matter between processing the lessons like an apprentice or coming out a clone. The legacy of Segovia disciples, in my mind, casts an ominous shadow on the teacher/student relationship (for those not as nerdy as myself, Andres Segovia was/is the granddaddy of classical guitar, and his famous students carry on his romantically rich/archaic style of interpretation with fervor, scolding anyone who doesn’t submit to His style).
Then again, this has always been my skewed view on classical music. I’ve never been one to admit I’m the best student, and I know I’ll never be, but it’s odd to think that for some musicians there’s just one set way to interpret a piece of music—more freedom dilutes the “point” and more conservation stifles the “artistic intent.” What that interpretation may be and what taking it too far in either direction is always up for grabs, but the notion that there is just one way of doing it “right” is, well…
Naturally, not everyone thinks this way, and for me to imply this is the norm throughout the spectrum of classical music is a bastardly generalization. However, I know the totalitarian mentality is out there, and I don’t mean to imply Barrueco thinks this way (although Segovia, notoriously, did), but I’ll play my irresponsible, reckless youth card and say it’s dangerous. I just finished Rob Kaplilow’s brilliant book All You Have To Do Is Listen, and in his chapter about the artist and interpretation he makes the claim that while certain dynamic guidelines are written in for a reason, an artist’s interpretation of a piece will constantly change back and forth to their matured voice, no definite statement solidifying until the piece is finally recorded. I’d like to go a bit further and wonder if, once it’s recorded, pressed and sent off to the stores for sale, isn’t the way the musician played that piece nothing more than just how they felt it should be played at that moment? Just because it’s out there for the public for good doesn’t mean that’s how a musician will feel about a tune for the rest of their career. Things change, attitudes towards gestures, motions and “that one damn note” have every right to flip like a bipolar’s whim.
I hope I get this whole classical music thing sooner or later. Even if I don’t…it’s still kind of fun.
Listening: Imelda May—Love Tattoo
Everyone should own this.
Friday, December 4, 2009
a question
I just read an article about Leonard Bernstein and the classes he taught/lectures he gave while teaching at Tanglewood.
When making appropriate decisions about flow, is there really that much difference between programming an orchestra concert and carefully crafting a mix tape?
When making appropriate decisions about flow, is there really that much difference between programming an orchestra concert and carefully crafting a mix tape?
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