Sinophobia: the Drums of War

Sinophobia (anti-Chinese bigotry) is the great socially acceptable form of bigotry you can openly display in America today - endorsed in the news media without anyone batting an eyelash, appearing even in campaign speeches from both major political parties. It may seem like just some cultural phenomenon not worth being concerned about, harmless fun until "politically correct" liberal killjoys speak up, but bigotry is how war is made possible. We all see each other as human beings, until we agree to separate ourselves into groups. Then soldiers can find excuses to part with their humanity and kill.

Whatever America's shortcomings, it still has the world's largest economy - for now. The greatest driver of all our military action since World War 2, including the cold war, has been perceived threats to our economic might. (Even a mere economic idea - communism, for which I am no apologist - was worth taking up arms against, just because it is a fundamental rejection of capitalism, and that frightens us.) The economies of the rising superpowers of India and China will rival ours in just a few short decades. Do not buy the idea (articulated in the documentary I.O.U.S.A.) that China and the U.S. are too economically interdependent to ever go to war - economists were making the same argument about the modern nations of Europe until 1914, as pointed out by Niall Ferguson in his book The Ascent of Money.

Vigilance about bigotry isn't a trifling matter for uptight hall monitors of "political correctness". It's a duty for those who desire peace, who do not want to see our children and grandchildren kill each other over the end of an empire.

TV sucks

It seems to me there could be an excellent documentary made about 9/11. If I made it, I'd call it "Causes and Effects" or something. Let's place it in historical context. What is Al Qaeda, what attacks did it previously carry out? Who was Osama Bin Laden and who were the mujahideen? Who is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? How did the escalation of the war on terror change Al Qaeda? How has it warped our relations with Pakistan? Who were the hijackers? What is the history of airplane hijacking and how did our system for responding to it make the attacks successful? What role did Islam play? What is the history of suicide attacks and their relation to religion? (kamikaze pilots, Hezbollah, Tamil Tigers, Hamas, IRA) How did the truther movement come about and what is its cultural impact? What already-existing political goals became easier to achieve thanks to the attacks? (Iraq war, Patriot Act) How did 9/11 change airport security, how did it change how airline passengers react to saboteurs, and which of these changes are efficacious? What impact did 9/11 have on art, music, literature, and film? What about the impact on news media culture? (U.S. media voluntary self-censorship, Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera) What about torture, rendition, and the further privatization of the military?

There are all sorts of additional curiosities like the subset of liberals who had been clamoring for intervention in Afghanistan - on the basis of women's rights - who then suddenly shifted to being opposed to intervention. Or the fact that we switched sides in Afghanistan, playing the role that the Soviet Union once played there. Or how we combined the war on drugs with the war on terror, deliberately destroying the crops of poppy farmers.

I have to judge the zillion documentaries playing on TV yesterday all nearly identical, and in that light, all terrible. Not only did they barely scratch the surface, they played like a voyeuristic True Crime special, for people who already know the barest details of the story to relive them and evoke the emotions we felt on that day. I don't deny the power of that emotion and significance of the change in how we viewed the world, but the superficiality of these T.V. specials banks on viewer's lack of curiosity. Maybe most others wouldn't watch a tedious ten-part academic exercise, but I do think most of us are capable of recollecting 9/11 as something more than a cheap thrill. I think the American people are being underestimated.

setting a practice schedule

In the past, I have not been very good at planning my practice time when I learn a piece on short notice. If I have two months, for example, I tend to do most of the practicing in the last two or three weeks... and this has a negative effect on the quality of my performances (Walton and Mendelssohn come to mind). Now that I have three weeks to learn the Brahms G minor piano quartet, for once, I am realizing at the outset that I have to make some kind of plan, if I am going to produce a credible runthrough. Even though this is a pickup group and we are only playing for each other, I would still like to be prepared and reliable.

Given that weekends are unpredictable in terms of how much time I will have to practice, and given that Carol works weekdays, likes attention, and is a bit mercurial when it comes to how she plans her weekends, I have sixteen weekdays, counting today, from now until the 27th, when I am meeting with the string players. The quartet is a massive piece - four movements, each about ten minutes long. Instead of starting from the first movement and working forward, which is a bit open-ended and likely to result in unhealthy cramming for the final movement at the last minute (see: Hindemith), I intend rather to give the most practice time to the most difficult passages, which means that I will learn the movements in the following order: fourth, second, first, third. So today, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, I will work on the Presto finale. Wednesday through the following Monday, I will add the Allegro intermezzo - it is fast and light, which is the most challenging sort of playing for me. The rest of that week, I can work on the Allegro opening movement, and then I can spend the week of Monday the 23rd working on the Andante. I did not count Friday the 27th among the sixteen days - it's rare that practicing anything the new on the day-of can be of any benefit. That will be a day purely of review.

Granted, the movements are not all equal in difficulty, even though I divided the sixteen days up into four equal groups of four days. But in reality the more difficult movements will get more attention, as I will be only playing the Presto at first, then two movements together, then three movements, then the whole piece.

That is a plan, at least. My plans frequently don't quite come to fruition as I naively expect them to. But having made a plan in this case is progress for me.

Carol and me

Part 3/3 of Lady's story. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here.

Carol and I could not stand there long, and we moved inside to lie down in her old bedroom and cry in each other's arms. At thirty-four years old, I am very old for this to have been my first real experience with death, which in part explains the strength of my own reaction. I knew Lady when she was healthy, when she got sick, and when she died. I knew her life story and all her relevant details. I couldn't say all these things for any person that I can recall, unfortunately. I had spent some time with my paternal grandparents when I was young, but I was living far away when they died, I had not seen them for years, and I was not able to travel for the funerals.

So it was a strange new sensation to realize there is tension at such a time, between caring for the living and the dead, or more properly, between caring for the bereaved and seeing that other people's needs are still met. Carol's father was in the hospital recovering from heart surgery, Lady needed to be put to rest, and Carol's brother and grandmother needed lunch. Carol is hit hardest, but it hurts me as well. I need to care for Carol, and Carol needs to care for others. I can help her, but I can not take over all her duties; she is the only one in her family fluent in English.

We took Johnson out for lunch, brought food home to Grandma, and took Johnson to visit Allen in the hospital, before returning to Lady. She had to be wrapped up for delivery to the humane society, but Carol and I were exhausted from the combination of grief and the tedium of having to continue caring for everyone else. Part of me could not bear to walk away from her bedroom and take care of business, but I was able to recall a pertinent phrase we have all come to recognize from novels and films: "We must care for the living." I suppose it is a good thing that such a phrase cannot be insistently and callously delivered, in the manner of Spock. My voice caught when I said it, but such reticence makes us human.

I wrapped Lady in a pair of towels and laid her in the back of my car. I was for the first time able to develop some sense of why we feel fear in connection with corpses. Perhaps it is merely an evolutionary advantage, as corpses carry disease, but that only explains selection, not how such a fear is constructed in the first place. I realized that for all my philosophical materialism, a mammal, a person, a pet, is still more than a thing to me, while it is alive. But I looked down at Lady as I struggled to wrap up her unyielding body, as I retched from the smell of her last messy bowel movement, and shook the drops of urine off the sheet I had temporarily wrapped her in, I realized that Lady was not in there any more, which meant that this thing was not Lady's body, it wasn't Lady at all. It was just a thing. And that was horrifying.

Her eyes, permanently fixed open, were unhelpful. They did not stare, they did not accuse me, but I realized that there is a practical reason I see people in movies quickly close the eyes of corpses the moment the anima is gone: you'll want it done eventually, for your own comfort, but if you wait for rigor mortis then it will be too late. And in my horror I realized the open eyes must have meant that Lady was awake when she died.

Oh, how I wish I had spent more time with her, that last night! How I wish I had just brought her to our house for the first time, on her last night alive, so she would not die alone in the cold. But how can you know? How can anyone ever know?

Beyond my inexperience with death, and my object lesson in it from having to care for Lady's remains, the other source of the intensity of my grief was seeing the effect of the loss on Carol, who I love. By the time we had finished all our duties to everyone besides Lady, and prepared her to be moved, it was 5 PM. The nearest humane society closed at 6, and had asked that we show up no later than 5:30 to fill out paperwork. As we rode in the car, Carol suddenly cried out: "I'll get you there in time, Lady! I'll do this one last thing for you! I won't let you down!" It is this least rational thing that she could say that has been the most moving moment of the past three days, and tears flooded my eyes, momentarily obscuring the other cars and the road from view. I do not think I can adequately explain it. Perhaps it is how such a loss can take away a person's reason. I do not know. I do not mean to say that I thought Carol foolish or stupid. Not at all - even if she actually believed on some level that Lady could hear her or that Lady could feel anything, such as the need to show up on time, that made no difference to me. It was simply a strangely eloquent and impassioned outpouring of her grief.

Carol spends her life making sure she doesn't let anyone down. She has organization, responsibility, punctuality, all those qualities I sneer at. But I confess I have been unkind to her in my thoughts. I have thought of her as not being very good at compassion, caring, human decency. I now realize how foolish I was. Carol didn't only take Lady on over one thousand walks in fifteen years because Lady was a comfort to her. Carol also genuinely cared about her pet's needs and wants and desires, and wanted to make her happy. Whatever her faults, she is a decent human being after all and I should have seen it all along.

The humane society was very busy and while the staff were clearly harried, they were still kind and helpful. Carol said her good-byes, they took Lady away, and we sat in the car for a moment. In the car in the space facing us, were two middle-aged women. One of them was holding a pamphlet. Please, no. As Carol and I sat there, one of them approached her window and knocked on it. I rolled down the window and the woman began speaking, saying she had lost her dog, too. I was pretty sure I could see where this was going, but I prefer not to assume the worst about people; I like to give them a chance.

Carol normally hates being approached by strangers, but she was telling the woman about Lady, so I made no objection and made a few polite noises. An awkward pause arrived, and to help prevent the woman from being a jerk, I said "well, we have to go." But she couldn't resist, and she produced the pamphlet, which made mention of a "virgin birth" on the cover. (Despite the fact that the virgin birth is a meme Christianity plagiarized from many previous religions and legendary figures, I don't think any other group has worked to hard so make it quite such a selling point. Not that I cared which particular superstitious nonsense this loathsome woman was peddling.) "You're being very rude. Taking advantage of a time like this to try to push your religion on someone," I admonished her. "I'm not... I wasn't..." she sputtered. "Good-bye," I helpfully offered, and she mercifully made an exit. She is, and she was. Should it have to take someone pointing it out for evangelicals to realize what a despicable thing they do, preying on the vulnerable? I recalled the words of Christopher Hitchens, who had left us less than a week before Lady. Religion, again, had poisoned everything.

The likelihood that all this comes off as a whiny tale of an overprivileged pair of Americans who have the luxury to lavish so much time and energy and emotion on a mere pet is not lost on me. In the Congo, in Syria, in Palestine, in Bangladesh, today, people are suffering. My girlfriend lost a dog, while human beings are living without freedoms I take for granted and they may lose their lives or the lives of their loved ones to violence and oppression. I know this. In this very country, blacks, women, gays, and transgender people face violence, and institutionalized discrimination; immigrants from the countries to the south face economic oppression, and white privileged guys like me and wealthy Taiwanese immigrants are blissfully unaffected. And yes, the beagle lived a long life. I don't mean to frame Lady's tale as a personal tragedy for me. What I mean to have said is that Lady helped me understand both life and death, and she helped avert Carol from thoughts of suicide and made her a better person.

I have not yet read Martin Rowson's humorously titled The Dog Allusion (referencing Dawkins' seminal The God Delusion), which argues, in part, that people should not keep pets, but it is no longer merely in the abstract that I see that Rowson is wrong - it is good for people to keep pets. It helps prepare us to be good parents, and it helps us understand death. I have come late to this experience, yet I benefit from it, and children surely benefit from it even more.

And now I understand grief better. Carol has repeated several times in the last few days: "I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do..." This inspired me to realize, even as I was pointing it out, that "You are doing exactly what you are supposed to do. You don't have to do anything. You have to grieve. There would be something wrong with you if you didn't. I will take care of you."

I have had several very real opportunities in the past three days to play the part of Ricky Gervais in The Invention of Lying. Carol has made comments to the effect that she hopes that one day when she dies, she can see Lady again, and it breaks my heart. I never realized that the scene where heaven is invented could translate into real life so literally. Mostly I have been gracious enough not to respond to these entreaties, but I have gently said, at opportune moments, words like "I believe that Lady is gone, but she lives on in your memories. That is where Lady is now." For the past three days, Carol has mostly referred to Lady in the present tense, but finally, while she was falling asleep for the night, she made some fond comment in the past tense. I think she is beginning to heal, and I do not begrudge her intentions to keep Lady's ashes in an urn in the parlor, and to keep the shades in that front room always open. She will finally be inside, and she will like the sunlight. I understand that Carol merely wishes to be comforted.

I hope I have done well.

Lady and Me

Lady's story, Part 2 of 3. Part 1 is here.

On a Saturday this past September, the three of us all set out for a walk. Holding the leash, I started briskly, encouraging Lady to run, but before a couple dozen paces I realized her heart was not in it; she was barely keeping up with me, instead of the usual reverse. I slowed to a walk. Carol caught up with us and I remarked with surprise on the beagle's unusual restraint. I mused that Lady must finally be feeling her years - fifteen of them by now, and Carol agreed sadly. It turns out it had been a few weeks since she had last wanted to run.

At some point, past the halfway mark, and on the return trip, I noticed what appeared to be something odd on the side of Lady's neck. Carol removed the collar and we took a closer look. Something dry, fleshy and pink was protruding a full centimeter from the fur, but seemed to be part of Lady herself. I had no idea what it could be (in retrospect, it should have been fairly obvious, but who willingly summons such an explanation to mind?), but I thought that we should call a veterinarian without delay. She didn't seem to be in pain, so she didn't need to be rushed to emergency care, but we should probably call, get some information, and make an appointment. Carol called Allen and he agreed; a vet was contacted, and Lady was to come in Sunday, the following day. Lady's body was scanned and her blood sampled and whisked off to the lab for testing. On Monday, the tests came back: it was definitively cancer. On Tuesday, she had surgery and the tumor was excised.

Apparently, the scan had not revealed any other tumors, but Carol related that the vets had told her Lady might require chemotherapy in addition to surgery. Despite it not being my decision in any way, I said I thought that didn't sound like a good idea. Chemotherapy is an unpleasant experience, I opined, and a dog is not able to have the process or the reasons for it explained for them. I reasoned that Lady had lived long past the median life expectancy for beagles, and probably only had a year or two left even if she beat the cancer, so it didn't seem rational to make her suffer only to get a little extra time, whereas if she were, say, two years old, the tradeoff would have been worth it.

Most of this turned out to be officious, mansplaining blather. Chemotherapy was indeed recommended: five treatments over a few months. But, it turns out, animals receive a much lower dose than humans do. It is much less strenuous, and their hair does not fall out. She was out of the animal hospital within a couple days, and soon started her chemo regimen and resumed her walks with Carol. The vets said that Lady was "responding well" to the treatment.

Yet her running days appeared to be over. The new Lady was still enthusiastic about walking, digging, and sniffing, but she was more subdued. The vet said that she could be expected to live up to another year and a half. Somehow I didn't really think about how the distribution of probabilities was likely to look given such a low maximum life expectancy. Again, who likes to think about such things? (Randall Munroe is one statistics geek who has had to. Stephen Jay Gould was another.)

I went to an evening concert this past Monday, not far away in Altadena. I turned my phone on to check my messages at intermission, and received an unusual kind of message from my girlfriend. We had not had any recent discussion of Lady's condition, but the message abruptly and curtly stated:

 Taking doggie to the vet now. 1412 Huntington dr. Meet me there.

Carol rarely asks me for anything outright, and almost never simply issues a command. I am used to an elaborate dance around a subject before she asks for anything, and even then indirectly. For her to be so direct, and without any precursors, was a sign that this was an unusual circumstance and I should comply without question. I said my good-byes and sped to the emergency clinic. Lady could not walk; she refused to go anywhere, and she was being kept overnight to be diagnosed by a vet in the morning. On Tuesday, tests were done, and on Wednesday, the verdict was returned she had damaged the radial nerve in her right front leg.

Carol brought Lady back to her parent's on Wednesday night; apparently the job of diagnosing and delivering instructions on aftercare had been done, without anyone bothering to give an estimate on the chance of recovery, or the cause of the nerve damage. If it was trauma, it would be good to know that she could then recover, and advice on how to prevent any more injuries would have been helpful. If it was a degenerative nerve condition, then she'd never recover and euthanasia should be at least discussed. The relative merits of for-profit health care of any kind are worth considering here - I can only surmise that no one took initiative to discuss these things with the responsible party, because no one was being paid to, and it was easier not to.

Because Lady was still unable to walk, Carol made plans to move her in with us. Although she would have to sleep in the yard, neither of us minded that - our backyard is enclosed with a brick wall that an old dog cannot jump, and naturally we cared more about the Lady's recuperation than some torn up grass, if she even had the strength to dig. Staff at the clinic had said that a pet of her age and in her condition should be fed several times a day instead of once in the morning; I agreed to take on these duties.

Her cage was old and damaged, and we needed a lot of supplies for her recovery, so she was returned to Carol's parents' house for one more night; we would shop for supplies and a new cage the following day and transport her. She was not eating, perhaps due to nausea, so we were to administer an antacid. She was being kept close to the house now, in her transport cage for the night, with blankets draped over the top for the cold, and soft blankets and toys inside as well. As I opened the cage and called her name, she turned her head to me, but did not move. Even given her deterioration in the fall, this was a startling change from the dog I had known. Her fur was matted and dirty. I pulled her out and held her in my arms; she struggled a bit as Carol pried her jaws open, but relented after I tilted her head back and put the pill in her mouth, and she resignedly chewed and swallowed her medicine. Oh well, if you must. Not much I can do about it, is there? Despite this rather unpleasant treatment at my hands, after I replaced her in her cage, Lady looked at me and thumped her tail against the floor several times, and I felt a little less guilty as I replaced the sheet on top of the cage. It was the last time anyone saw her alive.

Carol's shopping list:
Bowls
Food
Flippers
Leash
Sheets, Blankets
Cage
Dogloo
Pill Pockets
Pill Poppers
Protective Booties?
Dog Bath Shampoo

In the morning, we ate breakfast and returned to Carol's parents' house, hoping to get her to eat. As I approached the cage, I called out "Lady, the Tramp is here!" I did worry that she might be gone. I was whistling in the dark, a bit, as if my lame joke could make things better. I leaned down to pull back the sheet and opened the door to the cage. At the same moment that I reached for her, Carol burst out "Oh, no! Look, her leg!" Lady was not moving and did not react to us. I reached out and touched her belly; it was rigid, and I knew the worst. Her leg was pushed out the side of the cage, unmoving - surely if she had been alive it would have caused great discomfort to her and she would have tried to adjust her position. I give all these details because I could not bring myself to check her pulse or her breath.

I turned to Carol and shook my head slowly, stricken. At first her reaction was mild. "She could just go, like that, in her cage?" she said in disbelief. "Her belly is rigid," I said. Before long it fully sank in and Carol was wailing. "Lady, wake up! Lady, wake up!" she kept repeating, as we both cried and I held her.

Part 3 of 3: Carol and me

Lady and Carol

Carol and I began dating at the end of summer in 2009.  It was not long before I was introduced to her thirteen year old beagle, Lady, who lived behind Carol's family's house.  The decision had been made early on in Lady's puppyhood that it was not worth the effort to attempt to housetrain her - Carol's parents had their hands full with their business, Carol had her hands full with her junior year of high school, and the house's only other resident at the time was Carol's younger brother Johnson, who has Down Syndrome.  So an outdoors life for the beagle it was.  It may seem odd, then, that a decision would be made to acquire a pet at such a time, but Carol was battling depression, and her parents hoped that a faithful companion would be of some comfort.

They moved several times over the years, as the family business grew and prospered.  Despite an uncontrollable itching which Carol would experience whenever she spent time with her new pet, she walked her faithfully two or three times a week, quite willing to accept the inconvenience of needing a shower after every walk.  Allen, Carol's father, was responsible for feeding the dog every morning, and he would regularly take her for walks as well, although after he broke his leg in 2001, he scaled back his walking a duties a bit, out of concerns that the energetic animal's pulling on the leash might possibly trip him up and cause some recurrence of his injury.  Still, he walked her about once a week.  The rest of the household displayed little interest in the canine addition to the family, so Carol and Allen were the principal objects of Lady's affection.

As for Carol, she graduated from high school and briefly attended UNC Chapel Hill, but returned home and finished her studies at PCC and UCLA.  She hung around the house, depressed, playing video games as a distraction, not knowing how to find a feeling that her life was worth something, until she gradually became more and more absorbed in the family business.  She became quite good at it, eventually becoming accepted as an integral part of it, and offered an equal share of ownership.  She lost sixty pounds, delighting in her new figure.  The weight loss revealed the clear lines of a delicate jaw and elegant cheekbones.  Boyfriends came and went, one hanging around for six years.  Lady was with her for it all, their regular walks being the only constant of Carol's own choosing in her life.  Never one to connect much with her peers, or retain close friends, Carol instead confided in her digging, sniffing, leash-tugging companion, retelling her struggles, hopes and fears in Taiwanese to her British dog as they walked the local roads of the San Gabriel Valley together.

Carol and I met after the family had finally settled in Arcadia, where Lady's domain - oddly - was an unused, fenced-in tennis court in the backyard; I suppose the hard court prevented the wholesale uprooting of the lawn. (I recently inquired about this digging compulsion - "Did she ever find anything?"  But apparently her habit was merely to dig a deep enough hole to create a little shade for her to lie in.) A doghouse was set up inside, to protect her from the elements when necessary.  Clearly, the mild southern California climate made such an arrangement workable.

Early on I realized that Lady was not what I normally expected from a dog.  While not hostile or standoffish, neither was she particularly keen on being petted or played with.  She loved for her favorite people to take her for a walk - if you so much as picked up her leash, kept next to the house, she would immediately wake from dozing in her doghouse a hundred feet away, and come bounding across the court to pant eagerly by the gate.  But like an autistic child (I would know), she didn't feel a strong urge to interact directly with the people she loved, preferring simply to have them nearby while she was doing her favorite things: the aforementioned running, digging, and sniffing.  And she displayed interest in neither the friendly overtures nor the aggressive provocation from other dogs she'd meet at the dog parks or in yards she passed on her walks.  The running did get her in trouble a few times, once breaking loose from the median on Huntington Drive - running through traffic, fortunately unharmed, until a passerby rounded her up - and at other times, getting separated from Carol completely, but finding her way back home on her own, or wandering the neighborhood until being rescued by an impromptu search party.  For this reason, Carol would choose among a very short list of paths for their walks, knowing that the monotony might bore the dog a little, but reasoning that it gave her the best chance of finding her way home after one of these inevitable escapes.

This introverted beagle, more than just loving her walks, also experienced an indescribable anguish at the prospect of being deprived of them, as well.  I learned, after a couple harrowing experiences, that upon returning her from a walk, I could never walk back out through the gate; somehow this signified to the dog that I was going for a walk, but without her, and she would howl disconsolately for what seemed like an eternity.  If I re-entered the house through the back door, as Carol pointed out, the crisis could be averted.

Part 2: Lady and me
Part 3: Carol and me

How Bethany Church helped me become an atheist

I have, on many occasions, been asked questions that carry a pile of false assumptions, and it is much more interesting to try to address the underlying misconceptions than to attempt to answer.  For example, "Why did you stop being a Christian?"  An important error there is the assumption that the rationale I gave when I decided I was no longer a believer is the same as the reasons I would give today.  "Why are you not a Christian?" is a better question, but I think there is an important issue that still needs to be addressed before launching into a discussion of this topic - and a discussion it must be.  There can be no short answer, because the question "Why are you a Christian?" rarely admits of a concise response, either.   I think religious people in general do have a wide variety of reasons they believe.  To stop believing requires much more than just one of these foundations of belief being challenged or even overturned.

As a side note, this is partly why I disagree with those atheists who say that arguments with the religious can never bear fruit, just because no one changes their mind just as a result of one conversation.  No, it takes many conversations, with many other thinking beings than yourself.  The general reluctance of nonbelievers to respond to proud, public affirmation of belief in absurdities surely must help to prop up the faith culture.

So, because I, like most Christians, was a believer for many reasons, not just one, it was also not for only one reason that I one day found I was no longer able to believe.  It can be a difficult process for the apostate to deconstruct after the fact.  The thinking person's loss of faith, by necessity, is not a conscious process.  It is no secret that religious belief, the more detailed and counterintuitive it is (American Christians may read that as "the more fundamental and evangelical it is"), requires active maintenance.  Because worship and prayer and church groups are all part of this act of rationalization and reinforcement via groupthink, a critical mind can find its path away from belief through immersion in the very culture that is designed to prop it up.  I am lucky in that my wariness of self-deception and desire for rationality served me well in this regard.  I do not claim credit, for I did not choose these traits - perhaps I am merely fortunate that there were books in my home and my preference for solitude and lack of access to video games led to enough reading to cultivate my mind.  (Ironically, C.S. Lewis and other apologetics featured prominently in this reading.)

I hardly intend to enumerate here my objections to faith, as more eloquent writers than I have tackled the subject at length in recent years, and they succeed in filling such tomes as "God: The Failed Hypothesis" and "God Is Not Great", which for all their concise language and clarity of expression, fail to be nearly as short as a blog post.  While my most mature and most central complaint, I think, would be over the lack of a valid epistemology for generating any beliefs about the supernatural, it recently occurred to me that part of my gradual process of rejecting Christianity was a most generous and unintentional gift from a speaker at a youth group meeting.

"God answers prayers," the speaker said with conviction.  Slowly and deliberately, ostensibly to denote profundity, he continued: "Either 'yes', 'no', or 'not yet'."  (I mean no offense to any particular youth pastor or guest, as I have forgotten who delivered this platitude.)  In retrospect, I am struck with horror at how such appalling stupidity was so frequently and solemnly inflicted on me at such meetings.  My reaction at the time was not nearly so severe.  I was simply made very uncomfortable by this pronouncement, as it did not take any great mental acuity to note that if this man's claim were true, then the world we live in would be, in that regard, indistinguishable from one ruled by a god completely indifferent to prayer.  I decided the speaker was wrong, but I was as of yet unaware that my faith was diminished.  The wall did not, and never did, fall at the sound of a trumpet - it took the work of many to tear it down.

a little gig

In my piano studies, both independent and formal, I have struggled a great deal with choosing repertoire. There are so many factors to consider - It is important to play to your own strengths as well as to your weaknesses. It is good to play music in a style that you do not excel in, as well as playing music in a style you know and love. It must not be too easy, and it must not all be too hard. And, as a relatively mature musician who performs from time to time, I consider it important that the the pieces can cohere as a program. This consideration, how a program, both in its individual selections and as a whole, appeals to an audience, how it must take them on a journey through different moods and styles, is the one I give the greatest weight, and the other considerations, while essential, have to fit into a scheme of programming a recital. Other factors such as preparing auditions, working on an etude, having a "party" piece as my teacher calls it, I think all fall under this heading of programming.

I played a gig today for the Pasadena Women's Club, with my excellent violist friend Camille. (Unclear? No worries, she is both an excellent violist and an excellent friend.) In choosing what to play, and the order in which to play it, I was inspired by the French composer Alkan's opus 76 - three etudes, the first for the left hand alone, the second for the right hand alone, and a grand finale for the hands united. We each would play a solo piece before delivering the coup de grace together. I got more inspiration from attending an LA Phil concert conducted by Salonen - a program of Hindemith and Wagner. The second to last piece on the program was the Magic Fire Music, which is grandiose and deeply moving to the point of leaving the listener feeling quite spent. By the time singer Bryn Terfel returned to the stage for the third round of applause and the audience began to stand in appreciation, Salonen realized he had to reign us in, and launched into his clever preparation of an entr'acte from Lohengrin, which was delightfully light, but being Wagner, not a complete non sequitur. It was a very pleasant way to come down from the emotional heights of the Fire Music.

So that experience helped me develop the form of today's thirty minutes of music: Camille opened with the first two movements of Bach's G major cello suite (transposed up an octave for the viola, of course), I then played the Impressionistic "Jeux d'Eau" by Ravel, then we joined forces in the centerpiece of our performance, Telemann's viola concerto in four movements. After the rousing, joyful Presto finale, we closed the concert by bringing them down with Saint-Saen's The Swan. Then we were treated to one of those pleasant moments when the applause continues longer than you, as an performer, were expecting, and the realization dawns that your listeners feel they've been treated to something special, and we bowed a second time. It was a brief moment, lasting less than the time I took to write this paragraph, but it felt good.

Now what remains will surely be a fulfilling weekend - Pasadena Symphony tomorrow afternoon, LACO tomorrow night, and chamber music at Caltech on Sunday!  I'm starting to think Los Angeles might be an acceptable place to live after all.

It finally happened

It was bound to happen eventually, as I've already tried, and been foiled by the locked door. Saturday night I got into the wrong Prius, belonging to a stranger. "Hey, the seat is farther forward than I left it... Huh! Did I leave the car unlocked? Let me check and see if my stuff is missing. Oh cool, not only is my stuff not missing, I have extra stuff! Oh."

Psychosis and the problem of metaphorical violence

This weekend, a young man opened fire at a public event hosted by Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords at a Safeway in Tuscon. Giffords was shot and is in intensive care. Six are confirmed dead, including a federal judge who just happened to be stopping by, and a nine year old girl who had just been elected to her student council and wanted to meet Giffords.

The shooter, Jared Loughner, is clearly mentally deranged, as evidenced by the weak grasp of basic reasoning he displayed in five text-only youtube videos, mostly consisting of syllogisms with weird axioms. Many on the right wish to insist that this disturbing ad has nothing to do with Saturday's events. Same for this.

I think that there is evidence supporting a connection between them. It is at least clear that he wanted to target Giffords, as it was a "Congress on Your Corner" event she was running, and he was aware of the number of his Congressional district, unlike most Americans, so he probably knew who his representative was, unlike most Americans.

I think it is also clear he identified more with the American political right than with the left. He clearly picked up several words from the media, using them frequently without displaying any understanding of their actual meanings, in particular I note "currency" and "unconstitutional". He complained that people in his district did not know "English grammar". He declared that he would not use a currency that was "not backed by gold and silver". These are conservative positions on the gold standard and apparently on immigration.

Objectively, it appears that he was unsuccessful in life and did not know who to blame. He made a cryptic remark about being "unable to find the subject" - in light of his disdain for his non-English speaking neighbors, it seems he was bitter about his own inability to understand grammar at the technical level; he quickly followed it up with an observation that "most students can't find the subject". He was upset about paying fees at a community college, and insisted that charging fees to students at a public college was unconstitutional. Perhaps he thought that by changing money, he could somehow fix his money problems. He seemed to have a cognitive error which many if not most people fall prey to - seeing agency in self-organized, bottom-up systems. It's an error magnified by the conspiracy theorist, and running rampant in a schizophrenic.

How his station in life, which he perceived to be imposed on him from outside, rather than due to his mental illness and how it hampered his ability to benefit from his education, led him to the attempted assassination of his representative in Congress, I doubt can ever be fully explained. But the behavior of psychotic people doesn't admit of consistent rational explanation. Reportedly he is being "uncooperative" in custody, i.e., he is not talking. Perhaps he was satisfied that his act would draw attention to his videos, which are barely comprehensible, but which are, in his mind, revolutionary.

I do not claim that his political views and SarahPAC's ad constitute a smoking gun that should legally implicate Sarah Palin in Saturday's shootings. But I do claim that the rhetoric of violence as metaphor is a problem. People like Jared Loughner do have access to guns, as libertarians and political right want to ensure that they do. The ability to read violence as metaphor is something that a sane person with a grasp of cultural and social norms brings to the advertisement; it is not found in the advertisement itself. For this reason, different metaphors must be used, and I am concerned that we accept the imagery and language of violence as a norm, and that lobbyists and lawmakers as of yet see no need for a legislative solution.

If Sarah Palin and her PAC see no connection between their actions and Loughner's, why was it necessary to quickly remove the ad from their site after the shootings? Why do they suddenly feel the need to expedite the disappearance of violence-inciting tweets into the memory hole?

top ten?

Camerata Pacifica's Facebook page recently drew to its followers attention an - ostensibly incomplete - article by New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini, concerning how one might tabulate a list of the top ten greatest composers of classical music. While I do see the point of such an endeavor, it is one which I would be neither qualified for, nor particularly interested in attempting. Surely Bach and Beethoven would be near the top of the list. But to make such a list I'd have to set aside personal taste, and approach the matter from a purely academic perspective. And the primary reason I listen to music is for emotional stimulation. Certainly, greater understanding of style, form, and theory has informed and enhanced that enjoyment, but I would be terribly bored to spend much time trying to use that angle to share my love of music with a fellow human. (And if the goal of such a process, undertaken by a connoiseur, isn't to share, what would be the point at all?)

But I could make a list of roughly ten composers I most enjoy listening to, which is quite another thing than a scholarly perspective. I love music from the Romantic period, and I mostly like solo piano, chamber, and orchestral music. So, something like Chopin, Schumann, Sibelius, Brahms, Dvorak, Saint-Saens, Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky. That's nine. Bach and Beethoven can fight it out for the tenth spot, but the places of the other nine are secure.

I note that I love art song in English and I like a lot of 20th century music that I've heard, but I'm not well-versed enough in these areas to include an important composer of either among my favorites, besides Ravel. This must be remedied.

concern trolls

There is a peculiar thing about atheists as a group. When I dare to publicly point out the obvious - that religion is cruel, barbaric, harmful to society, and most importantly, false - I am told that I should not say such things, because some believers might get upset, and I am told this by other atheists. What a curiosity! When certain feminists speak out against gender inequality, pointing out how harmful sexism is to society, and opining that there is no rational basis for these dehumanizing attitudes, I wonder whether there are other feminists who try to hush them up, warning: "Careful! You might offend some misogynists."

Jessica Bang is always right

Last semester, at Fullerton College, I met and developed what I suspect will be a lasting friendship with a fellow pianist, who we will call "Jessica", because that is her name. While she always demurs, I insist that she has a talent for piano coaching. Sometimes I just listen to a performance and I think it's so hopeless that all I can think is that I hate it, and I tune out. She on the other hand, always seems to be able to come up with something both constructive and appropriate (good comments are neither too trivial nor focused on musical elements currently beyond the student's grasp - the latter direction is the way I tend to err, I think).

I have not always listened to her diligently, that is, some comments of hers I may have heard and remembered but been skeptical enough not to give them great consideration. Among these was an observation that my tone suffers when I lean forward. I thought "interesting... maybe" or something along those lines, until my new teacher this semester (at Pasadena City College) made the same observation. That can't be ignored!

Okay, so maybe a person can get lucky once. But on other occasions, when I would make a serious performance of a piece, Jessica would yell at me "Breathe! Breathe! You're not BREATHING!" I'm not passing out, what's the problem? But last week, when I was not expecting any problems in the Bach Prelude I would be playing in my Applied Music class, what followed could only be described as a debacle. The students were kind in their comments. But key was that one of the most frequently recurring observations was that I was not breathing.

Hmm.

So later when I practiced the piece in tempo, I realized that indeed I was holding my breath. So now I am making some effort to gain control of this supposedly involuntary function when I perform. I noticed then when I exhaled, things immediately became much easier. This no doubt was greatly helpful when I played in a little scholarship competition at the end of the week; $500 was up for grabs and the judges elected to split it between me and the resident wunderkind. No disasters this time!

So, Jessica, anything else I never listened to you about?

reactions

The consensus of the studio class was that my Bach was too loud too often, and that when I wanted to bring something out, particularly in the left hand, I did not quiet the other hand enough. Also, entrances of the theme were not as strikingly articulated as the opening. I hesitated twice. I was focused more on staying alive than more fine considerations. I don't recall any general criticism of the Chopin that was as concrete. Specifically, Petitto mentioned that my ritard in the retransition was too sudden; it must be more gradual. Ritardando not ritenuto.

I didn't practice after the class at all yesterday. I have a killer new toothache and the accompanying headache I get with it, but I have to say that excuse is inadequate: I could still find time when the pain is not as severe to sit at the keyboard, and I can alternate that with periods of rest. I did wake up at 3 AM thinking of the Bach, so that does show that I am practicing a bit more lately, but that needs to be a regular habit, not just a flurry of activity before a deadline. I am not going to practice right now because it is 3 AM, but my current promise to myself is to get working at 9 AM. Hopefully I will not be asleep again at that time.

My cat, Evie, has an appointment with a groom at 12:30 PM, so I need to plan today's practice around that. I know cats - especially indoor cats - don't really need a regular bath, but Carol, my fiancee, likes the fluffiness of her fur after a visit to the salon.

I can hear the dryer of one of the other building's residents buzzing literally once a minute. That person seriously needs to be slapped upside the head.

studio class tomorrow

I am playing Chopin's "B-flat minor" scherzo and the Prelude from Bach's English Suite in A minor in a scholarship competition a week from Friday. Petitto has scheduled a studio class for tomorrow, sort of a dry run for her students who are competing, I think. I am not ready, but it's *possible* I will not fall apart when I run through these pieces tomorrow. I am putting them together bit by bit.

Last night I worked for two hours on the first sixty-four bars of the scherzo; today I spent a lot of time on just bars 117-132, which is the difficult flourish which closes the A section. I used practice rhythms and gradually worked the tempo up from dotted half = 27 to dotted half = 80. I think I have found the key to tackling this figure, which is to use, in the descending arpeggio which finishes the phrase, a flat pinky to strike the A-flats, and a flat third finger to strike the D-flats. I am determined to master this without using the left hand to help.

Then I spent a bit of time on bars 516-551 (the bravura passage which uses chromatic modulation to return to B-flat minor), simply playing it with the metronome, working from dotted half = 50 up to 80. I don't really have time to use rhythms at this point, since at this point I'm just trying to see if I can make it through the whole piece. After the class tomorrow I will be working on various sections more intensely until Wednesday. This practice was a little awkward because I do not think the grandiose sequence from 544-551 is meant to be played without pausing dramatically after each downbeat (more so on the first, third, fifth, and seventh measures of the sequence, less so on the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth). I am trying to use the metronome anyway, to make it as technically accurate as possible, but I will play it more naturally in performance. I have a lot still to work on throughout the piece; I have to guess which section is weakest and work on that. It's not like triage, since I must refuse to reject any "patient" as beyond help (*and* every section must eventually receive very focused attention).

Music geek moment: The Wikipedia page for this scherzo incorrectly refers to the passage from bars 716-731 as having some sort of "key change". It's just a major chord on flat six and then a chromatic progression to a one six-four chord. Change of key signature is not the same as a key change.

I just played through the English Suite, going from quarter = 60 to 69, trying to find which passages are most treacherous. Bach is all about memory. Solid wrong or split notes are not really a problem, as long as there are very few. Any hesitation, however, is a disaster and ruins the performance. There is a lot of work to be done here as well, but I found the passages which tripped me up more than once were bars 59-61 and 82-83. So, stuff in E minor. I know my fingerings in 59-61, they just need to be more secure - I will write more detail into the music to help reinforce it. In 82, it's navigating the direct modulation and then remembering which measure I am in, since the notes are identical to measure 60. I will practice both sections with practice rhythms tonight.

About three hours of practice so far today; I'm hoping to get in another three. One's brain makes progress best by taking breaks, though, so I am off to do some errands before returning to Bach and Chopin.

LA Phil: "Casual Friday"

The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Friday concert was a shortened version of the one on offer this Saturday and Sunday. Those two programs include the overture “Cyrano de Bergerac” by the obscure late Romantic Dutch composer Johan Wagenaar (one senses guest conductor Jaap van Zweden is out to do his bit to promote his country’s musical legacy), Rachmaninoff’s first piano concerto, and Brahms’ fourth and final symphony. The Friday concert omitted the (probably unfamiliar to the vast majority of concertgoers) overture, and had no intermission. This seems to be in keeping with the night’s theme of “casual Friday”; the other charming and welcome aspects of this experiment are that the musicians were in casual/dress attire (no stiff tuxedo uniforms were on display), and a member of the orchestra, in this case contrabassoonist Patty Kindel, gave a candid and disarming brief talk about her personal history as a musician. This included an amusing anecdote about how she once made a dog’s breakfast of a contrabassoon solo in Strauss’ Don Quixote in a live concert led by Simon Rattle – “his eyes were like saucers”.

As both a musician and a concertgoer I am strongly in favor of less formal attire being employed, by both audience and performer. On this evening, I wore jeans as I always do. When I perform, I dress as close to that as I can get away with. I know of no reasonable explanation for the convention that we must all strive to make ourselves as uncomfortable and awkward as possible in order to produce or appreciate beautiful art. As it turns out, neither the players’ virtuosity nor their expression were dimmed by their choice to don skirts and slacks. And my sweatshirt seemed to inconvenience van Zweden not at all. I don’t know what was the cause of one horn player apparently having an off night, contributing more than his share of farps, but I’d be interested to hear anyone attempting to describe the mechanism by which his attire contributed to that difficulty.

The Rachmaninoff concerto, in F-sharp minor, was first on the program. The soloist was Macedonian virtuoso Simon Trpceski. I have seen video of him playing before, but this is my first time seeing him in person. He was in command from the opening octave flourish. I would characterize his technique as exceptionally fluid and facile. The bright passages of sixteenths had wonderful sparkle. As dense as much of this piano writing is, Trpceski’s Rachmaninoff never came off as labored or busy. He has the great gift, so often neglected in the modern Russian school, of retaining all the notes while still reducing it to the transparent textures which Rachmaninoff conveyed in his own playing. Only in one long thick passage of chords and octaves was there any impression that the soloist encountered any challenge, but that was apparent only to the eye, not to the ear, and it is a stunningly virtuosic work. Trpceski is also a competent ensemble player, sometimes looking out at the audience, but with an attentive eye for the conductor, and looking directly at soloists at key “ensemble” moments. Particularly thrilling was his immedate change of touch from the heavy cadenza of the first movement to the light descending arpeggios of the following coda.

I must say I liked this piece a lot more after this performance than I did before. It is a youthful work, completed while the composer was still a conservatory student, and polished in his 1926 revision. It is unjustifiably neglected, but one can only blame Rachmaninoff for writing three seminal concerto works which overshadow it: the second and the third along with the Paganini Rhapsody. This first concerto has much characteristic Rachmaninoff: melodies that move mostly by step and take long climbs to reach a high note and then subside. The final movement has clear and exuberant references to Russian folk music, with figures that are recognizeable to anyone familiar with Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Overture”. Rachmaninoff would later quote the finale’s coda in the corresponding passage of his Third Symphony.

I know the acoustics of this hall are much-lauded, but I found the piano a little muffled. That may have been partly because of my seat, as I was close and my head was lower than the performers’, and the structure of the piano and the hall directs the sound out and up. Also, it appeared to me that there is some unevenness to the keys of Steinway and Sons instrument used in this concert (my eyes were on level with the keys). This is mere speculation, but perhaps it is Trpceski’s pet instrument he travels with; I’d be puzzled that this would be the piano trotted out by the LA Phil for the star guest artist.

It seems to be that usually a second or third “curtain call” is required before an audience gets granted an encore, if one is prepared. Simon only got one, so if he was prepared for that contingency, we most regrettably did not find out.

Brahms, of course, like Rachmaninoff, was a stubborn Romantic in a changing musical landscape. But certainly, neither were merely rehashing old ideas. They had their distinctive styles and made their own voices. I surmise that the form of this grand symphony must be quite a challenge for a conductor to bring across in concert. True, Brahms has no shortage of opportunity for pure sentimental expression, but one must remember that among his many gifts as a composer, he was a master at form, and one must convey the arc of the individual movements and the symphony as a whole. Jaap van Zweden did so admirably. His own orchestra is the Holland Radio Symphony, which is second in stature among Dutch orchestras after the Royal Concertgebouw, and has a tradition of first rate musicians at the helm, including Bernard Haitink, Hans Vonk, Sergiu Comissiona, and most recently Edo de Waart. (I must confess I do not recall hearing of van Zweden before this evening.)

Music critic and KUSC announcer Jim Svejda is fond of characterizing many conductors of yesteryear as having great economy of motion at the podium, while producing an uproar from the orchestra, while he says the reverse is frequently true of modern conductors. I didn’t know quite what he was really talking about until I got to witness Carl St. Clair’s silly posturing leading the Pacific Symphony in concert, with over-the-top flailing of his entire body while producing a fairly straightforward reading of the music from the orchestra. Watching van Zweden, I had the inspiration to classify conductors according to what I’ll call a Svejda ratio. A mundane sound gives a low numerator, and an absurd visual spectacle from the conductor gives a high denominator, so St. Clair has a poor Svejda ratio. Van Zweden has a better-than-average Svejda ratio. His motions were fairly economical, and there was clear originality (but not idiosyncrasy), particularly in the formidable Brahms. He likes to form a circle with his thumb and forefinger and conduct with the connected fingertips. When he wants a particularly expressive vibrato from the strings, he sometimes gives a visual demonstration of vibrato (I only caught him doing this twice, so it did not get irritating). His indications of when to attack seem very clear, he makes very pointed motions at the right times. I noticed that the strings were incredibly precise in the fiendish pizzicatos in the slow movement, which one of course must also attribute to the greatness of these players as an ensemble. Van Zweden sometimes bounces with his whole body in time, but it is not an extravagant gesture and seems reserved for rhythmically appropriate passages.

The acoustics of the hall were kinder to the orchestra than to the piano. They would magnify a lesser group’s inaccuracies; one who is not spoiled by regularly attending LA Phil concerts is startled by the synchronization and tone these players achieve. Of note to me this evening were: in the first movement, the scary and mysterious passages of bare octaves in the winds, the poignancy of the cellos taking up the melody in the tenor register; in the second movement, the aforementioned pizzicato, a thrilling detaché from the strings in the B section, and a haunting string tremolo and piercing oboe solo before the retransition. In the march, the third movement, I was a little disappointed that the players were not more visibly joyful. Come on, it’s Casual Friday! Van Zweden provided some of his own smile, though. I found that the ominous slow leaps at the opening of the passacaglia finale were not ominous enough. They should be terrifying. The horn farps I previously alluded to were distracting. The final variations and very brief coda on an E minor chord, which I can only describe as “resigned rage”, moved me to tears; it was a little while before I could stand up and give the musicians their due. The audience kept bringing van Zweden back out until it was clear there would be no more. Maybe encores are proscribed on Casual Friday.

There was a brief Q&A following the concert, with Kindel, van Zweden, and Trpceski. Your intrepid amateur blogger got to hold the mic for one of the three questions they took. I told Trpceski he has my favorite recording of the Saint-Saëns concerto number 2, and he was a little startled. I guess maybe it is not commercially released; he inquired “Where did you hear that?” and I nervously said “I don’t know how you feel about the fact that somebody posted it on youtube…” as everyone chuckled, but I would like to think that he was glad for the exposure. My question was to ask if he is interested in championing any of the other concertos of Saint-Saëns, which are undeservedly underappreciated, as he has done for the Rach 1, and to ask him what other projects he’s working on. He said he’s a little tentative, since most of the others are very unfamiliar to audiences, with the fifth being somewhat known, but he thinks the third and the fourth are wonderful (I agree on all counts) and he would consider the possibility of doing one of them. For the second question, he said he’s playing a number of other warhorse concertos, but he has also recently recorded a new work by a Macedonian composer, whose name I did not catch; but I would like to hear that.

Another questioner asked about how he prepares for the youthful, naïve, brash opening of the Rach 1. Trpceski said that mainly one must not focus on the difficulty and be overcome by fear; instead, to focus on musical expression is paramount. As I am sure traveling virtuosos have demanding schedules and need their rest, the moderator then brought the evening to a close.

unjustifiably puzzled

Today I've been on the business end of a few startling reminders that I can be oblivious - until it's too late - of the cumulative impact my irritating behavior can have on people, from mere casual acquaintances to my closest companion. To be sure, I don't consciously choose to be a nuisance, but that doesn't absolve me of responsibility for the consequences of the way I interact.

When it seems that I have pissed *everyone* off, then it probably isn't the case that everyone else is wrong and I am right. Now as for how to go about gingerly untangling this puzzle piece by piece...

lesson & repertoire

A quick post before dashing off to my reserved 7:30 AM practice time. I'll probably be late, but no one else is insane enough to show up at this hour to practice, so I'm never in danger of losing my room.

I have a lesson today. I'm playing Les Adieux for Petitto. Not only am I underprepared, she's expecting me to play a different Beethoven sonata. *gulp* But I think it will be okay. This is the toughest work I am playing for her. The A minor English suite and Chopin's B-flat minor scherzo are the other two. They come much more naturally under my fingers.

I have never seriously tackled such a large volume of repertoire at once before (when you include the pieces I am playing for other classes), but I've finally worked out a reasonable approach to my practice time so I can be better prepared. And I've been compelled to acknowledge to myself that I simply can never afford to skip out on practice time itself. So, no more chess club when reserved practice time is scheduled.

I have a scholarship competition at the end of the month, and I'm planning to play the scherzo and the first movement of the suite. Finding more time to focus on those two is going to be imperative, so I am not delving into further movements of the Beethoven or Bach beyond the first of each until after the competition.

On hearing Rautavaara's "Cantus Arcticus"

Cantus Arcticus is a three movement symphonic work which makes extensive use of birdsong recorded in the Arctic. This piece is not merely a charming experiment. It illustrates that while we think of nature as containing music, the sounds of nature are either not truly music in and of themselves, or calling them music requires a redefinition of the word "music" itself. Unlike the oeuvre of John Cage, who seems tickled to make a significant percentage of his output more a commentary on how far it is possible or not possible to stretch the definition of what we call music, while producing mostly sounds that no one wishes to hear while in the mood for something recognizeable as music, Cantus Arcticus is indeed wonderful music in its own right. But what it also does is illustrate that while we frequently refer to birdsong as being musical, anyone can quickly recognize that without the orchestra, we would not call this music. The sounds of nature are beautiful, but wild. Music is primarily a human concept, and symphonies are highly ordered, being designed rather than emergent.

When the birdsong is sparse, the harmonies of the orchestra are not apparently strongly tonal. Rautavaara thus expresses the wild beauty of nature. When the birdsong is thick and sonorous, the orchestra reduces to simple, tonal harmonies, since it is no longer needed to express nature's wildness; the birds do it themselves. Indeed, some of the tweets towards the end of the piece would probably be interpreted as electronic noise if one were to hear them in some other piece on the radio, a CD or MP3.

Rautavaara went beyond Messaien's use of human-designed instruments to evoke the sounds of birds, instead going directly to the source itself, and produced what he calls a concerto for birdsong and orchestra. And it seems much less pretentious, with his technique for incorporating the two letting birdsong be nature's beautiful noise, and human music be human music.

A side note, the conductor was Finnish composer and conductor Leif Segerstam, who I had the privilege of hearing when he visited Chicago in 1997. He loves making a big deal of Sibelius' dynamic techniques for brass (e.g.: sforzando, subito piano, then a big crescendo), and incorporated them strikingly in Sibelius' youthful and patriotic opus, Finlandia.

First post

This is a blog. While I do not expect millions of people to read it, my fiancee probably will, and I'll be thrilled. All readers and commenters are welcome, although I have unfortunately already attracted one insane religious troll (pardon the layers of redundancy). I'm going to write about my adventures studying the piano, playing chess, and playing poker, and probably occasionally write about atheism and related topics, views on current events, and a little of my personal life. The prose may frequently be quite dry: I can write well, but that is a time-consuming process for me, and I am a *very* busy person, so to save time this may sometimes read like a list of facts. Fortunately, those sentences will describe events which I find interesting, so it's not a total waste.

I am a classical piano student at Pasadena City College with an eye on USC or the Colburn Conservatory, I am a USCF expert, and I supported myself successfully for three years playing poker, mostly massively multi-tabling low stakes SNG's on PokerStars. I've been an atheist since age 16, but it took me a while before I realized that was the proper word to describe my lack of superstition.

Woke up this morning and worked on three songs from Winterreise, on which I am collaborating with a baritone, Nate. We have a rehearsal Tuesday. We meet every other week. This is our second rehearsal, and the last one was very short (15 minutes ish?), and I was not very prepared, so this is like our first real rehearsal. I worked out fingerings for Erstarrung (Numbness) and Der Lindenbaum (The Linden Tree), and worked on touch, articulation, dynamics, and voicing in Tränen (Tears). I worked with the metronome on some parts of Erstarrung, but some things still need to get clarified. I am doing a little redistribution in a couple measures to avoid the quick arpeggio B-flat, B-flat, D in the bass; I'm adding the D to the right-hand figuration instead. I worked the first two pages of Der Lindenbaum with the metronome. So I must do the same with the longer dramatic D minor section in sixths in Der Lindenbaum, and I still need to slowly work out some of the tricky rhythmic interaction in a couple measures in Erstarrung. I have been studying the texts since Thursday. Erstarrung is deeply moving for me, enough to cause tears. My favorite of the songs we're working on.

I am rehearsing with a violinist, Rebekah, for the first time, at 8:00 this Monday morning, then we are meeting together with the coach (Stivers) for the first time on Tuesday as well. We also meet every other week. The first movement of Saint-Saëns' violin sonata no. 1 is on the menu for our Monday get-together. The first two movements have no break, so eventually we will work on the Adagio together as well. This is a virtuosic piece and I am glad we both like the tempo on the Sarah Chang recording, because I doubt I could credibly play it much faster. I need to work some of those sixteenth groups with practice rhythms to get them cleaner. I have trouble with synchronization when I get them up to a quick tempo. I think we should shoot for around dotted quarter = 108.

My private lessons are on Wednesdays, but in California, this Wednesday is Cesar Chavez day, so I have two weeks to prepare to play some Beethoven for the first time for Dr. Petitto. She is expecting the Sonata in E-flat opus 7, but I have decided to work on "Les Adieux" Sonata in E-flat instead. I think she will be okay with that. I like it a lot more. I believe Brendel thinks the opus 7 first movement is the most difficult Beethoven sonata movement. While I'm not sure I agree with that, there are certainly some parts in it that are quite awkward. And I love the music of Les Adieux, all three movements. It's more romantic, less classical. More my style. And it has a properly rousing last movement, so a good recital work.