gyrmination

It’s a damn shame that so many wonderful musicians are subjected to inferior conducting. I’ve made it a principle to discontinue both playing under and attending concerts of such conductors. My experience listening to the Metro Chamber Orchestra last night reaffirmed my stance. There were beautiful moments, in particular by vocalists Karen Parks and Melissa Block, as well as the amazing Jacquelyn Van Eck on flute. Unfortunately, the experience was marred by the weak link in the chain, conductor Philip Nuzzo. My comments here are not a review of the concert; they’re specific criticisms of low points in the music making that underscore the impact of the conductor.

I didn’t hear a single clean first note last night. The entrance of each piece, and movements within a piece, were hopelessly staggered across sections. This is pretty bad, considering the fact that the first and last notes of any piece are the most important. I know many of the musicians in MCO; they are a very capable bunch. Why then wouldn’t the first note be clean?

The musicians were unsure of where the beat fell, due to a reliance on inexact conducting. Yes, the group was small enough that ensemble communication should have been much better; people’s eyes were, for the most part, glued to the music, with next to no visual exchanges to lock in tempos and entrances. They should have been breathing and moving together. But the conducting didn’t help. Actually, its ambiguity was akin to sabotage; I could tell musicians were struggling to decide whether to stay with the baton or follow their musical instincts. They would have been better off with the latter. The movement of the baton must allow musicians to anticipate exactly where the beat will be, based on a shared instinctual understanding of physics. But the velocity of Nuzzo’s baton was off; for one, its sluggishness was out of context for the need for a precise entry; for another, it never accelerated toward the beat in a way that inspired confidence and certainty.

And for god’s sake, don’t conduct behind the soloists! There were so many cases where it felt like the orchestra was dragging and dragging behind voice or flute, like a heavy chain preventing progress. In their defense, the musicians were too honest; they really wanted to believe in the fidelity of the conducting. The truth is, unfortunately, that the conducting was simply late – and consistently, obstinately late. I watched every baton downbeat fall long after the soloists had cleared their notes. What’s worse, there seemed to be no recognition on the part of the conductor that this was even happening. Could it be that he was completely oblivious?

Not only that, but there was a rigidity to the conducting that was not responsive to the whims and directionality of the soloists. There was no room to push or pull; the conducting seemingly had nothing to do with what the soloists were actually thinking or feeling in the moment. It was as if what he was hearing was simply a preconceived notion of what he imagined the sound should be like, and was deaf to what was actually being produced live on stage.

Music isn’t just notes on paper; it’s a living, swirling entity in your midst. Music never just ends when the ink ends. I was shocked again and again last night when the conductor severed the tail of every movement of every piece in his rush to flip pages in his score. “Are you nuts?!” I cried inside. “The music for this movement hasn’t even ended yet, and you’re already starting the next one?” Turning the page with a loud WHAP! immediately shattered the silence and any feeling of completion, continuity, and suspension. I felt physically jarred. Even his turn and nod to the soloists to ascertain readiness was patently perfunctory, an empty act – there was no real opportunity for the soloists to communicate otherwise. There was no true awareness there. When Jacqueline was adjusting the position of her stand, Nuzzo apparently was single-mindedly focused on something else, and nearly knocked it over when stepping back. While she was still settling in, in his mind the music had already started. Just watching, I began to seethe with frustration.

During our recent ride up for LGCO, Vincent made an insightful comment, saying, “I’m having a hard time finding conductors I can really respect.” Ain’t that the truth. He’s looking at the level of professional conductors for the highest level orchestras in the world when making this comment. In many cases (though not all – Vincent himself is a shining exception), the situation is even bleaker for the other ensembles out there.

No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?

A central thesis of Sperm Wars so far is that behavior which we believe to be driven by conscious decisions are actually motivated by our animal subconscious, drawing on instinct and patterns predicted by evolutionary biology. The conscious aspect of it all is simply the subsequent rationalization of our own behavior, like a shadow following the real object – which is the hidden intelligence and agenda of our sexual bodies. Is it so? If so, is it frightening to think that we are so base, that civility is such a thin veneer over our primal selves?

Perhaps this is why Osho talks about three levels of love. The first is physical. It treats the other as an object, simply a means to a selfish end. It is flat and materialistic. He says that the vast majority of humanity never rises above this. It sounds hard to believe, too pessimistic – it can’t be that bad, can it? But Sperm Wars says it is that bad. It’s bad, it’s bad, you know it. A comment on who the self is at this level: the self is the unconscious motivator; the conscious mind does not comprehend that it is really not in the driver’s seat. Jealousy, possessiveness, heartbreak … are only the manifestation of our genes’ stratagems.

The second kind of love is more holistic; it treats the other as an equal. Osho says few attain to this reality. This is to rise beyond Sperm Wars. Yes, the sexual attraction is there. Physical and chemical processes move unabated in the veins and loins. Yet, they are observed and understood by the conscious mind, and embraced. Perhaps reading the book is one avenue to achieve greater awareness.

I’m at this level. Maybe. I think I’m seeking a kind of synchronicity. A free ride up. One that doesn’t crest early and cave back into itself. A resonating presence that says my path has not been a mistake. That, failing to find such pools of refreshment, my aloneness too is beautiful. That I should not feel abandoned when no one clings to me. That freedom in place of comforting routine is worthwhile. Thank god there Osho is there for me when there is nobody else.

Also remind me of the importance of the middle road.

The third kind of love simply is. The other disappears, with the experience that the other and the self are one. Then there is only loving; there is no separate object to love.

How do the sperm of an enlightened man behave? Do they kill the sperm of other men? Do they wait in the cervical “crypts” to ambush invading armies? Can they levitate and teleport?

Far from being amorphous, cervical mucus is structured. Who knew? When the woman is fertile, it contains channels that the sperm navigate up. Our bodies are shockingly intelligent.

The transmigration of the soul is a fine analogy for Aspect-Oriented Programming. Genetic transmission is a more or less linear process. Genes branch, and branches either branch or die. But from whence does your consciousness come? It is a cross-cutting concern. From the deathbed of one nodule, it traverses a different continuum to the womb that begins another.

I was once one cell. I was once only a potential. Half-formed in my mother when she was in her mother’s womb. I was once part of a blazing sun. A motley array of atoms strewn across the universe, finally to coalesce into a victorious sperm that was one of 300 million, on my lucky day. Was there a fight inside my mother that day? I can’t imagine so, not with some other man’s sperm. But who knows – who has verified it? Even without a fight, what if another comrade had gotten to the egg and through its protective junkyard first? Would it have mattered? How would “I” have been different? Would it have just been a matter of a few differing genes – a bit taller, less prominent cheekbones, being female instead? But still “me”? Or would my consciousness have lost its chance – given up to some other entity waiting in the wings? I was once one cell, but now I am 100 trillion. I was once only a potential. Yet I remain only a potential, completion has never been in sight.

In the unborn child, the heart begins beating before it forms a link to the developing brain. It functions in a completely coordinated way, without the brain. It has its own intelligence. The heart has its own network of neurons. Does it have its own thoughts? Perhaps it is the seat of intuition. It is the joining point of the 7 chakras, said to be the the ideal, most balanced point of focus. It is where love energy is nurtured.

What leaves one with an empty heart? Or full of emptiness, if such a thing can be said? If it can … is it characterized by fullness, or emptiness? The evaporation of desire, leaving behind an uncomprehending mind which moments before had identified with it. Now it has nothing to attach to; the rug has been pulled out from underneath. It was tricked; now it is in a pickle. Maybe it feels like a pickle.

When our bodies are trying to tell us something which goes against our conscious beliefs, which voice is right? What if our beliefs are the result of deep past experience – what if those too are controverted? When we feel the tugging in both directions, when the path is not clear but action must be taken right now, when in Murakami-speak we feel ourselves being “split in two”, then what? Half of me loves you from above, and half from below. Some other fraction of me understands this is all a bawdy game.

Intelligence cannot be deterministic. Otherwise it would be inevitable. Computers would have been able to achieve it. Therefore, caprice and whimsy are the signposts of intelligence. Is it intelligent to play it safe, or to take a risk? The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward, so they say. Nothing risked, nothing gained. Be cat-like in your alertness.

Food

Trust the Chinese to hit culinary home runs. I stumbled upon Xi’an Famous Foods (http://xianfoods.com/) after getting a haircut in Chinatown. The cumin lamb noodles were fantastically spicy, as the sweat beads condensing on and around my nose testified … of course, the soup was spicy too, but piping hot, which as you may know only magnifies the spice factor by, oh, 5x.

Space

Watching out the caboose of the subway tonight. Leaving 50th St. on the uptown C train, the glow of the platform slowly draws distant, and an envelope of darkness subsumes the view. I feel this is as close to casting off from the safety of a space station into black nothingness as I can get in terrestrial life.

Time

My introduction to Philip Glass was Satyagraha at the Met yesterday afternoon. I loved the visuals, especially the giant, tattered beasts doing battle, which to me represented the collective egoic structures in conflict. The music, though, was simply boring. There was essentially a single repeated motif for each scene, each of which lasted approximately 20 minutes. That’s a lot of repeating. It’s also not a lot of interest. The music lacked a critical dimension – variation – that the stunning imagery unfortunately could not compensate for.

I think that will be my last Glass.

Depth

It is possible to live more deeply while requiring less “clock time”. Osho calls this burning the candle from both ends, not in the sense of exhausting oneself through effort, but by bringing intensity and awareness into every moment. Every time I harmonize the rhythm of my body more with nature, I feel possibility of intensity begin to open. Each time it drifts, the opening begins to close, mostly without my awareness of it.

I look for those who create spaces. There are many who only know to fill them.

There are those who fashion themselves as guardians of objectivity on Wikipedia, when really they are simply clever in their use of words to insinuate their own biases, completely antithetical to the spirit of voluntary editing. They are typically highly egoic and elevate themselves beyond critique through language lawyerism.

One such Wikipedia loser posts on his user page, “I am presently an unemployed Aerospace Engineer …”. Oh guardian of objectivity, if you are unemployed, how can you be an Aerospace Engineer?

It’s a small town, so I can ride slowly. Everything about this day feels like summer, as I remembered it.

The sweat beads instantly on my skin when the wind sweeps in, hot and heavy; nevermind that I’ve just rinsed off with a cold shower. It’s been a long time since I’ve taken such a leisurely pace on two wheels. The yellow machine moves at a crawl, never rushed or out of breath. Its bones creak and clatter as I pedal; I grip the unsheathed metal ends, because the rubber grips have migrated towards the center of the handlebars, and they seem content to remain there. (The whole thing wobbles as if the earth were shaking if I use them instead.)

The soft serve place is called “Sweet Spot”. When I pull in, there’s a car at the drive-thru window, and a family of six seated at one of the hexagonal benches, enjoying – mother, father, and four daughters, including the red-faced little one who gets a slushie one strawful at a time. I get a small cone with vanilla and mint Andes pieces, for $1.85 . Two pretty girls hold down the fort, smartly closing the window shutters each time they move away from the counter. Probably a summer job. It should be shaded where I sit down, but the sun is so low its rays cut right under the roof.

A little later, I’m drifting down the shoulder with a lime green HyVee bag slung over my right shoulder. It’s got chips, hummus, water, an organic avocado, and rectangles of juicy watermelon inside. It’s Sunday, so the cars are driving even slower than usual, and most family-owned stores are closed. I stop by at a gas station to get some change – quarters I need for the laundry machines in the basement. (A dollar to wash, a dollar to dry.) A boy who would seem like a tough guy elsewhere, smiles disarmingly as he passes, and says, “Hi!”

When I get back to the visitor’s dorm, I turn on the room AC immediately, throw my clothes into the wash downstairs (the quarters are stuck at first; however, pumping the coin release magically produces two more quarters than I put in!), and return to enjoy the avocado and chips, and of course watermelon. The avocado is much softer than I remember it seeming in the store, but when I open it, it’s perfectly ripe inside. It’s getting dark out, and I’ve closed my window. The screen is busted – there’s a gaping hole at the bottom. (It’s fine during the day, but, as I found out last night, leaving it open in darkness will surely usher in unintended guests …)

Somehow, at this point, I’m inspired to write my first blog post in who-knows-how-long (without looking).