Gish Gallop Again

I couldn't resist doing this (with big apologies to Franz Liszt).

[It clocks in at two minutes, and has a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar material designed to befuddle.]

Gish Gallop

Sound Familiar?

Playing by the Rules?

From Thursday night's debate rules:

"No props, notes, charts, diagrams or other writings can be used by the candidates; however, they can take notes on the type of paper of their choosing."

Now watch this:



Do you think that whatever Romney took out of his pocket and slyly placed on the podium while he was looking up and passing by the audience was a piece of flexible paper he wanted to take notes on? I don't think so. I also don't think that he imagined a camera would be trained him while he did it.

His campaign people have dismissed this as really being a handkerchief, which does makes sense, since a handkerchief is flexible and can curl up in your pocket. He could, however, have had notes written on said handkerchief. Sure, singers and fiddle players often bring handkerchiefs on stage with them, but they do not lay them out flat so that you could, if you wanted to, read what might be written on them. And if I were to cheat in such a way, I would make sure to mop my brow or cough into the handkerchief, and then slip it back into my pocket.

Rage Against the Machine

There used to be some advantages connected with living in a small midwestern college town. I just returned from a walk on this beautiful fall day, and found that the huge sound system that the local university installed at the end of its athletic field effectively covered up the sounds of nature I might have heard. The banter from athletic events now permeates the air on weekends. You can hear the voices clear as day from two miles away, and the city itself is only about four miles long and four miles wide, and the stadium's speakers are sitting pretty much in the physical center of town. I do like to listen to the sounds of nature when I walk, but I also like to listen music or podcasts. Today the sound system was (and is, I can still hear it blaring through the closed doors and windows of my house) turned up so loudly that I could clearly hear the names of the people competing in the athletic event of the day through my Bach, Handel, and Haydn. I imagine that these sounds send the birds elsewhere.

That this state-of-the-art sound system was set up by the university athletic department using money donated by alumni, including the rich and famous Tony Romo, a distinguished alumnus of the university. I imagine it was designed for use in a large city stadium, where the audio for athletic events has to project over the sounds of car traffic, trains, planes, sirens, people, and general city noise.

On my hour-long walk today I saw half a dozen cars. There are places for sound systems like this one, but this town isn't one of them. There's nothing anyone can do about it either.

Rant over.

Why Save PBS?

It's nice to be reminded that PBS is probably the best value out there for $1.03 per person, per year. Silly Mitt.

First Recording Ever of the 2nd Brandenburg in the High Octave

This will "blow" your mind! It was recorded in 1932 in Berlin, and the trumpet player is Paul Spörri. Albert Harzer is the flutist, Gustav Kern is the oboist, and Szymon Goldberg is the violinist. Alois Melichar conducted the Berlin Philharmonic.

"Debate" Performance, Truth, and Lies

First of all, last night's presidential debate was not really a debate. The questions were too broad for the two-minute-response format, and the moderator did nothing to enforce the "rules," if there were any. Romney spoke loudly and quickly, and tried to sound kind of like Reagan (who was a far better actor than Romney). He raised far too many questions in his responses to the moderator's questions for anyone to rebut given the small amount of time, and I think that was part of his strategy. Obama smiled through Romney's lies, spoke slowly and deliberately, and told the truth.

The immediate criticism from my household and from all the post-debate comments I read was that Obama should have been more aggressive, and should have taken Romney to task on some issues. Some people feared that Obama lost the debate and therefore lost the election. I don't think so.

Some people wish that Obama could be more like Bill Clinton, but I don't. We already have Bill Clinton around, and if Obama tried to be like him it would appear phoney; perhaps it would be kind of like Romney coming across as a phoney Ronald Reagan. I also don't think that Michelle would appreciate him acting more Clintonesque, especially on their 20th wedding anniversary. One thing that nobody can deny about Barack Obama is that he doesn't pretend to be anything he isn't. He lives his life honestly.

I doubt that Romney persuaded anyone that his positions were better than Obama's, because he never came across with the "goods" that were asked of him. His plans, particularly his health care and economic plans, are still shrouded in mystery, and his math still doesn't add up.

But I think that Obama was actually acting strategically. He knew about Romney's bravura on the podium. Romney is a salesman, and in this campaign he is trying to sell his consulting expertise to a "client" that he believes would benefit (at a price) from his help. I hope that we never actually find out what that price might be, and I also help that we never actually find out the secret plans that he is offering "behind door number 2."

Romney has been taken to task for all of his partially true statements and all of his lies in the the post-debate fact checks. His lies are now on video tape, and can be played over and over, analyzed, and be used in ads. Obama is on video tape being deliberate, calm, direct, kind, humble, respectful, and honest. I believe that President Obama knew, while he was being attacked in this forum, that the press would come to his defense on matters of fact and truth, and that people who played back the tape or read the transcript would be able to make up their own minds and make their voting decisions based on truth. He didn't need to play Romney's "game." And it was Romney's game. Romney made sure of it from the start.

I'm really looking forward to watching Joe Biden and Paul Ryan next week! He can take Ryan to task on everything that Romney said in this debate.

Fish Story

I have been thinking about that "give a man a fish, teach a man to fish" story in relation to the way that music tends to work in the fishbowl-like way I see music in rural America these days. Yesterday I wrote about the native "art music" of my area, and the way a certain segment of the local population really enjoys playing (at any level) and listening (to musicians that play at any level). It speaks to the power of music itself, and the durability of folk music everywhere. People who play without worrying about the purity of their sounds, the quality of their vibrato, or even the accuracy of their intonation can still enjoy the way music helps build community and cement friendship.

My problem is that I do worry about the purity of my sound, the quality of my sound, the the accuracy of my intonation, and I have been kind of obsessed with this way of making music for a long time, and on many different instruments. It is just the way I'm wired.

Some women spend time putting on make-up and shopping so that they can dress in a way that is "just so." I'm perfectly happy wearing comfortable clothes that might be decades old, but I will go to all sorts of pains to avoid playing out of tune, and will do everything I can in order to make a vibrant and beautiful sound. I tend to attract (or at least keep) students who value what I have to teach, but for some reason (because living in a fishbowl where there are only a given number of people interested in playing, and other people teaching) the number of students I am teaching now is at an all-time low.

It makes me feel pretty lousy.

When I was young I used to think that I could help to make the world a better place through music. I believed it with all my heart and soul, because I felt that music was singular. I felt that music was the clearest way to communicate truth and authenticity, and I have dedicated my life to trying to play in a way that communicates truth. It takes a lot of soul searching and a lot of practice to meet Bach face to face and play a phrase that is as strong and as true as Bach would have imagined it to be. I heard many, many, many people play in a way I would consider "true" when I was younger, and I saw my ability to recognize that "truth" when I heard it to be kind of a gift; not the kind of gift you talk about when you say that someone is "gifted," but the kind of gift you talk about when you can go directly to experiencing pleasure and surprise from what others might consider relatively unremarkable. It's a gift that keeps giving itself to me, and it's one that I believe I can share with my students--if they are willing to listen.

I sometimes find that kind of musical "truth" present in young children who play, and through a certain amount of work and awareness, finding musical truth (even momentary musical truth) happens during lessons with adults too. It happens in cities everywhere, and it sometimes happens in small fish-bowl communities like mine. Not being able, for reasons beyond my control, to take part in it to the extent I once did feels like a real loss.

City Mouse, Country Mouse, City Music, Country Music

I suppose you could say that I am a city mouse, and since moving to the "country" 27 years ago, I haven't changed my stripes. I still busy myself with "city" (or old-school city) things, and I haven't forsaken city music for the country music that seems to be the music that really puts down roots and flourishes in this area. You could call it a Platzgeist.

Country music around here runs rather deep. There is a fiddle tradition that has deep roots in southern Illinois and Missouri, and, thanks to a bunch of musicians (some who happen to have grown up in the very town I'm writing from), that tradition has been preserved, and is still being preserved the old-fashioned way. The operative word for how this music is being preserved seems to be the word "collected," because people learn traditional fiddle tunes by going out into the country and playing with the old fiddlers who either made them up or learned them from another (perhaps even older) fiddler.

My friend Gaye Harrison, who was married to the recently (as in a few weeks ago) departed Garry Harrison, used the word "collected" to give the origin of a fiddle tune she played the other night (she was playing with a former student of mine who decided to try out life in the world of old-time music rather than the life of old-school music) at an enthusiastically-attended outdoor fundraising event.

I certainly don't begrudge people choosing old-time music over old-school music, but, being a "city mouse," I have never been very good at making old-time music myself.

We know a terrific plumber named Rick who grew up in Charleston during the 1960s and 70s. He loves to recite the various businesses that used to be on the town square, naming their owners, and discussing various features of the bowels of their buildings (which he knows intimately). It was a flourishing place of commerce. Rick told us that while he was growing up there wasn't anything anyone could possibly need that you couldn't get on the square.

Yesterday I had a phone conversation with a man in his 90s who grew up in Mattoon, a town eight miles west of Charleston, in the 1930s and 40s (he read about our Jewish Community Center in the Chicago Tribune). He talked about Mattoon as a paradise: an extremely tolerant and friendly place where businesses thrived. It was an important railroad town, complete with a roundhouse, and people who went into business there could have things sent in by train (fruit, furniture, hardware, clothes, you name it), and sell it in their stores.

Nobody in Charleston really had the need to go to Mattoon to get anything (Charleston had goods delivered by train as well), and nobody in Mattoon really needed to go to Charleston to get anything, except for "high-brow" culture.

Charleston has a university, and at one point the university had a president who loved music, and he encouraged the university to start a school of music. The school of music attracted some excellent musicians, and it looked like Charleston could eventually become a cultural center. I found a town plan in the public library that had an elaborate proposal (complete with pictures) to turn Charleston into a cultural resort-type town with an arts festival kind of like Interlochen. It all had something to do with a fake lake project, and I suppose this plan was part of Charleston's bid to get the lake, which would bring resort-type tourism to the area. People moved to town to get in on this project from the start, but the lake went to the town of Shelbyville, and the arts center was forgotten.

The Zeitgeist changed after that president retired, and the school of music became a department of music. The people (all city mice, like me) brought here as faculty members of the school of music have all retired, and many of them are no longer alive.

But the music that is native to the area is kept alive by people who care about it, and that is something to celebrate.

The United States of Alec

If you have 56 minutes, it would be really worth your while to watch this video made by Bill Moyers. If you don't have time to watch, take a look at the transcript.

I hate to use this space for things political, but with the privatization and "monetization" of everything, music and those of us who play it and write it (as well as those of us who listen to it) will have our lives changed drastically if this kind of thing continues. And the "beauty" of this widespread scheme is that it's all legal. Before our very eyes we have a "not-for-profit" institution that calls itself "educational" (so it doesn't pay taxes) doing the work that lobbyists are not allowed to do under the law.

Please watch this, and then share it with people you care about. I hate to go all negative here, but this is really SCARY, and really WRONG. This sort of thing should not happen in a democracy.

A Glimpse into the GOP's Twisted Mirror

That, at heart, is the twisted beauty of the plan being championed by Ryan and Romney: The higher Republicans manage to drive up the debt, the more ammunition they have in their fight to slash federal spending for the needy. And the more time they waste trumpeting their "fiscal discipline," the more the nation's infrastructure will continue to crumble around them. Squandering two full workweeks of the congressional calendar on votes to repeal Obamacare has cost taxpayers $48 million. That's nearly the same amount of money now needed to repair cracks in the Capitol itself – spending the House GOP has refused to authorize, out of anti-governmental spite. "If the House wants the dome to fall in," said Senate Appropriations chair Ben Nelson, "I hope it falls on their side." If the Republicans experience a crushing blow as a result of their hard-right agenda, of course, it won't be caused by the laws of physics – it will be delivered by the voters on Election Day.

Read Tim Dickinson's article in Rolling Stone.

Moving Forward, for Better or for Whatever

I have thought about it, and I have asked about it, both privately and publicly, and nobody seems to be able to come up with a parallel in the non-musical world to the idea of music (the stuff you listen to) moving from being a service that a person pays for to a good that a person would buy. Perhaps that means that music is making a pioneering move that will only be followed by other services that will become goods.

Our friend Van Dyke Parks told a story about Lillian Gish (when he was a child actor, he had the privilege of working with her) saying that when the idea of sound was introduced to movies, the actors always thought it would be pre-recorded music and not dialogue. Anyone familiar with the film The Artist knows about what happened when actors were required to speak in order to continue working, and anyone not familiar with the film should see it.

Who would have imagined that the post office would be eclipsed by electronic mail, and who would have guessed that most of the calls that come to land-line phones (at least to our land-line phone) are sales calls and scams. Who would have imagined that it would be possible to instantly publish a personal newsletter that can be read by anyone anywhere with an internet connection, that can be instantly translated into hundreds of written languages with the touch of a button.

I wonder if on-the-spot real-time translation (or interpretation) will be the next service to become eclipsed by an automated product. In diplomatic situations and in international corporate conversations it is necessary, or order to really know what someone is saying, to have an interpreter present. If machines take over (and with voice recognition software, they just might) and do a reasonable job, there would be no professional application for people who speak many languages to earn their livelihoods as interpreters. They would need to work as translators who work with written documents, and the product of their work would be a "good": the written translation. Sure, they could interpret for free for their friends and family, and be entertaining at social gatherings. They could enjoy reading literature in the original languages, never need to read subtitles, and they could have nice full lives conversing with people from all over the world, but I imagine that many of the polyglots in our world who are not fortunate enough to land a steady translating job would have to find other things do in order to pay the bills.

Teaching would be an option, but foreign language programs in many of the smaller American universities are shrinking or disappearing, and high schools seem to be having difficulty teaching students to understand and use the grammar of English, the language that the majority of American school-age people speak. I believe a handful of public high schools still teach Latin, but I don't know of any that offer Ancient Greek. Perhaps private schools and charter schools offer these language options, but I imagine that a newly-graduated American polyglot with a Ph.D. would have to wait a long time for a foreign language position to open up in one of those schools. He or she would also be standing at the end of a long line of equally-brilliant and overqualified polyglots. The American polyglot would be forced, out of circumstance, to live elsewhere, either as an expatriate or as an immigrant on a track towards citizenship in a country that values his or her skills.

There is no going backwards. Our technologies are improving much more quickly than our skills, and there is scarcely any time left in the day to work on real-time skills unless we live lives of relative leisure (like me--I have time to practice and write because I am woefully under-employed, and have the great fortune to be married--28 years today--to a wonderful person who can also pay the bills).

We will never go "back" to a time when the only way you could hear music was to be within earshot of it.

We will never go "back" to a time when in order to communicate in writing to someone, you had to do it by making marks on a piece of paper (either by pen, pencil, or printing press) and delivering it to its reader (either within an envelope or within a book cover).

We will never go "back" to a time when ice covered most of the Arctic. And we (whoever "we" is) are physically unable to "freeze" it back up again.

But we do need to move forward and figure out how to make this a better world.

Thoth

I was really pleased to find this entire 42-minute-long documentary about the violinist/performance artist Thoth available to watch on YouTube:



Michael and I watched it last night on DVD, and we both found it fascinating. Thoth is the son of Elayne Jones, a great timpanist who was fired, for reasons connected with racial discrimination, from the San Francisco Opera Symphony. I recognized her as soon as her face came on the screen, and was pleased to see that this multi-talented man is her son.

How this man can sing, dance, and play (while keeping the bow on the string) boggles the mind. This film, which was shot using sound that was generated from his instrument naturally, and enhanced by the natural acoustics of the tunnel in Central Park, depicts a person fully dedicated to his art and his craft, who can project the world of his (admittedly odd) imagination to total strangers and brighten their lives.

Compare the film above to this segment from his audition for America's Got Talent:



He sounds like a fish out of water amplified among the lights. The panel dismisses him immediately. The scorn on their faces shows the shallowness of their enterprise.

The Tiniest Jewish Congregation in the Country, in the Tribune

The article about the Mattoon Jewish Community Center (my little shul on the prairie) is on the first page of today's Chicago Tribune.

Yom Kippur with the Country's Smallest Reform Congregation

The Mattoon Jewish Community Center has the distinction of being, according to Reform Judiasm magazine, the smallest reform congregation in the country. A tiny item in the magazine caught the eye of a reporter from the Chicago Tribune (though nobody in our tiny congregation seemed to notice it), and a photographer came to photograph our service on Wednesday morning. I had no idea he was taking video, but now my shofar playing is documented for all the world to hear. The photographer wasn't planning to stay for the evening service (the shofar is only blown on Rosh Hashanah and at the very end of the last Yom Kippur service), but we thought it would be nice to have a photo of the shofar in action, so the shofar blowing was a staged shot. If I knew he was filming rather than taking a still picture, I would have played one of the appropriate motives.

On my Kol Nidre list for next year? Asking forgiveness for not warming up my lips for this (now) highly-public moment.

You can watch the video here.

There's going to be an article about us in Sunday's Saturday's Chicago Tribune.