January 31, 2005
Concussions
There is a person who I like to be. He's a wise, quiet, winking-smiling man, young at heart, never taking things too seriously, but always taking them as seriously as they merit being taken.
Last night I went drinking with my roommates. I was in a funny mood. Missed Solange really badly. Didn't know what to do with myself, but knew I didn't want to do the work I should have been doing. So I got plastered and happy. Until we went skating, and I passed out while on the ice. "Zac? Zac?" "Is he breathing?" "Call 911." Ambulance, etc., etc... leave the hospital a couple hours later, conscious, with a headache, a face broken in a couple places, and a handful of Vicoden.
The physical injury wasn't that bad really. Much much worse is that I feel like an idiot. Like someone very different from the man I described above.
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January 29, 2005
Minnesota Conformity
Minnesota culture is really interesting. It's adorable now, but on some level I'm glad I didn't grow up here. One thing that struck me about it last night is the fact that people subtly and in friendly ways reinforce their value of conformity.
I love ice skating, and I've never lived in a place where it is so accessible. Now that I own a pair of skates and live a block from an outdoor rink (that serves as a baseball field when temperatures rise), I go all the time, anytime the urge strikes. Last night, I particularly felt like skating from about 1:30 to 3:30am.
First, I just have to say it was a blast. I had the rink all to myself, plus they must have zambonied it at the end of the day because it was smooth as glass. It wasn't too cold out either—I even took off my jacket, hat, and gloves at one point because I was sweating.
The really interesting thing, though, was that person after person after person stopped whatever they were doing to ask me what on earth I was doing skating at x o'clock in the morning.
Usually my response was that it was the perfect time to skate—I had the rink all to myself! My inquisitors ranged from a couple girls who lived nearby who were drinking and just playing on the ice in their shoes, to a black lady driving by who actually stopped her car, opened her door, and screamed at me from the street. There were also people walking their dogs, and various official-looking cars that slowed, stopped, stayed until they were satisfied I was not a danger to myself of anyone else, then drove on. Cab drivers too: one stopped just to watch, another actually asked what I was doing, and if I'd teach him to skate.
Everyone was friendly, though. I suppose there's a sociological niche for outsiders in Minnesota, too, and perhaps if I'd grown up here, that's what I'd be. People made it very clear that I was doing something out of the ordinary, but once I exhibited confidence in my choice of activity, they laughed and joked and shook their heads, wondering what the world was coming to.
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January 26, 2005
Solution-Satisfaction
There is something so peaceful, satisfying, humbling, and beautiful about math.
In music, there are no hard and fast answers. Striving to create great art is a long, slow, arduous, often torturous process of wild swings. Moments of supreme confidence that one is "in the zone," writing truly great music, music that perfectly achieves the intended effect, to inspire, to elate, to communicate the essence of one's soul—those moments are interspersed with wild torrents of hate, disappointment, and self-deprecation, when no matter what one tries to do, the creation is flawed, fundamentally, awfully, a horrifying mess of mediocrity, or worse.
Math is the opposite. It is cool, calm, and objective. Even in the face of insoluble problems, approximation leads one incrementally closer to perfection. The steady march, stroll, even sometimes run toward the solutions not yet achieved goes ever on. It advances. One sees it advance. I, who am yet a beginning student of the vast discipline, can say to myself, "It's a small step, but I know more today than yesterday." Those great women and men on the leading edges of mathematics, I surmise, can say similar things, though no doubt the search causes them more than a little stress.
I have many refuges. Math, programming, physics, hiking, climbing. Music is one of my life's main paths, but when it gets too harsh, and the machete cuts not through the thicket, when I feel wholly lost in the forest and uninspired... almost invariably, without any intention on my part, I gravitate toward these peaceful pursuits. I follow them with the same passion, but it's easier.
Toward the end of the composition process of this brass choir piece, I started spending less of my enthusiasm on composition, and more on signal processing algorithms. I want to understand wavelet transformations. That's my pet project now. And it's beautiful. Every day I grasp a little more, and it excites me... but nothing about the journey toward understanding makes me hate myself for even a moment. Haha. :) That's simply refreshing.
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January 24, 2005
Conspiratorial Universe
Ok. This one definitely ranks among the worst days ever. I came home and listened to Nine Inch Nails The Fragile and cleaned my room in a ferocious sprint, and now I'm feeling a bit more mellow, so this entry won't have the vehemence it would have an hour or two ago.
Step 1, oversleep.
Step 2, realize it.
Step 3, lay in bed half crying, half yelling at myself to get the hell out of bed.
Repeat step 3 for a while.
Step 4, become ok with skipping math class.
Step 5, get out of bed.
Step 6, shower, aka experience the pleasure-pain of scalding oneself.
Step 7, pack bag for school.
Step 8, eat a piece of toast sprinting out the door.
Step 9, get on bus, realize I forgot something of little to moderate importance.
Step 10, hate self for this far out of proportion to its importance.
Step 11, get to school, work hard for a few hours, mostly satisfyingly.
Step 12, print all parts and score for brass choir.
Step 13, tape pages of parts together.
Step 13, mild celebration, in the name of all that is holy, it's finished.
Step 14, think, "All that's left now is to copy and bind the score; that's easy"
2:00pm realize you flaked on someone you were to meet at 11:40
- spend half an hour leaving her messages, listening to her messages to you, leaving her more messages, rearranging the rest of the day to meet with her
2:20 hand parts to Dr. Baldwin and head toward kinko's
2:30 halfway there, realize I didn't print a title page
2:40 become unbelievably frustrated by the lack of a simple drawing program
2:45 decide to draw a diagram on the inside cover by hand, print rest of cover
3:00 become infuriatingly insane attempting to find kinko's
3:10 find kinko's after directions from 3 people
- spend 20 minutes waiting for help
- spend 20 minutes explaining what I need
- be told it's easier if I email them a file
4:00 call person I flaked on to say I'm almost ready to meet her
4:15 back at school, have minor issues coming up with the file
4:30 finish emailing them the file
4:40 call kinko's to inquire as to when job will be finished, be told 6
- hang up
- realize that's too late for Dr. Baldwin's ensemble
- realize I disappointed him again, by being late
- nearly vomit
- call Dr. Baldwin to tell him the news, hear his disappointment, hear him reconsidering the concert date, hear him finally decide it's ok
- try again to get in touch with person I flaked on
- leave a million messages again
- start to head to another meeting
- get a call from kinko's saying they're having problems with the file
- return to lab to email them some fonts
- run around desperately trying to find the person I flaked on
- run into my afternoon meeting person several times, luckily she's chill, eventually says we'll skip it today
6pm wait for person I flaked on
... keep waiting
... leave her a msg
... leave her another msg saying I'm coming looking for her
6:30pm she calls saying she's on her way
- meet with her
Realize, by the end of the meeting, the following:
She wants me to go ahead and write her some music for her project, but, though I have been very clear as to exactly what materials, what kind of thematic suggestions, what kind of shape information I need to know what the heck her piece is going to be, she has given me none of this. Know that she'll be completely surprised by whatever I come up with, and that it will probably not be her idea of what fits the piece. Become very zen about this. Resolve not to work very hard on it.
6:55 go to get on the bus
7:00 realize I haven't picked up the scores or given them to Dr. Baldwin, even late
7:15 arrive at kinko's to find they didn't include the cover sheets
(watch my bus go by, get really, really pissed)
7:25 inspect scores with cover sheets, find them to be really ugly prints
- upon inquiry they tell me it all had to do with the file problems they were talking about
- pay only half price for this round
- leave paper originals with them to pick up tomorrow
- walk away
- grab a bus back to school to drop off the shitty score
- realize there's no point, Dr. Baldwin's gone home, so should I
- get off bus, wait
- get on another bus
After that it's home and NIN & cleaning as I said before.
Doesn't sound all that bad.
It was, from inside my body-mind anyway.
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January 23, 2005
Tenuous Hopes
I'm in the midst of work on the brass choir... I think it's good... I think it might be really great... I'm ecstatic, but humble, I could be totally wrong, but... I think I'm doing it—whatever it is that we artists always strive for... here's hoping...
Posted by crock038 at 06:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Beginning in the coals
Blog. Blah. Yup. Gonna try this thing. Let it start simply as a journal-type blog... see where it evolves.
So, today was down and up. I miss Solange, my fiancée, horribly. We're far apart for now. Yesterday was Abbie's birthday, and her party was lots of fun—got smashed... had slept a grand total of about 8 hours in the three days prior to that because I'm trying to finish a brass choir composition to give to David Baldwin, the director of that ensemble, so they can begin rehearsing... I'm proud of my work in some ways—for one thing it's 10 minutes long, for 15 players, and I've written it in 4 months! That far outstrips any pace at which I've composed in the past... 6 minutes for 4 players in 6 months is about normal... anyway, because it's so rushed I have less confidence in it, I've barely gotten to know the piece myself and I'm already handing it off to somebody to rehearse and perform... it might be awesome, it might be mediocre, I just don't know right now... and it's not quite finished yet... I'll be hashing out the drum set part, the other percussion part, and the bass part tomorrow, and printing scores... Finally finished, hopefully, by the time I sleep tomorrow night.
In any case, got smashed at Abbie's birthday party and woke up today, after my first full night's (morning and early afternoon actually... whatever) sleep in about a week... woke up depressed... really depressed... missing Solange, plus the brass choir isn't finished... I had hoped it would be by the time I actually got a full night's sleep. Mike made crèpes for breakfast. Left her house (I had slept on the couch), and came home. Slept here for a few hours, then went with Jen to the Minnesota Orchestra. Exquisite!
The concert began with Wagner's Siegfried Idyll, which was lovely... a love song cum Christmas and Birthday present for Wagner's young wife—truly lovely. That was followed by Lowell Liebermann's violin concerto, played by Chantal Juillet. Great piece, played very well. There was wonderful chemistry between her and the conductor. She is a smart cookie who gets serious respect from me. I don't know how many people noticed, but when she returned to the stage for a second ovation, she chose to first bow to the orchestra. She knows that those are the people who have worked hardest for that night, those are the people who actually care, those are the people without whom she could not have done it, and those are the people who have the knowledge to judge how well she did and to appreciate her talent and hard work. Then she bowed to us her audience, since we did appreciate her as well.
Then, the highlight of the concert was Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony. As far as I'm concerned it's the greatest piece of music ever written. My word, I was in heaven. So much better live than on any recording I've heard. Mischa Santora conducted amazingly, and all the players were smoking; I was blown away. Huge props to everyone... horns and trumpets didn't crack a single note, and their parts are often way high... piano and harp had beautiful blend and balance with the rest of the orchestra, all the woodwinds were phenomenal in every one of the gorgeous, meaty solos Serge gave them. Mischa handled the second movement's second half, that 3-minute-long accelerando just phenomenally... holding back, holding back, ever so gradually stepping things up... always smoothe, no jolts, except where they were totally appropriate... frankly: fucking amazing. I sobbed for every reason conceivable over and over and over, every movement. I know I'll take more lessons and improve my conducting so that I am confident enought to conduct my own music, but this concert really made me want to become a Prokofiev conducting specialist... to study all the symphonies and concerti in depth. The 5th and 7th symphonies are both just so unbelievable... sigh... add that to the long-term joy list, eh?
As Jen said, and I concur, that was one of the very few concerts I've ever attended, where I genuinely loved every piece.
Got home and then went bowling with Mike for a bit. Nice cap to the day. I sucked, but it was a good time. Mike's a good guy like that.
Anyway, that's my first serious blog entry ever. Guess we'll all just wait and see what comes next.
Posted by crock038 at 03:20 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack