Retrospective Notes on Three 2010 Shows: Introduction

IWTAS honored and humbled me with a request to write about my three favorite shows of 2010. The assignment has grown in my mind and on paper much too large and verbose, so I'll post the full of what I have written and am writing here and submit to IWTAS a Reader's Digest version.

Introduction: A Helpful, Albeit Silly and Overwrought Metaphor

After 2010’s shortest day I spend part of 2010’s tallest night sitting at the Hideaway bar. I contemplate my assignment: pick three shows and write about them. The man at the piano plays Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” with a feel as if we are drinking in an Old West saloon. He segues into “Blue Christmas” and maintains the saloon feel. Whatever the feel in which he plays does not really matter. The patrons pay only half-attention. The piano man knows that all we are in the mood for is the melody, and the piano man delivers that with minimal affect. The patrons on occasion sing along with a line or two, and it’s proven that Billy Joel knows what he’s talking about.

I think that were we, these bar patrons, at a show, we would be in the mood for more than a melody. We would pay more than half-attention. Most apparent and immediate for each of us as an audience member would be the moment - the ecstatic state of seeing and listening. I devise a silly and overwrought metaphor to guide me in my assignment. The moment is a pearl-headed pin pressed into thick woolen fabric. To step back; to see so many pearls upon thick woolen fabric; to fashion constellations upon topographies; to spot three bright pearls upon peaks of woolen fabric. (It’s a silly and overwrought metaphor, but it helpfully guides my arriving at the following three pearls of 2010.)

Tomorrow: Meredith Monk & SLSO at Powell Hall - 03/13/10

Deliberate Indifference

I went to high school at an all-male college preparatory school. If you're smart, Catholic and a male St. Louisan, then that is where you go. It was a good place, mostly. Students and families of modest means paid what they could afford. The school seemed to take (and seems to continue to take) affirmative steps to promote racial and economic diversity among the student body.

Coming out as gay in such an environment was absolutely out of the question. The supposed insults of "fag," "homo" etc. were thrown around among the students constantly. All of us ... students, teachers and administrators ... were deliberately indifferent toward it. There is a kind of default environment of hostility among an all-male high school as it is ... I hate to imagine what would have happened to the poor kid who was discovered to be gay.

I also regret my own deliberate indifference to all of the slurs. They contributed to an environment that too often ends up deadly. I was only in my teens, but I should have known better to try and confront this environment in some little way.

Here is a little way.

Correspondence

There are few better feelings than that which come from someone whom you admire offering a few kind words of interest and encouragement.

On the Proper Invocation of Infinity

I love Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. I know the screenplay by heart. On command, I can recite the dialogue of the entire film from beginning to end.

The movie came out in 1985. I was 8 years old. The following scene practically documented a rhetorical technique popular among me and my peers - the "I know you are but what am I/Infinity" technique:



"I know you are, but what am I?" has devastating potential far above that of the more retrograde "I am rubber and you are glue" in that it invites the person against whom it is invoked to further mockery. Couched in terms of an existential crisis of identity - but what am I? - it is actually a blunt instrument of schoolyard verbal jujitsu.

Francis: You [Pee-Wee] are crazy.
Pee-Wee: I know you [Francis] are [crazy], but what am I [Pee-Wee]?
Francis: You [Pee-Wee] are a nerd.
Pee-Wee: I know you [Francis] are [a nerd], but what am I [Pee-Wee]?
Francis: You [Pee-Wee] are an idiot.
Pee-Wee: I know you [Francis] are [an idiot], but what am I [Pee-Wee]?

Francis, deemed through this interchange to be not only crazy but also a nerd and an idiot, changes tactics by employing "I know you are but what am I?" against Pee-Wee. After five repetitions of tandem volley of the phrase, the coup de grâce:

Pee-Wee: Infinity.

Now and forever, Pee-Wee knows that Francis is an idiot. Devastating.

"I know you are, but what am I" is, as previously stated, a blunt instrument. The invocation of "Infinity" is more of an art. How many tandem repetitions of "I know you are, but what am I?" should there be before the invocation of "Infinity"? There are no hard-and-fast rules, but surely after one or two repetitions "Infinity" would not be appropriate. Perhaps after three, under certain circumstances. The danger of waiting too long is that your opponent may validly invoke "infinity" before you do. Fortunately for Pee-Wee, his adversary seemed unaware of the "infinity" aspect of the "I know you are, but what am I?/Infinity" technique.

When I was eight years old, I rarely was that fortunate.

Pops Palette

This Saturday night, my group the Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra play a new kind of show for us. In addition to serving as a kind of "house band" for a burlesque revue, we're playing a new original score for a short film that we ourselves did not compose. These past few weeks' practices and rehearsals for Saturday night's show have been really different from what we as a group have been accustomed - instead of taking cues and direction from ourselves, we've taken cues and direction from performers and composers with whom we've never worked before. It's been a pleasant and very new experience for us, perhaps not unlike when visiting composers and performers work with an established "symphony orchestra." I like to pretend it's not unlike that, anyway.

Kevin O'Connor is the visiting composer (and our visiting conductor, for that matter). Kevin plays drums in the band 7 Shot Screamers. They're a rockabilly band that's been around quite a while as bands go, and are quite well-known around the country. You may have heard of 7 Shot Screamer's lead singer's alter ego, Clownvis. Anyway, Kevin wrote a score for us to accompany Buster Keaton's One Week. In addition to the regular R&P MPO lineup, Kevin plays the drum kit (and conducts us) and Kevin's 7 Shot band mate Chris Powers plays upright bass.

Kevin composed a percussively kinetic and melodically freewheeling score to One Week that's perfect for the action on the screen. One Week was Keaton's first release on his own as a filmmaker. One gets the feeling when watching One Week that Keaton threw in dozens of sight gags and set pieces that he had been saving up for quite a while. With One Week, Keaton finally had the opportunity to film them. The visuals are non-stop action, and Kevin's non-stop score complements the action wonderfully. What better composer for such a complementary accompaniment than the drummer for a high-energy rockabilly band?

Kevin's score to One Week also is heavily jazz-inflected, the effect (and affect) of which works wonderfully both for the film and for this Saturday night's overall program. R&P MPO mostly know classical, but we gave it a shot. The result of us playing the jazz inflections sounds pretty close (I think) to a pops-style "jazz" of the 1920s ... classical squareness swung.

The 1920s pops-style continues in our accompaniment of the burlesque portions of the program. We've arranged three songs to perform with Lola Von Ella and friends: "Button Up Your Overcoat," "Smile," and "He Needs Me." Two are from the 20s and one is from the 80s, but we're performing them all in that 1920s pops style. Hopefully we'll musically complement the evening's theme: "The Golden Age ... Live on Stage."

Given the R&P MPO's conscious avoidance of "period" music when accompanying "period" films, it's been a new and sometimes challenging experience to rehearse and to arrange consciously "period" music. It's also been a lot of fun. Every song and every style has something to teach you as a composer and as a musician. No doubt our work in rehearsing and arranging the music for Saturday's show will inform our future and less consciously "period" music. Some of that 1920s pops style surely will be part of our future compositional palette.

Take a gander at my guest column at the Super Arrow blog.

Bescrabbled

I ratcheted-back my Facebook activity a couple of weeks ago. My reasons are not unlike the reasons of the author of this essay.

Instead of filling that Facebook void with contemplation or productivity over the last two weeks, too much of my energy has been spent here. My experience with internet Scrabble was turning into Lisa Simpson's experience with crossword puzzles. So, today I deleted the ISC interface from my computer. It was like flushing cigarettes down a toilet.

I just finished reading Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving. According to the book (and I think that the book is on to something), loving one's neighbor requires "true humility, courage, faith and discipline." True love requires four basic elements: care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. All of these qualities seem so difficult to develop in our society - especially now that so much of our society communicates via inherently narcissistic social networking sites. I wonder if there is such a thing as an online persona consistent with these qualities. Perhaps there isn't. I am going to try, both virtually and really.

This coming Saturday evening I am fortunate to participate in a splendid, splendid show at Off Broadway.

My group the Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra kick off the evening at 8pm sharp with a live performance of our original score to Strike as the audience watches the film on the big screen.

The excellent Andrew Bryant (all the way from Mississippi) follows us with a set of devastatingly beautiful music and lyric.

Then Theodore takes the stage to celebrate their new opus Hold You Like a Lover. Musicians from the R&P MPO (including myself) and other St. Louis groups will backup their entire set as an orchestra in its own right.

So, come on down. It will rule. I promise.

If you smoke cigarettes and you want to quit (and you should), do something else to take its place. Low-impact exercise is a pretty good thing to do. You will be surprised at how quickly you can do stuff that you were not able to do before. I started walking two miles every morning, but now I am up to five. At fifteen minutes a mile, it is a brisk walk but not too taxing. Another nice thing about walking is that if it is cold outside all you have to do is bundle up. Another nice thing about walking is that you don't need to buy any kind of "work-out" clothes or shoes. I just wear regular clothes and have a nice pair of shoes suitable for walking that I already owned anyway. After my morning walk, I do twenty push-ups and twenty sit-ups. I started at ten apiece, but when that became easy enough I increased each to fifteen. Now I am at twenty. None of this costs me a penny. In the afternoon, I walk to the library to study, and then back. Another three miles.

Start small, and work your way up gradually. Set small but achievable goals. Find something to do that you enjoy, and then have fun with it. I like walking because it is meditative. But maybe you like something more exciting. That's cool. Do what you find is fun. Often what is fun requires zero money out-of-pocket.

After our totally fun and awesome show Saturday night we were talking about Matthew Lesko. He's that free government money guy on TV who wears the question mark-covered suit and gallivants about the National Mall. He has a kind of Schweig Engel ethic and aesthetic. I was thinking that there is a certain kind of advertising where the message boils down to:

I care so very much and so intensely about you purchasing this product because you need it immediately and it is so important for you to purchase it that I will don a ridiculous outfit and behave as if I am mentally disturbed if that is what it takes to get you to purchase it.

There are people who approach courtship this way as well.

I walked today on Spring Street behind St. Mary's High School past a large abandoned apartment complex. Windows broken and boarded up. It appeared as if the complex was some kind of public or subsidized housing. Across the street from the apartment complex is a corner store called "Speedway" or something like that. Liquor, cigarettes, junk food. I began thinking that the only difference between that corner store and a corner drug dealer is a license.

5-Mile Walk ... House-Sit Edition.


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All I want for Christmas.

www.isc.ro

#0 juliet (H) -> archkevinb asked: I was playing a game. Saw a request for adjournment. Wanted to ask a question first, but then got response Not sent: you are in (name)’s noplay list. What gives?
#0 juliet (H) -> you were noplayed
PLAY delise
New game started: MattyFred vs delise TWL98 15 0
rated noescape=ON challenge=SINGLE. MattyFred’s turn.
assess delise to see the rating changes.
TELL delise hi gl
MattyFred: MOVE H4 felon 24
#0 juliet (H) -> archkevinb asked: How can I resume a game with someone when I’m on their noplay list?
#0 juliet (H) -> you wont enjoy it so just move to another game and forget about it
delise: MOVE 9D candy 25
#0 juliet (H) -> archkevinb asked: That seems like a sneaky way out of resigning, and leaves me with the clock running before I can start a new game.
#0 juliet (H) -> well we cant win them all
MattyFred: MOVE 10E nu 10
#0 juliet (H) -> archkevinb asked: No, but couldn’t the software be fixed to prevent people from gaming the system like that?
#0 juliet (H) -> why would you stop someone from noplaying you if they dont like you?

Last night I saw a man die. I was at a parish trivia night. It was held in a gymnasium packed with people, tables and folding chairs. The gymnasium was cigarette smoky and hot. After Round One of questions a large man collapsed four tables down from my table. There was a kind of silent commotion, and then cries for someone who knew CPR.

Give him space. Give him space.

We pushed our tables back to make a wide aisle for when the paramedics would arrive. It seemed like a very long time passed. A clean-cut man in a polo shirt tucked into his jeans and clutching a briefcase defibrillator rushed across the gymnasium and dissolved into the semicircle of people that had formed around the fallen man.

Don't touch him. Don't touch him. You'll electrocute yourself.

Everyone was quietly sipping beer, munching pretzels, smoking cigarettes and waiting. Now I could not see the man, but the people on the other side of the makeshift aisle could see the man. These people across the aisle had somber looks on their faces. I noticed that these people were not munching on pretzels or sipping beer.

The paramedics marched up the wide aisle and dissolved into the semicircle. Some time passed. I saw the paramedics lift the man onto a stretcher with wheels. They slowly wheeled the man down the makeshift aisle. The man's shirt was missing. His chest and face were a deep purple. His body was as still and silent as a stone.

We pushed the tables and chairs back into their original places. The tables made grinding and squeaking sounds as we pushed them. These were the only sounds to be heard echoing about the gymnasium.

A young seminarian took to the microphone and delivered an impromptu prayer. We then recited one "Our Father," and one "Hail Mary." This was the first time in over ten years that I had recited these prayers.

Before Round Two, the emcee explained to us that the man was a parishioner. The man was a mechanic who enjoyed repairing his neighbors' lawn mowers, including the emcee's lawnmower. The man also enjoyed playing softball, and watching his son play softball.

After Round Ten, the emcee informed us that the man had not been resuscitated.

I agree with this, but if you are eighteen, smart and minimally motivated then everybody tells you it is your only option. Due to the lack of alternative avenues to success, it often is the only option.

Looking back, I sometimes wish I had waited a couple of years after high school and then attended a public institution. The older I get, the more I think that four-year liberal arts colleges are a kind of racket.