January: it was a good month for reading

It was a good month for reading.

I'm working on the Boise Public Library's reading challenge -- a book from fifty categories over the course of the year -- and although you give up some freedom of choice, it's a good way to just set a goal and plow through pages. I'm trying to frontload the reading to allow for slacking off later in the year, so I wrapped up seven books this month.

For a book written ten years before I was born (one of the Boise Library challenge's categories), I read through Ian Fleming's "From Russia With Love". I had never read a Bond novel, and it was just as incandescently sexist as I had expected. This was somewhat balanced out with my reread of Hesse's "Siddhartha", which I admittedly didn't really enjoy until the final third, at which point it became downright transcendent and life-affirming.

For a book from or about Asia, I happened to pick up from the library "The Accusation", a collection of seven stories by an anonymous author which was smuggled out of North Korea several years ago. It read as a companion piece to "1984" with the disconcerting distinction of being based squarely in reality. While the plots of the stories themselves were fictional, the settings were not. 

Lois Lowry's "The Giver" provided a similarly dystopian setting, and checked off the box of "children's book you missed the first time around". Miles read it for school about three years ago, and although I try to keep up with what he's doing in class, for some reason I didn't read this in parallel with his work at the time. At just over 120 pages I sailed through it, loving every disturbing moment, wishing it had been around when I was in high school.

"The World in Books: 52 Works of Great Short Nonfiction" satisfied my "books about books" requirement, and synopsized some of the best non-fiction from the Greek era up to the present day. As much as I loved this, I enjoyed even more another collection by Kenneth C. Davis, "Great Short Books", his review of his favorite novellas. Since the library challenge includes reading a novella, I'm paying close attention to this one. Apparently he also also written a little something called "Strongman: The Rise of Five Dictators and the Fall of Democracy", which seems, um, timely.

Wrapping up the month's reading, I inhaled "Wires and Nerve" for the "teen graphic novel" and absorbed my third Emily St. John Mandel novel, "The Glass Hotel".

Haymarket Books won't stop sending me books, mostly likely because I joined their book club, so leftist titles such as "Unbuild Walls", an academic study of the prison-industrial complex in the United States, and "Blood in the Face", an overview of the history of white supremacy in this country, so it might become challenging to keep up with all of this material.

Office mate

Simultaneously making it harder and easier to work

The Improvisation Stance

Back in the days when I did kung fu, I would practice my horse stance for hours.  Legs a little more than shoulder width apart, knees bent, pelvis tucked under a bit, feet roughly parallel, spine elongated, arms rounded in front of me.  At the park, in the carport, in class, I practiced this stance for countless hours.  So much of what we did started from that basic stance that in many classes the sifu would have us hold it until we were either crumbling in pain or firmly and solidly rooted to the earth through the soles of our feet.

There is a basic stance in improvisation as well, although you should not confuse one for the other.  I just about drove one particular director mad one night when he instructed us to stand comfortably and naturally and I instinctively adopted a horse stance, which had become comfortable and natural. He repeated his request, and I sunk deeper into my stance.  He sighed and, presumably deciding to keep the mood of the evening light and playful, dropped the subject.

The stance that I’m thinking of is attitudinal rather than physical.  It usually takes me the better part of a warmup to begin to access it.  There are countless types of improv warmup exercises, but here’s one you run into often.  Everyone stands in a circle and a theme is chosen -- let’s say the theme is superheroes.  One player names a superhero, real or invented, points at someone else in the circle, and then that person names a superhero and points to someone else.  And so it goes for a while. Name, point.  Name, point.  Until you’re done naming and pointing.

A good warmup follows a few simple rules.  The rules of the warmup itself should be dead simple and decrease, rather than increase, anxiety.  The exercise should transition players from their normal, everyday reality to the new reality of the performance.  And camaraderie should be fostered; even improvisers who have never met before should be able to connect with each other.  By the end of the warmups, everyone in the group should be ready to play.

Entering into the warmup, I am often solidly in right-brain mode, calculating, guarded.  It’s not uncommon for me to be more concerned about my standing in the group than just being in the group. As the warmup starts, I’m likely mentally cataloging the superheroes I know, evaluating what might get a laugh, making every effort to not get caught off guard.  In most of my daily life, I need to be taking care of business, and being taken by surprise or put back on my heels can deal a real blow to my ego.  The perpetual thought process I engage in throughout most of my waking hours is an ongoing attempt to not only define who I think I am but to establish and maintain a protective shell of “self” around myself.  The level of listening and openness that improvisation requires cannot co-exist with this perpetual ego maintenance.  The warmup, then, is a step from one mindset to another.

As the exercise continues, my mind will continue to generate ideas pre-emptively even when it is not my turn to play.  Holding these ideas in my mind wastes short-term memory that could be utilized by staying in the moment and responding organically when a fellow player does pass the focus my way.  I may fumble when my turn comes and there’s no guarantee it will be clever, but it will be honest and it will be more likely to incorporate material that has already been contributed, which is germane to group improvisation.

That’s the stance I referred to above:  staying in the moment, observing and listening to what is happening, and not trying to anticipate or pre-empt reality with mental chatter.  Responding organically and authentically.  Letting the subconscious and the conscious and the superconscious and others’ consciousnesses play together.

When the show starts, I sit down at my keyboard while the rest of the performers make their way onstage.  My contributions will be musical, but this improvisational stance will be just as important as if I was onstage doing character work.  I can fake dozens of genres and know all sorts of musical gimmicks, and my fingers are pretty adept at noodling without being engaged with the musical mind, but the actors and the story that unfolds deserve a creative openness and freedom of expression that transcend that which is known and expected.  Something deeper is required.

The improvisational stance, that attitude of rootedness and centeredness and openness, allows the musical mind to invent and develop themes for the characters and their stories.  This creative flow need not be contained by quadruple meter, traditional harmony, conventional composition.  Passages don’t need to resolve if the moment has faded and the scene has moved on.  And although I strive to accentuate emotional tension and smooth out rough edges, if the actors are in their groove contributing to each other’s characters and the story, I won’t hesitate to sit out and let them do their work; silence is a powerful musical tool.  

Being strongly rooted and centered fosters the discernment necessary to know when to play and when to rest.  By the end of the show, just as I felt at the end of a good kung fu session, there’s a healthy exhaustion, that “good tired” feeling that leads to a deep, healing sleep.  It teaches you that play is hard work, and is good for body and soul.

"Voices Of The Night : A Psalm Of Life" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I was listening to Thom Hartmann's radio program on Friday, and amid discussions about the economy and the presidential election he read this poem:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, — act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Notes about tunes

In reference to my previous post (listed below) --

I recorded these tunes at East2West Studios, where I currently teach guitar and piano two evenings a week. While they were recorded to include on the studio website, I've dedicated them to Erica on the occasion of her graduation from NCNM.

Couple of notes about the recording -- the mix is 50% audio signal through my guitar pickup and 50% microphone signal. The raw signal was compressed, and a little reverb was added to fill out the sound. There was no overdubbing; the only edits were a couple of cuts.

Summer solstice recordings

Two songs I recorded tonight at East2West Studios in Clackamas. Comments to follow.

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obligatory report

Lazy Saturday. We awoke (late) with no agenda, except maybe probably to head down to OMSI (didn’t happen – we’ll try again tomorrow). Over the course of the day I cleaned up dog shit from the yard, filed a stack of papers, practiced keyboard for a good hour or so (the three B’s – Brahms’ “Hungarian Dance”, Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” and some Bach minuets), wandered around Powell’s for two and a half hours without buying anything (although I almost brought home a book on macramé).

Recent audio highlights: Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin, West Meets East; Jon Stewart, America: The Audiobook. Saw House of Flying Daggers, Garden State, I Heart Huckabees. Finished reading Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch, started Barack Obama’s autobiography. I’ve been a great consumer of mass culture this week.

ice storm

After a balmy Christmastime, winter hit today with an ice storm. I did my best to ignore it, but it managed to keep us from heading north for a visit with bro's family. So we returned home, battened down the hatches, and hunkered down for the night. TV was on for a while, but I knew I couldn't spend the evening in front of it. So out came the art supplies. While Erica sewed, I became fixated upon a banana, and this eventually emerged (click image to view larger version).



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