From Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Child’s Garden of Verses” illustrated by E. Mars and M. H. Squire; published by Rand McNally and Company, 1902.
After such a raw week, I need something distracting. Hmmm, let’s see. A ha! Here’s one. One of the comments on YouTube reports:
Zladko “Zlad!” Vladcik is a fictional character created by Australian comedian Santo Cilauro and is the unofficial mascot of the equally-fictional nation of Molvanîa. It’s from hella days ago and Mt Dew has revived it once again for their MDX drinky drink. Not new. OLD.
In my music theory class I am experimenting with a new technique as an alternative to homework. (The homework involved is college level harmony exercises.) I have divided the class into groups of four (2+2) with similar abilities and temperaments. I hand out a set of in-class exercises for the class, and the students are to do them in pairs. Each takes turns doing the exercise and commenting on the other’s solution. Once the two are in agreement about their work, they exchange with one of the other 2 in their group, and they all have to find each other’s errors. I am hopeful about the process of doing-watching-doing-watching and then correcting each other’s errors and doing so in a good-hearted manner. It is important to instill sensitivity to giving and receiving criticism at an early age. (It’s all we can do to fight the pulp-criticism of American Idol.) As the students work, my two teaching assistants and I walk around the room looking over shoulders, making suggestions, answering questions, and upping the tension a bit.
Our school, or perhaps I should say, our curriculum, is so packed, our undergrads are in school from 9 to 5 and many have nighttime ensembles. They have no time to stop, have a meal, practice during prime time, or have much of a life. Our desire to pack their brains full of everything the faculty think is important has reduced the amount of available time to actually do homework to late at night. I am not in support of this option: students need their sleep.
Short of changing our curriculum, along with periodic quizzing, it is my hope that this kind of real-time work-learn-look-critique workshop can be an effective alternative to take-home homework.
After a lovely morning of working, playing the piano, walking the dogs, I doubled over in pain and was taken off to the emergency room. I had no idea what was happening. Was it a perforated colon? An exploded appendix? Cancer of the prostate? Kidney failure? Death? I was nearly delirious when I left but was a bit better by the time I got to the emergency room. In my fog I had forgotten to bring my wallet, but didn’t fail to bring my Sudoku book.
Josie came and sat with my for a while and, being a nurse, speculated that it was kidney stones. She brought me some soup and I told her that I was ok from here on in. So I sat for several hours watching people come and go in the emergency room. A little boy with a bad flu. A very confused elderly man kept complaining of pain. Finally I got called into a room. Wow, what a zoo. In the next room was a crazy lady, likely a former opera star who had this bizarre habit of mumbling something like “oh let me go I’m in pain oooohhhhhh~!” and she would swoop up to some high note, and hold it with an impressive vibrato. Other phrases included “oh don’t touch me ooooohhh” “No,! you’re touching my breasts oooooohhhhh!~” “what are you doing to me oooohhh!” This went on for 5 hours. OOoooh!
Caddy corner across from me was a 30-something Filipina who, for some strange reason, they had to tie down. She successfully kept untying herself and the security guards would go in and strap her up again. Across from me was a 60ish Jewish woman who had obiously had a stroke. “What is your name?” “I don’t know.” “Do you know where you are?” “No.” “What is your birthday?” “August 22.” “In what year?” “What?” “IN WHAT YEAR?” [Door slams]. Outside my room on a bench were two gay guys, one obviously in terrible shape from AIDS.
I walked down the hall to go to the restroom. “Mr Bourland, please let me give you a cover up” as my ass was showing from those skimpy little hospital gowns they give you. I saw some 15 doctors and nurses furiously working on some guy who had just been brought in from a terrible car accident. On a gurney was a very elderly Korean lady looking as though she were taking her last breaths. As I walked back down the hall, a large Mexican family, all in tears, were bolting down the hall to see someone.
Finally, Travis, a black male nurse, and the best one I met yesterday, came in to tell me I’d be getting a CT scan soon. “Are you in pain?” Despite my desire to knock myself out and be spared this veil of tears, I said, no I’m better now.
An hour later, a patient assistant (formerly called Candy Stripers?) fetched me and took me in a wheelchair to the CT imaging room. Well, he tried to. He got lost. There we were rolling down these long abandoned corridors trying to find the CT room. Finally we did, and he delivered me to Carlos who put me into the big CT donut.
An hour later, Travis returned to tell me that they had found a small stone and it was in the bladder and would be passed “in the next 24 hours.” “Drink lots of water. The pain is as close as men get to experiencing childbirth. Here is a prescription for Vicodin.” The notion of drinking water to help flush the little bugger out, and bringing me to more and more pain was unsettling. And the notion that I’m going to have to go through a few more eyecrossing sessions is something I don’t look forward to.
I was released and joined Daniel and Wes for a martini and sushi. Then went home, drank tons of water, woke up at 3 with eye-crossing pain and moaned for a few hours. The clouds have parted for the moment, giving me the chance to write up this report. But I’m feeling it move again, so I’ll sign off for now.
UPDATE: (Saturday morning)
All is well––a bit raw, but fine.
Alexandre Michel Desplat was awarded a Golden Globe for best score in a motion picture. This is well deserved, and I hope that he goes on to get an Oscar as well. He is a terrific composer who incorporates elements of “pretty minimalism” from John Adams and Steve Reich but spares us the trance repetition. His orchestration reminds me of Reinhold Gliere (esp Symphony No.3) and it is clear he knows his Stravinsky, Ravel, and Debussy.
If you are looking for some wonderful orchestral music to sink your teeth into, buy the soundtrack to “The Painted Veil” and if you like that, buy the soundtrack to “Birth.” Between the two scores you’ll get a good idea of what Desplat sounds like. Such a relief to have a great and deserving composer get an award like this.
The tradition of a restaurant charging you a fee when you bring your own wine to their establishment (using their glasses and not buying their wine) is commonly known as “corkage.” As you wine drinkers know, many vintners are turning to screw caps, citing the high failure rate of corks as their motivation. What do restaurants call the fee for simply cracking open a screw cap wine bottle? I’m not sure, but I’d call it
SCREWAGE
Yesterday I watched two word nerd movies: “Word Wars” and “Wordplay.” The first follows four scrabble experts and their journey to compete in a yearly Scrabble tournament, the second interviews Will Shortz and the mechanics of the New York Times crossword puzzle. One of the saltier crossword puzzle constructor commented that people will always love puzzles because of their never ending desire to “figure things out.” Isn’t it that same impulse that drives our curiosity for science? Our spiritual quest? The educational process? Our courage to question and analyze?
These daily puzzles may be cosmically insignificant, but to very many people, they seem as important as meditation, exercise, and learning.
Go ahead, click the play button. You know you want to. It’s in stereo!
We’ve had a pair of little white tables that have been sturdy and useful, but a bit hideous with who know who many layers of paint on them. The paint has been chipping off the legs and the table top, and the poor thing has been begging to be stripped. Today being a beautiful cool and sunny day, I decided to strip the top and leave the sides and legs the putty-white it already is. There were some 5 layers of paint and I felt a bit like an archeologist tracing it all back through the years. I was certain the purple layer was the late 60s, harvest gold early 60s, muted grey 70s, and the tasteful 80s layer was putty white. Underneath all of the paint were layers of murky varnish and stain some amateur applied over the years.
I continued to strip the layers back until it seemed I was down to the wood. I started to do a light sand to the surface, and like magic, strange scrawlings appeared. There was also a strange gauge along the side that was filled with more paint. I carefully carved out the old paint with a plastic pick and then I realized what it was: it was an old school desk. The gauge was where the pencils went. The mysterious compartment beneath was obviously where the books went. And the mysterious cuneiforms were children’s writing. It occurred to me that all these children are very likely dead or else very senior. Most of scrawls were just writing that got pressed through paper onto a young wood–number 3 pencils, tough leads! Then, with age, layers of dirt, sweaty little hands, varnish, and paint, those scribblings disappeared––until today.
“Doctor of Music.” Hmm, what does that mean? I have a Ph. D. in Music from Harvard. Students call me “doctor.” That is the same word we use for the person who gives us our physical exam every year, and the person who keeps our teeth healthy, and the person who help us see better, and the mad scientist who created Frankenstein––we are all called “Doctor.” The Oxford-American Dictionary tells us:
I remind my students that musicians have a magical gift. A power that is unique to musicians. We can change the biochemistry, the emotional state, and neurological synapses in people. Music can make us cry, laugh, want to dance, want to sing, want to fight, want to worship. Music provides a legal high for its listener. Music heals. If we are blue, depressed, angry, or in some unsettled state, music can rope us in and take us to a place that is happier.
That happy place can usually only be self-prescribed, meaning, it is the musical equivalent of prescribing medicine for yourself. Only YOU know what music can do to you. Even though I am a musical doctor, just because a piece of music has been exhilarating to me, is no guarantee that it will be so to my “patient.” It might, but no guarantee.
It was this possibility, giving my “patients” musical prescriptions, that set my mind daydreaming this morning. I would have therapy sessions with patients. They would come in complaining of depression. I would tell them to see a medical doctor and/or a licensed therapist for professional advice, but before you do that, I’d like you to put Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony on your iPod and walk down along the ocean front until you have finished listening to it (about an hour). While you are listening, be receptive to the music. Let it take you, shape you, fill you, and evoke the emotions it does. At night, an hour before you go to bed, do stretching exercises in a quiet place and listen to Rachmaninoff’s “Vespers.” Let your stretches all be in slow motion. While you stretch, ride the music. Don’t worry about what they are saying, just go with the music. Close your eyes and breathe with each phrase. The next morning I’d like you to take the same walk, but listen to Steve Reich’s “Six Marimbas.” Then go to work. At night, make dinner and eat while you listen and sing along with Norah Jones. [...and so forth]
I think I’ve found a calling for my retirement. Being a musical doctor. Heck, there are a lot of people who want to be told what to listen to. Dying to learn about classical music but are afraid to ask. I’d set up shop, they can come ask me what to begin with, and I’d write them a prescription.
Music changes us, but it is temporary, like food, sleep, oxygen, and health. It behooves both future musical doctors as well as individuals to get to know as much music as possible so that when you self-prescribe, you have a large medicine cabinet.
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