i put two large red inverted cans on top of the bird cages. You may remember I had a hawk problem, well, the smaller one that has been around for the past week turned out to be a falcon. He would just sit on the ledge waiting for the birds to come out. Patiently. Wow, does this creature know patience.
Well, I took off after him. He flew up to the tree right above and refused to budge until I got the long handled frut picker and went after him. He went to the wires, and finally he disappeared into a large tree. Once I put up these silly red cans, he doesn’t seem to want to come back, or that’s what I thought happened and he really just flew away.
Our backyard is quite popular with Hollywood wildlife at this time of the year. We have a grand old persimmons tree that gives us far more fruit than we need, as well as two orange trees. In our backyard, we have possums, raccoons, squirrels, rats, mice, skunks, and all of the neighborhood birds. Fortunately the coyotes and bobcats can’t get into our backyard. Our dogs, Cody and Giaco, are extremely protective of our, er, their yard, and so if any animal dares to trespass, they are both there yapping at them until they leave. We also have 2 African Grey parrots that spend their days outside, in cages. Lately, the neighborhood hawks have decided that our birds would be a lovely treat. A couple of weeks ago Daniel found a hawk with a nearly 5 foot wing span, trying to get into their cages with much commotions. Even Daniel was a bit nervous to shoo off this rather large bird. Yesterday I got a call from one of fellows who works in our house telling me that another hawk or wild bird was doing the same thing, trying to get into Erin’s cage. He came out to clap his hands but the bird just went up to the orange tree, only to come right back, which he did for the next two hours until the sun began to set and he gave up.
Wow, who would have suspected such wild life in a property in LA just 3 houses north of Hollywood Boulevard.
[The image above is a rare version of an African Grey taken from the Audobon Society website and is from 1809.]
My ongoing battle with rats continues. I have grown to detest the snap traps, which have been referred to as dull guillotines that often just leave the poor rat without a limb or a broken back or some other horrifying wound. It just seems too cruel. So I started looking for alternatives. Wikipedia has an informative selection that some enterprising person put up, some are quite funny.
My guess is that I’ll try the screen type trap where they walk in and can’t walk out. I was briefly tempted by the Rat Zapper which gives them a quick shock that stops their hearts and lungs. Yuk. But get this: the RADAR mousetrap kills rats with carbon dioxide and then notifies the user by email that the trap can be quickly emptied and reset. My oh my, our lovely technology.
Ralph Waldo Emerson allegedly said “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.”
Mel and five other people from the production team of HOMER IN CYBERSPACE squashed into my studio yesterday for me to sing 25 minutes of music that I had written. Everyone looked so different, and I assumed their tastes in music would have to be different also. I decided not to worry about it and began to sing. One guy had a huge smile during the whole thing. Another seemed to be teary in almost every song. One was completely lost in the score, and the other two were lost in the script.
I sent them home with a CD of accompanimental music for them to get to know, and several took home the sheet music. Mel wrote me later in the day to report that the crew was “deliriously happy.” I couldn’t ask for anything more for my 55th birthday now could I?
I was really sad to learn of the passing of Karlheinz Stockhausen.
From 1972 to 1976, he was my hero. I wanted to go to Germany and study with this god of contemporary music. I studied his scores with a Talmudic fervor. I loved his constant ability to reinvent the way music could be made. I could never really understand what he did with pitches, and after a certain point, I decided that it didn’t really matter.
I bought every LP that Deutsche Gramophone ever put out of his music. I remember fondly opening the plastic cover, and carefully extracting the vinyl, smelling that wonderful plastic smell, and putting it on the turntable, holding my breath, waiting to hear the latest from my German hero.
And then, he seemed to get weird.
In the late 60s he put out some poem compositions called From the Seven Days, sounding positively biblical. These were little Yoko Ono style poems telling you what to do. “Play a note in the rhythm of your self, meld it with the rhythm of the universe…” or something like that. Wow. Far out. Deutsche Gramophone issued a multi-album set of the Stockhausen group “realizing” these scores, for the rest of the world to appreciate. What started happening is that colleges around the world started “performing” these pieces, not having the chops to perform his other pyrotechnical notated music. As Karlheinz toured the world to hear these realizations, he was in horror to hear what he heard. He immediately sent out an edict that no one was to perform his music without his permission. So there. Wow…
By 1978, I was starting to come out as a tonal composer and had less and less interest in following KS’s career. At Tanglewood that summer, Gunther told us that Stockhausen had been “propped up” by the German government to ensure German supremacy in contemporary music. Everything he ever excreted (to used Paul Reale’s term) was published by Universal and recorded on DG. Now, you can get all that stuff on Stockhausen’s website for lots of money.
You changed the world Karlheinz, and you changed me. And for that, I thank you and we will miss you. Farewell Brother Karlheinz!
My life over the past week has been catching up at school after being away on a trial, and writing music. Oh yes, and learning to sing it. Mel is coming over shortly and I’ll be singing about a half an hour worth of music for him. I have to say it’s going really really well and sounds great. I sang it for Mitchell last night and he liked it and was relieved that it “didn’t sag” as it went along — evidently, a deadly habit in some lesser 20th century operas and musicals. Later this week I’ll be singing for the tecnhical crew, or whoever wishes to hear the composer sing it in progress. I have a huge range, and am not necessarily strong in all ranges, but I’m shameless, and I know how it goes.
Here is the NOTE SHAPE of the piano-vocal score for a song from Act 1 scene 5 called “Stephen Hawkings came to dinner.” Look at the shape and you can see that it’s a two part piece with a little introduction that doesn’t repeat. Now I will orchestrate this music for an electro-acoustic ensemble that lives inside my computer.
Mel Shapiro invited me to two final classes that are part of the Department of Theater’s music theater program. The students go through the demanding four year course together as a class, so there is great bonding between the students. The first class final that I attended taught students how to sing gospel music (the teacher was black, all the students were white). All the students in this class were juniors. The second class devoted itself to singing pop songs, with the accompanist crashing through the songs reading from a fake book at the piano. The students in this class were all seniors.
The reason I was there is that Mel and I are scouting for voices for our new musical, HOMER IN CYBERSPACE. I was skeptical that I could find voices in undergraduate students but I was pleasantly surprised. I was struck by how these theater majors invade each other’s personal space all the time. They touch, hold hands, look into each other’s eyes and sing directly to one another. This is in stark contrast to how musicians teach our students. Our students are in classes, in chairs, each with their own little personal wall around them. Even in the orchestra, students all sit next to each other but those personal walls are firmly in place. This is likely less of an issue in opera workshop, but I couldn’t help thinking about this big difference. Mightn’t music majors benefit from a bit of the touchy-feely currency so prevalent theater and dance?
I celebrate the courage to be a personality like Leonard Bernstein, who had no problem conveying a complete set of emotions while conducting an orchestra–from the profound to the banal. He invaded the orchestra’s personal space. Bono sings lovingly into a camera as though he were addressing a lover, and ultimately and virtually invades our personal space. These models could inspire a clarinet player to shoot a glance into the audience in the middle of a gorgeous passage from Mozart and invade our personal space.
So, my music students, invade someone’s personal space. Reach out and touch them. Look them in the eye and THEN play that fabulous note!
My father has gotten back in touch with the photographer he was some 40 years ago (I forgot to tell you, he earned his living as a Methodist, and later, United Church of Christ minister). I highly recommend his photoblog which consists of exactly one photo a day: a nice amount for this information overload reality we’ve brought upon ourselves. Here’s a photo he posted today taken of Bell Rock in Sedona Arizona– a place commonly known as being a cosmic vortex as well as an intergalactic airport.
One of the unpleasant realities of being a homeowner is the fact that occasionally a rat decides to die in your house–usually somewhere in the floorboards that only a rat could get to. Well, we have one. A dead rat somewhere under the house, rotting in slomo. My nose is pretty good, so I’ve pinpointed his location to an area in the house, but then it just gets gross, and one area is just as bad as the other. In my mind I become Wiley Coyote and blow the whole area up with a hole in the two floors above it, but I come to my senses. I haven’t found him but will continue to do so. Where is that smellometer when you need one? Wish me luck.
In the odiferous memories department, I’ll never forget this one smell: kimchi. Back when Susan and Wes were living with us (both Korean-Americans and engaged), Susan’s mother gave us a stash of kimchi–a container, double wrapped. In case you don’t know, kimchi is one of the most pungent aromas there is. It is all permeating. We stored it in a refrigerator in our basement. And regardless of that fact, together with the double wrapped container, the next day I came home from work to find a house reeking of kimchi. It had taken over the entire house. I expelled it into the backyard but the damage had been done and the house smelled like kimchi for a week.
Same as when Adam and Julia brought over Korean barbeque and cooked it for hours. Our house smelled like sweet burned soy kimchi smoke for two months. Sheesh.
This past weekend, I decided to clean out a useful looking mystery bottle made of plastic with a red something in it that had some mold on it so I threw it out and put it in the dishwasher. Mistake. It had kimchi in it. Now my dishwasher smells like kimchi, even after four cleanings.
Moral of story: smells happen; and, beware of kimchi in your house, unless you know what you are doing.
rss feed
