Transition back to LA has been difficult, mostly because Delta has planes with cool monitors in the seat in front of you. But if you have a long torso, as I do, your head flops over the “headrest” and sleeping is impossible, even with a Nyquil swig. So I only had a half hour of sleep. Having taken the red-eye (never again unless in first class) I was wiped out on my return to LA and cancelled my appointments. Our new Chancellor’s expertise is in Circadian rhythms and a colleague told me that travelling from west to east is harder on the body than the opposite. [I have not confirmed that Gene Block actually said/wrote/reported this.] Boy, it is true, and add no-sleep to that equation and it’s a deadly cocktail. I was a zombie.
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For the last two days, I have been back in the saddle as Chair doing all kinds of cool stuff and dealing with insane budget cuts (I assume you’ve read all about it in the papers) but making terrific new plans.
I flash back to Kauai. So beautiful and peaceful and little and VERY humid. Fabulous to visit: not ready to move there. Maybe a time-share. Hawaii, and likelly Kauai itself is one of the most dangerous places on earth according the Atlas of Hawaii, 3rd edition. Volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, variation in sea levels, and millions of years from now, the collapse of the porous stuff the island is actually built upon. All that doesn’t keep us away. It is such a great and magical place.
A friend accused Kauai of becoming over-commercialized. Maybe the south part of the island, but there is still a well protected majority of the island that is raw island. After a heavy rain the other day, four amazing waterfalls came streaming down the mountain as we had fish and chips in Hanalei Center. A lovely memory.
It is such an amazing experience to fly over water, water, water, water for six hours and finally you see teeny little set of islands and you land on one. In the middle of nowhere. An amazing experience for me every time I visit.
Mangosteen
Daniel and Mitchell went to the farmers market twice and we continually ate local fruits and vegetables. Mangos, papaya, bananas, coconut and coconut water (filter, boiled and cooled:mmm!), mangosteen, jackfruit (yuk), avocado, kalamansi, rambutan, atis, and more.. I actually lost weight. We ate out at terrific restaurants. Prices on Kauai are not that different from LA.
We swam everyday. I haven’t swam in the ocean since Hurricane Olaf knocked me around, scraping me all over rocks in Will Roger State Beach––I barely got out alive. A very cute lifeguard tended my cuts. When I emerged from the surf, I was covered with blood. It was like Carrie coming from the sea. So, I’ve had issues with swimming in the ocean for a long time.
The sun is so intense in Hawaii from 10-4 that you can really scald yourself. We fragile school teachers limited our beach activity outside that brilliant time. I have nightmares these days about being trapped in an open field, exposed to full sun with nowhere to escape. Golf is just out for me. Sunbathing, while being boring, is not even an option for me. Bicycling in full sun: no more. Both of my parents have had cancers removed from their faces. I’ve been lucky so far but am getting a few biopsies Oct.1.
Some of my colleagues chastised me for doing UCLA work on my vacation. I love my job and taking a vacation 2 weeks before school starts (when children are back in school) carries with it some putting out fires from time to time. And interrupting my vacation from time to time did not ruin it.
The stock market is crashing, but the world is still spinning ’round.
I try to keep the aloha spirit alive. I wore my boar’s tusk necklace to my Moodle class today. Yes, I’m using Moodle for my course online syllabus and resource center.
We’re planning a huge party for the beginning of term and have invited the entire faculties of all three music departments at UCLA and the staff. It’s a potluck, and most of these people are amazing chefs and bring the coolest dishes. The mix will be fab.
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In my blogging pattern, I tend to write less in September as that month is often my vacation month. I read a book once that advised to NOT blog if you don’t feel like it or if it is forced. I’m sure you understand.
I am excited about the upcoming year. The vacation was a terrific battery recharger.
Last night we watched the beautiful but disturbing film based on James Michener’s epic novel “Hawaii.” It focuses on a hell-bound, er, heaven-bound missionary (played by Max Von Sydow) who is determined to convert the “heathens” of Hawaii to Christianity. It underlines the dangers and ugliness of such endeavors. Our hatred for this minister grew through the movie to the point where we kept threatening to turn off the movie itself. By imposing literal interpretation of the bible onto an otherwise happy, loving and spiritual people, his efforts ruined a culture and killed hundreds of thousands by bringing measles to the islands. Although history and science have proved that incestuous relationships are biologically a bad idea, using the bible to justify splitting the king and queen of Hawaii put a bad light on that great book.
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We also watched a locally made DVD that outlines the history of Kauai. In it, a senior Hawaiian ultimately thanked those early missionaries for bringing Christianity to Hawaii. But a terrific resource for information about Hawaii that I found at the house we are renting “Atlas of Hawaii” 3rd edition states:
The biggest challenge to the political-economic establishment of today is the Hawaiian sovereignity movement. Emerging in the 1980s to demand control over Hawaiian life and lands, the movement developed from the Hawaiian cultural renaissance that followed statehood, restoring a sense of pride in being Hawaiian. During the territorial years, Hawaiian culture and language were disvalued––as were other non-white cultures––and Hawaiian language was suppressed. White American culture was promoted as the ideal, and many Hawaiians grew up ashamed of their heritage. While the Democratic political revolution brought economic success for Chinese and Japanese, Hawaiians stayed disproportionately at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. In reaction, Hawaiians revived traditional music and hula in the 1960s and their native language in the 1980s. [...] Ka Lahui Hawai’i is the largest sovereignty organization, claiming a membership of 21,000 citizens in 1996. It is working to gain control of the Hawaiian lands ceded to the United States at annexation and is opposed to large-scale development by outsiders, favoring instead development based within the Hawaiian community.
As much as I love having Hawaii as part of the United States, after seeing “Hawaii” I support Ka Lahui Hawai’i. If you have never been to Hawaii, visit it and see what a magical miracle this place is.
Remember this one? I had once thought that it was John and Yoko that were the trail blazers for Asian-Caucasian relationships, but no, South Pacific was. I looked at the population statistics for Hawaii and saw a huge spike right after this movie came out. But it wasn’t until after 1968 that interracial relationships were legal in America.
As I listened to the score of SOUTH PACIFIC, one of the most important harmonic colors is sharp-4. The sharp-4 (on the syllable ‘Hai’ in Bali Hai) gives a feeling of exoticism. The parallel chords in the introduction to this song evoke impressionism––a style that was also strongly influenced by the East (Debussy heard the Balinese gamelan in the 1894 Worlds Fair). The final chord of the song has a tonic add-6 chord that gives the impression of a magical hovering, not unlike that magical island in the distance in the film.
We watched SOUTH PACIFIC last night — it having been filmed in Kauai, which is where I am right now. I have to admit to loving his music and began thinking about his compositional technique for writing songs.
Rodgers seems to start with the lyrics. His melodies always fit the lyrics perfectly. Afterall, his job is to make sure the audience, and especially those sitting in the back row of the balcony, can understand the words. The shapes of his tunes always seem to be implied by the words themselves.
My guess it that the next thing that comes is the bass. Once the melody and the bass are written, harmony is implied. He can either flesh out that harmony or imply it in the countermelody.
The third step is his remarkably effective countermelodies. They draw very little attention to themselves, but the countermelodies contain, in my opinion, so much of the emotion of the song: the non-chord tones, the suspensions, and the mood. They are quite often in step-wise motion and sequential. Play a Richard Rodgers song with only the melody and bass line and, although effective, the result is not as powerful as when the countermelody is added.
As I work on my book on Rufus Wainwright, I can’t help but notice that many of the songs I prefer have countermelodies not unlike Richard Rodgers. They are predominantly step-wise, sequential and offer spicy tones to the prevailing harmonies.
After a long a busy year and just before school starts, I’m on a vacation on Kauai with my spouse, and two colleagues from UCLA (Mitchell and Mark — see below). We saved all year long to rent a wonderful modern house for a long week in Hanalei called the Tiki Home.
After our arrival on Friday we got up early to go to the local farmers market a block away. An amazing variety of fruits and vegies were there for those who got there in time.
All over the island are roosters and chickens, scattered by Hurricane Iniki in 1992. We found out from a waiter that the cocks were used for fighting. We had determined that I would catch the hen, Mitchell would break its neck, Daniel would pluck it, and Mark would have nothing to do with it. After learning that the hens were a bit “gamy” tasting, we compromised and took pictures instead.
On Tuesday we decided to make the trip to the other side of the island to see Waimea Canyon Outlook (The Grand Canyon of Hawaii). The views were spectacular and the drive grueling but worth it.
Waimea Canyon
On the drive back we had dinner in Poipu but first had to see the grand blow hole known as the Spouting Horn.
We ate at The Tidepools Restaurant and were visited by the many koi that Mitchell and Daniel couldn’t resist feeding Hawaiian bread.
We have made fabulous dinners, ate out at some lovely restaurants, swam at many beaches, body surfed, gone for walks, played gin rummy, Sudoku and crossword puzzles, read books, took naps, did a little work (which my colleagues keep scolding me for doing), watched movies, and surfed the internet. Yes, there have been some amusing moments where the four of us were sitting around each with a laptop in his lap. I get up with the roosters at 5 am, and Mitchell and Daniel have enjoyed catching up on sleep. It rains, pours, and sprinkles every day which we love because after a bit, the clouds leave and the sky is blue.
I still find this island a miracle in that that there is this little world out in the middle of nowhere. I’ve taken a little vacation from blogging and may or may not make more posts this week, but I’ll be back next week.
Woman 1 and chorus
(Sing)
A married man wants a part time lover
Who he can call any time or other
Come over
Relax
Before you send him home
Iron his slacks.
Doin things his wife won’t do
Used to do
Too tired to do
Listenin’ to his stories
Dull as they are
Callin’ him a hero
Handin him drink and cigar
Doin things no one else will do
Shouldn’t do
Wouldn’t think to do
A married man wants a part time lover
Who he call any time or other
Relax
Love him to death
No strings attached.
Doin things I want to do
Shouldn’t do
Can’t resist not to do.
Listen to his stories
Dull as they are
Massaging his body
Nothing’s too bizarre
Come on over boys.
That’s right. Keep coming
Women’s voices chanting, maybe on top of the above song:
Hey laddie, hey laddie ho
The salt of the earth is in from the sea
Hey laddie, hey laddie ho
Stretch out that oar and give, give, give some loving to me
(Some of the men jump over hoard and dance with the women).
O-Man
And port side you could hear—
Men singing:
(Sing)
A married man wants a part time lover
Who he can call any time or other
Come over
Relax
Before you send him home
To what he lacks.
Doin things his wife won’t do
Used to do
Too tired to do
Listenin’ to his stories
Dear as they are
Callin’ him a hero
Make him feel a star
Doin things no one else will do
Shouldn’t do
Wouldn’t think to do
A married man wants a part time lover
His own little secret sort of a brother
Come over
Relax
Love him to death
No strings attached.
Doin things I want to do
Shouldn’t do
Wouldn’t be me not to do.
Listen to his stories
Dear as they are
Massaging his body
Nothing’s too bizarre
(The rest of the men are dancing with each other).
There is this unfair phenomenon that exists for us 21st century composers. There are certain stylistic gestures and textures that are ultimately attributed to a single composer. For instance: anyone who tries to orchestrate an American folk tune for orchestra will automatically be accused of sounding like Aaron Copland. Aggressive modal or atonal writing for strings, especially with double, triple and quadruple stop action, ends up sounding “like Bartok.” Slow and long glissandi sound like Xenakis. Philip Glass has created an overflowing toolbox of accompanimental licks for future composers — that is, composers who are not afraid of people saying “YOUR music sounds like Philip Glass.”
Pop music is filled with musical chunks written by the famous and the unknown––cool little musical licks that everyone shares. Most songwriters have no problem using these [unoriginal] ideas as their own songs as they are really part of our musical language.
Post-Webernian serialists have had an unspoken prerequisite that all music MUST be completely original. So silly.
The new phone books arrived today, three of them in a plastic bag. I went into the area where I keep phonebooks, took out the old ones and noticed that they had never been used. I tossed the old ones and wondered how long it would take before phonebooks go the way of Sears and Roebuck catalogs.
My respect for parents has just sky rocketed. Having been the guardian for my nephew, Roger, for the past 5 days, I have a little better of an idea of what it takes to be a parent. The patience and calm it takes to quiet a screaming baby, the act of letting early teens have more freedom, watching your kids hang out with friends that you would rather they not hang out with, overseeing their eating habits, their manners, what they wear, what they say, and how they talk, all of this is a huge amount of effort, and I, for one, salute parents all over the world from all time and say “my hat is off to you for being a parent.” As The Urantia Book says, parenting is a marvelous civilizing tool for an evolving planet in that it teaches all the great qualities in people: love, tolerance, patience, forgiveness, and such.
I resisted parenting my nephew, but rather spoke to him like an adult. He will, after all, be 14 this weekend, and everywhere we went, 13 was considered “adult” and I let him know that. What was informative to me was what it is like being that age. I really had forgotten. As much as I like to think I was so much older then, people are still children at that age, or big children.
Our music education professor keeps telling me that there are special things that teachers of K-12 students need to be equipped with in order to effectively do their job. I have always been skeptical, but not after this weekend. I have always referred to the ability to teach and have patience with children age 0 – 18 as a “gift” at least in terms of the educational process, and that I have not been blessed with that gift. My abilities as a teacher don’t really kick in until the college level, when students have made a conscious decision to pursue college.
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