The highlight of my year had to be the premiere of HOMER IN CYBERSPACE, my new musical written with Mel Shapiro. I don’t have the interest or connections to try to send it to Broadway, but am certain it could have a huge audience if put in the right hands.
A trip to Hawaii with Daniel, Mitchell and Mark was thrilling. We loved it so much we are considering getting a time share on Kauai. Prices are lower than ever with people trying to sell theirs with the downturn in the economy.
I got married to Daniel Shiplacoff, and after the passage of Proposition 8, I guess we are still married but I’m unclear what our legal status is. I’ll keep it as married.
This year Daniel took a job at Palm Inc. (of Palm Pilot fame) and is working on some mysterious new things that will be announced at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas in a few weeks. I wasn’t sure how his commuting back and forth from Sunnyvale would work. I had visions of our marriage falling apart but it just got stronger. It gave both of us concentrated time to do our own research, and could look forward to spending quality time together over long weekends.
I have enjoyed seeing the growth of social networking resources like Facebook and MySpace. It is especially gratifying to reconnect with old friends, and to follow my own students in their post-graduate lives.
This year my brother Andy’s health went into a final decline. He is now in a hospice in Reading MA. Yesterday we had a wonderful birthday party there for his daughter Hannah. We were a noisy bunch and were a bit worried that we were disturbing the other people there but the nurses assured us that it was welcome. Andy couldn’t have been happier. He got his picture taken with everyone. This may be his last party, but who knows. He’s been an amazing survivor. He has faced his imminent death with courage, grace, intelligence, and candor. He has been good to finish the unfinished business in his life. His blog and especially, his recent posts have elicited a remarkable response from the many people who have known him in business and life.
I was upset about being excluded from a top 50 Classical Blog list because I write about other things than classical music. I am a composer, and composers have lives, but as far as this anonymous blogger is concerned, I don’t belong. Fine. I dealt with it, but I find myself wanting to start another blog where I can write about things that may not be appropriate for the Chair of the UCLA Department of Music to write about, like “sex, drugs, and rock n roll.” I keep putting off posts in this category to my retirement when I can write without worrying about what my students’ parents (or my parents, who are faithful readers) might think. To that end, I’ve decided to start a new blog in January where I will be anonymous.
I have rejoined the new music scene in LA after some 15 years of avoiding it. I am thrilled to go to these concerts and see a new audience. I have been somewhat baffled by the rise in single, often widowed, retired women who flock to hear new music. The wilder the better for them. Whodathunk? I refuse to change my musical language so that my music can be programmed by Esa Pekka and Pierre Boulez. I am more than happy with who I am musically, and have seen how my music touches people.
I finished my first year as Chair of the UCLA Department and anticipate I will continue in this post for several more years. I find it challenging and rewarding. I am happy to be at the helm during our transition to becoming the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. I have enjoyed working with our Deans and with Tim Rice, the school’s director. Designing a radical new curriculum has been exciting and long overdue.
I am amused to see the world’s enfatuation with texting. It seems all I see are people shuffling down the street texting or looking at their cell phones like zombies. Young people can’t hold concentration to have real conversations, preferring to check out and text with some other bored friend. I’m ready for this technology to move to eye glasses, and for a return to real conversation, but I know texting is here to stay. (I text regularly.)
I am thrilled to see the Bush era end and for Obama to become our new leader.
I, along with many other music teachers, am puzzled as to the lack of passion and obsession in young composers with regards to learning new music. Why, in my day, I remember trudging home from the music library with oversize scores in my arms, spending hours poring over the notes, the orchestration, the invention, the craziness. I would be obsessed over a composer and listen to everything they had written: Ives, Stockhausen, Boulez, Berio, Stravinsky, Webern, Schoenberg, Berg, and the rest. Nowadays, young students barely know who these composers are, and don’t really seem to care. Where has all the passion gone?
I am horrified that young people today don’t know folk music. People from my generation grew up on it and know thousands of so-called folk songs. Young mothers are singing rap and hip hop to their infants. I just find that weird.
I’m fascinated by the widening gap between theists and agnostic/atheists especially in young people.
I have no interest in pursuing more involvement in composing film music. I am happy to help train young composers who ARE interested, but scoring one every so often is fine. That being said, I’m thrilled to see the rise in interest in film music, worldwide. I dare say film music is far more popular (and perhaps relevant) than most of the so-called classical music being written today. For young film composers, studying metal music today is just as important as studying Bach harmony. I’m puzzled to see that USC is now offering a BM in popular music. Why? Since when does one need to go to school to learn how to be a pop/rock musician or songwriter? None of the songwriters they will be studying did, so why should anyone else?
I am fascinated to see the old world order crumble — politically, ecologically, economically, musically, and socially — and feel fortunate to have been alive during the period I’ve been alive. I wish I were optimistic about the way the world will be in 100 years. I hope I’m wrong. I hope the world can begin acting like a single, mega organism. I wish that corporations will learn to have a heart. I hope the world can learn to become more tolerant of social diversity — that it should be assumed that other people are not like you, and that that is ok, and normal.
[Photo by Mark Carlson of RB at Haleakala, in Maui]
Part of my job as Chair of the UCLA Music Department is to know about all of our large and small performing ensembles. One group that is probably what most of the world thinks when it thinks music and UCLA is our marching band.
Yesterday Daniel and I spent from dawn to dark at the Rose Bowl as guests of the UCLA Marching Band. The main attraction for everyone else was UCLA versus USC, a long standing city rivalry that I personally never cared about but was amazed to see in full force. The mere fact the we both had UCLA blue jackets made us involved in the town rivalry. And when we walked through areas of only USC colors (red and gold), we felt a bit uncomfortable. How silly.
We arrived before 9 am and there were already miles of RVs with rugs in front, full bars and lots of chairs with people already drinking and barbequeing. We were misdirected and nearly had to be locked in the purgatory known as stacked parking, but we kept saying “NO! We have to be in the M lot.” They’d shake their heads and tell us to go to the opposite side of the stadium. Some police then gave us another set of bad directions and we started getting a bit cranky. We stopped again and a motorcycle policeman got out. He looked at our pass and said, “OH! You’re really going to M, eh? Ok, I’ll take you there.” We then got a police escort to Lot M.
After parking, we went to watch the UCLA Marching Band rehearse in a large parking lot, this was now 9 am. The Director, my Vice Chair in the department, looked professional, was cool, calm, and in control. He runs a tight ship. Controlling over 200 undergraduates while playing their memorized music and stepping through complex steps all over the football field is an amazing ability. Wow!
When Gordon realized that I was there, he announced to the amassed players that I was there and that it was the first time in 20 years that a Chair had come to a rehearsal and game with the band. I waved, they whistled and shouted.
After an hour and a half of rehearsal we wandered over to the Chancellor’s tent. This was a huge tent with terrific food catered by Bristol Farms, with a free open bar, a coffee bar, and lots of tables. This is a perk of being a donor. And if I heard it right, each of these people contributed at LEAST $10,000. And the place was packed. That’s when I realized how powerful school/team spirit is, or can be.
We sat down with a retired couple and had a lovely chat. Members of the band came in and entertained us for a while. I got to visit with the Chancellor’s wife, Carol Block who is a marvelous and bubbly person.
After the reception we went into the stadium, and since we were apparently on the A list, we had access to everything. We went down on the field during the pre-game show, wandering up and down the sideline until we were told to go back to our seats. We sat in front of the band near the 30 yard line, and with good earplugs, it was tolerable. The audience was deafening when the cheerleaders would call for NOISE. An incredible phenomenon–an audience of 40.000 (?) all screaming some loud sound that, together, adds up to an amazing cluster of terror, done to distract the USC offense.
Just before the end of the 2nd quarter, Jennifer Judkins, perhaps sensing I was in melt down mode from the sheer volume of everything, grabbed us, and walked us down on the field. It was a bit surreal. The game was still going on, and we tip toed around the edge of the field, cops saw our badges and waved us through, walking in front of a huge section of USC fans. Would they boo us? Would they throw something at us? Two little blue spots moving along a sea of red and gold. THey didn’t. We then stopped at the corner of the UCLA end zone and just watched the game from the field. It was marvelously QUIET. The view from the field is vast and quite beautiful. The sun was starting to go down as well, so everything looked beautiful.
We then watched the half time show. After hearing the two bands, it is clear to me the great job Gordon does arranging and running the band. UCLA did, appropriately, a suite from West Side Story– perfect for town rivalry. After the show, Jennifer fetched us again as the players came back on the field and took us up to the press boxes hovering above the stadium. We went into the media room and watched the announcer, and everything involved in keeping the score board up to date, and the various video feeds.
Next to it was the Chancellor’s room where donors were allowed to watch the game from a privileged room and schmooze with the Chancellor. I greeted him and chatted with Carol again, had a hot dog with Sheila, Jennifer and Daniel and then got into our cars, leaving a bit early to avoid the rush.
USC beat UCLA 28 – 7. I’m over it. I had a great time and suspect everyone else did as well. I’m not ready to up my quotient of “Bruin Spirit” but I’m glad to have learned that many take it very, very seriously. We were exhausted when we got home. It is a lot of exercise: walking all over the place, standing most of the game, clapping with the cheerleaders, cheering, watching, shouting at each other. I had no energy to sit through the Beethoven 9 at Royce. We came home and collapsed, pooped, but exhilarated.
Go Bruins!
[Photo by Daniel Shiplacoff: RB watching UCLA Marching Band rehearse]
After an intense year being chair of the music department and writing a musical, it seemed like an easy transition: just chair? no problem! All of a sudden, my TO DO list has become formidable. And having this list just sit there is very stressful knowing that I am going to have to do most of it. Yes, I delegate, and delegate wherever possible. But sometimes ya just gotta do it yourself.
I haven’t written any music all summer long. In that I wrote almost every day last year, I think it’s ok to take some time off. Recharge the batteries. I have no guilt: i feel good about it.
Ahead of me is a new orchestration of FLASHPOINT/STONEWALL for men’s chorus, soloists, and replacing four live synthesizers with piano, bass and two orchestral instrument (stay tuned).
Another piece I will be writing this year is a “companion” piece to the Goldberg Variations. This is for a solo piano recital by Lana Chwe, who will be performing the GV on the first half, and my piece on the second half. So I share the program with Bach. I can’t imagine doing another set of variations––it would probably just give everyone hiccups. I’m thinking post-Rachmaninov.
I find that after NOT composing for a while, it’s like going for a long time without sex––you get really, really horny. So, I get really horny for writing music, and BAM! i set the piece in motion. I love it!
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Today was the first day back at school. I taught a large “music theory” class–the first of a full year course with freshmen from ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and music majors, and later, individual lessons with graduate students in composition. Intense. My aloha spirit–left over from our fab vacation in Kauai–got me through it. But man, I’m beat.
Today we’re hosting a party for faculty, staff and families from the departments of Music, Musicology and Ethnomusicology. We’re anticipating around 80 people. Not everyone can make it but those that will be here should have a good time. A warm day is in store and there is enough shade in our backyard to keep us all happy.
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.
Yesterday in my duties as a chairman, I attended several meetings where we discussed and invented jobs for graduate students who in turn oversee other students whose duties we also defined. I couldn’t help but feel like a member of “the gods” who set cosmic parameters in motion and watch them play out.
At UCLA, each department has a self-review and an external review every eight years. This is a necessary prod to keep the educational process vital. One of the Chair’s primary responsibility is to continually update the curriculum. With any luck, whoever a group or society picks to set up a curriculum, one hopes that institutional memory, innovation, and adherence to the organization’s principles guides them to better and better ways of educating students.
Beyond imagining how a curriculum can shape a student’s world view, there is the curricular Yenta aspect of the admission process––meaning, when you put people together (in this case students) in a class, in a curriculum, in a particular year, these students all go through the program together, and there is a bond. And from time to time, they meet and fall in love and get married with each other. Two musicians in one household can prove to be too much music for some and a student may fall in love with someone who is completely different from them. And even if they don’t marry, they stay in touch with each other, hire each other, recommend students to each other, and through Facebook, many of them stay in touch in new ways by being members of a “Friends of [YOUR SCHOOL]“. I enjoy keeping track of our graduates through Facebook––to see their careers blossom, to become more themselves, to move to a new city, and sometimes start new careers.
My brother Andy was prescient in singing Facebook’s praises from their beginning. Now I see he was right on. The phenomenon that Facebook has set in motion, will likely be part of our society forever. I can now get in touch with some of my old friends from Green Bay, and Madison, and Boston, and New York, and, well, all over the world. Getting back in touch with old friends feels pretty good.
I found Janet Grice the other day, the woman for whom I wrote my solo bassoon composition for in 1978 (Soliloquy VIII: Meditation) through “Friends of NEC.” She remembered my piece as having microtones––a detail I have since forgotten.
Little celebrations like this make Facebook a worth while hobby.
We have had to make some drastic cuts in our department related to the California budget crisis. The process is a painful one but necessary and interesting. To console myself, I think about patterns in nature, where when you cut off a branch, two grow back. Pruning is a pattern and is always good for the plant. The pruning is either done by natural causes, or by a wise gardener, or an administrator who has to make cuts to their budget.
Yesterday, four of us were wracking our brains over trying to find ways to cut. We spent 45 minutes and only cut $7000, then we found a forgotten expense that erased it. Then all of a sudden, bang, bang, bang, and we came up with excellent solutions that did the least amount of curricular damage. What I loved was the ‘bang bang’ part where all of a sudden, we all came up with the solution to our cuts in one minute.
For some cosmic reason, the Universe taught me a lesson this week: get your facts straight.
I chaired a meeting to discuss a departmental issue. I didn’t have the facts straight, and assembled the agenda that momentarily threw gasoline on the fire. Everything turned out ok but I learned my lesson.
The next day I got a cranky email from a student accusing me of X, Y, and Q, two of which were just false assumptions and the other was just her warm and fuzzy opinion. Get your facts straight before you accuse the Chair (or anyone) of something.
As I mentioned in my “receptive” article from the other day, we often decide something is true whether it is faith, or one’s own construct of some unexplainable event, or fact, or opinion, or accepting a rumor as fact. My lesson this week was to not be so quick to decide that something is true. Be like a newspaper reporter and verify the information.
This kind of decision has to be hard wired into me as long as I am Chair, but ultimately the exercise seems relevant to any civilized person.
The doorbell rang this morning. I wasn’t expecting anyone so I peaked through the side window and saw a creature that resembled Cousin It in the Addams Family. My heart thumped not being sure what it was. I went to the door, opened it and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi — you know, the guru that the Beatles, and Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys, and Mia Farrow and all those people went to in 1968 (7?).
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Roger: Dude, I thought you died not too long ago.
Maharishi: (Smiling with a white flower in his hand.) I am standing in front of you am I not?
R: Uh, kinda. Please, come in.
(MMY floats across the doorstep, the way the South Park characters ambulate.)
M: A very beautiful home you have here.
R: Why, thank you Maharishi
M: Call me Maha
R: Got it, call me Roho
M You are trapped in the physical world and you are NOT a wise man.
R: (Taken aback) I don’t know what you mean.
M: You went out of town recently. You got out of your element, your community and your way of life, and you became intolerant.
R: I beg your pardon Maha?
M: I scanned your brain the entire time. Here are some exact quotes:
Ugh, I can’t believe how much cologne that man has on.
Look at those beautiful teenagers smoking, what idiots.
Can you believe he ate that entire plate of food?
This person is trapped in 1972.
Your view of the world is so myopic.
Your taste in clothes seems to have stopped in 1973.
It is so beautiful here!
M: So, with the exception of that last line, you are an intolerant, un-evolved dolt in addition to not being a wise man.
I stood up, and he disappeared And where he was standing, George Harrison appeared, playing a sitar, the gourd cradled in the hollow of his bare foot. His eyes looked really dilated, which made him look really cute. He didn’t say anything, just looked up at me for a few seconds, bobbed his head a few times with the music, and then went back into his inner world. I closed my eyes and nodded forward.
The door opened and my assistant walked in:
“Your 11 o’clock appointment is here.”
“Send him in Moneypenny” I thought to myself. “Someday I will learn to tolerate all the shortcomings of my earth co-habitants.”
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Send him in Moneypenny.” Her eyes glanced to to the ceiling.
The Beatles (George Harrison) – Blue Jay Way from the Magical Mystery Tour movie
Yesterday was a stressful day. Why? Because in my mind, there were so many things that needed to get done but simply not enough hours in the day, nor enough energy to get them all done even if there were.
I watched my body as it tensed up, and all other physical manifestations of stress kicked in. Then I took a big breath and realized all I can do is put one foot in front of the other and get through the day, and not worry about what isn’t being done. I have no choice, so let it go. As much as I try, I can only do so much in one day, and that’s the way it goes. Life will go on, as ol’ George used to say “within you and without you.”
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