No Wonder I had So Many Cups Too Wash











I had been clearing out no longer wanted items from our apartment for weeks, and that turned things upside down.

Yesterday, in an all night marathon of my last minute, frantic cleanup before my wife and son arrived back from Japan, I found an old page of practice writing of my son's. It made all the frenetic work I had to put into cleaning up the apartment pay off. I think I may steal it for the first line of one of my stories.

"A few days ago the toothfaire came and drinked all our coffee"

Snowstormlessness













I read a woman's description of herself today. She is in her 30s and lives in Florida. She said she never saw snow.

I feel sad for her. I would not want to miss a year of snows.

On a more serious note, for the past month we have been worried over my friend's 15 year old son who had had cancer for years. He lost one eye and nearly another to it.

Other than that he is now fine and the cancer appears gone, it seems. But, for the past month, after an operation to remove a cataract, his vision got cloudy instead of better. He could just about not see at all. A second operation three days ago was to clear the eye of blood and debris. Now his vision is much better and expected to clear even more week by week.

I thought of the things I would miss seeing. People's faces most of all. Trees and stars. The ocean beach. Small things like birthday candles and the color of the shirt my son picked out for the day. My wife's earrings. A pianist's hands while he plays. It's been said that we first taste food with our eyes. Books, I love the intimacy of paper words in my hands.

And yes, I would miss seeing seeing snow. Snow changes the whole world around us in a beautiful way. But if friends could tell me it was snowing out, and if I could feel it and smell the air, that would be OK. In this week's pilot for the new TV show, Covert Operations, a blind CIA operative tells the protagonist that he doesn't need to see a woman to know she's beautiful, he just listens to the way other men talk to her.

I would rather give up chocolate than snow. To those who know me, that says a lot. Even the chocolate from the basement of this one, old department store in Japan.

We must be careful not to miss our opportunities. Each time I visit Japan, I bring a book to deepen my feeling of being there. One such book mentioned these weary travelers who, 20 years ago or so, stopped to sleep at a monks' place. The monks encouraged them to see their treasure, it was on view. But they were tired and decided to decline, just go to sleep and see it in the morning. They woke up and asked to see the treasure. A monk apologized and said it was only on view for that day. "Maybe next time," the travelers said. "When do you think it will shown again," they asked. "I don't know," the monk replied, the last time before this was in the year 1230.

If you open for a big rock band, you can get a ton of exposure. I worked selling real estate years ago with a woman who looked like Rhea Perlman, (Carla from the Cheers TV show). Eventually, her boyfriend David F. came and worked with us too. He told me he was once in a band when the Beatles came and toured America; and they were asked to tour and open for the fab four. But David said it was cool then to turn things down. They could have been rich and famous.

In Judaism, you are supposed to run when you have the opportunity to do a good deed, you don't know if it will pass quickly or if you will ever have the chance again.

I hope the young, snowstormless lady gets and takes an opportunity to see snow very soon. And that my friend's son will get to see many more years of snow.

The Best Book Ever?













That was what I was asked after reading. . .

"Have you ever read a book that is soooo good it blows all the others out of the water? Last month this happened to me. Seriously every book I reviewed on my blog the year prior went down a notch in my five-star rating system."

What about you, my reader, the BEST? I thought about a bit about this, myself.

As I had learned to type by retyping The Catcher in The Rye, no matter how great another book is, this will always retain its own special dimension.

Cummings' 95 poems comes close to perfection in its category.

Recently, Victory Finlay's non-fiction, Color, introduced me to our world as if for the first time; and also The Cello Suites by Eric Siblin. Read it even if you aren't a musician.

Perhaps I will write elsewhere of music books - of the only theory/composing book to consider; about a book that Julliard wishes wasn't; and on a book that is an advanced technical study on how to play the recorder, but which remains very human.

Not the book itself, but now listening to the text and fine explanations by Jean, a brilliant friend and teacher (in his 90s and dying of cancer), as he explains the stories in a book by Aragon; by it teaching us French at his dining room table. But the book itself too; for Aragon's way of expressing himself is, among any writer's I have encountered, the most similar in thought process behind some of my own poetry. It makes me feel less lonely. And more so too, with Jean reading to us.

My most intimate facts have been learned privately with teachers, but one or a few.

Surely, I exaggerated just now. And one exception was Tides and the Pull of the Moon, where I learned the moon does not circle the earth but the moon and earth, each other; and so, apples do not fall, they and the earth merely are trying to circle each other's center; the center of the earth being so down deep, the apple appears to be falling straight towards that middle.

For sheer depth and breath, the immense Torah commentary, MeAm Loez is unrivaled, building upon Rashi, the Talmud and other tomes.

In the other direction, there is this tiny, Beatrix Potter sized book, odd as small, in translation from Japanese, The Illustrated Book of Living Things by Momoko Sakura. Just get it. Intimate recountings of her meeting various species and wonderful, amateur illustrations. (James Thurber once told his "NYer" editor that he was going to take a drawing class. The editor told him it would ruin his terrible style. Likewise, Momoko San's paintbrush is warmly naive in its own way.)

Incidentally, Ms. Potter choose her small book size for small hands, she said. Of hers, I love Ginger and Pickles, whose title characters were a cat and dog. I love it for the following quote, Edward Gorey worthy. . .

"The shop was also patronized by mice - only the mice were rather afraid of Ginger. Ginger usually requested Pickles to serve them, because he said it made his mouth water. 'I cannot bear.' said he, 'to see them going out at the door carrying their little parcels .' 'I have the same feeling about rats,' replied Pickles, 'but it would never do to eat our own customers; they would leave us and go to Tabitha Twitchit's.' 'On the contrary, they would go nowhere,' replied Ginger gloomily.

As firstborns of man get birthrights and double blessings, the same holds true for novels. Don Quixote says it all and so well that all the authors in all the lands could have stopped there. We struggle within what we believe is happening, but with grave delusions of what is, though this does not decrease the import of our quests.

(OK, "first western novel," the appellation of first novel is more accurately awarded to Lady Murasaki's pen.) I love The Tale of Gengi's beginning. But when my wife was given a choice to study that or The Pillow Book, she choose the latter, a great little work by a horrible court lady and so much more interesting. My wife chose well.

And I see no need for me or any to attempt to write "The Great American Novel." It was already written and has Atticus Finch in it and a real guest appearance of Truman Capote as a child. It is so America.

The early Peanuts books, The Hobbit, 100 Years of Solitude, Moby Dick, the first Harry Potter for it's escorting us into another, here world, flawed though its world structure is. The Dark is Rising series, maybe partly because my wife introduced it to me. The greats have been well thumbed and acolladed with good reasons.

(Well, I guess "Moby Dick" was a previous "The Great American Novel," and it could be time for a third.)

I can't imagine another book that would notch down Bilbo's tale.

And my favorite quote in any of these or between some other covers? It comes from the book on how to play the recorder. You will have to write me if you want it. It's not earth shattering, but important.

(Ohh, I just had a thought. Imagine, as a child, being tucked into the covers of your bed; and the top cover is an imprint of the cover of your favorite book. Or even now, what book would you choose?)

Pleasant Speeds

Later this morning, I will be seeing my lovely wife and energetic son off. They will be taking a plane to Japan. The land of moon viewing.

And there are the trains there, between Tokyo and to Yokohama and beyond, which run local and express, and one that is faster still. It is called "Pleasantly Fast Express." I like that name.

I have been up working and typing here, in the late night; comparing the different speeds Feuermann and Casals take with Bach's Air in G; and I am distractedly watching the moon like a scientist between times, struggling to see if I can actually notice her moving.

But the moon is too slow for me to see move across the sky.

There! No, I think I just imagined it.

And, as if to taunt me further, a small mouse blurs across my floor too quick for my eyes, like a magician's trick.

But now, I am comforted to watch the pleasantly slow moving clouds which have appeared and are moving in front of the moon, like a curtain at the ballet.

I see the moon snuff out like a candle, a smokey glow left nearby.

I keep at my works and eventually look up again. My companion has returned, definitely further to the west in the sky.

We used to play red light, green light as kids, where you only moved when the watcher had his back turned. The moon has been playing this game with me, no?

Well, she has won. I need to retire before I forfeit all my night's sleep. And the yellow disk has finally hid behind the building wall as I finish.

There is a trick I could have used at the end - if I hadn't been engaged in writing this for you. If you imitate the coming of an eclipse by positioning yourself so the moon touches the edge of the window or another building's side, you can see it melt, eclipse. You can notice it move.

But she has won.

Barney Greengrass











I have just finished my writing work and went off for bagels. Walking down the street, I ended up thinking of two restaurants. one Japanese, one Jewish.

My son, Sage, was very disappointed that Sapporo was renovated. It was a typical Tokyo or Osaka feeling restaurant, a shabby and unfancy, beaten up place that served wonderful, basic food - chicken katsu and noodle soups. But it was special because it's in Manhattan. Now, the food is still the same, but my teenage son, like a retired geezer longing for "the good old days," complains that the katsu have gotten smaller.

Oh, and don't be mistaken that their katsu is like what you've had in other places, unless you've eaten katsu in Japan.

We get out bagels from Barney Greengrass, that still-the-same, dingy, unrenovated restaurant across the street from where Mr. Singer lived and where the author had many a bagel and bialy, eating there practically every day for many years.

I think Issac Baschevis Singer, an author my son likes, would have understood Sage's feelings.

One biographer supposed Mr. Singer choose his apartment building because it has a huge inner court to look in on. It would have reminded the Yiddish writer of the court his family lived on in Warsaw as a child. Mr. Singer wrote of how he loved to watch from his family's balcony, the dealings and dramas going on below in the Jewish ghetto, an old world he chronicled and which is now gone.

And while Barney Greengrass across the street wouldn't have been why he took an apartment in that building which takes up an entire city block like a medieval castle; I'm sure it was one of the reasons he stayed there so long. A comfortable, unfancy place with simple, familiar soups and food.

The English title we have for Issac Baschevis Singer's short story masterpiece, Gimple the Fool, is a mistranslation. Tamim is not a fool. It is a Hebrew word for perfect in a straightforward and untricky way. In our selfish, tricky, clever, violent world, the simple tamim is looked upon as foolish. But that is a mistaken view of fools.

I used that word, tamim, only once in my fiction writings. Just last night, actually, in the simple poem I wrote. I will share it with you below. I am still looking for a title. Maybe a good one will come to you as you read? Nothing fancy I hope.

find a way
to be amazed
and thankful
at sighting the next
small, brown bird
in a common, green tree.
it will have taken
every, every one of
this world's woven events
to bring the two of you
together just then.

be as the true and tamim cellist
or the quiet guitarist in his room,
who has chosen to love
the subtleties of each
of eighteen million,
slow, unadorned scales.

Something for Your Coffee Break














If you go to this site you can read some of my quite-short stories, myshorttales.blogspot.com Click on the sleeping cat on the upper-right of this page to be magically transported, she is a portkey.

I just added another small story. Enjoy with a donut.

(This picture isn't relevant at all, but it was so beautiful I couldn't resist. Isn't she like Botticelli's Venus rising, her slightly tilted head, her falling hair? But this maiden comes to us not from the sea, rather the deep wood. For comparison, I provide the image below. You may click on the images to enlarge. The photo above is by ha!photography on Flickr. )

Rubber Chicken Soup











This is the true story of an unfortunate pun.

It all started several months ago when I entered a contest for the world's worst poem. I lost. Imagine, my poem wasn't even good enough to be the world's worst! How sad.

The reason I had entered, in the first place, was the glorious prize they gave you if your poem was the worst. The prize was a rubber chicken.

My son, Sage, had mentioned he wanted one. I wanted to win it for him.

Well, a week or so after the contest results came out, I saw one in the window of a pet store and decided to go in and buy it myself. (I didn't need no stinkin' contest.)

Sage loved the chicken and named it Tasty. This somehow got us talking about rubber chicken soup; and then to making an account, tastyrubberchickensoup@gmail.com.

Sage's new hobby became playing The Blue Danube on the piano while substituting the chicken squeak sounds for some notes. (Is this how Victor Borge got started?)

The other afternoon, when he had gotten a bit bored with his bassoon practice, Sage got out Tasty the rubber chicken to find out which note it makes. He compared it to the bassoon and then the piano.

Sage found that if you squeeze our chicken, it produces the note la, or a natural.

I imagine other chickens from other manufacturers produce other notes. There must be f sharp rubber chickens, and e chickens, and d chickens out there somewhere.

We definitely have a chicken. But if you squeeze most of the air out, the note then sounds half a step lower, then it's a flat chicken.

(The next time someone asks what it's like to homeschool, I think I'll just send them this article.)

I Wish I Were an Architect!












David Ayache, an Italian luthier, took this wonderful interior photo of a violin. I love the shot and wish I were an architect. Then I would design a lobby for a symphony hall that looked exactly like this with the soundpost, curves, materials, basebar and f holes. (Imagine this 22' tall!)

Wouldn't it be fun to sip wine here during intermission?

I am adding a note 5 months later. . . My son just played bassoon at Lincoln Center, in a student orchestra. Afterward, while enjoying the celebratory party upstairs, I am told that the architects of this redesigned building for Julliard and Avery Fisher Hall wanted to make it feel like you were inside an instrument.

How to Succeed With an F Average








How I envy those who can captivate with a story. I mean in a conversation, like last night when we had dinner with a close friend. She obviously has different genetic material than I do regarding the ability to make interesting words come out of one's mouth.

This is very different from being able to write an interesting story.

As I sit here at the computer, remembering our cellist friend tell her stories last night, it's like remembering scenes from a movie, or like the stories happened to me, not her.

I, on the other hand, feel shy and clumsy in company. It's as though I'm playing the wrong instrument, say a cellist blowing into an oboe. I think of Gary Larson's cartoon of an elephant onstage at the piano realizing in panic that he's not a pianist, he's a flutist.

When I do say something, it's often a clumsy imitation of what I wanted to say. And I can't go back and edit, revise, like I can as I am typing to you here.

That is why I like typing out my stories and essays. It feels like I am playing the "write" instrument.

Writer Lorrie Moore answered well when she was asked "What in your childhood contributed to your becoming a writer?"

"... a shyness that caused me - and others - to notice that I could express myself better by writing than by speaking. This is typical of many writers, I think. What is a drawback in childhood is an asset in literary life. Not being fluent on one's feet sends one to the page, and a habit is born."

Ineptness in conversation can be a useful failing if you're interested in writing. Just as dead, decomposing plants in your garden become the humus, the soil, which allow other plants to thrive.

In her article on how to become a writer, Ms. Moore speaks of a different failure which is helpful to writers...

"First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/missionary. A movie star/kindergarten teacher. President of the World. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age -- say, fourteen. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at fifteen you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire."

I just finished a book of poetry that took a few years. Yea! and Confetti! And I can truly say that my finesse at the small failures in life has greatly contributed. (Except for my failure at being a descent speller. That's been a bit of a drawback.)

Here is a small appetizer from the collection. . .

An Extra Closet

The corners of my home
have become
filled with filling.
I wish I could put
some of the piles
into my writings
and hide them away.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Actually though, gathering any experience will give you some grist for the mill, having something to write about is what matters. Not just the failures, a writer's successes in life and those mixed results can be useful too. Getting out of bed and trying is the thing.

Playing Hookey











I was going to write something else today but I got distracted by the faint and constant snowing. In a few hours we'll go skating at Bryant Park. It's very beautiful to skate there as the snow falls. Then we'll go to a restaurant I love nearby there that reminds me of being in Japan. I'll order tanuki (a tanuki is an animal like a raccoon, but that's just the name, there's no tanuki meat in this). Tanuki has pieces of tankatsu batter, the batter used in making tempura, in a soba or udon, warm, noodle broth. I love it.

They also have kitsune (fox) of soba or udon broth and tofu skins, which is funny because this again stirs my memory, of the simple, traditional song my son and every Japanese child hears and sings about - kobuto, kitsune, tanuki, neko. However there is no (kobuto) piglet or neko (cat) soba or udon.

How to Walk onto the Stage of Carnegie Hall Without Stage Fright










Nine and and a half years ago, in July of 2002, I cut out a couple paragraphs from a New Yorker article and taped it up on our kitchen cupboard. In it is the simple secret of how to instill confidence in your child or in a pianist who will debut at Carnegie Hall.

Never praise abilities, praise efforts.

Never tell your child, self, wife or student that she is talented, smart, or naturally gifted. Tell her, she is such a hard worker.

Never say to a pianist that he is so good at sight reading, tell him that he worked hard at sight reading and it paid off. Don't these sound similar? But no, no and no - they are polar opposites, like northern polar bears and southern penguins, we feel they are from the same region, but they live on opposite ends of the earth.

Do not tell a violinist that she has real talent, tell her that her hard work on her vibrato really paid off. This is a dangerously important distinction.

And secondly, it is better to praise small achievements than broad accomplishments. You really worked hard on this trill in the second movement; you're getting good at filling the cat bowl; I noticed how quietly you have been closing doors lately, you've been trying hard not to slam them; you're relaxing your shoulders now when you play the piano, you've put a lot into it.

If you want to walk on the stage of Carnegie Hall without stage fright, you need to start encouraging yourself way before that night. You need to make it a habit to tell yourself that you are a hard worker. Not in a magic phrase way. But find little things you worked at, notice them and encourage yourself. Surround yourself with friends who will do the same for you. "I love the way you worked on phrasing in the beginning of the slow movement, it sounds beautiful."

Here is the article snippet from my cupboard. . .

Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Columbia University, has found that people generally hold one of two fairly firm beliefs about their intelligence: they consider it either a fixed trait or something that is malleable and be developed over time. Five years ago, Dweck did a study at the University of Hong Kong, where all classes are conducted in English. She and her colleagues approached a large group of social-science students, told them their English-proficiency scores, and asked them if they wanted to take a course to improve their language skills.

One would expect all those who scored poorly to sign up for the remedial course. The University of Hong Kong is a demanding institution, and it is hard to do well in the social sciences without strong English skills.

Curiously, however, only the ones who believed in malleable intelligence expressed interest in the class. The students who believe that intelligence was a fixed trait were so concerned about appearing to be deficient that they preferred to stay at home. "Students who hold a fixed view of their intelligence care so much about looking smart that they act dumb," Dweck writes, "for what could be dumber than giving up a chance to learn something that is essential for your own success."

In a similar experiment, Dweck gave a class of preadolescent students a test filled with challenging problems. After they were finished, one group was praised for its effort and another group for its intelligence. Those praised for their intelligence were reluctant to tackle difficult tasks, and their performance on subsequent tests soon began to suffer.

Then Dweck asked the children to write a letter to students at another school, describing their experience in the study. She discovered something remarkable; forty per cent of those students who were praised for their intelligence lied about how they had scored on the test, adjusting their grade upward.

They weren't naturally deceptive people, and they weren't any less intelligent or self-confident than anyone else. They simply did what people do when they are immersed in an environment that celebrates them solely for their innate "talent." They began to define themselves by their description, and when times get tough and that self-image is threatened they have difficulty with the consequences. They will not take the remedial course. . . They'd sooner die.
-
Yes, every musician in or out of music school knows you have to practice like a little, red-tailed demon, talent alone gets you nowhere. But it is the self-encouragement of noticing our little victories, and how we talk with each other that make a difference. Are we saying, "Oh, you're so talented! You're going to go far." or "Wow! you really worked on your dynamics in that piece."?

You made it to the end of this article, you really showed determination. Keep up your good work!

What To Choose as Your One Genie Wish













This is what your parents should have chosen for you, and what you should for your son or daughter. . .

Confidence.

Occasionally, when I am in the middle of badgering my son, trying to change, inform, control, mold, teach him - I stop and ask what I am actually teaching him. Yes, I can defend every little thing I say as being important for him to learn, but. . .

What am I really teaching him?

What should I be teaching him? Well, I want him to grow into a confident person, a disciplined-on-his-own, compassionate, considerate (rather than bullying), thankful, happy, intuitive person who accomplishes great things.

If I stop and ask regarding any of these - am I teaching him these? Much of the traditional molding of a child is teaching him exactly the opposite, (you find it in both the classroom or home).

So, if I find a bottle washed up on the beach with a genie trapped inside, I would use my wish to give my son confidence.

And I can, just by putting less effort into molding him and letting him make his mistakes, work through his own challenges. Watch my son do his project exactly wrong and say nothing, or let him rebel a bit and say nothing.

There was an interview of a Japanese comedian we watched one summer in Tokyo. He was asked how he became such a success. The comedian said that when he was young, he was a very poor student. But if he would come home with a test with no answers right, his mother would exclaim, "Wow, anyone can get a 5 or 10, you got a perfect 0%. That's something." If he got one question right, she would say, "That's great, you got a 5%, let's put it on the refrigerator." No matter how poorly he did, his mother would praise his results.

The comedian says his mother gave him so much confidence that now when he gets up in front of a huge audience of people or performs on TV, he knows he will be funny and people will laugh.

I want that for my son. Don't you want that too? For yourself, your child?

There is a wonderful Jewish saying, "If you tell you child to study, he will grow up to be a person who tells his child to study. If he sees you studying, he will grow up loving to study."

We teach other lessons than what we think we teach.

(And by the way, in case some Genie is reading this essay, I hope I would get another wish or two for selfish, little me.)

A Perfectly Broken Performance









My son is learning the piano and bassoon, and last week we went to a dinner at a friends' Brooklyn home with about 15 people. Sage, at 14, is getting quite good and there was a piano in the dinning room, so he volunteered to play after the meal.

Sage sat down and began with the new Clementi piece his teacher gave him. He played with a handful of stutterings, restarting phrases he tripped on, as he tried to play this piece which he just began memorizing. But he didn't care. And it actually turned out well enough, then a nice applause followed.

My wife and I were in shock that he played the Clementi he hadn't quite mastered yet. And that he was totally unfazed by his rough playing, not unnerved or embarrassed at all.

I was even in more amazed when I realized my son had actually listened to me.

I had been explaining to Sage over and again that it's not the mistakes in a performance that matter but the quality of playing. And I had been telling him that when he performs to just enjoy it and not try to impress people with how talented he is or how perfect he has been been practicing. The performer is there to share his love of a piece with the audience, to move them with wonderful music.

He could have chosen to impress the room with his Debussy, but this Clementi Sonatina was what he was excited about, in the middle of learning. This was the music of his current heart.

I hope he carries this attitude all his life and in all his performances.

The Exotic Fish, My Flashlight,
and Monkey Waiters










I remember my son, Sage, getting upset only three times when he was very young. And each of these times he was quite inconsolable.

Once, we were given tropical fish and a tank. I thought the tank needed one more so I took Sage to a pet store and he picked out a fish. We brought it back in the small plastic bag you get, but when I put our new pet in the tank with the other fish, Sage cried.

He wanted to eat it. My wife took him to Citarella's to get another fish that was for eating, but Sage remained insistent on the one he and I had picked out. Not even a beautiful pink snapper could entice him.

When I first saw the movie Tampopo, I thought it was funny but too exaggerated - no one obsesses about food like they show in the movie. Then I married a Japanese girl and slowly began to realize as I frequented Japan, the movie was an understatement. The Japanese have a different relationship to food than all others and while my son was half Japanese, his tongue genes were inherited entirely from his mother.

Another time, Sage cried was when we showed him a flashlight for the first time. We sat on the bed and he put the the flashlight to my ear and looked in the other one. He was upset because he couldn't see the light through my empty head. What do you say to someone who is disappointed about such a thing?

The third time was entirely my wife's fault. We were headed to Chinatown in Yokohama. She was trying to get him excited about going to a restaurant there called something like "Monkichi." Somehow he got it in his head that it was a monkey restaurant and imagined monkeys serving us Chinese food. With such expectations, how could anyone not be disappointed? Sage cried until he fell asleep at the restaurant and missed the meal.

Never underestimate the Japanese, however. Last year we saw in the newspaper that a restaurant in Tokyo has monkeys which bring you your food.

The Composer as Performer












"I am disturbed that Gosfield doesn't place the acquisition of musical (esp. instrumental) technique at the top of her list. Ever since it became acceptable to be a "accredited" composer and not a performing musician (thanks to universities which began issuing degrees in "composition"), "composers" have given us music which is not worth the paper it is written on.

Young composers should spend more time being performing musicians and less time hatching half-brained works which the public is invariably going to hate. I liken the contempory composer to a chef who conjures up recipes without ever having set foot in a kitchen.

Having listened to "Lightning Slingers and Dead Ringers" (2008) is it clear that Gosfield has a good command of the piano: young composers should aspire to the same level of proficiency. If your instrument is the computer, then please don't compose for acoustic instruments."
- Desabata. Hamburg, Germany

I deeply agree with the above idea that we composers need to aspire to master instruments.

Our greatest influence is the voice, from which in the tongue which we speak, we find our most subtle musical phrases. The next is the rhythm with which we move through life, our dance. After that are the instruments we play and lastly the ambient sounds of railroad trains, steam kettles and catbirds which inhabit our personal worlds. Somewhere in the mix, of course, are all the other compositions that have beautifully or obnoxiously invaded our ears. (My order here is quite arbitrary and may be skewed.)

The instruments we play and to the degree we master them, are frustrated by their limits, alter them, imagine them just beyond what they can do, and push and struggle against them for perfection, become our internal tools of composition. "Break your instrument," Casals.

Whether adjusting the pitch for cello notes higher or lower within a piece's harmonic and step considerations or getting a piano sound like other various instruments as did Horowitz, or altering the emphasis of notes as did Rachmaninoff for others' piano works, we learn.

Modern composers are generally strong in getting feedback from musicians as to how to stretch their instruments in new ways. If there is not first however, the deep, subtle connection to wonderful music playing of these or another instrument by the composer herself, the adjustment is only a parlor trick, an "Ah, ouuh, look at my cleverness," not something deeper.

The greatest composers were among the greatest performers. And I imagine, this will continue to be.

Advice to Young Composers











"The composers you admire didn’t get where they are by imitating others. Inspiration and influence are a far cry from imitation, so listen, observe, and then dig deeper to find your own music."
- Annie Gosfield

"I am not in any way a specialist in any kind of music. I am what might be called an ordinary, general listener. In that very limited capacity I would give one piece of advice to young musicians. Try to understand the kind of music which has given people, and still gives people real pleasure, true joy in listening. Understand then that in order to truly give something in music it might be necessary to speak in a vocabulary which most of mankind is capable of understanding and enjoying. Touch the heart and soul of human beings, and avoid empty technical achievements which even computers will not hum along with."
- Shalom Freedman, in response to an article by Annie Gosfield

In my way of thinking, the way to approach composing is to write beautiful music that touches the soul and uplifts it, encourages people to live a little higher up the chakra tree than before, be more caring and giving and thoughtful.

But composers want to make something new. They believe that this is a measure of having achieved a great stature. It is.

However, one should not aim at being original. That comes naturally from the process of being great at doing what has been done before. Doing it over and over and honing your talent until one day your work actually becomes something new without that being the goal.

I don't mind being old fashioned, Bach was considered old fashioned during the years he was writing. I would rather follow him.

Composers write at the level they are at in their personal lives, they relate to that level. The music of the rapper, for example is one of aggression and survival at any cost, down at the lowest chakra level called survival. That is where many people are comfortable and rap music affirms their feelings. Other musics fit people at other levels. Much of popular music is about the ego, getting things, especially getting (or wanting or the sadness of loosing, etc.) a romantic relationship, which is on a bit higher plane than "survival." The music of Bach is from a composer who, and for an audience which, are less comfortable living on that level and more comfortable with a more advanced spiritual level.

Experimental composers mostly relate to the world which is now sadly discordant, polluted, overpopulated and at war. Of course, this shows in their music. How to make them cringe? Tell them their work is sweet and warms you.

But it is more than the world situation which creates a "modern composer."

Their writing is often a reaction to too much exposure to mediocre and saccharine sweet classical performances, often the composer's own. When a composer who is middling at best on her instrument spends hours and hours, years and years, playing his guitar or cello and it doesn't hit the quality of beauty of say, Segovia or Casals (and in fact is boring), the composer turns to something else to erase the experience of that bland music which deadens the soul.

Having to sit through some very uninspired piano music last week sent me straight to my own piano to improvise extreme discord with some resolution. If the composer has sat at her piano for years of her own tedious practice and dull piano lessons, she needs to react to that.

If the composer tries to write the exercises at music school and finds that her work is flat and dead compared to what Faure or Schubert did in their school work when they wrote their Ave Marias, what is she going to do but try something else? If the composer, realizes somewhere in her heart of hearts that in writing traditional music, she will become at best, a workaday, mediocre composer, she will turn to the avant garde. That way it feels creative and exciting and the quality of her music can't be measured against Beethoven and Haydn.

Nadia Boulanger, the most influencial music teacher of the past century taught just about everyone: Quincy Jones, Gian Carlos Menotti, Ned Rorem, Walter Piston, Astor Piazzolla, Aaron Copeland, Burt Bacharach, Leondard Bernstein, Daniel Barenboim, John Adams, and two I would like to now contrast, George Gershwin and Philip Glass.

George Gershwin went to Ms. Boulanger to hone his compositional skills. She told him that while he might not understand all of technical aspects, she did not want to teach them to him because he had a quality that she did not want to ruin. She knew he would produce wonderful music.

Philip Glass also went to Ms. Boulanger in Paris to improve as a composer after studying first at Julliard. He said he wasn't very good at traditional composing so he turned to minimalism.

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it".
- C. S. Lewis

One Small Step Can Change Your Life



In Robert Maurer's book by the above title, he mentions how bestowing small rewards produces the best results.

He tells us, Japanese companies give tiny rewards for suggestions, maybe a pen for the best year's idea, as opposed to a common American practice of giving large cash rewards in proportion to the money their idea saves. Because of this, the ideas suggested are different and 90% in Japanese ideas are implemented while less 38% in American Companies. But these figures are misleading by themselves. It gets worse. You have to take into account how few employees in our country's companies offer suggestions while Japanese workers offer their companies a lot.

Last night my wife came home a bit shocked. She had some little-kid stickers. You know, "Good Job!," "Doin' Great," Super Work," that kind. Chie teaches at NYC's premier public high school, Stuyvesant. The students pride themselves on being sophisticated. She didn't expect them to gush over the stickers so much when she stuck them on their completed work sheets. These are the students who will be going into pre-med or pre-law in two years. One boy asked for it to be put on his folder instead of his paper so he could see it everyday and get inspired.

Chie ordered a slew of Pokemon stickers for the students last night.

If you think you smile to the cashier girl or a tiny tip to the young man who made your coffee this morning is unimportant, think again.

Part of why you appreciate a smaller award may be that you sense you actually deserve it. Another part may be that when the gift is small, you focus on the fact that the other person noticed you, cared.

On a similar note, I've seen that homeless beggars here in Manhattan are often more thankful for the fact that someone cared than the coins put in their paper cups.

Why Does Intuition Want to Spoil My Wonderfully Logical Plans?











Let's say you want to be a rich and famous novelist.

You have it all planned out:

1. get a writing job at the local newspaper;
2. come up with a brilliant story idea;
3. write novel;
4. find an agent who gets your book published;
5. tour the country for signings;
6. have novel made into blockbuster movie;
7. win Nobel Prize for literature;
8. retire to the South of France.

You get step one and two checked off. Great!

Then one balmy Tuesday in October comes along. Your "Intuition?" tells you to call in sick and enjoy some golf. You call your friend Alfie and meet him at the North Fork Country Club. Your boss runs into you at the 19th hole and you get fired from your terrific job at the Suffolk Times.

Back to step zero.

Now, the only lousy work you can find is scraping barnacles off boat bottoms at the Greenport Yacht and Shipbuilding Company. You get depressed as the weeks drag by.

Then you start noticing that the strange characters who work with you each have their interesting quirks and histories. Your novel starts to percolate. You can't wait to get home each night and type away. And Danny, the old man who's been painting the names on yachts, his daughter is a top literary agent. You meet her at her Danny's retirement party and she takes interest in your writing.

Your logical mind says, "Well, why didn't you tell me that we were supposed to write about the characters in the shipyard? And that you were planning to meet an agent through one of them?"

"Why?"

Well, your intuition isn't interested in wasting time talking to your logical mind. It speaks a different language. I haven't figured out if its Medieval French or Pre-Cyrillic Russian, but I know it's something I can't translate just yet.

Besides, your intuition only deals with the next step. It only will tell you the next thing to do.

This is important, this is why I actually wrote this entry. Your intuition only deals with the next step. It will only tell you the very next thing to do and will sometimes wait years until you do it.

It won't not nag and hound you like your mother did when you were 14, to clean up your room. It will just whisper. Sometimes just once and if you don't listen, you miss out, you file the thought away, you forget about it. Or if you keep pestering your inner feelings instead of taking the next small step, you might get to hear the wrong answer you wanted to hear all along.

If you want to hear your intuition, you need to blindly take the step it is telling you. Afterwards, you may stumble into what to do after that, or your intuition may speak to you again.

I like to think of life as a maze. Your logical mind tells you that you want to go a certain way. It knows the cheese you want is to the north. But you will sometimes will have to go east or southwest as you follow the maze path. You have to if you want to eventually get to your goal, your cheese at the end of the maze.

It can be frustrating, your mind is shouting "the cheese is thataway" and your gut is yelling, "I don't care, this is the next step in the maze." They can sound be like two brothers, 8 and 9, fighting over that last jelly doughnut.

And it takes courage - what if your gut feeling is wrong?

At one point in my life, I studied from Stuart Wilde. He said that, "Your logical thinking isn't right all the time, so don't expect you intuition to be either." You will make some mistakes. When you follow you intuition, do your taxes, or paint the name on a boat, you will make mastakes.

It will take practice and mistakes to know when it really is your intuition speaking.

I don't like writing articles like this for one reason. Too much theory, too much thinking. All the words in 180 books can matter less than one bumbling, tiny attempt to do something. My gentle reader, just make some small, clumsy attempt to do what your gut is saying and I will feel today's writing was worth it.

(Oh, man! I was going to have oatmeal for breakfast. Now that I wrote about jelly doughnuts, It ain't gonna happen.)