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Things do change, sometimes dramatically. 2016 will be a year of that kind of change for us. I've dropped some broad hints in a few previous posts here, and calling our lighting display this season "family tree" is surely a giveaway of sorts, but now I can proclaim the news:
This year, however, the 'joke of the year' contest entries were rather paltry. Uncle John did not come through with his usual tough contender. Daniel had a joke based on "Good King Wenceslaus" (I'll report later) and that was about it. Fortunately I had two (2!) entries. The first was this:
He told us we could get our money back for the bed (guaranteed!), but we would need to go down the hall to see the manager. I explained to him that we didn't have our receipt, no paper, nothing to show about our purchase. The salesman said it was no problem, but I persisted in articulating my concerns. Finally, he got fed up with me (and the constant BANG-ing of the little door), and he shouted:
I've been a bachelor the past few days. Jill is with her grade-school friends at Disney World, and Daniel has been spending time with high-school friends having fun in Boston. He gets back tonight, and I'm picking Jill up at the airport tomorrow. It's been a good few days, though. I've gotten a lot of of work done. I think I'm feeling ready for the coming semester. Which is good, because there will be some difficult things to negotiate.
I've also nearly finished a piece -- it's one of my "pretend you are young" rock pieces again, but this one has been taking shape since last August. I'm happy to get it out of the way, because I have a bunch of other music I want to do. Somehow I felt committed to finishing this one first. Nearly all of the 'rockish' pieces I've done in the past twenty years or so have lyrics, and they all relate obliquely to my state-of-mind/state-of-life. The words are deliberately obscure, and most have to do with my relationships, mainly with Jill. I hope she realizes how much I'm still in love with her! I've missed her a lot these past few days. Others words relate to my old friends Thanassis and Perry, and also some about Dan Trueman and Luke Dubois. But I'm not telling! Ha ha ha!
I feel I'm semi-ready for the coming semester, which is probably dangerous. I have an appointment with Roger this coming Wednesday, also potentially dangerous. Heck, everything is dangerous. As I said, the wind is blowing hard outside! At least I think I'm having fun again. I hope I can keep this framework in place.
Classes start on Tuesday. It was a good break. Lian and Itay's
visit was wonderful, and Daniel received some excellent news
earlier this weekend. Hearing joy in your children's voices,
no matter what their age, is one of the absolute best things in life.
I've been able to accomplish most of what I wanted over the
intersession, and I think Jill is also set for the coming academic
term. Things are good.
Jill is in Florida, so I've been hangin' with Xenon the cat. Shoveling snow, too, of course. I'll get photos on-line soon.
I do have some reporting to do today, though. First of all, the BIG SNOW! Jill's enjoying time with her friend Debby in Florida. We think her departure this past Friday was one of the last flights out of Newark. I've been holed up inside getting lots of work done, when I'm not outside shoveling, that is. Here are photos from the event:
I've also had a good week of music-making, starting last weekend with a session involving Karl Fury and two friends comprising an electronic duo called The Melting Transistor. Links to the music we did and to the transistor-friends Juan and Floyd are here:
All this and classes started well, too. And snow! Snow!
In the meantime, good things abound. Last weekend (it's Thursday now writing this -- shows how time has evaporated!) Jill/Daniel/I went up to Brenda and John's home in Longmeadow. The occasion was a public lecture by the Pulitzer-prize-winning oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. I had read it while ago, even talked briefly about it here, in the ole blog. Anyhow, John is Chairman of the Board of a coalition of hospitals in Western Massachusetts/Hartford, and he set up the lecture. He asked me to introduce Dr. Mukherjee, so I did. I guess it was the Columbia connection, or the myeloma (one of Mukherjee's research areas). I was really nervous; it's a bit outside my 'comfort zone', but it seemed to go well.
It was COLD up there! Absolute temperature of -15 F on Saturday night, with wind chills down to -30/-40 F! Now it's just plain old February, and I'm slogging through a lot of coding for my class. Plus the changes.
This one is actually being written on March 4, though. Why? You can skip ahead to that March 4 posting to read about the changes I mentioned in my previous post. It's been an intense week or so.
Wow! I've rearranged TIME ITSELF here! All that will ever exist, has already. And I can link to the future! Wheee! Plus I wanted to have a post here on February 29. It doesn't come around all that often.
Although I had been talking to Douglas about this for several months, the actual occurrence has caused a fair amount of chaos as we move to adapt the CMC to this CHANGE. It's like losing 1/3 of my staff (actually more than that; Douglas did a huge amount of work at the Center), to say nothing of the valued colleague and respected artist that will no longer be a part of our team. I haven't yet begun to grapple with the personal loss. Douglas has become one of my closest friends. Jeez, I've known him for almost twenty years now. That's a good 20 percent of my life! (yes, we'll all live to 100...)
Things have been rather hectic as life gets rearranged once again. On top of many meetings with deans and colleagues, other happenings continue. Jill had an amazing show of her work in New York! (that's one of her pieces featured in the posting link.) A curator for the West Harlem Art Fund was visiting the studio where Jill does her work and was really impressed by her pieces, so she asked if she could include them in an art show. Wow! Lots of good publicity and visitors came by; this is quite a career for Jill. There's a good video showing the work here, done by Jill's friend Robert Diken who also had pieces in the show.
What else? Daniel is going to Madrid over spring break the week after next. They're using the "last hurrah as Columbia undergrads" excuse, which seems ok. I'll be traveling to see mom and dad over the first part of the break, followed by a visit out to check on Lian and Itay and help get the new nursery all squared for the May arrival. CHANGE!
I always fall into this trap -- at any given point in life, I find myself thinking: "this is what it is! Life will go on from here, like here, like now, into the indefinite future!" It never does. I've been through several big friend-changes like the one impending with Douglas in the past, and each one is different, each one leads to a new way of being in the world. There are myriad other changes, big (babies!) and small, that serve to shift our existence. In one of his essays, I forgot which one, maybe Are You Serious? or Compose Yourself, Jim Randall had a line: "arriving back at ground zero, refreshed" (or something like that). It was explicitly about the process of music-making, and the putative 'objective' for that activity, but also -- and I think Jim would certainly agree with this -- more about the process of living. Things shift, they change, they rearrange, and the best we can hope for is to face the future refreshed. There is a beautiful, late snow outside today. Earlier this week I noticed that our first spring crocuses had come up.
I returned last Monday, and then made a quick turn-around to fly out to Seattle with Jill to visit Lian and Itay. Our original flight had to be changed slightly to accommodate some airline delays, but all worked out fine for us. Flying is so much fun anymore [yes, sarcasm]. Lian and Itay were looking great, and they both seem pretty thrilled about life.
-- environment (physical) I like nature. I like space. Jill grew up in much more of a 'neighborhood' than I did, and I don't mind that. However, I do not want to be totally surrounded by a housing development. I like... scenery. I think most important (and it reflects the physical structuring of a place) is the acoustic environment. When I was growing up, before the interstate was built, we used to sleep with our windows open in the summer (no A/C!), and the sound of the frogs and night insects was wonderfully overwhelming. I love hearing the spring peepers calling out this time of year in Roosevelt. I love the katydids in the fall. I love the call of the screech owl in early winter. I love the soughing of wind through our pine trees, and the fact that I can hear a great horned owl on full-moon nights in January. Geese. Rain on leaves.
-- neighbors I've been spoiled by Roosevelt. Our neighbors here are terrific, even the ones we disagree with. Next door: Eric and Larisa, Alan and Robin. Then Jeff, Sharlene and the whole "Tuck" clan. Kate and Henry. Graysons. The RAP crew. These are all people we would enjoy as friends if they lived at some distance from us. Having them just down the street is rare. As we were driving around the different housing areas surrounding Seattle, I didn't get a strong sense of shared values 'just down the block'.
-- environment (cultural) Some of this is co-extensive with the "neighbors". Seattle does have a lot happening, nice restaurants, nifty events, etc. I'm hoping that we can get good access to these things, or that the trade-off is worth it (see below).
-- sense of self This is, not surprisingly, a 'selfish' concern. We've built our lives here for the past 30+ years. Our home in Roosevelt is the instantiation of our dreams, our notion of "place". I love to sit on our back porch, overlooking the yard. I look around, I see the things we've done, things we've created. The flowers. The grape arbor. The fountain. People know us here and what we do. Who will we be in Seattle? Who will know it? Job, work, colleagues, friends, students.
-- health factors Health care. This will be random. No real effect, I suspect.
In the meantime, though, is this joy and happiness:
One aspect I didn't mention above in my list of moving-concerns is
implicit in the family category: Daniel. He is leading is own
life now, and what a life it is...
Lian impressed us on St. Patty's day. She and Itay have an Amazon Echo device -- she had an early prototype even -- and I had been playing my standard set of Irish music from my laptop in honor of the day. She said "Dad, I can do better than that" followed by "Alexa, play Irish music radio" and their house was filled with Irish cheer. Pretty amazing. It also went well with the corned beef and Guinness we had for dinner.
I did also play my standard stuff, Patrick Kilbride, Clannad, all that. I added Dan and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh's lovely Laghdú CD (see my longdue page for a fun 'take' on the first piece on the CD). I also played Samhradh Samhradh from The Gloaming. That piece always really gets to me.
I looked through my past postings here, and I haven't said too much about April Fools' jokes. I do enjoy them, and it has turned into a big family affair over the years. But of course we all know and anticipate it, so generally our plans don't work. I suppose it is the thought that counts.
One of my all-time favorites was one Daniel did when he was about five years old. We were all sitting at the breakfast table on April 1, and Daniel suddenly pointed out the back windows and exclaimed: "Look! There's God!"
April Fool! I like this because it succeeds on a whole range of levels. Daniel was indeed a good Unitarian kid.
I think the weather gods were playing "April Fool" with us today. It was unbelievably warm, in the upper 70's. The sun was bright and our flowers were out in full-springtime-force. Tomorrow and the next day it is supposed to get back below freezing again, with even the possibility of snow in the forecast. Foolish, indeed.
Yesterday Lian gave birth to our first grandchild. -------> YEAH!!!!!!! He arrived about 4 weeks early, but weighing in at 5 lbs. 11.2 oz. he's doing just fine. Lian and Itay are also doing very well. Jill flew out to Seattle this afternoon. I plan to be there this coming weekend. Oh my, oh my, I don't know what to say. No words. This is amazing! Our darling little GRANDSON!
But I just violated that principle. I entered the "Happy Birthday!" posts for my and Daniel's birthdays just now. I wanted to mark the days, even though they aren't particularly 'round-numbery' for us this year at all (Daniel 22; me 59). So I did.
Columbia has been pretty intense the past few weeks, by way of excuse or explanation. It always is at the end of the term, and this term is certainly no exception. The days now are uncannily warm, with beautiful sunshine. Spring! Babies! Awards! Graduations! I still get tired. Is it the weather, the Revlimid? Or just that I'm getting older? 59. I think I'll celebrate that number for the next few years.
I went to the final graduate student composers' concert of the semester last night in NYC. Afterwards I had a quick drink with Luke. Often I feel very disconnected.
Today was the actual due-date for Shai. Instead, it is his one-month birthday. What a Shai! Lian and Itay have sent a number of photos and videos. I'll get them posted here soon.
HAPPY 1-MONTH BIRTHDAY, GRANDSON!
We have a bunch of moms in our family now. This goes out to Jill, to my mom, to my sis, and now to our daughter. My oh my oh my! It was beautiful spring day here, although cool enough to be an April day. Jill and I took a long walk around Roosevelt.
I just put these photos and vids on-line:
I've put on-line sets of photos from several of our recent trips:
We had a marvelous graduation dinner celebration with Brenda, John and the cousins, along with Daniel's three-year roomate Laura and her family. I'm relatively caught-up with CMC and Department stuff, and I'm working on a new piece. Yeah, I'm getting too adjectively carried away ("absolutely stunning", "amazing", "marvelous"), but the words have real meaning for me here and now. File this day under "joy".
Another way to bookmark particular moments for me is through music. I finished a new piece a few days ago, here it is:
Jill as Borough Council President and our good friend Jeff Ellentuck as Mayor have been dealing with some particularly obnoxious issues in our little town. Politics in general are horrible right now, but local politics can get really nasty. Supposedly we're all friends and neighbors, and I suspect most of us in Roosevelt agree on almost 90% of the political issues facing our nation. But that last 10%, the local 10%, can be personally awful.
To try to cheer them up, I did another 'brad pretending to be a young rock-star' piece, this one called Secret Meetings (it's a little over three minutes long):
Speaking of days and events,
my parents celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary on June 17.
Lian and Itay left for Tel Aviv that same day to introduce Shai to the
Israeli contingent of the family. Sis Brenda left the next day for the
three-week course she is teaching
in Sorrento, Italy. What a family! The Universe
might be bigger, but the world feels smaller.
I thought about how literature can do this. The deferred wham! Music can do this to a certain extent (those sneaky deceptive cadences!), but not over the large span that reading can do it. My best experiences with David Foster Wallace, for example, is totally tied into this long-term closure-ness.
I've tried to do this very thing, using words, and the closest I think I've come to succeeding is at the end of my Memory Book app, where I write this:
More on the musical end of the scale, one of the parts of my book-apps I really like is at the end of My Music Book, where I write this:
At this point it would be wonderful if I had something truly heroic to say, some sentence I could write that revealed the shining path to societal peace. Of course I don't.
It's really been a gorgeous weekend here, one of those that makes you realize how good life can be. My sister has been having a wonderful time in Sorrento, Italy, and Lian/Itay/Shai have arrived safely back in Seattle from visiting the family in Tel Aviv. Daniel's getting ready for Finland, Jill is doing amazing pottery (no kidding!), and I've been getting a fair amount of programming done.
The evening before last we went to the traditional Etra Lake fireworks. The evening started like this (speaking of 'real' fireworks!):
Today, of course was the big town-wide 7/4 picnic in Roosevelt. complete with
the Big Parade:
But this time was different. Instead of personal recollections, I was instead besieged by a sharp consciousness of childhood in general. I was primed for the experience by a thesis defense we held last Friday, the day before we went to Columbus. Nina Young (now Dr. Young!) was the candidate, and in her excellent dissertation she had included some notes about a piece she had composed title Etched in Sand. Here is what she wrote:
"I recall going to the shore as a child and spending hours etching designs into the wet, hardened sand at the threshold of beach and sea. With the sun on my back I would revel in the glory of these beautiful and ephemeral pieces of art that I created using the sand as my canvas and a stray seashell as my stylus. As evening encroached, the tide would slowly come in, its regular cycles of crashing waves a whispering reminder of the passing of time. The gently lapping water would inevitably creep towards my etchings, and as it neared I waited, in tense anticipation, for the arcs of water blindly reaching up the beach. As the first finger of water washed over my design, the image began its transformation into a subdued echo of itself. For a short time - an eternity - I would solemnly watch my day's work gently fade away into the original blank canvas."This remembrance of Nina's really got to me; not so much the actual memory itself (although it is beautiful, and Nina wrote about it beautifully), but the sense of what the world was like when we were kids. We were so creative! We were so inventive! So engaged! And the world seemed so wonderful and good, or perhaps the haze of nostalgia has dimmed the discontent that was surely in play.
Something happens as we mature, though. I guess it has to happen, but does any discontent necessarily have to extinguish our joy as we age? How can we keep joy alive?
Maybe the slings and arrows get to be too much, and it becomes so easy to slide into fear and despair. Watching the vitriol on TV from the Republican convention (my poor Dad couldn't even stay in the room), I wondered why we choose this way of being. Maybe children are more evil than I perceive, but I do believe that we teach them how to be adults. Based on the RNC and nascent 'Trumpism'. I'm afraid that we are doing a terrible job.
This is what I would hope we can preserve:
One summer during my undergraduate days I read Franz Kafka's Diaries, and I recall one entry (or maybe I'm mis-remembering it, but it's close) in particular. Usually Kafka would write several paragraphs, but one day all he said was: "I am in a frail skiff, cast adrift on a sea of chaos." I thought it was both funny for it's over-the-top description and also kind of frightening with its profound statement of depression. I'm not grappling with existential depression like that or anything. It's more that my frail skiff is sitting in the doldrums.
It bugs me, because I don't feel as driven as I once did, because I don't quite know what to do. Yet there is so much to be done. More on this later, I think.