| beginning latest entry |
2020. My.
The holidays have been great with everyone. Our power went out about an hour ago. Welcome to the new decade (if you count it that way).
We're happy! Life is good!
I had downloaded the soundtrack and was listening to it on the plane. This piece was playing, and I happened to look over at Jill and Daniel, sitting next to me. Out the window beyond Daniel I could see the snow-covered peaks of the Eastern Rockies. It all seemed so.. cinematic. Not in a kitschy, mawkish way, but in a 'hyperreal' sense. It was a heightened picture of that Life I keep exclaiming is Good. There it was. It was beautiful.
Like taking our great friends Jeff and Sharlene Ellentuck to the airport for their trip home! Yes, they surprised us with a last-minute visit out here. Things had worked around and they asked if we would be here this past weekend. We were, and we had a wonderful time with them. And we got them returned home safely (just between two snowfalls).
Tomorrow I'm heading back to New York. I've plotted out my classes on my calendar, duplicating on my computer the physical act I used to do of counting out aspirin fragments. Reading those lines from over a decade ago, a younger me realizing that the future was unknowable, and here I am on the west coast, again trying to tame the "fundamental randomness of life".
Classes start again tomorrow. It's cold outside, although the snow stopped yesterday (bright sunshine today). I've been wrestling with an annoying coding problem that really should not exist, but for the stupidity of constant 'upgrades' to software. I miss Jill. I miss my family. I miss Lucy the cat. I'm mildly depressed, but things will go and go. It's almost February, and that's what it feels like.
It was a weird day. Lian had reported an 'active shooter' down the street where she worked, and here on the East Coast we had an alert of an 'active shooter' just north of the Computer Music Center. Both were a bit away from our respective locations, but still... that 'life' thing.
So what did self-pity-wallowing Brad do? I went home and put on some folk/country pieces I liked, and got driven into the ground by this one:
I spent the day working on class/Columbia stuff, and listening to Debussy and Chopin. Romantic music, doncha know. It's very cold here today, too.
Brenda and I surprised Mom with a new cat. Now named "Dickens" (Mom kept saying "you dickens, you!" to me and Brenda when we showed up with the full cat-carrier), it has adapted amazingly well. And why not? This cat won the Kitty Lottery as far as living arrangements are concerned! I just now mis-typed 'living' as 'loving', and that's about the truth of it. In any case, a good b-day for MOM! yay!
I hope everything else works out ok. It's an insane time right now.
This is a crazy time. I think it's all a bit overblown, but I do have to remember that when they talk about the 'at risk population', they mean me.
As noted above, Columbia suspended all classes today and tomorrow because of the coronavirus epidemic, even though there have been only a few reported cases in New York. That will certainly change, and it more likely reflects the STUPID Trump administration's inability to make tests for the disease available. Heavens! Do you mean those budget cuts and placing of incompetent idiots in high-ranking government positions actually had consequences? Duh... Anyhow, classes were cancelled and we were asked to come up with alternative pedagogies that will allow us to teach remotely -- i.e. on-line -- for the rest of the term. This is going to be a real trick. I think we have things figured out for the CMC, and I've got some ideas of how I can also run my Music Hum class. Gad zooks, though.
Even though classes were cancelled, we were asked to carry on with the other 'normal' functions of the University. We had our last Mellon post-doctoral candidate in for interviews, etc. today. It was surreal. But we did it.
I talked with Karen from Dr. Pearse's office late in the afternoon. She said I should avoid public transportation (definitely stay out of the subway), and try to refrain from hanging out in big crowds. They weren't particularly worried about the fatality rate due to the coronavirus, though, so that's good. This would be an annoying way to die.
Columbia cancelled all of its classes for several days last week. The point of the cancellation was to allow us to put in place on-line resources. All of our classes, all of our meetings, all of our scheduled dissertation defenses, etc. are to be held 'virtually'. Students and faculty are being actively discouraged -- well, pretty much prohibited -- from gathering on campus. Students are being asked to leave if they can. Columbia is even paying up to $500 for each one to help move!
Things were starting to get weird in New York. The virus, while fairly contagious, isn't really all that virulent EXCEPT for those in a 'high-risk group': the elderly, those with chronic conditions, those with compromised immune systems. Yep, that's me (maybe not too elderly yet!). Jill and I had thought independently that it might be a good idea for me to go someplace where I wouldn't have as much contact with people as I would in NYC. Someplace like Whidbey Island!
Even going to the local grocery to get some milk could goose the probability of contact for me in a bad way. It's almost paradoxical for me to be flying to Seattle to escape the virus. Seattle was the site of one of the first big 'hot spots' in the US. But I'll be skirting the city and hiding out in our home, away from large groups. At this point, the virus is pretty much everywhere anyhow. We just don't know it yet [yes right here I could launch into a diatribe about the utter failure of the Trump administration to handle this crisis, beginning with a complete lack of tests for the disease, to say nothing of any coherent protocols for deploying them. But I won't. For now.].
I also have a family-support-network in the Seattle area that I no longer have in New York. I would have to rely on friends and neighbors, all of whom would be dealing with their own situations, to provide serious assistance. If I do get sick on Whidbey, Jill's there. Lian. Itay. Shai Neeman! And it's about as far for Daniel to travel to SEA-TAC as it is to EWR. Of course, flights to and from Europe have now been scuttled. Again, things are starting to get weird. I wonder where we'll be a week from now? Two weeks? Months?
There is so much to relate, so much to write about! I've been really busy getting my class materials on-line for remote teaching. Working in them 'content mines', by golly! I'm hoping to get some time to start work on music and apps again. There is a lot of coding I need to do to get things back up-to-speed. But for now... 'sixteen tons, whaddya get?'
writing this on 4/4/2020 -- this is when Lian and Itay will be celebrating it with him. Socially isolated, of course.
Four years ago, life completely changed. Today, hiding from a virus, life has changed again. Circumstances at Columbia have changed. Things always change. Perhaps if we had a four-dimensional overview, we could see the solidity, the structure, but that's not how we're made.
I had a dream last night, just as I was waking. I was in one of those "hypnagogic" states, and I knew what I was doing couldn't be true. In the dream, though, I figured out that if I wrote a blog entry here with a date in the future, I could write what had happened between now and then. I would be in-the-know! Fourth dimensional! But I really don't know. In any case, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!! again, Shai!
Lian wrote to us: "Just had this unprompted conversation with Shai:"
writing this on 4/21/2020 -- I'm running a little late!
Subject: why I actually *like* to teach music hum So the 'concert report' papers for my class were due at 5 PM today. I started reading through them, and after 4 of them I had to stop. The intensity, the poignancy, the sheer *humanity* of their writing in this pandemic, it was overwhelming. I guess I just happened on some exceptional papers, but I had to stop reading. We have the best students in the world here at Columbia. Yeah, the university itself may suck eggs sometimes, but I hope these students all grow up and make a difference in the world . We need them.Separate from this 'paper' assignment, the final piece I assigned for them to listen and discuss was Fratres by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, the version for eight 'cellos. This is by design, as I start the semester by playing the version he wrote for solo violin and piano. I talk about how it is a 'personal masterpiece'; only one student in all my years of teaching has made the connection between the two.
But like a big dummy, I thought "hey, I'll listen to that solo violin Fratres just for fun!"
Here is the piece:
Jill is in Seattle with Lian/Itay/Shai. This is the world now. Oh my.
I have a lot to catch up on here. Last weekend I had a major hard disk failure. Fortunately I didn't lose much work, but it took awhile to rebuild my computers so that I could function again.
Lian and Shai came out to Whidbey Island for the weekend, and I'm really glad they did. Happiness is becoming more and more scarce. Jill and I are helping to watch after Shai while Lian and Itay work from home -- they've been good about 'social isolation' and it seems ok. Driving back from their home in Seattle last week I got fairly melancholy, starting to border on downright depression. I knew this would happen. The first weeks of the pandemic response were just weird, but now the reality of the world is beginning to sink in. What will I do? What can Jill do, my sister, my mom and dad? The world will be radically different for quite awhile, and somehow we'll need to accommodate to that change. I don't know that we'll be able to do that, either.
The problem is that a significant portion, or so it seems, of humanity now seems willing to accept a certain percentage of coronavirus-deaths as just another part of contemporary life, like the way we in the US have accepted gun-violence deaths as 'normal'. I can't take credit for this observation. I read it in a New York Times op-ed piece last week. Sadly, it made sense to me. I don't know that I will survive. In order to have any hope of containing COVID-19, we need to continue with many of the social distance practices that have begun to bring the death-rate down. So many people are now buying into the atrocious 'politicization' of the pandemic response by Trump and his minions, and they want a total restoration of their 'rights' to transmit the virus as freely as possible. Yes I know the economy is in the toilet, and people need to get back to work, but to assert a 'freedom' to gather as closely as possible will guarantee that the disease will spread again, and again, and again. Those 'rights' and 'freedoms' are a matter of life, and death, for me. Wow, thanks.
All this is exacerbated when I go on FaceBook and read posts from my former school friends, adults who grew up with the same education and exposure to civic values that I had. The debates there range from speculation about Bill Gates' "patenting" of COVID-19 so he can magically produce the vaccine (and earn billions, of course) to strong statements about NOT taking any vaccine (see, it will have secret government "tracers" somehow inside it), to the liberal-communist-demonic cabal behind the spread of... well, you get the idea. My melancholia is definitely descending into depression.
This should be a time when the best of humanity can shine, a time when we can show the common good we all share. Instead, thanks to the abominable idiot we have as our president, we are flying apart, embracing a collective wickedness that will surely spell disaster for years to come.
I'm still feeling pretty depressed about all of it. I have no idea how to deal with Columbia at this point, and the number of people I counted as friends who are rabidly supporting Trump and the 'freedom' to ignore health and safety warnings is shocking to me.
Seth Cluett 'challenged' me to participate in a Facebook generate-postings exercise: list ten albums that have influenced your musical taste. I actually enjoyed doing it, and got a lot of interesting feedback in the process. The postings are in reverse order on my FB timeline (click on the left-arrow key on the photo to sample them), with the first one here:
I'm certainly feeling that chaos, and honestly don't know what to do. How can I help with things? I'm working on more software, hopefully that effort can help enable, well, something. So much is up-in-the-air right now. I feel like I should somehow take advantage of 'the moment' and try working on something momentous, but I have no idea what that might be. I've finished a little series of eight 'coronavirus pieces', but they aren't momentous. They're selfish. They're for me. I haven't even bothered to put them on-line yet.
People are protesting. People are working for positive change. People are thinking hard about what they can do. Me? I'm playing with my grandson, realizing with guilt how fortunate I am, and how little I feel I am contributing. Years ago, in high school, my friend Geoff Pacheco wrote lyrics to a song. I still remember them:
While sitting in my selfish room I try to see my future bloom Can't because my feelings change shift about and rearrange
Clouds of blue and grey overlay a northwest solstice late-pink sky. Lights are flickering across the water from distant Seattle, where COVID-19 is on the rise again An owl just flew overhead and landed in a tree down the bluff. Bats are flitting around. I'm sipping the cloudberry liqueur Daniel brought here from Finland. Like I said, there is a solid peacefulness here.
I write these words here now, probably to remind future me what it was like. Why do that? I don't know, I really don't know.
Back to the re-reading: the past few months in particular have not been all that great or coherent, and they've missed a lot of the 'documenting' of life that was part of the initial motivation for this enterprise. They do, however, reflect the chaos of our contemporary existence. It's not going away! Tonight at dinner Jill said: "I feel like life is passing me by -- I'm not really doing anything... but then I realize that's true for almost everyone."
That's it. I've been programming like a maniac, and I have a little 'suite' of twelve 'coronavirus' pieces almost finished, but we're basically in isolation. We need to be; I need to be, but it's not the Normal Life we had prior to this.
People are doing stuff: articles are being written, speeches are being made, plans for change are being pursued, protests are being protested, but not me. I sit here and wonder, where will this lead? What are we doing? Where can I go from here? I bet I'm not alone in this.