Holiday Gift Ideas

As many of my blog posts tend to be somewhat… ahem… esoteric in their subject matter, I thought I’d do something a little more helpful for the Holiday Season. So, with a mere 10 days to go until the big day, here are some (not quite) last minute suggestions for gift-giving for all those naughty or nice folks on your shopping lists!

For the Existentialist Who Has Everything

Everybody knows that George Jones has the greatest voice ever given to a male country singer. But who knew he was also a disciple of Jean Paul Sartre? His song, “Choices”, just about says it all in the personal responsibility department. You can hear it here:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5EUKP-l80M

You can also buy the album featuring this tune for that hard-drinking-SUV-crashing- Gospel –shouting-come-to-Jesus-special-someone in your life here:

http://www.amazon.com/Cold-Hard-Truth-George-Jones/dp/B00000JC6B/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1323114507&sr=8-2

It also includes the wonderful title track, "Cold Hard Truth," as an extra bonus!

If the lucky recipient of your Holiday generosity wants their angst straight from the Parisian source, however, you can give them a DVD of Godard’s wonderful “Vivre Sa Vie” (“My Life to Life”). It stars the matchless, magnetic Anna Karina as your typical chain smoking French intellectual hot chick who spends her days vacillating between turning tricks, dancing in pool halls, having machine gun battles with pinball playing thugs, and hanging out with saggy old philosophers talking some heavy, heavy Existential doo-doo!

For a flavor of the film, you can check out her wonderful “Je suis responsable” speech.  Sad to say for you non-French speakers, I couldn’t find an English subtitled version. But I did find this one in Spanish which pretty clearly gets the point across:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KY5An_X7o4o

If that hooked you, you can buy the DVD here:

http://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Live-Alfred-Adam/dp/6301883047/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1323114558&sr=1-2

Viva Montenegro

A long, long, long time ago, in a century far away, my grandparents came to the United States from the tiny Balkan country of Montenegro (population 600,000 which makes it two-thirds the size of San Jose). At the time they left, it was still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which is why my Granddad had “Austrian” as his nationality on his immigration papers. Usually, there isn’t that much about Montenegro in the daily news or percolating around in world culture. In fact, all I can remember is:

1.      The fictional detective Nero Wolfe came from there.

2.       We almost qualified for the Euro 2012 soccer tournament only losing out to Czechoslovakia in the final match of qualifying. (But we did tie England in a match at Wembley Stadium which is quite an accomplishment for such a tiny land.)

Now we have something else to truly proud of! It’s the emergence of the stunning new classical guitarist, Milos Karadaglic. He combines incredible technique and talent with some serious “bad boy” good looks. That can be a dangerous combination, integrity-wise, but hopefully he’ll keep playing good music and won’t go all PBS-fund-raising-drive-Andre-Rieu-Yanni on us.

You can learn more about Milos in this article:

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/03/quick_hits_milos_karadaglic_plays_live/singleton/

If that grabs your attention, you can buy his album here:

http://www.amazon.com/Mediterraneo-Milos-Karadaglic/dp/B004PKOKU2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323113675&sr=8-1

 A Horse of A Different Color – A Play in One (Very Short) Act

 Scene 1: San Jose, the present day

 Scott: Honey, what are you reading?

Beatrice (reading): Seabiscuit: An American Legend.

Scott: You mean… like about the race horse?

Beatrice (reading): Hmmm…..

Scott: That’s funny. I never knew you were interested in horse racing.

Beatrice (reading): Hmmm…..

Scene 2: Same setting, several hours later

Scott: You want to go for a walk?

Beatrice (reading): No, I’m reading.

Scott: But it’s a beautiful day.

Beatrice (reading): Hmmm….

Scott: How about a movie?

Beatrice (reading): Hmmm….

Scene 3: Same setting, several hours later

Scott: But you don’t even like sports books!

Beatrice (reading): Hmmm….

Scott: What’s so special about this one?

Beatrice (reading): Hmmm….

Scott: If it’s so great, how can I get a copy?

Beatrice: Easy! Http://www.amazon.com/Seabiscuit-American-Legend-Laura-Hillenbrand/dp/0449005615/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323121715&sr=8-1

Curtain. End of Play.

Just Something Beautiful

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was an Austrian composer born early in the 20^th century. No less a light than Gustav Mahler himself pronounced Korngold a “wunderkind” and predicted a glorious future for him.  After some initial success, however, Korngold’s lushly romantic writing fell out of favor with the Viennese classical music crowd who were eagerly flinging themselves down the rat hole known as atonal music. So Korngold emigrated to Hollywood where he ended up writing sound tracks for movies like “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “Captain Blood,” and “The Sea Hawk.” This may have won him several Academy Awards but did nothing for his… ahem…. critical street cred amongst the long-haired crowd. And thus he sank into oblivion reserved for most “movie music” composers.

Recently, however, EWK has been enjoying something of a Renaissance. It’s been mostly thanks to the efforts of several enlightened performers who love to do his music and totally leave it all on the concert floor when they perform it.  As an example, check out Anne Sofie von Otter doing “Marietta’s Song” (“Gluck, das mir Vierlieb”) from “Die Todt Stadt” (The Dead City). BTW, EWK wrote this little ditty at the ripe old age of 23. I hate people like that (even though I love their music!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN_vsAUEE8s

If you like what you heard here, Anne Sofie has released a two-CD set of Korngold’s “serious” music. You can find it at:

http://www.amazon.com/Anne-Sofie-von-Otter-Rendezvous/dp/B00000HY3U/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1323115754&sr=1-1

One thing that haunts me is that Korngold died in North Hollywood just as I was wandering around there as a tyke. It makes me wonder if I ever ran into him at the “Dales’ Jr” (our “7-11” back in the day). Maybe I stood next to him in the checkout line while he was picking up the latest copy of “The Hollywood Reporter” while I was out buying kilos of root beer popsicles for my poor drug-addicted stepmom.  

For Classical Free Market Economists Who Think They’ve Just About Got It All Figured Out

I recently stumbled on a book at the San Jose library called, “Debt: The First 5000 Years.” And, no, it isn’t about how long it takes to pay off your Visa bill making minimum payments. It’s by David Graeber who, according to his Amazon page, is an American anthropologist and anarchist who currently holds the position of Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London.

The book examines how the concept of debt has evolved and changed as human needs and relations have themselves evolved and changed. In particular, it applies actual anthropological data to several “facts” that classical economists routinely posit about human nature without a shred of evidence to support them (Are you listening, Adam Smith?) For example, did money and debt evolve from a barter economy in primitive humans or was it the other way around? Is “enlightened self-interest” really the driving force behind how we behave? And how much do economic ideas about debt and collateral and payment obligations feature into our religious views (which allegedly pre-date our notions of economics.) You may not “buy” it all, but it’s a fascinating book and sure to spark some interesting conversations over the egg nog and gingerbread (especially if you bought them on credit.)

http://www.amazon.com/Debt-First-5-000-Years/dp/1933633867/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323119918&sr=1-1

 

For All Those Blogging Playwright/Clarinetists on Your List

Well, we wouldn’t want to forget these folks would we? The poor darlings! All they do is give and give and give! So here’s an ideal stocking stuffer for them. It’s the new revolutionary clarinet created by the good folks at Backun Music. It’s designed to solve scads of technical problems that plague the old style instrument and make even the… err… amateur clarinetist sound sooooo much better.

You can check it out here:

 http://www.backunmusical.com/clarinets.html

At a mere $8,000, the Backun B-flat with gold-plated keys is practically a steal! And it's the perfect size for slipping into someone’s stocking by the old Yule tree!

Well, that brings us to the end of this blog post. I hope I haven’t been too materialistic here! After all, it isn’t just about collecting loot, is it? It’s really about the experience, right? Of course it is! And in that spirit, I’ll leave you with the following clip which just about says it all when it comes to gift-giving and presents and all that Yuletide jazz:

 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHi9bCjbu20

Ho, ho, ho, everybody! And merry, merry, merry!

Mozart and Self-Deception

Since my last posting on Tolstoy and "War and Peace," I’ve been thinking a lot about why I’ve always preferred Mozart to Beethoven. This is especially poignant for me as today (December 5th) is the 220th anniversary of Wolfgang's death at the age of 35. It reminds me of the old Tom Lehrer joke, "It's sobering to remember that when Mozart was my age he'd already been dead two years!"

Sigh...

Anyway, I’m just old enough to remember how Mozart was once dismissed as a pretty but superficial “precursor” to Beethoven’s greatness. Even as a young ‘un, puffing away on my clarinet in Mr. Tucker’s “senior woodwinds” class in high school, that kind of thinking just totally hacked me off! 

As in:

“In his symphonies, Mozart suggests the themes Beethoven would bring to a more profound culmination in the Eroica.”

“Although charming, Mozart’s wind quintet must yield the palm to the greater depths of Beethoven’s Opus blah-blah-blah.”

 “In his string quartets, Mozart begins an exploration of the genre that will only reach its apotheosis in Beethoven’s late works.”

Yuck! Gag me with a Sacher Torte!

From the first time I heard Mozart’s music in “Music Appreciation” class in the 7th grade I was just… well… hooked. I immediately felt a sense of connection that I had never experienced before. I think that’s why I chose to play the clarinet in the first place. Some music teachers came into class one day and said, “Who wants to learn to play something besides the radio?” (Today I imagine they would day the IPod.) Remembering all the wonderful music that Mozart had written for the clarinet (the trio, the quintet, the concerto), I shot up my little hand and said, “The licorice stick for me, please!” And how I wanted to play all of those wonderful solos he created for the instrument in his operas! It seems that every time Mozart wants to speak about human longing and desire he gives the music to the clarinet. 

As in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCOZbjePXkI

For those of you who followed the link, there are certainly more elaborate polished versions of this music on YouTube. But I just had to include this one for the magical moment that occurs about 25 seconds in. At least it’s magical for any clarinet player!

Despite the poverty, ugliness and horror that I might be feeling at any particular moment, Mozart’s music was always for me beauty, happiness, and the longing for a kind of harmony and sweetness that transfigures and ennobles our lives. And, tootling away on the half-busted B-flat clarinet that I got for $5 at the local hock shop, I felt I got at least a few half steps closer to experiencing that loveliness.

Fortunately, those bad old days of Mozart bashing are gone!  Today Wolfgang is celebrated as the titanic world-changing genius that he was. And the whole idea that he was just “leading up” to Ludwig van B has gone into the proverbial wastebasket of musicology. And if you doubt this just think about how many "Mostly Mozart" festivals there are compared to those that are "Basically Beethoven". Yay!

 

But do I really understand why I’ve always preferred Mozart? Or for that matter why I also prefer Virginia Woolf to D.H. Lawrence or Scott Fitzgerald to Hemingway?  So I decided to take a shower and brood on it – as most of my ideas tend to come in the shower. Something about great clouds of steam unlocking the otherwise fettered consciousness! 

And it hit me! Perhaps the unifying idea here is the theme of self-deception. This is something that has always haunted me. The idea that you think you are one thing, or are coming off as one thing, and in reality you are being perceived by everyone else in a totally different way.

For example:

You think you are like this…       … but everyone sees you as…

A brilliant raconteur                    A blowhard
Generous and giving                   Manipulative
A good listener                          Someone who never shuts up
Progressive in your views           A slave to your class interests
Speaking truth to power             Someone with tenure
Totally hot and “all that”             A candidate for an Oprah makeover

This kind of self-deception is at the heart of all of Mozart’s operas. In Beethoven, “people” are who they say they are (tortured, heroic, Promethean, etc.)  In Mozart, however, there is a constant sense that everyone is ensnared by their own misconceptions. So the Count who thinks he is a great seducer is really a buffoon. The servant who thinks he is the cleverest guy in the room is really being led around by the nose.  The “puppet master” who thinks he is pulling all the strings is really a sterile and lost old man. And so it goes. Of course, Mozart, being a supremely enlightened person, invites us to forgive them all through the beauty of his music. And so we do.

As in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2yrDWEoCpc

BTW, check out the comments after the video. They’re kind of wonderful!

With these thoughts in mind, I’ve been brooding on the degree of self-deception that marks my own life as a “seducer” of audiences.

As in:

I think I am like this…                      … but everyone sees me as…

A powerful playwright                     Meh - and who's up for
with provocative views                    Chinese food after the show?
who really stands out
from the crowd!
             
I like to think of myself as creating something of value. But doesn’t every creative person believe that? When I contrast that with the “90% of everything is crap” rule, I can see a problem. We can’t all be right, can we? So there has to be a lot of self-deception going on here!  But who is zooming whom?

Of course, this kind of thinking can lead down a very Hamlet-like hall of mirrors where you can’t pick up a pen without wondering about your actual motives. And I’m left with a feeling of envy for the “Beethovens” of this world – the people who truly feel that what they are doing is important and meaningful and must be shared with the world. Does it matter if this is self-deception after all? I mean… gosh…. We don’t even know how many universes we live in or how many dimensions there are. One two, eleven, a hundred, an infinite number? So if we can’t even understand where we are how can we know who or what we are either?

As Yul Brynner used to say in “The King and I,” ‘Tis a puzzlement!'

On (Almost) Finishing War and Peace

This post is dedicated to my friends Theresa and Danielle – for encouraging me to keep writing these little puppies!

My apologies for the long delay since my last blog post! Was it really last April? In the interim, I’ve been to France a couple of times to help out with my French family. I’ve also hiked in the Spanish Pyrenees and discovered that I adore that part of the world. I’ve also tried to keep things going on the theater, instructional design, and house fixer-upper fronts. So I’ve been a busy bee!

In fact, I was just outside admiring our work in getting the first coat of paint down on the beams that adorn the front of our beloved Eichler home. It’s a very light and pleasant green to offset the rich, dark “coffee” brown of the house. We’re debating whether we need a second coat. After having Béatrice fall off the ladder and really hurting her shoulder, and after wrenching my knee and hobbling around like Captain Ahab without his peg leg, I am pretty much in the “It looks good enough to me” camp… but we’ll see….

BTW, we bought ourselves some peace of mind by investing in the most expensive paint we could find. It’s from Sherwin Williams. It’s called “Duration” because it has a lifetime guarantee. Whose life is that anyway? I wonder! Does that mean the paint will be here long after I’ve slipped off this mortal coil? Ugh! Nothing like staring into a can of paint to remind you of your own mortality!

Anyway, another reason why I’ve been grossly arrears in posting is that I have been spending a good deal of my free time reading “War and Peace". I just hit page 1400! Only 44 more to go! Yowza! Technically, I’ve just started Part Two of the Epilogue. So the “finish line” is very much in sight.

Well, it’s such a cliché to say “I’ve read War and Peace.” Like big whoop for me, right? So I’ve been entertaining the thought of stopping right where I am. It’s a little like Tom Courtney at the end of “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” I don’t know if you remember that old British black and white flick. A very young Tom plays a kid in a kind of Juvenile Detention center who discovers he has a tremendous talent for running. The creepy warden puts him in a race against the swells at the local academy for rich kids with the promised that if Tom wins he’ll get all sorts of cushy privileges and liberties. Anyway, the race starts and….

Oh, no! Spoiler Alert! Skip the next paragraph (all in italic type) if you want to watch the film…

So young Tom just obliterates the opposition. He gets right to the finish line and there isn’t a competitor in sight. Instead of crossing the line though and claiming his prize, he just stops and stands there. In a kind of, “Screw you and the horse you rode in on” gesture, he stays two feet in front of the Finish Line and waves to the kids who eventually catch up and “win” the race.

If you’re interested, you can get a flavor of the flick here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQJsE4dJmG0

So I’m thinking of doing the same thing with W and P. Why make a fetish about “finishing” something? Can’t I just stand here a few paces from the end and just wave as Tolstoy makes his way to the conclusion? Is it possible? Can anyone “almost” finish War and Peace? Maybe it would be fun to “almost” read a lot of gy-normous classic books. Don Quixote? Middlemarch! Tristram Shandy? Remembrance of Things Past? The Great Gatsby? Oh, wait. That’s a shortie. But, in general, I wonder…

In the meantime, though, here are my thoughts as I stand (near) the Finish Line of Tolstoy’s magnum opus….

First off, what’s the quote from Samuel Johnson about Paradise Lost? “A very great work certainly - but no one has ever wished it any longer.” That’s kind of true here too I’m afraid. There are long stretches where you feel like saying,

“Umm… I believe I’ve read that already… “
“Ehh… I think I got the point here. Can we move on now?”
“Ahh… haven’t we covered that ground before?”
“Urrr… I guess everybody does need an editor after all….”

This is especially true in the last quarter of the novel where Tolstoy seems to forget that he’s writing a piece of fiction at all. Instead, he turns historian and decides to share (and share and share and share) his thoughts on the great struggle between Napoleon’s Grand Army and the Russian people. So why did the French lose the campaign of 1812? Was the battle of Borodino really a Russian victory? Was Napoleon a bit of a poser, wanker, and fraud? Well, old Leo has all the answers for you!

As with many an armchair general, Tolstoy makes his share of good points. He totally debunks the “great man” theory of history (especially when the “great man” in question is French.) He also sees the end results of historical events as the accumulation of many small decisions and actions rather than as the result of one “maestro” of genius waving his baton. In doing so, Tolstoy certainly anticipated many of the trends of modern historical writing. You have to give him his props for that. On the other hand, he seems to believe that, just as the heavens and planets obey the universal laws of physics, gravity, and so forth, so too do historical events correspond to some as yet undefined “laws of history”. Given our current understanding of modern physics, this seems a naïve view born of a mid 19th century feeling that Newton and Darwin had pretty much “explained it all” for us in their domains.

At least, I think that's what Tolstoy is up to. I'm really too tired to know for sure! All in all the last part of the book gives you the feeling that there is an equivalence between reading this novel and being in the French army yourself slogging your way back to Poland from Moscow – freezing your tookus off and wishing desperately for the whole thing to come to an end. Either that or to fall down face first in the snow and just not get up again until some Cossack comes along and turns you into a human shish-ka-bob. And the fact that Tolstoy is totally, absolutely, utterly lacking in any sense of humor whatsoever makes it even more of a "long march" here.

All that being said, there’s still a tremendous power in the book. That’s especially so when Tolstoy focuses on the lives of the individual characters (as opposed to what Napoleon was having for breakfast the morning of the battle of Austerlitz and whether the Russian General staff really knew what they were doing in evacuating Moscow without a fight). That’s the great theme of the novel for me – how we still have to live our individual lives even though we understand we’re in the grip of these tremendous impersonal historical movements which basically treat us like bugs. That’s certainly a theme that resonates with us all now too, isn’t it? We still have to live and endure even though everything around us (our fortunes, our freedom, our retirement savings) looks like they could/will be taken away in an instant.

So I go back and forth between being really gripped by the novel and often being really, really bored and even angry. That’s when continuing with the book really becomes a chore. I have to say that I just can’t learn to love Tolstoy. Deep down, for me, he’s one of those “world embracing enormous geniuses that we must all admire and who totally eclipses everyone else so there.” I sometimes feel that he is a bit of a bully. At times, reading Tolstoy feels like you’re trapped in a cab with a driver who is a brilliant, cranky autodidact. Realizing that you have something to do with being a writer yourself, he decides to bombard you with everything he knows about the role of the Freemasons and the Vatican in controlling the world money supply. And as he continues his tirade, you hear on the radio that the Freeway to your hotel is blocked for miles ahead because of an overturned big rig with chickens running on the road. So there is absolutely no escape.

Help!

Which also makes me think that in the arts there often seems to be s a funny kind of pairing/balance between the “Tolstoys” and the “anti-Tolstoys”; e.g., the “blowhards/bullies” on one side of the equation and the “whisperers/seducers” on the other. For example, consider the following list of matched pairs. If you had to choose, which would you prefer?

Tolstoy vs. Chekhov
Beethoven vs. Mozart
Michelangelo vs. Donatello
Picasso vs. Matisse
Rembrandt vs. Vermeer
Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald
Whitman vs. Dickinson
Milton vs. Donne
D.H. Lawrence vs. Virginia Woolf

As I look this list over, I feel like, “Oh, heck! I respect the people on the left hand side of the equation but I love the people on the right.” What accounts for this difference? Is it because one type kind of grabs you around the throat and says: “I have something terribly important to tell you! Something that will change you utterly! Something that will make you better understand the meaning of life itself”? Meanwhile the second type seems so much more modest, seductive, and insinuating. Like they’re just saying, “I’m working on this little story. It’s kind of interesting. What do you think?”

But I better stop here! This posting is starting to feel as long as W and P itself! Yikes! Oh, well! Maybe everybody does need an editor after all!

New Year's Blog Resolutions

Happy New Year, everyone! Wait, I know it’s really Tax Day but this is my first posting of 2011. So I’m feeling a little bit of that “the giant, glittering ball is falling in Times Square” vibe. Where’s my party hat and who has the bottle of bubbly? Actually, it’s been so long since my last blog-o-rama that I was beginning to think I’d never post again. Couple of reasons for that:

1. Between 1/1/11 and March 7th, Béatrice was still in France with her folks and I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with bidness work, trying to keep the house nice, feeding the hungry koi fish, and fighting off feelings of personal sadness. So I didn’t feel much energy about blogging (or anything else creative really). There was also a general depression about the shape of our dear old Republic and deep, deep disappointment with the leadership coming out of Washington.

2. Since March 7th, Béatrice has been home! Yay! I’ve been very, very happy. So many things to catch up on and do and share! So, once again, blogging faded into the distance. I have to say the feeling of disappointment with the Democrats is still there too. But when you’re personally feeling happy it does recede into the background a bit. (Except when you have to listen to debates about the critical nature of cutting the deficit in a time when masses of people are still unemployed and desperate).

But it’s a beautiful morning here in San Jose as I write this. I can hear the birds singing outside. (“Les oiseaux sont joyeux” as we used to say back in French 1. And, yes, Mlle. Isner, I still have a crush on you!) I was just taking a shower and thinking about how happy I am now that Béatrice is home. In the middle of all that the idea of writing a blog post popped into my head out of the proverbial nowhere. So there you have it! The blog lamp is lit and I’m going for it! So, in the spirit of renewal and re-birth, I’ve decided to write up some “New Years’ blog Resolutions”!

I resolve to…

Write shorter posts. (I think that’s the equivalent of “losing weight”).

Blog more frequently. (I think that’s like “going to the gym.”)

Be more open and honest and not hide so much behind humor, jokes, and YouTube clips. (I think that’s the equivalent of “not waste so much time on Facebook.”)

Figure out how to make the blog more visually interesting. (I think that’s the equivalent of “learn a foreign language.”)

That’s all that I’ve got for now! Whew! I’m tired! Like someone who has gone to their first personal training session and realized, “I am sooooo out of shape! I really have to cut back on the Doritos!” By way of preview, in my next post I plan to write about a recent performance of one of my one acts down here in San Jose at Arclight Repertory. I think it posed several questions about my ongoing struggle with “seducing the audience”. So stay tuned!