Welcome!

It’s been a long time, but I’m back! This blog will be home to occasional reflections and stories from my tour with Northern Harmony.

With tour starting in three days, I’m preparing: polishing my packing list, getting last-minute advice, and trying to cultivate an emptiness in myself. I want to be open to the new friends, new music, and new experiences that will soon come my way. But there is also an emptiness I already have that I wish to preserve. This is the emptiness of someone encountering our repertoire for the first time.

Our leaders, Patty and Larry, have just sent out recordings of the pieces we’ll be singing on tour. I’m never heard any of these pieces before. As I listen to each of these pieces for the first time, I try to record what moments speak to me. Why do I do this? So that after I have rehearsed these pieces for hours and know them like the back of my hand, I can return to my notes and remember what seemed dramatic or poignant to a first-time listener.

It’s too easy to forget that while performers may know their music, the audience generally doesn’t. And since I believe that performing is about communicating with an audience, a performer has to remember what it is like to not know. So how can a performer, whose hearing of the music is overlaid with memories from rehearsal and a knowledge of the piece’s trajectory and concerns about vocal production, forget all of that – and shape something that is beautiful in its continuing incompleteness, as it unfolds, measure for measure?

Arabella's Dilemma - Part II

The forest was also home to Jake, who was a couple of weeks older than Arabella and already had a reputation as a trickster. One day, Jake had simply disappeared from the forest. When he didn’t return that evening, or the next, or the next, the elders sent out a search party to look for the red-flecked ruffian. Finally, on the evening of the fourth day, Jake barged into the elders’ house with a laugh, telling the assembled greywhiskers how much fun it was to watch all the cats looking for him. It turned out that Jack had climbed a tree and thought it would be funny not to come down.

In addition to being a trickser, Jake had a reputation as a showman, which everycat knew came straight from his elder brother. Jake’s elder brother had a meow that carried from one end of the dell to the other, and Jake wanted his meow (which he called his “roar”) to be just as gigantic. To the annoyance of everycat who went to bed early, Jake practiced his roar late into the evening. So Jake’s roar came to be pretty fierce.

One day, Jake the trickster and the showman decided to have some fun at Arabella’s expense. He climbed a tree near the road in the middle of the forest, and waited for her to approach. Soon enough, little grey Arabella came to the side of the road and stopped to look both ways. When Jake saw her from his perch atop the tree, he gathered up all his might and roared. GROOM!!!! His roar resounded across the forest.

Arabella skittered. She heard a sudden GROOM!!! from her left , and remembered that her mom had told her not to cross the road if she heard such a thing. But all Arabella saw down the road was trees and bees and tracks in the mud. There was nothing suspicious. As she looked probingly into the distance, Arabella wondered what she should do.

Meanwhile, Jacob scampered down from his tree on Arabella’s left and scampered up a tree on Arabella’s right. This was quite fun, he thought. From a branch on Arabella’s right he puffed out his chest and let out another roar. GROOM!!! His roar resounded across the forest.

Arabella nearly jumped out of her whiskers. First left, now right – the GROOM!!! was everywhere, yet seemed to come from nowhere. Despite her mom had said, the road seemed safe. Arabella pondered her dilemma. Should she cross the road, or not?

Thoughts on Thoughts

I've been applying to law school, and thinking weird mangled thoughts lying somewhere in between law and cognitive science. Here are some oversimplified thoughts that I've found useful to think with.

Analysis is a way of thinking that takes an idea and breaks it into parts. For instance, "A car includes a chassis, an engine, a transmission, wheels, ..., (and optionally a driver, a paintjob, ...)"

Analysis:



Synthesis is a way of thinking that describes two or more ideas as members of a category. For example, "red and violent are both colors of the rainbow." In linguistics, the process of making a syntactic unit out of individual words is called Merge, and Merge is an example of synthesis. An example of a Merge is the process by which our brains create the noun phrase "red pepper" out of the adjective "red" and the noun "pepper."

Synthesis:



So far, so boring. The clincher is - my LSAT studying and my legal internship have made my thoughts more analytic. Most of the of legal thinking I've been doing has been breaking down a problem into parts. This is a fine way to solve a problem, but analysis and synthesis should be complementary. You can't have one without the other. And furthermore, though I like both ways of thinking, I prefer synthesis.

Why do I like synthesis? My most creative and insightful thoughts are synthetic. The more improbable the induction, the more diverse the components, the better the thought (the more it changes my theories about the world). Of course, my preference for synthesis extends only to useful categories. When the heading under which concepts are synthesized becomes too abstract (for example, categorizing "making nouns out of verbs" and "making verbs out of nouns" under the way-too-abstract heading of "ambiguitization"), this heading ceases to refer to definite things like "shoe" or "lizard" and instead becomes a mental chameleon that can be whatever you want it to be.

I am uncomfortable with legal thinking so far as it does not balance analysis and synthesis. That said, I have too little experience to trust my characterization of legal thinking. The analyst in me says legal thinking is not one, but many, processes.

So I will put my discomfort on hold for now. My ongoing project is figuring out how to maintain creativity and spark within legal thinking, within the legal profession, -- if that is what I want to do -- and within my life.

Thank You, Paul Bloom!

Yesterdream, I had this conversation:

Me: What should I do with my life? (approximately)

Paul Bloom: Do what you love. What do you love?

Me: Writing and music, of course!

Of course!

Arabella's Dilemma - Part I

Arabella was a tabby cat who lived in the big forest. She was little and she was grey, and she had a big streak of white on her tail. All the other kittens laughed at Arabella and said her white tail made her look silly, but Arabella didn't let the other kittens get to her. Arabella was proud of her tail and thought she would grow into it -- or so her mother told her. Arabella's mother told her many things. Her mother told her -- always clean your fur after sipping milk in the morning. And Arabella did. Her mother told her -- purr quietly when other kittens are nearby. And Arabella did. Her mother told - always look both ways before crossing the street, and never cross the street when you hear a loud GROOM!!!. And that is where Arabella got into a spot of trouble almost as big as the spot on her tail.

You see, Arabella wasn’t the only kitten in the forest...

On a bloggeroll

Explanation for craziness is, friend Josh-the-weird-one came to Moscow for LA for tourist week. With parents, on mission find Jews and interrogate them. So went to Hillel, talk to teenagers who rule world. Er, international Hillel organization. Talked smilingly in Englishy and I translate for them, get invited to next Sunday make-costume-creative-holiday. Learn new English word: flashMob. I did not think, would learn new English word in Moscow. Many interesting things happen in Moscow, like when I nearly fall in hole with barking dog. But nearly, say I. Ha ha! You laugh at my joke.

Think I, this Josh-the-weird-one now off to Turkmeniwhoknowswhereistan, return triumvirately Sat/Sun for more get-to-getherers. Nice to be Moscow go-to guy! Maybe see Romeo/Juliet, or narrate milleniums of russian history as stroll through krelilin. Evertheless, be it good, perkiness infects me.

Coolness =

Freedom of action.
Width of gesture, length of stride.
How strong is your step and the pump in your arms
You breeze through the world's at your side.

Russian sign language
10 perky Russian Hillellies, a contradiction in terms
No less that I, vegan aesthete, should fly to Motherus's uranium arms!
The confidence concoction, it's no secret, it's on auction,
Just think the cup's half full runneth over
Walk unstopped, cork unpopped, your pizzazz is the raspberry fiz on top.
Whirl out and whirl back in, metro doors swing on invisible hinges
Levers and fulcrums and invisible gears,
People change days, illuminate weeks, and haunt the years
Of my life. Yes that's right. This is life. And I'm here.