Living Woman cannot prove that she's not dead...

Whenever we are tempted to dump the management of ever-greater chunks of our lives on the government (see: quasi-socialism), it often helps to review how well our already existing large administrative organizations are doing. Take, for instance:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331647,00.html

Do we really want these same people running every American's health insurance? I can just see the scenario:

Patient at Hospital: "Hello.. I'm in need of medical treatment."

Hospital Receptionist: "Oh I'm sorry sir, our records indicate that you're already deceased."

Patient: "But I'm right HERE!"

Receptionist: "That may be, but first you'll have to go downtown and cancel your death-certificate. I can't process insurance for a deceased man."

***
Think back to every administrative run-around you've ever had. How much worse do these situations become when there are no other parties competing for the job?

The fact is, Universal Health Care cannot effectively work in our country. The fact is, it would slowly cripple the health-care industry, not to mention the economy.

Hill-Bill and Obama are only fishing for naive votes when they pitch their univeral health-care plans. While an overhaul of the system is long-overdue, and medicare reform is certainly needed, to suggest anything more is to make empty promises. America needs realistic plans and concrete solutions, not dishonest pipe-dreams.

Politics of the Absurd

Republicans have their Obama: more on that in a bit. But first:

For once, I have to agree with Hilary. The criticism leveled towards her comments regarding the role of superdelegates is absurd.

We do not live in a real democracy. In fact, in a nation of this size, it would be impossible to live in a real democracy. Imagine the time it would take to vote on all of our most important issues: the time in research, debate, and the voting act itself would add-up into a full-time job.

America is merely a quasi-democracy. A trusteeship.

Senators are trustees, and one would hope that they think carefully and independently about their decisions, as opposed to simply towing the party line.

The Supreme Court -- the real power in our nation -- is not elected, nor are they expected to follow the line of political popularity.

Superdelegates are an intellectual stop-gap measure fully in line with our democratically elected trusteeship system. They exist as one of many measures to temper our voting system. After all, it is just as easy to have a tyranny of one man, as a tyranny of the vulgar masses. Liberal populist rhetoric is nothing more than posturing to earn the votes of the "common man."

In other news, the Republicans now have their own Obama: The young, charismatic, conservative and INDIAN governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, almost comes across as an Obama understudy. Whether now or in the future, this man seems to have a bright political career ahead of him.

My prediction? McCain will pick Vindal as his Vice President and Obama-antidote. He's little known but highly skilled before a camera, and could become Republican secret-weapon. It may be wishful thinking, but such a move would make an already fascinating election even more interesting.

Self-help me Please

Have you ever wondered why one of the biggest sections in any bookstore is the "self-help" aisle? What is this curiously North-American phenomenon, and why do so many Americans feel that they need this help?

I don't think that most people purchasing these books are acting on a whim akin to buying the latest infomercial miracle product. While most people don't follow through on their desires to "get help," I believe that they are initially acting on a natural human state: they know they both desire and deserve to have better lives, and some part of them is desperate for change.

To anybody caring to look, North America is both a wonderful and a tragic place. Wonderful, because we are still the land of opportunity. Tragic, because we have created social structures, media structures, and interpersonal structures that stifle the great American drive.

The great American/Yankee spirit was one of individualism and innovation: if you couldn't make your mark in the urban world, you were encouraged to pack-up and head for the open West. In this time, the government greatly subsidized such ventures. Individualism was seen as a boon to the nation, not a danger.

On a personal note, I bring up the arts as an example of this social hypocrisy. Everybody loves movies, music, television, and perhaps other forms of the "fine" arts. Most parents, however, have no problem watching the Oscars with secret admiration, yet chiding their child when they announce their interest in theater. Some lucky children are allowed to engage in high-school-aged artistic pursuits, but are then pressured into "stable" and "realistic" career paths.

Every year this happens, our nation grows dumber and duller.

Every year that young people are discouraged from the natural individualism born of their adolescence, America grows slowly weaker.

Every year we grow weaker, the "self-help" industry grows, reacting organically to our very real human needs.

I will suggest that for all of the charlatans parading miracle cures, there is a genuine need for the self-help industry. Its very prolific existence is simple proof that in our land of opportunity, something is certainly going awry.

Learning to Color: Stumbling Across Orchestration

The fifth grade was not kind to my artistic soul. I remember when we were given the assignment of coloring-in the outline of a large maple leaf. Unsatisfied with the results of my project, I grabbed a handful of gold and silver crayons and began to add highlights to my red and green leaf. My fifth grade teacher bounded up to me in a huff and accused me of scribbling. Little did I know it, but the little creative person inside of me had just received his first challenge. Normally quiet, I argued my point. I was not able to express it at the time, but I was seeking the realistic gleam of a leaf after it had begun to dry.

Not buying my poorly given argument, my fifth grade teacher made me stand in front of the first-grade art class, to learn how "good children" do their art projects. I've been obsessed with color ever since...

***

There was a time where I was silenced at the sight of a blank Orchestral score. It was simply too much to deal with, and my brain couldn't wrap itself around such a behemoth of color, sound, and passion. The ideas fizzled, and I was left standing in humble silence.

To this day, few compliments please me more than being told that I have orchestrated something well. As I approached the end of my Masters studies in composition, I was still handicapped by the large ensemble. This meant that I was essentially incapable of writing the orchestra piece that I needed to write in order to graduate.

Certainly I could have written a bad piece, but I promised myself long ago that I would never kow-tow to academic requirements in a way which sacrificed creative quality. Never.

Part of fearing the Orchestra and Wind Ensemble was fearing what monstrosity might come about as a result of my bringing my ideas into such a huge creative space. Inside of my head there were great colors, shapes, and swirls of energy brewing, but I was unable to open the door to fully access these ideas.

It was digital audio editing that changed that. I began to compose a piece called "Blood, Forgotten," for solo Violin and multimedia. The multimedia portion consisted of a video element, and a massive and continually evolving sound-world derived almost entirely from the sound of a single violin.

In the process of shaping and layering the hundreds of sounds clips which eventually became the full eleven minutes of "Blood, Forgotten," I ended up with something resembling -- but greatly outdetailing -- a classical orchestral score.

As I put the finishing touches on "Blood, Forgotten," I began to compose the Orchestral version of the piece. Still mired in trepidation, I was shocked to find that the floodgates had burst, and I was dancing joyfull on the the 11X17 field.

In the end, the orchestra piece was mediocre at best. The significance of the situation, however, is that working the digital medium helped me make the leap into writing for large ensembles.

Working with a digital-audio editor, you begin with recording sounds and manipulating them into new sounds. You work in a top-down-left-to-right approach as in an orchestral score. You are concerned with pitch, balance, color, layering, and progression.

Sound familiar? Such are the concerns which we encounter in any piece, with the concerns being multiplied to extreme levels with large ensembles.

Some might suggest that I was simply suffering from a lack of familiarity in the Orchestral Repetoire. In my case, this is untrue, as I had been ingesting large amounts of music for many years. I had done my score studies, made numerous sketches. I just couldn't ever get past the first idea in a large-ensemble setting.

The problem was comfort: I could not synthesize all of the necessary elements without being overly critical about myself as a composer, or being worried of the potential train-wreck which might result from such efforts.

The digital realm allowed me to experiment endlessly, with instantaneous results available. It helped build the confidence my inner-ear needed, and allowed the necessary mental-dancing to develop over ever-larger soundscapes. Soon I was thriving, and the transition was not a difficult one to make.

I wonder if any other young composers have had similar experiences. Perhaps one day, I will be afforded the opportunity teach a course dealing with such subject-matter. Orchestration is an art that one can continually improve upon. I'm just glad that I accidentally stumbled across the way to my own ability in this realm, and hope to help others do the same in the future.

New Music Advocacy

Recently the Canton Symphony asked me to give a presentation on music from the perspective of a young composer. After much thought, I've decided to call my talk "New Music: Part of the Problem, Part of the Solution." The below thoughts are merely a preparation for this talk, and I ask for your detailed (and if necessary, brutal) input on the matter.

***

For all of our griping, what exactly ARE we doing which is productively bringing new music to wider audiences?

I was recently sent comments from a talk by John Adams, in which he decries the overt conservatism of Orchestras and their audiences. He said that "all the interesting music being written now is generally not for Orchestra, as a result." (This is a loose paraphrase taken from a loose paraphrase.)

Mr. Adams is correct, of course: despite the many talented composers out there, our music is either not being performed, or being usurped by less-accessible "great" old-new music in Boulez-ite tradition. Another famous conductor, asked to defend such programming choices, said that the Bouleschoewebernites "need" such patronage.

Such programming attitudes beg the question: If 75 years of stuffing atonal-serialism down the throats of audiences has yet to do anything BUT alienate said audiences, at what point do we concede to the obvious?

While stubborn artistic directors and conductors seemingly purposefully only choose new (or, dubious 20th century) music to piss off their audiences, yet another generation of composers that DON'T sound like Boulez or any of the bergs and berns are being subsequently swept under the carpet of collective irreletivity.

If I didn't know better, I'd think that some of these "proponents of new music" were purposefully attempting to sabotage contemporary music.

I will propose that the average concert-goer over 50 doesn't realize that most new music being written nowadays is NOT being written in such inaccesible styles. In fact, I will submit (with personal experience) that most young conservatory students are equally in the dark as to what is available to us.

I've already named inaccessible old music and its entrenched proponents as part of the problem. I don't have a solution to this dilemma, but there are things that we can start doing TODAY to change the tide of artistic decline in America.

1.) Every graduate student or new professor who is "stuck" teaching music appreciation needs to quit bitching about it, and instead embrace the opportunity. What if every 200+ person lecture-course resulted in three passionate new music listeners? At over 10,000 universities in our country, we would be adding 20,000 new, hip, and curious listeners to the American audience. That's 200,000 potential new listeners per decade, which is easily enough to turn the establishment on its head by that time.

2.) In keeping with #1, education is always the key. Music teachers tend to be relatively ignorant about contemporary music as well, which is why composers need to start visiting classrooms. I know, I know, we're all ridiculously busy. But if every composer visited one classroom annually, we'd have over 5,000 classroom visits with which to inspire minds and build audiences every year. Think of it as contributing to your future audience, which definitely might make retirement a bit easier. I plan on making at least one visit before the school year is over.

3.) Groups such as Eighth Blackbird are putting on hip, varied, and wonderfully performed programs. In only a few years, they have nearly single-handedly revived the new music scene in Chicago. Here in Cleveland, I've become involved with what will hopefully be our equivalent. Any community with a few musicians can pull this off, and smaller communities are especially ripe for such endeavors. If 500 new groups of such a nature came about in the next five years, think of the possibilities for building audiences and getting new commissions!

4.) Wind Ensembles are our friend. To reject them is to do so at your own peril.

5.) Write music which is considerate of your performers, and treat your performers like gold. I recently had a musician from Taiwan tell me that I had "changed (her) opinion of composers for the better." She now plays in all sorts of new music projects in the area, all because a few composers were really nice to her. In contrast, I saw an established Cleveland-area composer selfishly berate a Pierrot Ensemble of younger grad-student musicians. He got his wish: a tight performance. The way he went about it, however, alienated his musicians from composers.

These are five steps which can change the musical landscape we live in. If we put down our bitterness and become real advocates for our art, the resulting tide will eventually sweep back onto the Orchestral stage.

Rather than be part of the generation of composers which has rejected tradition, I would rather be a part of the generation of composers which has revitalized it.

What are the Beatitudes?

What is a system of faith, and when is it outdated?

The soundtrack to my past few months has been Czieslaw Niemen's "Dziwny Jest Ten Swiat" , which translates to "Strange is our World."

I can't help but think of God himself bobbing his head to the soulful organ and simply true lyrics, as Niemen crooned:

"How Strange is our world.
Where still, somehow
there is room for so much wrong...
...it is a shame to admit."

Yesterday's mass reading was the famous Beatitudes.

Almost two millenia after people first heard these revolutionary thoughts, we still haven't gotten them through our collective thick skulls.

The homilist at my Church stated it brilliantly yesterday:

What if above the doors of our courts, it read:
"Blessed are the merciful?"

What if above the doors of our military bases, it read:
"Blessed are the peacemakers?"

What if above the doors of Senate and Congress, it read:
"Blessed are those who thirst for Righteousness?"

I'm sure that you can think of a few yourself. My point is this: whether we are talking about the people who embrace him -- or those who reject him -- it seems that few of us have really listened to what Christ really had to say.

It is difficult to say that "Christianity is outdated," when we've rarely gotten it right in the first place. Indeed, as a system for life, it is one that we are called to revisit now more than ever.

The Beatitudes seem to ring true in our hearts, because they address the most fundamental aspects of our human journey. They register as an echo of perfect eternity in our hearts -- haunting us because of our origins, inspiring us because of our destiny.

I have taken up Richard Dawkins on his invitation to "imagine a world without religion." I know of a world where enough people have at least tried to live up to the beatitudes as to rescue us from much misery. I shudder to think where we would be today, had they never been set as a human standard so long ago.

So this year, instead of giving something up for Lent, I will instead dedicate myself to re-learning the words of Christ. When the season is over, I will still be a deeply flawed human being... but perhaps I will be a little kinder, more patient, possessed of greater vision, and a little less of a hypocrite.

Those are goals that we can all strive towards, my friends, regardless of our differing religious beliefs. As another wise man recently reminded me: "God does not desire perfection, only progress."

I think that the late Czeslaw Niemen was echoing Christ's words in his famous song, as if to say: "after all the terrible things we have seen in recent history, how can there still be room for willing strife in our hearts?" He concludes his song by saying:

"It is time -- high time -- that we kill the hate in our hearts"

Indeed, how can there still be room for such things?

And just for fun, here is a live clip of the afformentioned song, all the way back from Opole Fest 1979:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1bdMhrvh20&feature=related

Katyn

If the New York times is to be believed, currently 78% of people (over 27,000 votes) believe that "Katyn" should be awarded "best foreign film" at the upcoming Oscars. Not bad, considering the film just made its first showing outside of Poland.

I have seen the film, and despite my nit-picking critique, I still feel that it is a powerful and well-told story. I have not seen the other films which were nominated, but I am certain of this: the story of Katyn is one which the world must hear.

The story of Katyn is also one which AMERICANS must hear, because the United States helped to cover up the infamous Katyn massacre.

That is right: over 15,000 of a nation's brightest professors, doctors, politicians, and military officers are shot in the back of the head and thrown in a ditch, and the heroic United States plays a hand in the cover-up, if only to avoid ruffling the feathers of Uncle-Joe Stalin.

The United States certainly was the hero of the Second World War... which makes it even more painful to know that they betrayed their fourth biggest ally, and the only ally to fight against the full face of evil during the war.

So as soon as you get a chance, see Katyn: it will broaden your perspective of what really happened during the great calamity of the 20th century. There certainly was a holocaust, and not only Jews were being targeted...