The less time one has, the more freedom one feels to not give a crap. With precious little time to sight-see, I disregarded any sense of being both a typical tourist and trying to hide that fact when I, along with some 250 members of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Chorus, and Staff went to New York City to perform at Carnegie Hall on the 100th birthday of Benjamin Britten--more on that later, as this post's title suggests.
As a morning person, it wasn't too odd that I was out of my hotel and out on the street by 5 am. A couple days before, torn between winging it and planning it, I decided to work out to some detail what I would do on Friday, as we had a 1 pm rehearsal and a 7 pm concert and being late to either was not an option. I wanted to be downtown before the sun rose, so I had to catch the subway around 6 am. With an hour to spare, I wandered the blocks near our hotel. Thankfully, it was chock full of good sights.
(I like getting some love in the morning...)
(30 Rock! Totally thought of Liz Lemon quotes)
(Ermahgerd, Lergos! The tower of Isengard
across from the tower of Rockefeller.)
Picking up my train at Columbus Circle (dear God, what elaborate stations they have; at least St. Louis Metrolink stations look better...), it was a quick ride to the Chambers St. station, which dropped me off close to the World Trade Center site, the construction of which got me a bit lost, but I refound my way. Famished, I ate at Pret a Manger, and would recommend it to anyone (not that the food is especially good, but it is a charitable business).
Then I ambled my towards the Brooklyn Bridge. Here are some things I saw:
A squirrel, you ask? I was in City Hall Park, when a squirrel scurried right up to me--I even called to it, and it came yet closer. Amused, I went to find more such critters, when, to my delight, I discovered this guy sitting on a bench and feeding the squirrels in his lap. Three thoughts came to mind: 1.) squirrels in St. Louis don't do this (though we don't feed them like this, either); 2.) a memory from New Orleans, where, in a shop on Jackson Square, a pigeon followed us in and the store owner knew it by name; and 3.) this might be the real highlight of the trip (kidding...mostly). Whatever was running through my head, though, I'm sure the thoughts in the passersby heads as I snapped this and other pictures of the squirrels were "tourist" or "escaped mental patient."
Leaving the Land of Friendly Squirrels, my next stop was the Brooklyn Bridge. I wish I had some Hart Crane memorized for the occasion, but oh well.
(Liberty is so far away...)
I arrived at the subway stop a bit early, which was a blessing, because after so much walking I needed to sit. From there, it was off to the Guggenheim museum.
...but I wasn't about to pay $22 to enter. Unfortunately, overestimating my physical prowess, I had figured to walk back to the hotel; by now, though, I was tired (when I left the museum, I had already been awake for six hours, and it was only 10:30), cold, and my left foot was starting to give out. Which made getting lost in Central Park all the more fun. At least I got to see a "castle," Cleopatra's Needle, and that bastard Alexander Hamilton.
(Belvedere "Castle")
(Isn't there some controversy over this?)
Winding up on the wrong side of the park, I then walked over 20 blocks back to the hotel, where I promptly almost-died. No rest was to be had the inn, though, as rehearsal was to start soon. But! they let us go an hour early! So I went with Dr. Carter to Lincoln Center, where I was Met Opera dreaming (as a composer, not a singer).
But there was magic to do, so it was back to change and then on to Carnegie Hall...
...where we kicked ass and took names. Like, important names:
I'm still waiting to see what Alex Ross at The New Yorker has to say: he did, after all, devote a whole chapter in The Rest is Noise to Benjamin Britten, with an emphasis on Peter Grimes, AND he tweeted the link to St. Louis Public Radio's broadcast of our St. Louis concert. Apparently, he'll have a very favorable review (the hardest critic we've had is our hometown one, but she's difficult to please on a good day... however, she was appreciative).
After the concert, I limped down to Times Square (my left foot is still somewhat lame), which was neat for a cool 3 minutes before I got tired of all the damn people.
(Aren't bright lights and digital cameras fun?)
(Statue of another bastard.)
And that was that. Up early next morning for the flight back home (the major fear of flying I thought I had never materialized, and except for the migraine I got halfway on the return trip, it was actually pretty awesome).
Except, it was more than just "that." It's not everyone that gets to perform in one of the premiere classical performance venues in the world in front of the premiere cognoscenti in the world (or so I would think) with one of the premiere orchestras in the world, doing one of the premiere 20th century operas on its composer's 100th birthday (and St. Cecilia's Day), in a one-of-its-kind performances (the program noted that this was the first time a complete concert version of the opera was done at Carnegie); of course, I was not alone on the stage, but part of a chorus and orchestra, yet that hardly diminishes the impact--indeed, I wouldn't have had it any other way (as a performer; as a composer, I'm looking forward to my works being performed there all on their own--one can dream). Sharing this kind of ovation with others makes it all the more thrilling and fulfilling:
My next post will be about Peter Grimes, and how this experience significantly improved my opinion of the opera and of Britten.
It is very tempting to make connections out of chaos, which can be delirium-inducing for a coincidence "believer" like me. And when the coincidences cascade like a waterfall with a lot of water--hmm--it can make a doubting Thomas of one's own doubting Thomas-ness...hmm. In the past week or so, there have been three articles in particular that I read online in which (most of) my life's problems are openly discussed, and such concentration of topic is striking.
The first of them, "How Not to Talk to Your Kids," is a more thorough and, well, correct example of those "these damn kids with their bajillion trophies and self-esteem" articles that wonks like to litter the internet with. In this concise piece, Po Bronson examines ever-growing research that debunks the idea that (positive) self-esteem is the most important thing to have, at least to the extent that it is built on praise of attributes and traits. I break it down thusly: Praise is a powerful positive reinforcement, moving us to do what we can to get some mo' o' dat sweet sweet drug. Next, you have two different sides: being and doing: this is a vital binary. If we are praised for being something, we will want to ensure we continue being that, whereas, if we are praised for doing something, we will want to continue doing that. Perhaps because the simple grammars of our languages lump being and doing into one category, verbs, we tend to think of them in nearly identical ways. Yet, one is static and the other is not, and in a dynamic world, it is action that carries the day. The research is finding that when praised for being, say, smart, people will do what they can to continue being perceived as smart; this causes people to lean towards easier tasks, avoiding anything they fear will make them look dumb; they will be harshly critical of others, striking down others to make themselves seem better; and so. When one's effort is noticed, however, one will be moved to put more effort in, risking failure and possible embarrassment along the way. And in a world that expects people to get off their rumps and do stuff to be considered worthwhile, that is the important quality: persevering effort. Very few people get paid to just be. Praising efforts, though, and being specific about it is hard to develop when the habit is to praise attributes. When I read this article, I was almost quivering with recognition: I fear failure incredibly so, I can be overly-critical, being perceived as stupid frequently paralyzes me with anxiety--and so on. Combine this with my manic depression, and I'm a hot mess. Thankfully, I have been moving in the right direction over the years, but for those of us who were praised for being something, putting effort into making an effort is a hard task indeed.
I remember in fifth grade failing a major project, which was the first time I had done so. Considering the shame I felt when I told my mom about, one would think I had murdered someone. (My mom, for her part, more or less shrugged it off, saying I would do better next time or some such motherism.) This is the plight of the perfectionist. "14 Signs Your Perfectionism Has Gotten Out of Control" shares several ideas with the previous article (surprise, surprise, smart-appraised people tend to be perfectionists), and to a number I identify with each of the points listed here, though some are mostly latent anymore. Especially the last one, "You have a guilty soul," which is well-nigh Biblical. My own path to dealing with it is realizing that perfectionism is an end-game; to be literal, in grammar the perfect tense is the finished past, it is an action (or state of being) done and gone; and so I will only reach perfection when I am done and gone: how would I enjoy it then? Instead, to tie back with the previous article, it is vital to enjoy the process, to seek satisfaction in effort and moving.
Loneliness can be a powerful force of unbeing; as someone frequently prone to the pangs of it, one path I have taken to be rid of it is to be a people-pleaser, hoping then people will like me. Instead, this led to a build-up of resentment that finally broke...this past summer. If I were a less rational person, Lord knows what I might have done or become, but what carried me through was my reason, like a lighthouse to the tide-tossed ship of my self. To be exact, my knowledge that there is (almost) always a way forward helped me move forward. Now I am trying to refind who I am, Me, Christian Hendricks, one of the delicates, and then accepting that not everyone will like it. So I think I should perhaps take up this mantra: "I am not for everyone and that is okay." In her article, life coach Kira Sabin realizes "the sooner we can let go of people pleasing people who will never be
pleased, we can embrace all of our shit and start surrounding ourselves
with amazing people who like us, for us. That is where great love shows
up. That is what we are doing here." I remember a few years ago, when things were going "right," someone shared a quote with me (they thought it might come from Goethe), that when we decide on a course of action, life has a way of falling into place. Perhaps the clustered occurrence of these three articles (and who knows what further ones are in store) will make me believe that life cares enough to do that, but I think I'll remain too focused on my life to worry.
"This is nothing," cried she: "I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire."
Wuthering Heights, Chapter IX
The destructive identification between Catherine and Heathcliff may be matched by the Nature of their realm in bleak fervor, but Nature does not give its blessing, nor does society, and the two entities collude against the two lovers, annihilation through sickness and status not just them but many who happened to be in the way, while scarring the survivors. This maelstrom of passion, however, is necessary to clear away the build-up of past enmities, even if by obliteration, and the junior Catherine and Hareton, after Heathcliff finally dies, are free to attempt a new way.
Or so new thoughts and old memories make of it. I confess to not having read the novel again since I first read it around eight years ago. This is not an exegesis on the novel, though, so I am undeterred. Emily Brontë's violent vision came to mind as I watched again Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical Passion. The similarities are abundant and obvious: a love triangle, a passionate love that comes at the cost of not much less than everything, a desolate and remote location, sickly people. Yet, my real concern here is the idea of complete yielding, and that such a thing as demanded in the worlds of these two words is demanded also by great art.
Clara is beautiful and still young enough that Giorgio, himself young and handsome, is "hopelessly in love" with her (one wonders if Sondheim was aware of Cecily's rebuke of that phrase in The Importance of Being Earnest). Joined through pity, they do as lovers do and believe they are not just another love story. Then Giorgio, a soldier, is sent to some provincial military post and meets Fosca, who is sickly, homely, and embittered by life; her only escape until Giorgio arrives is through reading ("I read to fly!"). All it takes is Giorgio's initial pity and general gentlemanly conduct, and the spark is lit and grows until the fire illuminating the bonds between him and Fosca also go on to burn away his honor and his shallow love for Clara.
In both of these works, morality has little to no relevance: indeed, they are more proscription than prescription, and no one should carry on in the real world as such--even if we actually do. But, as with much other art, that is hardly their point, as far as interactions between people are concerned. Aesthetic interactions, though, are different, as they are our selves in dialect with ourselves, carried on in the echo chambers of the art which possess us. The abuses we suffer of our own doing are overlooked in a way that abusings of others are not; they are doubt, guilt, anguish, and so on. We are not moved to change when content, when Clara's and Edgar Linton's are moved just enough to love us as we are, to meet us just enough past convenience; but a new life, a new self emerges in the clearing love that Fosca's and Heathcliff's demand--and yes, manipulate--us to rise to. The inner voice of actualizing change that frequently torments us needs an agent to affect us, this agent being seemingly possessed by this voice the way Heathcliff and Fosca can seem possessed by some foreign passion, and this agent needing the sublimity of these two characters instead of the beauty of a Clara. Outside of our selves, what we find in this real world of ours are, most personally and therefore most profoundly, our experiences with art.
Passion, when it premiered, was lauded by critics but derided by audiences. Sondheim said in reply:
The story struck some audiences as ridiculous. They refused to believe
that anyone, much less the handsome Giorgio, could come to love someone
so manipulative and relentless, not to mention physically repellent, as
Fosca. As the perennial banality would have it, they couldn't "identify"
with the main characters. The violence of their reaction, however,
strikes me as an example of "The lady doth protest too much."
I think they may have identified with Giorgio and Fosca all too readily
and uncomfortably. The idea of a love that's pure, that burns with D.H. Lawrence's
gemlike flame, emanating from a source so gnarled and selfish, is hard
to accept. Perhaps they were reacting to the realization that we are all
Fosca, we are all Giorgio, we are all Clara.
[Thanks to Wikipedia for the above, whose citation credits Sondheim's book Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981-2011)]
The demand of Fosca and the eventual yielding of Giorgio is analogous to the thorough submission that art, great art, demands of us. To be Catherine confessing her complete identification with Heathcliff, that he even surpasses herself as her self, is the truest form of love-criticism we auditors of works can and should have. The Clara's of art are the pretty distractions that come and go: all the movies, all the books, all the music which we profess to like, which we acclaim to be "cool": how much of it all remains, haunting our hearts and thoughts the way Fosca haunts Giorgio, or Catherine literally haunts Heathcliff? When a work of art possesses me, I learn about myself, and when I possess it in return--can we say that it learns more about itself? The critical is forever the personal, and while great works fill the canons, the greatest works are the vocations of our individual canons, works "hopelessly in love" with the lovers who find them and are found in return, a love that is not a choice but what they are, and who we are as well. This criticism by total yielding of identity marks me as a Romantic, and is almost literally Narcissistic: we are transfixed by our reflections, and who's to stay the reflection, or the reflector, is not transfixed with us?
"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." -Oscar Wilde
I have a particular affinity for plot lines that involve the culmination of things a long time in the making, particularly when we, the audience, start in medias re and learn about the beginnings piecemeal as the story progresses: it's a narrative device that I think is particularly engaging. The writers for Breaking Bad use this quite frequently on the small level (episode; though in this case we are typically flashed-forward to some striking act or visual...anyway), but with the Gustavo Fring story, they employed it in a much larger arc that I found particularly satisfying (and which, for me, made up for how annoying Walter White became in that season/act).
Where was I going with this?...hmmm...
Anyway, I've made a decision that was a long time coming. I had been planning to go to grad school at Oxford Brookes University over in merry olde England. That plan is no more, and I will not be getting a masters in music composition any time soon. It was a lovely dream; the reality was not. Even considering the financial benefits studying in England would have afforded (1 year v. 2 years, cheaper tuition) and that I had some money to go, it still would have deepened my debt to a more painful degree, and--this is important--I realized it wasn't worth it. Part of the realization was solid advice and information concerning the future state of music and music education, particularly for a composer, but it was mostly that I didn't truly want it that much. The cost-benefit analysis weighted too much towards cost, and I heard myself saying things like "it would be nice to go," not "I would do anything to achieve this dream." Perhaps most telling, I felt I was more drifting along than rowing forward, compelled towards an expectation of my future I had fed people instead of impelled towards a future I could claim solidly. Not to say I blame others, but I have a tendency to rely too much on the thoughts of other people. So, for the foreseeable future, I won't getting a masters to teach music in college.
The compromise, though, is something I think will work better for me in the long run. For a while I had been toying with teaching English abroad, mostly as a means to make a good buck for a short while. Now, I am going to make a career out of it. It combines teaching, which I've wanted to do since 2nd grade (according to my mother, but I can only recall to 4th grade), with travel, which I've wanted to do since 2nd grade, and with my love of English, which...I've had in some capacity since 2nd grade. What I'm saying is this plan is the seventeen year culmination of a grade schooler's various interests...I guess; my, oh my, what a winding road. As soon as I can I would like to attain a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Certificate (and I have a program in mind that I'm still looking into), go perhaps to East Asia where the big bucks currently are, help work down my debt, and move on from there. Of course, nowhere in this plan is a cessation of musical activities: I will still play piano, sing, and most importantly, compose. Several famous composers held other full-time jobs: Alexander Borodin was a chemist, Charles Ives was an insurance salesman, Phillip Glass has done all sorts of things. Of course, it remains to be seen how famous I will become (see what I did there with the word manipulation?).
Some dream places to teach:
Chile
Brazil
...End of list? There are of course many European countries I would love to visit, but EU regulations make it difficult for non-EU citizens to attain such work, so I'm told; such jobs frequently go to Britishers. And I would like to visit parts of the Middle East and South East Asia, but considering my sexuality and the local views of such in many places in these regions, that may not be wise. We'll see.
There, he mounts a high tower in his mind, and looks out far and wide. Many solitary figures he perceives, creeping through the streets; many solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying under haystacks. But the figure that he seeks, is not among them. Other solitaries he perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over; and in shadowed places down by the river's level; and a dark, dark, shapeless object drifting with the tide, more solitary than all, clings with a drowning hold on his attention.
Where is she? Living or dead, where is she? If, as he folds the handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able, with an enchanted power, to bring before him the place where she found it, and the night landscape near the cottage where ti covered the little child, would he descry her there? On the waste, where the brick-kilns are burning with a pale blue flare; where the straw-roofs of the wretched huts in which the bricks are made, are being scattered by the wind; where the clay and water are hard frozen, and the mill in which the gaunt blind horse goes round all day, looks like an instrument of human torture; — traversing this deserted blighted spot, there is a lonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all companionship. It is the figure of a woman, too; but it is miserably dressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall, and out at the great door, of the Dedlock mansion.
(Charles Dickens, Bleak House, end of Ch. 56.)
("Eleanor Rigby")
("Another Hundred People")
o o o o
I admit to visions; oh, not of the kind where burning wheels-within-wheels accompanied by freaks of nature tow in a God with the dramatic sensibilities of Andrew Lloyd Webber: They are, rather, image-dramatic responses to my thoughts, my ponderings; I am nothing if not metaphorical. Two common visions I have are concerned with connections, one of a dispersed web, the other of a central focus. The first, the older, is of some nondescript transportation network (why yes, I am fascination by such systems). Frequently, though, I will give this network a more definite form as I imagine the layout of the St. Louis area, seeing from aloft like a satellite image. The other vision, even more abstract, was born out of both my thinkings-through of certain current projects, and an interest in astrophysics: it is of some kind of astral matter, circling, writhing, and throbbing around some unknown center. They are imaginings of two kinds of connections, one of links between more-or-less separate points, the other of links from several points to one center; the former of independent identities, the latter of interdependent ones.
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We're the other nation anthem, folks,
the ones that can't get in to the ballpark
Spread the word!...
There's another national anthem, folks,
for those who never win:
for the suckers, for the pikers,
for the ones who might have been.
(Stephen Sondheim, "Another National Anthem," Assassins)
Bifil that in that seson, on a day,
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay,
Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
To Caunterbury, with ful devout corage,
At nyght were come into that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye
Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde.
(Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Prologue 19-27)
("La Vie Boheme")
o o o o
To this day I remember a little line from a hilarious TV show that was on, I think, when I was in middle school: Titus, a vehicle for the comedian Christopher Titus (if you don't know him or the show, check them out). He would interpolate commentary between the scripted action, and in one of them he said "normal people scare me." To be a bit frank, all people scare me, to varying extents, though confidence in its different forms, such as "liquid courage," have helped. What is "normalcy?" We can speak of normative behaviors, for example, and mean objectively behaviors that can be observed and defined across a broad spectrum, but when we say "normal," it is a subjective stance, usually with the implication of what should be observed and defined; even more so, when used in the negative, as in "that's not normal." Too many people, even today, run around like Old Testament gods, interchanging "abnormal" and "unnatural," condemning any and all behavior that is seeming condemnable. This cuts off sectors of people from each other, obviously, but this is more than missed connections: unsuccessful people, seen to be at fault for their state, are cut off, disenfranchised; they can't get into the ballpark, if for no other reason than they can't afford the tickets. Then there are the "freaks," "weirdos," "monster," those who are what they are, and they are cut off from those who are not what they wish they were. It is this separation, this quartering, that is "abnormal," "unnatural," for the scatterings of the universe, to have made the universe as it is, interacted in bump-'n'-go fashion, another billions and billions of particles colliding endlessly.
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From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that ’round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by—
From the thunder, and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—
(Edgar Allen Poe, "Alone")
Let's let the world go its own way. If you, my dear love, want things as I do, let's not allow anything to drag us away from the path on which we know we must go. I mean the direction of my art. Let's leave the competition to the others. But let's grasp our art with a tremendous grip.(Jean Sibelius, letter to Aino Sibelius, November 10, 1911)
("Means the right to expect that you'll have an effect, that you're gonna
connect! Connect! Connect! Connect!")
Spent the evening with the symphony. The disposition of the themes: with all its mystery and fascination, this is the important thing. It is as if God the Father had thrown down mosaic pieces from heaven's floor and asked me to put them back as they were.
(Jean Sibelius, diary entry in April, 1915)
"All roads lead to Rome."
o o o o
To get to Rome, I must go to Rome. Should I be in Venice, I cannot say I am in Rome because there lies open a direct connection between the the cities; that would like saying that since today leads into tomorrow, that it is already the next day now. I must travel, and in traveling I make the connection
Romance can be only with incomplete information; it blossoms out of an engagement with discovery. Knowledge/wisdom is like romance in the latter sense, but needs ever more and clearer data to thrive better. Love and thought are—must be—linked, and so with art and science. Philos and sophia are united only by active engagement, not by passive acceptance, and certainly not through prideful divorce.
It is not as important how connections are made, but that we are either open to them at all, or should we be forced open to them, that we meet them matched and directly. The relationships I have—with friends, family, art, and food—are more or less accidents: life jostled us together, and like a solar furnace crafting elements, a bond was made. Yet, I myself—so reticent, shy, rather inept at conversation—so understandingly internalize this unopenness to connection that these connections I have I feel the strongest when they are at their most tenuous, and I feel them the most tenuous when they are the strongest. In the former case, romance trumps reality as we desperately wish for a relationship with intriguing strangers; in the latter, the honeymoon ends in Rome, and we long again for the fantasy of travel—but there remains, one, plenty in Rome, and two, the return home.
What are connections? Are some forms better than others? Does tangibility outdo the indirect? Is it the end? the means? both? What balance is good between solitude and company? What is it to connect? Truly, you: what is it to connect?
A line, from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "Ulysses," that has taken me a bit to come to understand, partly out of awe, mostly of laziness, goes "yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world, whose margins fade for ever and for ever when I move." I don't claim to grasp it fully even now, but a more blunt, prosaic wording might be: "All my experience is behind me, in the past, and is like a doorway to the limitless realm of wisdom and knowledge which lies beyond its frame; but the more I absorb of that knowledge and wisdom into my experience, the pathway to that realm shrinks, or seems to, since that realm, in being absorbed, becomes less expansive; but in moving through life, I don't just devour knowledge, I also consume life, or have it consumed anyway [Ulysses immediately goes on to rage against stopping and how the little life our human mortality grants us is hardly enough; he basically agrees with the ancient rabbis while also railing against our modern retirement], so the opportunity to experience and learn diminishes against the clock." (This, folks, is what separates poetry from prose.) Ulysses is a troubling figure to empathize with; his cunning brought about the successful sack of Troy in the Iliad; Dante casts him into the 8th pit of the 8th circle of the Inferno, for generally being a "false counsellor" or "fraudulent rhetorician," depending on your interpretation; and while Tennyson wrote this great dramatic monologue out of a need to go on after the death of his great friend and mentor, he molds his Ulysses after Dante's man. Ulysses' obsession is with knowledge, and having soaked up what the ancient world had to offer, the only place left is "beyond the baths of the Western stars," "beyond the utmost bound of human thought"; that way lies death, and his quest is a suicide mission--it is well-nigh homicidal. He mentions his son Telemachus; I have only now had any inkling of explaining this rather jarring stanza, which seems shoved in like nuts in a fruitcake. The stanza itself tosses Telemachus aside, making him little more than a domestic; to what extent this is true of Telemachus, we don't know, and likely neither does Ulysses, who isn't that interested anyway. So why mention him at all? Self-service: in bringing him up, perhaps he is protesting that his son is important to him so Ulysses isn't such a cold person after all, even if he does frame his son as a servant carrying out necessary duties that don't interest Ulysses. Worse yet, though, is his attitude towards his men, his "mariners." He never says he loves anyone; it's either "those that loved me" or "alone," and his interest in his men extends only to how far they participated in his quests, and how they helped him in achieving experience and knowledge. Yet, what wisdom! "Though much is taken, much abides" is the take-away of the poem.
As I said, though, he is dangerous to understand empathetically, and I so frequently fear that I do. I have lost friends, loves, seen much and done some, but have I reacted? In tears, sad, angry tears? No, not much so. I was thankful to have experienced, like attaining a specimen to add to my collection: so academic, so studious--"Thanks for the memories." It is (was) a cool detachment; Ulysses claims "I am a part of all that I have met," but behind that I think is a vain casting of oneself into parts of importance, not of one deeply involved with and attached to something, who feels empathy with people and places and events and things. The irony, to empathize with a man who lacks practically any empathy. Ulysses is a bus, all bump and go: he is more interested in moving, in going to destinations, rather than the destinations themselves: in experiencing over experiences. I let a man go easily, a man leaving me, partly because I knew uncontrollable circumstances could not be overcome, but mostly because I was hungry to add to my empirical charts, another datum gained. I was also buffering against loss, as I have come to learn. But to have been in the moment, riding along the point of convergence where emotion, thought, and the polar aspects of time meet? To have liked, maybe loved; in short, to stop and smell the rose? And to have subsumed the anguish and bitterness under logic and observational study? This is to become a person who intones with Ulysses "those that loved me, and alone."
We are all fools, made weak by time and fate--"you've been a fool, and so have I." In the end, Ulysses will have been the biggest of fools, for he is blind to the greatest, most edifying aspect of wisdom and knowledge: people learn best how to move through life by the trans-causal relationship between the deep, personal, involved experiences of one's own, and those of others. The only requirement in critical analysis of art, for example, is to bring one's whole self before the work and then hold dialogue with it. He could have found untravelled worlds locally if he had bothered to see them in family and comrades, but most importantly in himself. There lies the problem; he is "always roaming with a hungry heart" because his heart is empty; Ulysses is a void; he must always travel, always explore, because there is nothing within, no flowers in his garden or birdhouse in his soul. Do you, Reader, have nothing but nothing inside? Our pains may make us wish so, but joy reprimands that. Terrible sorrow awaits practically everyone, and we will experience it no matter how we choose to do so. Do not welcome pain--"I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged"--but when it comes, do not stand by and observe how the frost kills the roses, and you taking notes and marking charts. Be upset, then accept, and finally move in to cultivate your roses again, now into a hardier beauty. Detachment, like all defense mechanisms, helps us survive, not thrive. To make your garden grow, you must learn and truly be a part of all you have known, which happens only when all you have known becomes a part of you. Who knows: when you stop to smell the roses, do the roses smell you?
Sir John Gielgud reciting the end of "Ulysses," with the middle section of Holst's "Jupiter" in accompaniment.
And the song I referenced in the latter half of this post:
The idea of connecting, or connections, has concerned me for a long time, on all planes of subjective and objective questioning and theorizing. And now I would like to know what others think. Let your responses be as free-wheeling as you please, or answer some questions I will list here and go from there.
1.) What does "connecting" mean? What does it mean to you?
2.) What forms do connections take?
3.) What helps connecting? What inhibits it? Something personal, technological, social, political, geographical, temporal?
4.) What is the good of connecting? What is the evil?
5.) What are examples that come to mind, whether from the news (politics, crime, weather, etc.), art, etc.?
And so on. I will keep things anonymous, unless you specifically want credit (and if you reference or allude to a newspaper, or speaker, or of the like). After a week or so (pretty much whenever I feel like it), I will synthesize all of it together, including my own thoughts, into something portentous. I hope.
You may post your replies as a comment on this post, on my Facebook page (Christian Hendricks), my Twitter (XtianHendricks), or email (composingpenguin@gmail.com).
Caravaggio...Gesualdo...Wagner... These are a few names that come immediately to mind, artists of striking, severe originality, whose creations invoke supreme emotion and depict stunning vistas of humanity. They were also capable of awful things: Caravaggio was an excessive brawler who killed a man, perhaps intentionally; Gesualdo murdered his wife while his henchmen killed her lover, and later killed his baby, finally dying in an extremely tortured state of mind; Wagner had no problem living off others gifts, sleeping with his friends wives, and practically codifying and intensifying European anti-Semitism in such essays as Das Judentum in der Musik. I would not want to know these men personally. Their works, however, know me intimately, and I rate Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg as one of my favorite operas.
"As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular." - Oscar Wilde
"Never trust the teller, trust the tale." - D.H. Lawrence
I am, usually, much less interested in the personal lives of artists than in their creative lives. Naturally, the two arenas have overlap, but it is easy for me to, say, ignore Wagner's ideas on Jewry in music and focus on the real and deep human achievement in his one (great) comic opera. That is part of the essence of the above quote by Lawrence, and of the handful of admonitions I take to heart, mind, and soul; whatever a person says, postulates, theorizes, it little matters compared to what he does, or to be more exact, what he achieves. Gesualdo was, to be scientific, looney, at one point taking a cue from Macbeth and having the forest surrounding his castle mown down; even today, strangeness attends his name (see Werner Herzog's excellent movie on him, Gesualdo). Yet, there stand his six books of madrigals, which take the madrigal to its disturbing limits and conclusion (the madrigals of Monteverdi serve as an epilogue, bridging from the madrigal to the new-old art form of opera). More particular to my case, and returning to Wagner, the German master wrote much on music and art, postulating this theory and that ideal. To me, none of it matters until the works matter (which naturally the operas of Wagner do); theory should follow, not lead.
In enlightening upon the relevance of the quote by Wilde, I come to the recent controversy surrounding the novelist Orson Scott Card, known for Ender's Game and related books. I have not read his works, and am only slightly interested in doing so; something, though, tells me he is hardly of the caliber of the geniuses I listed above. He has only gained recent notoriety, however, now that a major movie has been made of his blockbuster book, bringing to light some truly horrendous opinions of his, particularly those on marriage equality; simply put, he is vehemently against it, even calling for secession should the gays get the marriage. Meanwhile, I did not care about his opinions before, I do not care about them now, and the future contains too much possibility to waste on dithering over them then. Nor do I particularly care to see the movie. But, my disinterest has nothing to do with his opinions. To put it differently, I will not boycott the movie because he is anti-gay; if it can be said that I am boycotting at all, it is because I am anti-spending-good-money-on-things-I'm-not-all-that-intrigued-by. If the movie, or the book were anti-gay, then I would certainly boycott, just as I refuse to endorse Das Judentum in der Musik. Such views are vulgar, and art should have nothing in it that is itself vulgar (this is different from depictions of vulgarity, which is a necessity). Wickedness is fascinating: usually what we attribute as wicked is something that our more disturbing parts wish to pursue. Boycotting the movie, as this group wishes to do, is to affix wickedness to it (by proxy of it's writer), and will make it all the more interesting for people to see; in other words, any publicity is good publicity. But, should we treat him, or his ideas at least, as vulgar, we lose interest as quickly as we lose interest in stinky trash. I hold it would have been better to ignore Card's personal opinions altogether, only addressing as the need should arise.
Personally, Card and the whole cadre of anti-gay activists and opinionators do not hurt me; their way is down and out, and they will be--already are--irrelevant. Card has already made money from his books, Ender's Game having been first published in 1985, and he will continue to do so, especially now from the movie. May he make money from his art. May all artists make money from their art. May he earn nothing from his vulgar opinions. May all people earn nothing from their vulgar opinions.
N.B. Orson Scott Card was recently hired by D.C. Comics to write for the digital Adventures of Superman. The artist who was to draw the issue, Chris Sprouse, withdrew from the project, saying the controversy crowded out the work at hand.
Also, the New York Times called out Geeks OUT for their boycott.
(Thanks to the blog Joe.My.God. for the compiling of the articles concerning the matter.)
It's my birthday, and I am now 24 years old. My body responds by being sick, of course. I respond in kind with an artillery of drugs, because I am going to a concert tonight, and that is that.
However, I am not here to kvetch.
After taking a nap today, I awoke to find a large, chocolatey temptress of a cupcake sitting at my computer, with an attending card, from parents. It was a pleasant "surprise" (it's hard to be surprised on your birthday; one kind of expects something out of the average to happen). So I went to my mom, thanked her for the card and cupcake, and then politely abstained from devouring the dessert. She understood, and I of course offered it for her and dad to eat.
This is, in action, part of my gift to myself. I could easily have forsaken everything and scarfed down the whole sugary kit and kaboodle. If I hadn't downed a bunch of advil, tylenol, and excedrin today, or didn't care about my liver, I would likely booze it up later. Then, I would have stayed up late, doing lordy knows what. I choose not to use Time as an excuse to speed up the ravages of Time, however. The best gift I can give myself today is take control of myself.
The past year has not been kind to me, overall. (See: this, this, and this.) Then, again that's not quite right: I haven't been kind to me. Essentially, I had given up and given in. In losing so much self-control, I had lost much sense of self. This has proven necessary, however, to vomit up some things which were dragging me down. Yet, not even a month ago, my grasp on my identity was close to dissipated. The mental ground upon which I walked seemed to be ever shifting, and I was about to be sucked in.
I have had it, though. I have had it with giving into depression, jealousy, loneliness, envy, incompetence, inferiority. One can admit that one's life isn't quite where one wishes it were without allowing these base feelings come in to play. I have had it with letting these said emotions run my life; they will still be there, naturally, but not in the pilot's seat.
How does a cupcake factor into this? Part and parcel with my mental health, my physical health went down the drain. In the summer of 2010, I lost 40 pounds, going from 185 to 145. I am now back at 180, and all my previous health problems I had overcome have come back. So I am doing a 6-week Paleo challenge, and for the next 30 days (well, 28 now), I will only eat certain, healthful foods. It will be difficult, and only yesterday I spent much of my waking moments telling myself "No!," in a conversation not much unlike the kind Gollum has with himself; yet, the best things in life are difficult pleasures, for the payoffs are glorious. (Why Paleo? Of all the ways of nutrition I have read about, only Paleo has proven well nigh 100% effective, not to mention making a lot of sense. Plus, it is because of Paleo that I lost the weight in 2010.) I resort to eating when I'm bored (that is, to keep myself busy, because of an over-active mind), when I'm emotional, or when I'm hungry. With the way my life has been going in the last year, those three things covered most of my waking hours.
Therefore, I will not give into my body's maniacal urge for easy desires and mind-numbing delights. Instead of using my birthday as excuse to let myself go, I will use this memorial to my aging as a reason to do myself good. I am still in hibernation, not quite ready to spring fully forth, but I am also not wasting my time, using my relative free time between now and when I go to England to rebuild myself, to regain my confidence, and to strengthen myself against giving into what has for so long been holding me back.
Well, now for a piece of music to match my mood: My favorite work by my favorite composer, Sibelius' Fifth Symphony.
This is a working theory on syntax, "the way in which linguistic elements (as words) are put together to form constituents (as phrases or clauses)."
Grammar knows no equality, and all the better for our speech. Yet every word has its part, and even the lesser ones affect the greater. A word is a celestial body. These span the mightiest stars to the lowliest comets. A word is a locus, a center of gravity; its immediate meaning is that material which has been so drawn in that it is what constitutes the body. If the word should have particular significance/size, it can draw in other words. The Earth has a moon, and in the phrase "good dog," "good" is the lunar object of "dog." The most important word is the sun of this solar system of a sentence, around which all the other planets move (let's not even think of multi-star systems). Gravity pulls between all objects, however, and just as the moon affects tides on this planet, so too can gigantic planets affect their stars. Gravity here causes meaning locally (denotation) and generally (context). From here, we can carry on the analogy: paragraphs are galaxies, chapters/sections are groups, books are universes. Dark matter is the effect of outside influences (memories of other works, personal experiences); nebulae are drafts (maybe). This pleases my need for grandiosity.
Like in a Russian novel, I first met her when she was in middle school, I in high school, she was singing for a solo and ensemble contest, and she was one of the students I was accompanying; I think she sang "Climb Ev'ry Mountain." And that was it. This recollection was pieced together later, and I know I could barely remember her name during the brief time we performed together; yet, musical theatre, lying at the intersection of our first fleeting encounter, would bring us together again a couple years later, to form a more perfect union.
Too often in my life great things happen to me as I'm heading out the door. If greatness was thrust upon Malvolio, it calls after me as I'm leaving, telling me I forgot my keys. At the end of my senior year in high school, our choir took a weekend trip to Chicago. Who overheard whom, I don't know, but Sweeney Todd was brought up, and the other one of us mentioned "Hey, I like that show." By the time we had returned from the Bloviating City, we...well, hadn't yet become the best of friends, because Life so poorly imitates Art, but she had asked me out sometime by the end of the following week. I declined, because I was leaving (I may have had a week left of high school, at the most) and she was a freshman, because I wasn't that interested--and my lack of interest mostly a result of my picky bisexuality--and because it was during a time when I wasn't that interested in relationships. Intrigued, though, I did exchange my email address. She then took her sweet time. I got her first email. I replied. Then it continued. It grew and grew. We finally hung out together as friends. During my first year at Webster we managed to see each other frequently. There was no slowing down.
I won't share the problems we have had, not out of fear for myself, just out of respect for our privacy. Herein, though, is one of the things that makes this relationship so dear to me: even at the brink of ending it, there is an understanding between us not to, something I finding lacking in so many other relationships, romantic or friendly. In order to maintain the bond, change occurs. I have been scorched, wind-blasted, buried, and well-nigh drowned, and doubtless so has she, but in hanging on, we survive injuries both coming from the world outside and from each other:
I am much more open;
I am more receptive to relationships;
I have better patience;
I am frequently humbled;
I am loved by non-blood, which in many ways is more important;
And a host of other things that I can't quite grasp.
As my life lies currently in crumbles (not, thankfully, in itty-bitty bits), I have taken to needing her more than ever; I restrain myself still, for I fear I could suffocate her. She shoulders me, more than perhaps she knows, and I stumble forward with her help, waiting until I have recovered my strength.
Je t'aime, Paige.
Now, to the reason I first started crafting this post: to get a shout-out from her new, awesome blog, which can be found here: http://tippingteapots.wordpress.com/. Hopefully now she will reciprocate.
Also, I will acknowledge some other friend's blogs:
If there are more, I apologize for missing/forgetting them.
UPDATE: As I was crocheting, I remembered a newer friend and blog that I had wanted to mention. Kevin's blog can be found at http://chekhovsgunman.wordpress.com/. My apologies.
I have taken to looking frequently at my hands: what have they done, what are they doing, and what more can they do. My imagination answers with terror, as I see them spaghettify towards some black hole at some unknown distance, in time and space, away from me. Then I blink, then things return to normal. That isn't true. Physical reality overtakes metaphor, that's more like it.
I am losing myself. The person I have been constructing, the little confidence I have built, has collapsed upon itself. Just today I criticized myself for being too hard on myself, and then declared that this is why I'm alone. I am my own Lucille Bluth (side note: I love the new season of Arrested Development).
I have always been a really sensitive person, which seems to hinder more than help. Unfortunately, I was born into a frequently insensitive family, at least one that doesn't handle the broader spectrum of emotions very well. So I seemed to steel myself, and carried on. This has proven unhealthy, as I now have very little idea how to cope with my overbearing sensitivity. Everything seems more than it is: slights, kindnesses, so on. Eventually, everything then seems false, and I harden. (And because our hearts were hard, God gave us poetry...)
I am excited to go to England for grad school. Apparently. But when I'm honest with myself, as I was the other day, I become scared that music has lost interest to me, and that my England trip is more of a dispassionate interest. My fight is gone. I roll over anymore, avoid arguments, keep quiet when the conversation turns disagreeing; everyone is right, except me. The reason is that it's difficult to be passionate or interested at walls, which is what I get much too often when I speak, which becomes rarer and rarer. I die a little each time I see people lose interest halfway through my sentence. According to my family I have always had to essentially yell at people not to interrupt. Now, I'm tired, and something like England, the passage to which is laid with nothing but difficulties, seems like in a different galaxy.
So perhaps...
A friend and mentor asked me once if I liked or loved myself. Perhaps I don't. Or perhaps that isn't the right question.
I think the question is: Do I trust my friends and family? There is no perhaps here. I do not.
If I trusted my friends, I would be energetic, pursuing my ambitions, succeeding at such, have no doubts in my worth. I would be the person they say I am, instead of the "lost, lost loser" looking for more than the man that got away (so to speak). I don't know when this happened, or how, or why. When they tell me something, though, that I should read, or watch, or listen to such and such; that I am, well, what I said I am apparently; when this happens, I think, in some manner, "why should I believe you?" And I don't believe, because I put too much faith in the further opinion of others. To clarify: I have had practically no luck in my love life, and I take my loneliness as a sign that I am unworthy. Pathetic, I know, but I still spent the other night wondering why I am so hard to love that no one seems interested in me. Anyway, I become more and more terrified of hanging out with people, because I might be a Debbie Downer, but worse, that I'll just suddenly unleash everything I have just shared.
I guess this is asking for help. I don't like asking for help; perhaps because I don't like feeling like I owe people; perhaps I don't like feeling weak; but apparently, it's because I don't trust people will help me: usually when I reach out, I get fog. Also, I prefer to help, I love to help, but so many people I know are so damned independent that I have practically no outlet.
Anyway, I hope this public...collapse...has been graceful, as much so as I could manage.
