Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit....

So I've finally broken a decade-long opposition to Wagner and have started attending his operas. starting with the Ring cycle.

My first observation was that hey, Wagner isn't so long after all - Das Rhinegold is so short that it's performed without an intermission; a mere 2 1/2 hours.

That was swiftly contradicted by the next, Die Walkure, which managed an impressive four hours of people (and gods) arguing about whether or not incest is really so bad, and some ladies on flying horses.

But really the striking thing (beyond the music itself) is, one, how much influence Wagner has had on us. The Lord of the Rings leans heavily on Wagnerian myth; a magic cursed that bestows incredible power? Sure, in the opera it's the helm, not the ring, that makes you invisible, but the idea is the same.

(I can't help but feel the irony of an opera denouncing all-seeing dictatorship being picked up by the Nazis). 

Further, without Wagner there could be no Disney. His atmospheric effects are so essential to the Disney universe that I may never be able to watch those old movies again without thinking of him.

To be continued...

"You gods, you are so high above us, you laugh and love, and do not desire gold. But all shall lust for gold, when they curse love, as I curse love."

- Alberich

What Matters Most?

Liberty?

Equality?

Fraternity?

The answer may surprise you.

Punderdome II: The Pundering

Actually this should be Punderdome III, but since I declined to blog about that one I decided to confuse everyone instead.

Once again I made a valiant effort to compete in that most Brooklyn-y of Brooklyn events, the monthly Punderdome. My so-called friend insisted I use the most demeaning pun name possible (My Little Punny) which prompted several people to approach me and excitedly declare themselves 'bronies' or ask if I knew what bronies were (which, even if I knew before, I know a great deal more detail now).

This time we didn't have the joy of seeing one of the contestants moon the audience, but at least one person competed in drag.

BUT, the really important thing is that I made it past the first round. I did have the advantage of much more useful themes: Saturday morning cartoons (I enjoyed playing in the sandbox as a child. I used to have all kinds of tiny dunes adventures) and birds (You're robin me blind! I have bills to pay!) If these trends continue, I should be winning the damn thing in two or three months.

Looks Like Nemo Found Us

I was sent home early from work on Friday because of the impending Blizzard Nemo. I had great difficulty convincing my co-workers that the storm was named after the sea captain:

 And not the fish:

 

Really, why would you name a storm after an animated clownfish? Seems like bad taste to me. A mysterious submarine pilot makes a better choice any day of the week.

Needless to say, the MTA was slow all weekend. I don't accept this constant service failure at the slightest sign of inclement weather. Oooh, there was snow. Big deal. Do you suppose the Berlin subway shuts down every time it snows? What about Moscow? The New York subway would shame even the most impoverished former Soviet republic.

It's the fault of those damn reactionaries who run the country who believe that, if people are going to demand public services, then at least those services should be underfunded and lackluster. Otherwise, what do people have to strive for?

Missing the Super Bowl

And really, I don't feel like I've lost anything.

I suppose that makes me un-American.

I know my Ravens-loving friends will never forgive me.

But the ads! The ads are incredibly expensive! And they have famous people in them!

That's nice. If I really want, I can watch them online.

I spent my day writing music and playing 'Diplomacy', which is like a much shorter version of Risk.

Punderdome

Puns! Is there any word more thrilling to the human soul?

I recently discovered a monthly pun competition in Brooklyn called Punderdome 3000.  

The format is simple: 18 contestants or pairs are given a category and challenged to make puns relating to it. They have 90 seconds to think while distracting music plays.

 The winners are given by audience reaction and can proceed to the next round.

Naturally they're not going to provide a helpful topic like 'food' or 'music'. Instead, you'll get things like 'pirate nicknames' or 'pumpkins'.

My category was 'Seasonal Affective Disorder'. My story was something like this:

So, the changing of the seasons always gets me down. I was telling my friend Thomas '[Aw, Tom], this winter...it's like you only have one old pair of shoes that you can't avoid wearing, and I feel like I'm going to [fall back] into [dis pair]. 

He said to me 'I know that around Christmas you [pine] for warmer weather, but be patient and we can [spring forward] into a new season."

Not my best work, certainly, but not bad under the circumstances. Until next month! 

A Christmas Carol

I haven't read A Christmas Carol in almost 15 years - since 7th grade, in fact. It's a short read and this year I decided to take another stab at it.

What is most surprising about the story is not the plot itself - we've all probably seen a hundred adaptations of it by now - but how vivid the setting, and by contrast how lacking in imagination is Scrooge's conversion.

It is a little strange to describe Charles Dickens as lacking in imagination, but there you are. Dickens saw, and clearly saw, the problems of Victorian England - the filth, the poverty, the wretched inequality and the exploitation of children. But he completely failed to understand why those problems came about, and how they might be resolved.

Scrooge refuses to give to charity, won't go to his nephew's Christmas dinner, underpays his clerk and forces him to toil in a freezing-cold little office. Why? Dickens' only excuse for Scrooge's meanness is that he had simply forgotten how wonderful Christmas was, and a few examples were all that was needed to bring him around (what a shame Scrooge did not have a photo album). It does not occur to Dickens, perhaps, that paying workers low wages and scrimping on coal make a certain economic sense and are not usually done out of pure spite.

Of course, if the sole reason that Scrooge is a miser is human cruelty, then the only possible remedy is human kindness - and here we see the same theme repeated over and over in his other books, that of a kindhearted rich man coming along and solving everyone's problems with bags of gold. Dickens simply can't face the idea that the system might be producing problems by design - if only people would be nice to one another, everything would be fine.  Maybe so, but for a renowned social critic a response like that is simply an evasion. 

A Few Words on the Edge of the Fiscal Cliff

With the fiscal cliff fast approaching, let's take a moment to reflect before plunging downward.

The 'fiscal cliff' is a not-at-all alarmist term for a set of spending cuts and tax increases that will go into effect at midnight, December 31st, if Congress doesn't act. The GOP is taking the opportunity to demand we deal with our long-run deficit problem RIGHT THIS INSTANT or they'll crash the economy just to be make a point - deficits, of course, are only a problem when a Democrat is in office.

Mr. Burns explains:

Most of the Very Serious People in media and politics have decreed that 'both sides' will have to offer 'painful concessions' - in other words, The Republicans will have to acquiese to certain tax increases and defense cuts, while the Democrats will have to allow for cuts in Social security and Medicare.

Here's the problem: asking for some spending cuts and revenue increases certainly makes sense in the long term, but with unemployment still doggedly around 8% what the country needs is more investment, not less.

Even more importantly, if you really believe that the deficit is a problem, Social Security and Medicare don't add to the debt at all. Both are funded through specially dedicated levies (or taxes) which are seperate from the budget as a whole. Social Security is estimated to start losing money in 2033, while Medicare is completely solvent up until 2024.  At that point, the programs do not 'go broke' - they simply start spending more money than they take in, and will require money from the general budget to keep going - like every other government program.

In other words - this is more or less a scam. Republicans hate entitlements so they want to get rid of them. The deficit is only an excuse; if the programs were free they'd still try to get rid of them.

The good news is that even as the GOP refuses to budge from their anti-tax orthodoxy,  we still have a month or so before things really start getting hairy. For that month the only real loser will be the stock market, but at least they can blame the Republicans.

Sing-Along Messiah

This Sunday was the annual Sing Along Messiah at the Judson Memorial Church near Washington Square. I attended for the third year in a  row.

Singing in the Messiah is a lot more fun than just listening to it. Choral works - especially religious ones - tend to sound like a big polyphonic mush with dozens of voices blending together. When you're inside a chorus and following the music, each moving part seems far more organic and distinct.

One thing, though - the endless melismas are a nightmare.
 
But hey, you say no to that face:

Breezy

 It's six weeks after Hurricane Sandy, but out in the far reaches of Queens and Staten Island the situation is nowhere near back to normal.

On Saturday I volunteered out in Breezy Point, a narrow strip of sand which is south of Brooklyn but is technically part of Queens. It's a popular spot for retirees and is the site of many small beachfront houses.

Or, at least, it was. Sandy devastated the community. Most people still have no power or heat, thousands of homes were flooded and rendered unlivable. Several hundred houses went up in flames:

Now, the residents have only two options: move out or rebuild. I spent the morning and afternoon helping a retired schoolteacher tear up her house, taking out the sheetrock, insulation, and floorboards, until only the skeleton was left.

Really, they don't have a choice. Once mold is in a house it is in there until the end of time; after weeks of flooding the place was a lost cause and needed to be completely redone. I and the other volunteers all had to wear face masks and gloves to avoid breathing in the spores. 

Hard to imagine that in 2012 in New York we'd find ourselves to vulnerable to the elements, but there you are.

The Laid o' Cockpen

Music has always been a large part of my life, but I've always been better at listening and appreciating than producing it. Without the voice for singing or the eyesight for sight-reading, I ended up in the most abstract expression of music: composition and theory. 

My current course of study involves two music-writing exercises: counterpoint and harmonization. Harmonizing a tune is rather like completing a puzzle. Each note of the melody presents a distinct set of possibilities which affect the tone and character of the song.

A song that begins with the melody on F could call for another F in the bass, making an F root chord...or you could use a D, or an A, a B (assuming a B-flat or F-sharp, to avoid the tritone), or in extreme cases a C (for a 6/4 chord). And that's only using triads.

A simple two-part harmony can sound a little bare; four voices (Soprano-Alto-Tenor-Bass) is considered the ideal.

My teacher has decided that all the songs I should harmonize are old Scottish ditties. The latest is 'The Laird o' Cockpen', written by Carolina Oliphant, (Lady Nairne), known for her beauty and Jacobism in addition to her poetry.

The Laird of Cockpen was a companion-in-arms to Charles II who fought with him at Worcester and was in exile with him in the Netherlands. He was also a musician who wrote the song Brose and Butter. After the Restoration the Laird appealed for the return of his property, but was not granted an audience.

Cockpen then reportedly gained admission to a play he knew the King would also attend. When the play was over Brose and Butter played. Charles went to Cockpen remarking that the air had almost made him dance. The Laird replied, "I could dance, too, if I had my lands again." Charles thereupon restored his lands.

This is the tune,

And this is my 4-part harmony:

The Laird o' Cockpen

The laird o' Cockpen, he's proud an' he's great,
His mind is ta'en up wi' things o' the State;
He wanted a wife, his braw house to keep,
But favour wi' wooin' was fashious to seek.

Down by the dyke-side a lady did dwell,
At his table head he thought she'd look well,
McClish's ae daughter o' Claversha' Lee,
A penniless lass wi' a lang pedigree.

His wig was weel pouther'd and as gude as were new,
His waistcoat was white, his coat it was blue;
He put on a ring, a sword, and cock'd hat,
And wha could refuse the laird wi' a' that?

He took the grey mare, and rode cannily,
An' rapp'd at the yett o' Claversha' Lee;
"Gae tell Mistress Jean to come speedily ben,
She's wanted to speak to the Laird o' Cockpen".

Mistress Jean was makin' the elderflower wine;
"An' what brings the laird at sic a like time?"
She put aff her apron, and on her silk gown,
Her mutch wi' red ribbons, and gaed awa' down.

An' when she cam' ben, he bowed fu' low,
An' what was his errand he soon let her know;
Amazed was the laird when the lady said "Na",
And wi' a laigh curtsie she turned awa'.

Dumfounder'd was he, nae sigh did he gie,
He mounted his mare - he rade cannily;
An' aften he thought, as he gaed through the glen,
She were daft to refuse the Laird o' Cockpen.

The song often ends there, but Sir Andrew Boswell (the, ahem, natural son of James Boswell) wrote two more verses which offer an arguably happier ending to he story:

And now that the laird his exit had made,
Mistress Jean she reflected on what she had said;
"Oh, for ane I'll get better, it's waur I'll get ten,
I was daft to refuse the Laird o' Cockpen".

Next time that the laird and the lady was seen,
They were gaun arm-in-arm to the kirk on the green;
Now she sits in the ha' like a weel-tappit hen,
But as yet there's nae chickens appear'd at Cockpen.

 Gaelic or otherwise curious terms:

fashious=troublesome
ae=one
pouther'd=powdered
yett=gate
sic=such
mutch=close fitting cap
ben=through
laigh=low
waur=worse
tappit=tufted

学中文

1.5 billion people can't be wrong...

I've been studying Mandarin Chinese for the past few months - my first serious attempt to learn a foreign language since my years in Spanish class throughout high school and college.

Well, this is a whole other kettle of fish.

Of course, there are the tones....Mandarin has four, which is not as onerous as the Vietnamese six (and even less so than Cantonese, which has nine). It still takes a tremendous mental effort to avoid saying 'horse' when you're trying to say 'mother'.

Pinyin is not the most helpful system of transliteration. The word 'to know' is written 'zhi dao' and pronounced 'Joo Dow'. 

Finally there is the writing - thousands of characters to memorize. I am told that there is a system to all of this, but I haven't figured it out yet, and the explanations my teacher offers for each character are so arcane that they might as well be in secret code.

Still, progress is being made! I even recorded a podcast, detailing the proper way to greet a lady. Download it here.

On Re-Reading 'Lolita'

Now that I have a certain amount of spare time (when not working, studying Chinese, composing music, or navigating the New York mass-transit system) I've begun doing something I haven't done in some time: reading for fun.

There are those among us (mainly those who haven't read the book) who make it out as some kind of apologia for pedophilia. People still use the term 'Lolita' to mean a sexually precocious young girl, and the poster of the 1962 movie (which made her at least 15 instead of 12) doesn't help at all:

Actually, the book is a grand display of the unreliable narrator; a novel-length exercise in defending the indefensible. In short, a trick.

I say a trick because our anti-hero, Humbert Humbert, is many things other than a predator. He's clever. He's funny. He's highly educated. He seems self-aware. And he's a smooth talker. Is he ever! The narrative never lets up for an instant; showering you with classical allusion, puns, wry observations,  self-pitying exculpations, and poetical descriptions of his passion for the doomed Dolores Haze.

He's also extremely perceptive; at least about the hollowness and absurdity of modern bourgeois sentimentality and taste. His status as a well-educated European provides him the distance necessary to see how bad it all is.  Without the molestation theme the book could function as a hilarious satire on mid-century Americana kitsch. Of course, this perspective allows him to treat everyone else as less than real. Not a single character - other than HH and Lolita herself - ever rises above a caricature. The deaths of Charlotte Haze and Clare Quilty are presented as almost pure comedy. Even Lolita is treated with contempt despite Humbert's mania for her ('Mentally, I found her to be a disgustingly conventional little girl').

On top of everything, we get the obligatory depiction of Lolita as sexually aggressive. She's the one who seduced him! Humbert even goes so far as to portray himself as rather conservative than not, acting like a typical overprotective father and refusing to let his Lo go on dates or even talk to boys on the phone when she is enrolled in Beardsley high school.   The act which ultimately lands him in jail is not his kidnapping and abuse of Lolita but his murder of the man Humbert believes has acted in essentially the same way as himself.

The result is that many - perhaps most - readers are fooled. Sure, Humbert may be a rapist and murderer and a schemer - but at least he's not some middle-class boor! Besides, she was a slut anyway.

Occasionally, very occasionally, we have flashes of insight about the reality of his and Lolita's situation (he notes in passing that Lolita is crying herself to sleep every night) but these never stop him in his pursuit of his nymphet.

I am not inclined to read any symbolism into the story as a whole (Nabakov claimed to 'detest symbols and allegories') so I have to disagree with those who see Humbert as personifying Communism or dictatorship or some such thing.

Instead, Lolita shows us how bad people can get away with it for so long. If villains were dirty and ugly with Snidely Whiplash mustaches and were accompanied everywhere by screeching strings they would never get far. They can be evil because they have an unlimited capacity to justify themselves, and charm the rest of the world.

Mistscraper

Democracy in....Action?

Last Tuesday I dropped by my local middle school to cats my ballot. The school is right around the corner, so i figured the process wouldn't take long. Wrong! I opened the door - CHAOS. Lines of voters snake around the tables in crazy zigzag patterns, intersecting and looping around like a knot that can't be untied.

So I wait, and wait, and wait some more...2 1/2 hours in total. The bottleneck is right in front of the voting booths, where the three election volunteers have to manually look up every person's name before they can vote.

The voting itself is pretty low-tech - just a little cubicle to shield your ballot from prying eyes. The form itself is very SATs; fill in the bubble. No stray marks! I vote for who you expect me to vote for and submit it, the end.

Now the election is over,  a few observations:

- it seems pretty obvious that the old GOP coalition can't carry an election anymore. Not because they've moderated; it's just that their constituencies are aging and therefor dying off.

- On the GOP truly becoming the party of 'Greedy Old People', I do find it funny that the group which was strongest for Romney (the elderly) is also by far the biggest recipient of government aid.

- In the near future (unless we enter a second Era of Good Feeling) we're going to see a rift in one of the major parties. I couldn't say what the exact cause will be, but my bet it will be immigration.

Sandy Days, Wintry Nights

Just as the power went off in Manhattan, my blog decided to come back to life. Sure, we're a few days out, but I've been busy getting back to normalcy.

Sunday: The subway shuts down at 7pm. People scramble to make last minute arrangements. The supermarket is packed; they've sold out of bread and the lines stretch deep into the aisles. The supermarket intercom is playing 'It's Rainin' Men', which I find funny, if not in the best of taste. 

Monday: Storm day. Kind of a disappointment for me; in my neighborhood there's not much wind and rain. We never lose power or even the internet.  I end up spending most of the time watching movies with friends (The 39 Steps followed by Brazil).

Tuesday: Time to survey the devastation. Downed tree branches, general debris everywhere. We head to Red Hook but find it curiously normal-looking; the flooding has receded. We head up to Lower Manhattan and find it a ghost town; no power, not even traffic lights. We're supposed to be checking up on elderly residents but find ourselves caught in a catch-22: none of them can let us into their buildings because the buzzers don't work!

Wednesday: Still no subway form Brooklyn to Manhattan. I work from home for a few hours. I make a call out to Westchester and discover that they've lost power almost completely.

Thursday: They've established two bus lines from Brooklyn into the city; one from Atlantic Station and the other from Jay Street. Jay Street is closer so I go there to find a half-mile line waiting for me. The shuttle only goes up Lexington Avenue, so I take it to Grand Central and walk across the island to get to work.  Our office is just over the line, and we still have power. Four blocks south, and nothing is open.

Coming back home I take the bus from Grand Central. The line there is tremendous; I wait about an hour and a half before finally getting on. Driving through a totally dark Manhattan is a strange experience.

Friday:  Same story. It's eerie waiting in a cold, dark, windy corridor, then looking up and seeing a brightly lit Chrysler Building shining back, reminding you that you're in New York and not Soviet Russia.

Saturday: Time to give back. I join a group of volunteers in Canarsie as we hand out information packets to residents of southeastern Brooklyn who suffered most heavily from the storm. Many of them still don't have power, which drives them out into the streets and makes them easier to find. Some of them don't speak English, but my Chinese is good enough to direct them to the number they should call if FEMA is dragging their feet.

Sunday: This time I'm up in Harlem working with kids, doing the arts-and-crafts stuff I was never particularly good at. Some of the kids want to play Connect Four, which I'm much better at (though I try to give them a fighting chance).

Monday: Things more or less back to normal, at least where I am.  Still, there's a lot of work that needs to be done - more volunteering scheduled for Wednesday.

Snow in New York?

Nope, just confetti after the Giants won the Super Bowl.

The Post-College Hunger

Well, this isn't very good:

Hungry Grads are Hit by Recession

When Christy de la Cruz was an undergraduate student at Fordham University, she never thought she would have to worry about paying for food.

"You expect that when you get out of college, you'll get a job that [will] make more than enough to survive," de la Cruz said. "But the real wake-up call comes when you find out that it's not enough."

De la Cruz is not alone. Almost 3 million New Yorkers — 35 percent of New York City residents — had difficulty affording food at some point in 2011, according to the Food Bank For New York City.

I knew the economy was bad, but it's a shock to me that people with college degrees would actually be starving.

Pura Vida

When I lived in Buenos Aires 'Pura Vida' was a juice bar across the street from my apartment - my near-daily relief from the endless supply of meat and starch that constitute so much of the Argentine diet.

Here in Costa Rica, 'pura vida' is the national saying. While its literal meaning is 'pure life' it's generally used to mean something like 'cool' or 'great':

Como estas?

Pura vida, por dicha.

But Pura Vida is much more than just a phrase...it's a way of life. To live la pura vida is to really and truly live, to be healthy and happy.

Well, I'm leaving Costa Rica in a few hours. Pura vida!

I noticed that many of the local workers here still keep Bill Clinton's portrait in their offices. I haven't seen a single one with George Bush. I asked someone about that - what happened to all the Bush portraits? -and he said 'We can't vote in the American elections, but we can express our opinions in other ways" and he pointed to the wastebasket.