Musical Composition: The Fir Tree

I've mentioned in several blog posts that I have tried composing in the past and that I want to keep trying.  This assignment was a great opportunity for me to experiment with my creativity and improve my composing skills, and I really enjoyed it.  The process was interesting, to say the least.

My original idea for this project was totally different from the way it turned out.  Initially, I was going to do a percussion piece using only office supplies.  I had come up with four characters and chosen rhythmic motifs for each of them to perform, but then (believe it or not) I actually had a nightmare in which the piece was a total failure.  In the nightmare, my group performed my piece exactly as written and it totally fell flat.  Everyone felt empty; there was no energy, no meaning, no connection.  I woke up in a cold sweat and realized all at once that I hadn't been staying true to myself as an artist.  The kind of music I was trying to write was not the kind that speaks to me, so how could I expect it to speak to other people?

I started over and took a completely new approach.  I took three of the four rhythmic motifs I had written for my original idea and set them as the foundation for my new piece.  Then, I found a beautiful poem called "The Fir Tree" by Josephine Preston Peabody, and I created a tune that I hoped would serve to convey the stirring mood of the poem.  I exchanged the office supplies for objects in nature that I felt best represented the story and the symbolism of the fir tree.  There is still a lot of percussion in my composition, but it's not longer just a percussion piece.  I wanted a solid melody line to be the principle story teller in my composition.  Adding tonality to my composition allowed me to employ my knowledge of chords and intervals to create combinations of pitches that would evoke specific emotions.

Is the result brilliant?  No, not at all.  It's very simple, and it's not going to knock anyone off of their feet.  But I like it because it's very me.  It's honest, heartfelt, and personal.  And I worked hard on it.  I even did the unthinkable: I totally scrapped my "shitty rough draft" and started again, and from my perspective, it was the right decision, even though it was a bit scary at the time.  I will reiterate that I do recognize that this piece is nothing to shout about, but I did use my brain in ways I had never used it before in the process of composing "The Fir Tree," and I feel that my composition skills improved.  I still do not consider myself a talented composer, but composing is something that I really want to excel at, and this assignment brought me one step closer.

For my graphic notation, I made something called an icon chart...kind of (pictured below).  I learned how to make these in a conducting class I took a couple summers ago.  I did not understand then, nor do I understand now, how to make an icon chart or what exactly they are supposed to look like.  I'm still learning about them, and I'm fascinated by them!  My understanding is that they are a form of macroanalysis that requires you to create visual representations of phrasing, dynamics, chord quality, etc.  My conducting teacher that summer told us that they could look however we wanted them to look, but that they should touch upon all important elements of the piece, and that we should be able to conduct from our icon charts without looking at sheet music.  I've been practicing making icon charts for different choral pieces all semester, and my format has changed for each one based on the nature of each piece.  While experimenting, I've sort of come up with my own system of notation, so I used it for "The Fir Tree."

The melody line is notated in pink; the rise and fall of the line on the page indicates the rise and fall of the pitch in the piece.  Beneath the melody line, each of the three percussion lines has a color and a symbol associated with it.  The symbol for the Leaves is a continuous line throughout the score because the Leaves rhythmic pattern doesn't have starts and stops.  The symbols for the Pinecone and the Hands are detached, and they appear on the page directly underneath the lyrics with which they correspond.  This is not really how you make an icon chart; it's just a little system I've devised to utilize in some icon charts if the need arises.

Working on this composition was a great learning experience!  I discovered new things about the art of composing and about who I am as an artist.  I plan to keep working on "The Fir Tree" and adding layers of meaning and intrigue until it's something I can really be proud of.

IC Percussion Ensemble Concert Reflection

As a music student and music enthusiast, I am always excited to attend any performance that I possibly can.  In fact, my favorite thing about Ithaca College life so far has probably been the free live entertainment all the time.  Pretty much every single night there's at least one recital or concert happening in Whalen, and all I have to do is walk over from my dorm (or, more frequently, walk upstairs from the practice rooms), grab a seat in one of the performance halls, and enjoy.  I am very rarely disappointed by whatever performance I happen to be attending, and even on the rare occasions when the quality of the music is subpar, there is still something to be learned from the experience.  All of that being said, I did not want to go to this percussion concert tonight.  I attended a percussion concert earlier this semester, and I did not particularly enjoy it; I found the group to be rather bland and unenthusiastic about their music-making.  And today our seminar class attended the pre-concert talk with the conductor Gordon Stout, and it was awfully boring.  Stout did not have much to say about the pieces, and he ended up just playing excerpts of most of them for us, leaving us with very little to look forward to.  So, needless to say, I only attended tonight's concert to fulfill the requirements for my seminar (although, as a bonus, I did get the final punch on my Fall 2014 recital attendance card...and there was much rejoicing)!

The first act of the concert was exactly as I feared it would be: monotonous, long, filled with music that simply did not move me.  I made a valiant effort to connect with the music and to allow it to tell me a story, but it all just sounded like noise to me, and my thoughts wandered aimlessly.  Especially the first piece, "Lost in Time," reminded me of children banging on pots and pans on the kitchen floor, which is a great thing for kids to do to discover the wonder of sound, but it's not something that I want to listen to for twenty minutes straight.  Intermission came and I found myself (uncharacteristically) lamenting the fact that the concert was only half over.

The second half opened with a piece in three movements entitled "Love Triangles."  I thought it was a clever title and decided to try and pick out as many 3s as I possibly could as I listened to the piece, and, much to my delight, there were plenty of them.  Beyond the fact that there were 3 movements, there were also just 3 performers on the stage, most of the music was in triple meter, and the main theme in the first movement was written for 3 triangles.  I was surprised to find myself really getting into the first movement, "Down at Nookies Bar"; it was lively and colorful, and it made me think of a rowdy party with lots of dancing and drinking.

When the first movement ended, I looked down at my program and saw that the second movement was called "Next Morning," and suddenly I got excited because that title fit with the story I had been forming in my head during the first movement.  I imagined that the three members of the "love triangle" had made some bad decisions "down at nookies bar" and were going to suffer from some terrible hangovers the "next morning."  The second movement was SO COOL.  It began with quiet interwoven rhythms that sounded like the ticking and chiming of many different clocks, creating the feeling of waking up.  As the movement grew, the morning progressed, and the rhythms became more intricate; the people in my story were beginning to go about their day.  My favorite touch: Every so often you could hear the main theme with the 3 triangles come back for a few moments, all part of the noise.  It was all making sense, and then the end of the movement totally blew my mind.  Amidst the cacophony of clicks and dings, you could hear cell phones ringing rather loudly.  Assuming the phones belonged to audience members, people began to glance around the auditorium, irritated, trying to figure out where the sounds were coming from.  Then, all of a sudden, the three percussionists on the stage put down their instruments and revealed that their phones were the ones ringing.  They let the ringing continue for a few seconds before silencing them, and that was the end of the second movement.  AWESOME!  The movement started off by convincing us that we were awake and that this was real life, and in the end the whole movement turned out to be a dream, and we were awakened by the ringing of the cell phones.  That's what happens in real life: At first, your alarm sounds like a distant noise in the background of the dream your having, and then the sound of the dream stops all at once and there is nothing but the sound of the alarm.  I was transported back to this morning, lying in bed and gradually letting my alarm pry my eyes and ears open.  I thought "Next Morning" was BRILLIANT.

At this point, the third movement, "What Were We Thinking???", sounded just the way I had expected the second movement to sound: the musical embodiment of a hangover.  The percussionists created a feeling of tipsiness by dipping the triangles in water while they were still vibrating, which created a sort of droopy, drowsy sound.  Throughout the third movement, all of the dynamics were exaggerated, as if to annoy the person experiencing the hangover.  The piece ended with a recapitulation of the main theme for the 3 triangles from the first movement.  "Love Triangles" was a pleasant surprise; I loved it.  And I don't even know if the story I came up with is anywhere near what the composer had in mind, but that's where my mind went as I was listening, and, right or wrong, I enjoyed the music!

And then, of course, the final piece of the evening was a letdown.  It was very well done, it just didn't really speak to me.  But the whole concert was worth it for "Love Triangles"!

What to Listen For in the World

Goodness, what a profoundly beautiful collection of excerpts from Bruce Adolphe's book What to Listen For in the World, a book that I am most likely going to purchase at some point.  Adolphe uses such poetic language to describe the way musicians and other artists interact with their surroundings. Ha...that was weird...as I was typing that last sentence, I was about to type "the way musicians and other artists view their surroundings," but then I stopped and corrected myself, because we don't just view the world; we hear it and feel it and smell it and taste it, too.  In his book, Adolphe talks about how he has discovered that it's more difficult for many people to audiate than it is for them to visualize things.  For me, it's always been the other way around.  When I'm remembering or imagining things, the images are usually blurry in my mind, but the sounds are always very clear, so clear that I tend to subconsciously recreate some of the noises out loud when I'm really lost in daydreams (which has led to some embarrassing moments in classes and other public settings)!  Maybe it's because I'm a musician.  My thoughts are not particularly colorful, but I imagine that if I were passionate about painting or drawing, they would be.  Adolphe says in his book, "Composers pay attention to daydreams.  A wandering mind is creative," and I was like YAY!  (I know there's so much more to creativity, but it's always nice to be reassured that having a restless mind is not always such a bad thing).  Reading these excerpts really made me think about thinking.

As I read, I thought back to Tchaikovsky's "Composing a Symphony," and his words: "The only music capable of moving and touching us is that which flows from the depths of the composer's soul when he is stirred by inspiration."  Bruce Adolphe implies with his gorgeous writing that practically any conceivable moment one could experience has the power to be stirring and to inspire art.  I particularly liked his image of a person sitting on a train, looking out the window at the houses zooming past, and thinking about the situation the way different types of artists might.  He states that the composer is always listening for "life's conflicting rhythms," for example, the contrast between the speed of the train and the total stillness on the inside of it.  This passage reminded me of an essay I wrote once, in which the opening paragraph was far too long because I went on and on about how every earthly sound is music, how every single sound has a pitch, a rhythm, a timbre, and a life all its own.  It's an amazing thing to try and wrap your head around, which is why it's even more amazing to actually be able to compose a piece of music, to actually be able to take those earthly sounds and combine them in a way that is meaningful and turn them into art.  It's an overused phrase, but music is its own language that can and must be understood by listeners.  Adolphe says that "for the listener,  music is always about memory," and that the shape of a piece should create metaphor.  It's fascinating to think about the way music communicates with those who hear it.  How is it that some notes sound like rain and others sound like wind?  How is it that certain combinations of notes have the power to evoke memories and summon emotions?  Listening to music really is sometimes like cracking a code, and once you've cracked it, you can speak a new language: the composer's language.

Because I've always loved music, there is a part of me that longs to compose my own pieces.  I've tried it, and I've never thought that I was particularly good at it, but reading these excerpts from What to Listen For has encouraged me to give it another go.  I know how to speak the language of sound, and I know the theory of how sounds work together, which ones are pleasing to the ear and which ones are dissonant and which combinations are associated with which feelings.  The hard part is putting it all together to create something that has a definite message.  That is the skill (and the art) of composing.  I liked that Adolphe discusses the importance of repetition and circular patterns in music while asserting that striving for "sameness in repetition" is a recipe for failure, but it definitely raises a lot of issues...What about atonal music?  Does music really need audible patterns to have a message?  To be appealing, I think yes, it does, but to have a message?  What, then, is the difference between a piece of music and a mere pitch pattern?  And the million dollar question, is it really possible for me to create something completely original, or has it all been done before?

I know we have a musical composition assignment coming up in this class, and I've decided that I'm going to try to apply Adolphe's equation for art: imagination + memory = idea, idea + structure = new, organic piece.  "Remember anything, and change a detail: that is imagination."  This concept makes so much sense to me.  Art has to begin with thoughts, and thoughts have to come from somewhere within.  Memories.  Experiences.  These are kindling for composition.  I'm excited to see if this mindset allows me to tap into an undiscovered part of my creativity.

On the Uses of a Liberal Education

Both of these articles were fascinating, particularly the first one, "As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students."  The second, "As a Weapon in the Hands of the Restless Poor," was more inspiring than it was enlightening.

"Lite Entertainment" reminded me so much of my high school English teacher Pat Marble.  Marble was always preaching about the death of creativity and motivation as a result of consumerist culture.  I heard Marble's voice in my head especially as I read Mark Edmundson's description of "rebound teaching," where the student contributes only half-hearted comments and the teacher responds by desperately fleshing out the student's whisper of an idea into something meaningful.  I am embarrassed to say that I identify with this concept, that I have come to class unprepared and have only been able to contribute shallow general statements to the class discussion, and that I have felt a sense of relief and undeserved pride in my own intellect when the teacher has developed those statements for me.  I have been on the receiving end of rebound teaching, and I feel guilty about it.  Even in the moment, I knew deep down that I was not really learning or working hard enough.  Marble was the only teacher I ever had who did not succumb to rebound teaching; she was not so desperate to keep the discussion going that she was willing to compromise the quality of the conversation.  She felt no personal shame whatsoever if her students had nothing brilliant to say.  If we were not prepared, there was no discussion; we would sit there in the most awkward silence you can imagine while she leaned back in her swivel chair, folded her arms, and smirked at us.  Pat Marble forces the ice cube mentality upon her students.  Mark Edmundson, the author of "Lite Entertainment," seems to be dealing with some buckets in his classes.

I actually identified with a lot of the content of "Lite Entertainment" and it was quite horrifying to read...Edmundson describes a lot of qualities that he associates with the consumerist mentality, qualities that I admittedly possess, qualities that I had never seen as weaknesses until I read this article.  Humble politeness when talking to professors, ending arguments with a "whatever" and shying away from confrontation, eagerly viewing surveys as a chance to assess a product that has been marketed to me...I'm guilty of all of these things in moderation!  I don't like confrontation, and I don't necessarily believe that that's a bad thing, but I can see now why a professor or potential employer or respected colleague might see my pacifism as a lack of passion.  But, all of that being said, I still see myself as a good student, because when given the freedom to choose my own classes, I'm always going to choose the most challenging ones.  I agree with Edmundson's assertion that it does "depend on the individual"; in our society, where students are given the power to be consumers of their education, some students will choose to take the easy way out, but there are still students out there who are motivated enough to strive for their fullest potential.

I found it interesting that the students described in "A Weapon" were so successful in their pursuit of a liberal arts education.  Isn't it fascinating that those who have nothing to lose, those who are not driven by grades or scholarships or parents or credit requirements, those who are seeking an education for no other reason than to be educated, are the best students in the end?  Reading the works of Plato and Socrates because it's fun and worthwhile, and not because you have to...  I couldn't help but think that the people described in this article, many of whom were high school dropouts, must be so much smarter than many college students in the areas of literature, history, and philosophy.  The difference?  They're ice cubes, and a lot of us are buckets.  This article inspired me to call to mind motivation as an important factor in learning; someday it will be my job to motivate my students to be energetic about their education rather than simply being consumers.

FINALLY

Hey Dr. Haefeli!  At long last, we finished our political action art project!  Today we headed outside with our darts, poster boards, and paint-filled balloons, set them up, and invited the public to come over and "pop a stereotype."  We had a beautiful day for it, and we received a great response from people who were passing by.  IC students, faculty, prospective students, and parents alike were enthusiastic about participating.  People were attracted to our concept of "turning hate into beauty," which ended up being the unofficial name of the project.

Right about now, I'm feeling all kinds of relief: relief that the project is over and I don't have to stress about it anymore, relief that it wasn't a total disaster like I thought it was going to be, and relief that it actually ended up being rather enjoyable.  I had actual nightmares about this project failing miserably,  and honestly I'm surprised that it didn't.  I was preparing myself to be totally embarrassed by the outcome of this project, but in the end it was fine.  I still think we failed in the sense that we did not create something that had much of an impact on our audience.  Our idea didn't even have the potential to be meaningful.  However, we were successful in a different way.  People who participated seemed to really like the idea, and several said that they felt empowered after they threw the dart.  It was such a silly idea; it was not political, it was not action, and it was not art, but it still managed to make people feel empowered.  We ended up with this beautiful angry splatter paint explosion (pictured above), and you know what?  It was pretty cool.  I think everyone was able to identify with at least one stereotype, microaggression, or derogatory term that was put up on the board, and by popping the balloons these people were all united.

Most of all, I am relieved that this project is in the past.  I hated every minute of the planning process.  Yes, "hate" is a strong word, and that is why I reserve it only for group projects.  I've always hated group work; the bigger the group, the more nightmarish the experience.  I've always been told that group work is good for building teamwork skills and that these kinds of collaborative experiences are just a part of life, so for years I've been hoping that I might eventually start to like group projects.  But instead, in my experience, each group project that I've been forced to do has been further proof of my theory that group work is the root of all evil.  Which is not to say that I don't know how to be a team player.  I do.  And I'm a great collaborator.  I'm a musician, so I know how to work with people, whether it's one-one-one, in a small group, or in a large ensemble...I've been a part of many different teams, and I always contribute positively and pull my own weight.  But group work?  It's completely different, because with group work, there's no guarantee that everyone's going to be invested in the project.  With group work, everyone is forced into it, and force is not a good start for art.  I've come to the conclusion that group projects are not really about teamwork, and that it's impossible to get a group of people the size of our Creativity & the Arts class to be on the same wavelength and agree on something.

Part of the problem is that everyone has their own unique ideas that don't necessarily complement one another, and beyond that (the even bigger problem) everyone thinks they're a leader. In life, everything goes so much more smoothly when someone is appointed as the official leader.  Leaders initiate concrete ideas, mediate progress, and ultimately bring the work to a stable conclusion.  With group work, there is ALWAYS more than one potential leader in the group, and as soon as more than one of them steps up and tries to lead everyone else, the project is doomed to fail.  Take our class, for example: We were throwing some great ideas around, all of which had their problems, but there was potential for us to create something truly great.  However, as soon as the balloon idea was conceived, a few of the self-described "leaders" in the group became attached to it and were too stubborn to allow the discussion to develop any further.  I have had to deal with this kind of attitude from at least one person in almost every forced group I've ever been in, and I've concluded that it's unavoidable.

My point is that some projects are destined to be mediocre, and this was one of them.  We followed the recipe for failure: the work was involuntary, we had no say in who we would be working with, we had no leader, and we had no guidelines.  Have there been situations like this that resulted in success? Yes, I have indeed heard of such sorcery.  But it all depends on the people in the group.  The people in this Creativity & the Arts class are wonderful.  They're all creative, smart, and all-around-good people.  But we were simply not meant to work together.  There was nothing that could have been done about it; it was just the wrong project with the wrong mix of people.

My Collage: The Essence of a Woman

I think I've mentioned good ol' Yuri Temirkanov at some point in a previous blog post, but just in case, here's the gist: He's a prominent Russian orchestral conductor who does not believe that his profession should be open to females.  He is quoted as saying, "The essence of a conductor is strength, and the essence of a woman is weakness."  This quote obviously offends me and makes me angry, but I also find it humorous because Temirkanov is just so wrong on so many levels.  Not only are women strong; I would argue that strength is, in fact, the essence of a woman.  It is necessary to be strong and brave and independent in order to survive as a female in this world.  So my collage is a rebuttal against the chauvinistic attitude that seems to infect so many males in the music industry.  It's called "The Essence of a Woman," and it is meant to directly contradict Temirkanov's words by associating images of strength with pictures of female conductors.

I began by choosing a piece of music that I associate with empowerment: "Snow Angels" by Sarah Walker.  I printed copies of the sheet music, cut up the pages, and plastered the pieces on a piece of notation paper to create the base for my collage.  The most prominently displayed scrap of sheet music has the powerful lyrics "There's not a wind can stop my music."  I traced my own hand onto the page to show that I am part of the fight against sexism, and so that I could be part of the artwork.  The silhouette of the girl conducting, meant to represent the next generation of female musicians, is being led by Marin Alsop, who was the first woman in the U.S. to be appointed conductor of a major symphony orchestra.  At the bottom of the page, the hands that have just broken free from the chains are positioned like those of a conductor giving a cutoff, symbolizing the fact that women have the power to stop oppression if they simply step up and refuse to let it carry on.

My collage did not come out exactly the way I thought it would.  I am too much of a literalist for this type of art.  In my attempts to make sure that all of my symbols made sense, I ruined any and all subtleties that I could've hoped to have in my collage.  Color-wise, I'm not sure I like the way it came out; each of the colors definitely meant something as I was working, but now that the piece is done, it just kind of looks like an explosion of Skittles.  But, although I may not be totally happy with the outcome, I enjoyed making this collage.  I got to challenge my brain and my heart to be expressive through a different kind of art than what I'm used to.  And I think I'm kind of starting to understand the art of the collage now.  It's about letting go, taking images that evoke certain feelings and compiling them to create something meaningful.  As I made my collage, I definitely felt that I was channeling my emotions into the work, which I never expected to happen.  A lot of thought and soul went into this collage, and whether or not the outcome has an impact on others or is even aesthetically pleasing, I can honestly say that I am proud of the work I did.

Preparing to Make a Collage

I've never really thought of a collage as a fine art form before.  Collages were just fun things that I used to make when I was little, my own little masterpieces of magazine clippings and bits of construction paper.  They sometimes stressed me out because they usually didn't come out exactly the way I wanted them to; the very nature of them went against my innate desire for order, structure, and control.  But I did enjoy the process of cutting out shapes and choosing the way I wanted all of them to be laid out on the paper.  For me, when I was little, collages were a way to pass the time, and I never really viewed them as art, but I suppose if I were to go back to my house in Massachusetts today and pull out some of the collages I made as a child (assuming my parents kept some of them), I might find a certain beauty in them.  Something about the patterns found within little Juliana's collages might be indicative of certain personality traits.

Similarly, collages made by professional artists must mean something, must have a message.  When I go to art museums, I probably spend the greatest amount of time looking at the collages, and they have the least impact on me.  In my opinion, collages, more than any other art form, are like puzzles with more than one feasible solution but only one correct solution.  I enjoy trying to figure them out, but I don't recall ever encountering one that really resonated with me.

I think it's interesting to think of the concept of the collage as it applies to other mediums of art, such as music, film, and dance.  Each of these mediums must have a method or concept that serves as the equivalent of the collage in the world of visual art.  In Jared Leibowich's article about collages, he compares them to the "mash-up" style that has recently become popular in the music world.  I was reminded of the fact that the first choral concert of the year here at Ithaca College was called "The Choral Collage," because that's what it was: a mix of choirs performing an array of different types of music.

While reading the article, I was fascinated to learn that puns, double meanings, and wordplay are considered to be an essential part of a good collage.  I had always thought of them as being totally random, never as being witty or humorous.  This knowledge has inspired me to view collages in a new light in the future.  Maybe if I train myself to search for the double meaning while I look at a collage, I'll finally be able to understand what it's trying to say!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNwARV9tPUw
Above is a link to my personal favorite collage, and my favorite type of collage: the video montage.  There doesn't seem to be a double meaning of any kind, but otherwise it seems to fit the definition of a collage.  It's the closing sequence of the final episode of the hit TV series Six Feet Under, and it's widely considered to be one of the greatest series finales in television history.  I did not watch this show; I was in elementary school when it was on the air.  I don't know anything about this show other than that it dealt with death in some way.  But my parents loved this show, and the day after the finale aired they had all of my siblings and me sit down and watch this sequence.  We asked them, "Why?  We don't know any of the characters."  And they responded, "Because this is art, and you may never see anything like it again." Now that I'm old enough to appreciate the emotion and forethought that went into the making of this montage, I understand why my parents (and millions of other viewers) were so impressed by it.  The music, the editing, the colors...everything about it is on point.  I've never watched it without crying, and I reiterate that I know nothing about these characters.  If you've never seen it, check it out!

Pantoum: "Retrospect"

pantoum - a Malaysian verse form adapted by French poets and occasionally imitated in English. It comprises a series of quatrains, with the second and fourth lines of each quatrain repeated as the first and third lines of the next. The second and fourth lines of the final stanza repeat the first and third lines of the first stanza.

RETROSPECT

by Juliana Joy Child

Living in the moment means

that what you feel can only be

defined as such in retrospect.

If you are living honestly,

then what you feel can only be

a sensation at the time it’s felt.

If you are living honestly,

accept that it is hard to grasp

a sensation at the time it’s felt.

It's raw emotion…organic…real…

except…it can be hard to grasp

reality when you cannot label

that raw emotion; organic and real

though it may be, it somehow escapes

reality.  When you cannot label

feelings, then your thoughts, inspired

though they may be, somehow escape

before you can articulate your

feelings.  Then, your thoughts inspire

you to dig down deep inside,

before you can articulate your

feelings, and find out how it feels for

you to dig down deep inside

your soul and find your fears, desires,

feelings.  Find out how it feels

before the words appear; reveal
your soul, and find your fears, desires…

They may not be what you expect.

Before the words appear, reveal what

living in the moment means.

It may not be what you expect,

defined as such in retrospect.

The Icarus Deception: Part 5

I had a really hard time getting through this section of the book.  Why did Seth Godin even include this section?  All it did was rehash the same principles endorsed in the first four chapters of the book over and over again.  By the end of the fourth chapter, Godin has made his point.  We get it.  And now in the fifth chapter he's just throwing more insincere self-motivational phrases and anecdotes at his readers.  Even if I liked this book, I would probably be sick of it by now.  The whole book is disorganized, but especially Part 5.  It seems that Godin just doesn't quite know what he wants to say.  He moves from topic to topic quickly enough to give himself plenty of room for b.s., and in the process he waters down every point that he tries to make.  Part 5 is particularly lacking in flow, depth, and meaning because it is basically all recapitulation.  Its subsections are so brief and randomly assorted, I felt like I was flipping through a quote-a-day calendar, not reading a book.  Parts 1 through 4 had their problems, but Part 5 of The Icarus Deception is simply not enjoyable to read.

Now that I have sufficiently criticized the structure of Part 5, let's discuss the content, shall we?  I think that, with this book, Godin is essentially trying to stir up passion in his readers, passion that will inspire them to view themselves as artists and "fly closer to the sun."  In doing so, he is choosing to ignore some important elements of artistry:

1. Passion takes time to develop, much longer than the time it takes to read The Icarus Deception.

2. Skill takes time to develop.

3. Skill is actually necessary.

Yeah.  Sure, everyone is an artist and everyone can do whatever they want because Seth Godin says so, but every artist has a craft, and every craft has a skill set with which it is associated, and the development of skills requires patience, dedication, energy, and (dare I say) just a dash of talent.  By focusing solely on motivating readers to soar, he is encouraging people to take unnecessary risks.  Not everyone who makes art is totally confident in the things they're creating, nor should they be, because if they're still figuring out who they are, then their art can't possibly really be a reflection of themselves yet.  In order to really soar (by taking a worthwhile risk) you have to be willing to die in defense of your work.  Artists who are just starting out need to develop their art before they take that leap of faith, or else they'll fall flat on their faces.  Seth Godin fails to mention in his book that there is a long period of preparation that precedes any worthwhile artistic endeavor.  He makes creativity sound like it's a cake mix or something, like you can "just add water" and it will suddenly be a part of your life.  There's a danger in this kind of thinking: a danger of rushing things along and not really being true to one's own identity, a danger that many beginners face.  And isn't that precisely for whom this book is designed?  Beginners?  I see what Godin is going for.  He's trying to eliminate fear and teach people to aim high and think outside of the box.  I get that.  But, in the wrong hands, this kind of advice can sometimes to more harm than good.

This book annoys me in a very personal way.  I know from experience that incorporating art into everyday life is not as simple as Godin makes it sound.  The Icarus Deception teaches that everyone is an artist and that if you follow certain steps then you could become a truly great one.  But books cannot teach people how to be artists.  The only power this book has is to get people to want to be artists, and then it leaves them in the dust, lost in the puzzling whirlwind of Seth Godin's contradictory statements.  Because I do want to be an artist, I know that wanting it is not enough, and I know that recognizing your own innate artistic qualities is not enough, and I know that constantly surrounding yourself with creative people is not enough, and I know that constantly doing creative things is not enough.  The Icarus Deception means well, but in my eyes, it sets people up for disappointment.

$#!*ty First Drafts

This excerpt from Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird spoke to me, and it probably speaks to a lot of people. Even those of us who are not professional writers have had to deal with writing rough drafts at one time or another.  I especially enjoyed Lamott's description of how most people envision professional writers at work, "typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter," because there was a time in my life when I had this image of perfection set as a goal in my mind.  As a child, I wanted to be a writer, and I NEVER wrote rough drafts.  Of course my teachers taught me that they were important, but I absolutely refused to write them.  In the time that the other kids were writing three or four copies of their essays, each one better than the one before it, I would be poring over just one copy, my first attempt, trying to make it perfect.  I wish I could look back now and say, "Ah, how foolish I was," but I'm actually embarrassed to say that I haven't changed all that much over the years when it comes to writing rough drafts.  Little 9-year-old perfectionist Juliana's thought process was as follows: "If it's not as close to perfect as possible on the first try, then I didn't really try my best and therefore I'm not ready to move on to a new draft."  So little Juliana would sit there and make sure that her rough draft was beautiful in every way.  She would skip the whole "write the first word that comes to your mind" thing and start refining her language right off the bat.  Instead of describing something as "pretty," she would skim through the thesaurus and eventually settle on the word "pulchritudinous," a word she knew her peers would not discover until their third draft, and this knowledge was delightful!  She was so ahead of the game...the teacher was sure to be impressed by her extensive vocabulary.  Little Juliana would dissect each individual sentence as she went along, checking for grammar and spelling errors.  When she was finally finished, she would turn it in to the teacher for approval, and, unsurprisingly, the teacher would be hard pressed to find anything wrong with it.  Unfortunately, more often than not, the teacher would praise little Juliana for her exceptional work and tell her that it was unnecessary for her to do a second draft.  And little Juliana would think to herself, "Mission accomplished!"

Ten years later, grown-up Juliana often thinks to herself, "I wish more of my grade school teachers forced me to write drafts instead of indulging my innate tendency to strive for perfection and value the result more than the process."  I was led to believe that "shitty first drafts" were for the weak.  The result?  Fear.  I'm afraid of what will appear on the page if I simply let myself go and allow myself to write something that is literally terrible just to get my ideas flowing.  I do believe that Anne Lamott's concept of "the child's draft" is important; in fact, I believe that this kind of uninhabited writing is essential for the writer who wishes to stretch the limits of the imagination.  But I personally struggle to embrace my writing in such a fashion.  So great is my fear of failure that I tend to limit my own potential by isolating individual thoughts within my stream of consciousness, labeling them as "unsuitable," and blocking them out.  This is exactly the wrong way to approach a rough draft.  At this point in my life, I am actively trying to improve the shittiness of my writing, because deep down I know that sloppy copies are important to the process and will ultimately set me up for great results.

I completely relate to Lamott's attitude toward "trust[ing] the process"; she explains in the excerpt that she still experiences fear of rejection after she writes her rough drafts, before she goes in and fixes them up.  I think it's something that's bound to be scary no matter how experienced you are because you end up with something that doesn't quite feel like it's yours, something you're not really proud of, something...well, something shitty.

This excerpt transported me back to the summer before my senior year of high school, the time when I was under the false impression that my Common App essay was going to be the most important thing I ever wrote in my entire life.  It was torture.  I hadn't written a rough draft for an essay in years, and I must have written at least ten really shitty rough drafts for my Common App essay.  I was trying to follow the advice of every high school teacher I knew and allow my emotions to flow through my writing.  I knew what my topic was going to be, but for some reason I was struggling to figure out exactly how to articulate my feelings.  (In this case, the biggest problem was that I was trying to describe a moment in my life that I had deemed too beautiful for words, but that's beside the point).  The point is that I was suffering from intense writer's block, and, for the first time, I was trying to solve the problem the way my teachers had once tried in vain to show little 9-year-old Juliana how to do.  I forced myself to write draft after draft until it was just right, and I was particularly proud of the result because it had been written freely and without fear.

Although I myself have not mastered the art of letting a shitty first draft spill from my mind onto the page (and yes, it is an art, and it is a skill that must be acquired), I recognize that rough drafts are important in the creation of any kind of art.  As Anne Lamott says, "All good writers write them."  It just makes sense because art doesn't come from nothing; you must create something before you can turn it into something good.

Movie Review: The Skeleton Twins

I love when films totally surprise me.  The Skeleton Twins featured two actors who are best known for comedic roles, and the film was marketed as a comedy, but, while it did have some elements that tried to be funny, the movie as a whole left me feeling rather depressed, which I had not been expecting.  I think the creators' decision to take a comedic approach to the story was very clever because it allowed the actors to be real without disturbing the flow of the piece.  When audiences come to see a drama, sometimes it is difficult to know how to react to funny scenes because they often seem distasteful and/or out of place, but when you come to see a comedy and you're hit with tragedy and realism, it has a very different (although equally shocking) effect.  In The Skeleton Twins, the comedy exists in the relationship between the two main characters, Maggie and Milo, and it is ironic that both characters are actually tragic.  As I watched the movie, I thought of Oral Fixations artist Julia Randall and her concept of "Ha ha!...Huh...".  I felt bad for wanting to laugh at the film's sitcom-like moments because the characters' situations were truly emotional.

There is quite a bit of irony in The Skeleton Twins in the sense that nothing really turns out the way you expect it to.  Its dramatic turns, strange character developments, and lack of a happy ending are all surprising to the viewer.  This went along with the storyline very well; in the same way that some audience members may have been disappointed by the turnout of the story, the main characters were disappointed with the turnout of their lives.  The Skeleton Twins has relatable and well-developed characters, brilliant imagery, and some really beautiful moments.  I especially liked the emphasis on the twins' emotional connection to water as a result of the manner in which their father took his own life.  Most of the flashbacks to the twins' childhood were clips of the two of them swimming together and playing games underwater.  The clear connection between the flashbacks in the water and the penultimate scene in the pool created even more tension and beauty at the climax of the story.  Perhaps my favorite scene in the movie took place right after the twins' most intense fight, when Kristen Wiig's character, Maggie, comes inside to find the two goldfish she had purchased earlier, forgotten, lying dead on the table.  For most people, after a huge emotional argument with a loved one, a pair of dead goldfish would seem trivial, but Maggie looked at the fish and saw herself...limp, helpless, lifeless.  I'll not soon forget the macabre image of her violently stirring the fish up in a bowl of water in a futile attempt to rejuvenate them, as if the fish had been her last hope in life and she had failed them, too, just like with everyone else.

I thought that this story had potential to send a powerful message, but after watching the film I found that it doesn't really have much of a message at all.  Too many parts of the story are left unresolved and/or simply forgotten.  Over the course of the movie, Maggie and Milo change and grow as siblings; they learn how important they are to one another, and they learn to appreciate the relationship they have, but beyond that, they do not solve any problems or change as people.  Both Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig gave strong, if slightly inconsistent, performances.  The issues with the plot seem to lie with the script and not with the actors.  In my opinion, the writers could have taken more risks, but instead they took the easy way out by leaving many things unfinished in favor of an ambiguous ending.  It was as if they had just shrugged and said, "Yup.  That's all we got, folks."  Especially after such a wonderfully emotional climax, I was disappointed with the ending.  A more dramatic finish...a divorce, a death, a lawsuit...would have sent a more meaningful message, and might have actually been more realistic, given the characters' circumstances.  And yes, as audience members we're supposed to imagine that some of these things do eventually happen to the characters, that their lives go on after the credits start to roll, but ambiguous endings are starting to become cliched.  In the end of The Skeleton Twins, Maggie and Milo simply accept the problems in their lives, and it is not implied that they will ever try to fix them.  I was actually surprised when the closing credits started.  I'd love to see a film writer stand up straight and say, "Yup.  THIS is how the story ends.  In your face!"

Also, about Bill Hader's character, Milo...he complemented Kristen Wiig's Maggie very nicely, and the two had great chemistry, but the way Milo himself was written was insulting.  Why is the gay character always so pathetic, always a victim of something, and never the strong one?  Did the film world really need yet another stereotypical, childish, flamboyant gay character?  I think not.  But if you really must create a character who possesses those qualities, why would you intentionally make him the comic relief?  The scenes where Milo had to perform tasks that are considered to be masculine, such as rock climbing or clearing brush in the woods, were only included to get a laugh.  This needs to stop.  The performing arts industry, while it is possibly the most openly LGBTQ-friendly community in the country, is in constant danger of making things worse for homosexuals by constantly portraying them either as emotionally confused weaklings or as well-dressed Barbie dolls who exist solely for the amusement of others.  Bill Hader's Milo was not the worst example of this injustice that I have seen; in fact, Milo turns out to be quite heroic in the end.  But it bothered me that the film's only gay character was still set up to be laughed at by audiences just for being a little bit feminine and eccentric.

The best thing about this film was that it shed light on what life is like for people who struggle with depression, mental instability, and family issues.  The characters' conflicts were complex and extreme, but completely understandable given the nature of everything they had gone through.  It was educational to watch these two mentally ill people helping each other to be strong; seeing their vulnerabilities made it easy to sympathize, even though I had never experienced anything like the events in the movie.  Overall, The Skeleton Twins is unique, emotional, visually appealing, and certainly worth the price of a movie ticket.  It has its problems, but nothing catastrophic.  Although I disagree with certain aspects of the plot and character developments, this movie definitely kept me entertained and made me think about life.

The Icarus Deception: Parts 3 & 4

I am getting very tired of this book.  And you know what?  It's kind of funny...Seth Godin emphasizes the importance of designing art for a specific audience and catering to them, and worrying only about what they think and how they respond to the work.  His art, The Icarus Deception, is designed for people who want to read it.  In the book, he even alludes to the fact that the reader's voluntary purchase of the book is a sign that he "knows he is capable of far more" and seeks to understand how to achieve it.  This reader, this person who does not know how to unlock his own potential...this is Godin's audience.  Since I am not reading this book for my own personal betterment, I guess I am not part of the intended audience for The Icarus Deception!  Maybe that's why it's annoying me so much!

Reading this book is good practice for music education majors, like me, who have to complete observation hours in various classroom settings in fulfillment of the requirements for our degree.  We are told that we should reserve our judgment, and that even if we are observing a teacher whom we deem inadequate, we should not simply discount everything they say, but instead we should listen attentively and try to pick out at least one helpful bit of information.  Following this principle, I find myself making a conscious effort to be patient with Seth Godin as I read The Icarus Deception, and I did identify with a few lines from Parts 3 and 4.  In the section that explores the vulnerability that we face as artists, Godin says, "To own the idea, to be responsible for the project. . .we risk being shamed for our arrogance."  I do think that this rings true in countless different situations, whether you are the person in charge or the person stepping out of line and challenging authority.  But then Godin goes and ruins it!  He goes on with sentiments along the lines of 'stand up for what's right even if you're afraid of shame' and so on, and then he says, "When your restaurant gets a lousy review on Yelp or a stranger yells something out the window, that attempt to get you to quiet down and conform doesn't belong to you unless you want it to."  Who said anything about conformity?  The person doing the "shaming" is just another artist voicing his or her opinion.  Isn't that what this whole book is supposed to be about?  Encouraging people to voice their opinions?

It seems to me that a lot of points in this book contradict each other.  Seth Godin reiterates over and over throughout the book that a creation does not become art until it is shared with an audience, and that part of the beauty of the art lies in the experience that the audience has.  But then he basically says that anyone who does not appreciate your art ought to be ignored, and that you should focus your energy towards pleasing the people who understand you.  Godin even reveals, "I haven't sought out and read a view or a tweet since [negative experience with feedback].  This is not cowardice; it's the act of someone who wants to keep writing and is determined to do it for an audience of his choosing."  I'm not saying that all art is meant for all people, and I'm not saying that any artist's goal should be to please everyone; in fact, I personally believe that trying to please everyone is the key to failure.  But I'm not so sure that blocking out all negative feedback is such a good idea.  Isn't it healthy to keep tabs on how your art is perceived, whether it be received well or poorly, by anyone and everyone who sees/hears it?  I think it is rather selfish to ignore any opinion that differs from your own, even if it is in an effort to stay true to yourself.

While reading The Icarus Deception, it's often hard to tell whether Godin is encouraging his readers to create art for others, or for themselves...or both.  (As far as I can tell, this lack of clarity has a great deal to do with the scatterbrained setup of the book as a whole.  Godin darts around between ideas, robbing himself of a chance to fully flesh them out and robbing his readers of a chance to poke holes in them.  As a result, the book only has the power to reach its readers on the surface rather than in a meaningful, permanent way, and has virtually no real-world applications.)  But anyway, reading Parts 3 and 4 of The Icarus Deception called to mind one of my favorite lines from the musical Sunday in the Park with George by Stephen Sondheim.  (I think I've posted about Sunday in the Park in a previous blog post...maybe not...but either way, if you're reading this and you haven't seen or listened to this musical, run, don't walk, to get your hands on a copy of the album).  The line is, "Work is what you do for others...Art is what you do for yourself."  I've spent countless hours pondering this concept, and I think every artist has.  Am I selfish for wanting to share the depths of my soul with the world?  Because I enjoy my work so much, is it really work, or do I not really know what it means to work?  I think Seth Godin's response to this line would be something along the lines of, "Art is work, and work is art," and while I disagree with his general attitudes towards criticism and individuality, I agree with him on this point.

Overall, with these two chapters of The Icarus Deception, I think that Seth Godin is trying to say that art is for artists, and anyone who questions the vitality and/or the morality of an artist's work is a "non-believer" and ought to be "shunned."  This counteracts his earlier claims that everyone is an artist in his or her own way.  This book does exactly what it tells its readers not to do: it tries to offer a solution to a problem, and it assumes that the solution will work for everyone.  I wish this book's content was narrower and deeper, but apparently my opinion doesn't matter because I'm a non-believer.

The Icarus Deception: Part 2

Okay, this book is starting to get really annoying.  I don't like self-help books, and that seems to be all this is: just another self-righteous, self-centered self-help book.  Self-help books, in my eyes, are characterized by vague statements, overly optimistic generalizations about the world, and an overall condescending tone.  Seth Godin's The Icarus Deception has got the full package.  Chapter 2 begins by listing various immortalized mythical and historical figures, claiming that they are all "humans...wearing the cloaks of gods," and the chapter goes on to assert that all humans are capable of godlike things.  While it may be true that everyone has the potential to contribute something meaningful to the world, I think that seeing ourselves as gods is a bit melodramatic.  Godin goes on to state that "we don't have a humility shortage" in our society.  Um, yes we do.  Particularly in the United States, people are so closed-minded and focused solely on themselves.  If you ask me, we don't need any more people viewing themselves as gods.  This book assumes that its readers are lacking in self-confidence and need encouragement to reach their full potential.  I don't fit into this category; I know where I stand and I know what I have to offer.  Perhaps this book is frustrating me because I'm only reading it for a class rather than for personal enlightenment.

But seriously, this chapter was full of contradictory statements.  The book as a whole focuses on creativity as a means to success in all walks of life, thereby suggesting that all people are different and that there are countless different forms of creativity.  Why, then, does Godin feel entitled to make such bold accusations as, "You have no idea what you're doing.  If you did, you'd be an expert, not an artist," as if such a statement would be true for all people?  That's one of the biggest problems with these self-help books; they're geared towards EVERYONE.  They aim to please EVERYONE.  And anything that aims to please everyone tends to make very little impact on people because there was no risk involved.  Godin even talks about this concept as it applies to art in his book.

This chapter got really preachy, particularly in the section entitled "Where Are the Gods?":

The old work: Bale that cotton, mow that hay, load that barge.  Fill in this form, obey these instructions, take this test.
The new work: Start something.  Figure it out.  Connect.  Make the call.  Ask.  Learn.  Repeat.  Risk it.  Open.  What's next?
The old work is machinelike.
The new work is for mythological gods.
Gods in charge of their destiny.  Gods responsible for their choices.  Gods with power and the freedom to use it.
Us.

Words, words, words.  While I admire Seth Godin's apparent passion for the subject passion, these are words with no practical application attached to them.  The most meaningful response one could have after reading this passage would be maybe a thoughtful tilt of the head followed by a self-affirming nod, as if to say, "Yeah!  I can do this.  I am a god.  I can do anything if I put my mind to it."  Then you get out into the real world, back to your everyday business, and you remember that there is still cotton to be baled, hay to be mowed, forms to be filled out, tests to be taken...and your little self-help book did not actually give you any answers regarding how you might do these things with a creative flair.  If you're someone who needed Seth Godin's empowering words to motivate you to think outside of the box, perhaps The Icarus Deception inspired you in some way, but that's all it can really do for its readers.  Because I am fortunate enough to be surrounded by resources that help me to kindle my own creativity, I don't need this book to open up my eyes, and therefore I don't feel that I am learning anything from it.

My biggest problem with The Icarus Deception thus far is that, through the use of its generalized statements and flashy middle-school-motivational-speaker-style language, it makes creativity look easy.  It proclaims, "Follow these simple steps, and you will be a true artist!"  The truth is that everyone has to work hard to discover their own unique process by which they may tap into their own creativity, and one thing's for sure: it's not a process that you can learn from any book.

An Evening of Saxophones, Tambourines, Tchaikovsky and Such

Who would have thought that such contrasting styles of music could be celebrated at just one concert?  The Ithaca College Chamber Orchestra presented two contrasting but equally epic pieces of music at their concert on Friday, October 3rd, 2014.  The first was Fred Sturm's Terra Madre, a contemporary piece written for soprano saxophone, percussion, and string orchestra.  (How do you even conceive the idea of combining those instruments?!)  The second piece was Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings in C, Op. 48, a more conventional choice for a chamber orchestra, but an equally memorable performance.

Terra Madre has 9 movements, each of which represents a different country of the world.  The piece as a whole is a plea for world peace, and it seeks to achieve this dream by creating a sort of musical collage of cultures.  Each movement contains sounds that are uniquely indigenous to the region they represent.  The ICCO performed six of the nine movements.  After the performance, my one critique was that there didn't seem to be a flow; as a listener, I didn't feel that there was a line connecting all of the movements to each other, as there should be, especially in a piece that is supposed to be striving for unity.  It wasn't until after the concert, when I researched the piece, that I realized that the movements the ICCO had chosen to perform were not actually adjacent to each other in the full context of the piece, so it made sense that the flow was a bit off.  And besides, it didn't really matter.  Each individual movement was its own experience.  One of the movements, entitled Appalachia and written for the U.S., consisted solely of tambourine and body percussion, the latter being provided by the audience!  My favorite movement was the one written for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, called Rainforest; it was full of excitement, complete with wild percussions and lively string lines.  The soprano sax, played by Marco Albonetti, soared above the orchestra throughout the entire piece.  Albonetti's sound was spirited and smooth, and in a physical sense he reminded me of Ian Anderson, a flautist who is known for playing unconventional music and for his visual appeal when playing.  Both Albonetti and Anderson have a way of bending their torsos and lifting one leg to create a pose that resembles a flamingo, which I think adds a certain element of freedom and abstractness to the music!

Here's a video of Ian Anderson's famous "flamingo": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAgYOfBycV0

Now let's talk about the percussionist, shall we?  Wow!  Dane Richeson, who is actually an IC grad, played all of the percussions for Terra Madre on his own.  If I had had my eyes closed, I would never have guessed that all of those intricate rhythms and foreign sounds were coming from just one man sitting on a box, with (literally) rings on his fingers and bells on his toes.  Appalachia, in particular, was fascinating to behold; Richeson made such a wide range of sounds with just his two hands, his voice, and the tambourine, and the music was absolutely thrilling.  He was also in charge of directing the audience for the parts that involved body percussion, and the sounds we made added depth to the overall sound.  Also, for me sitting in the audience, being able to actively participate in the music made the experience so much more meaningful and enjoyable.  For a moment, I was transported back to the Gospel Invitational that was held at IC last month, during which the entire audience was on its feet, singing and dancing along.  Audience participation truly has the power to bring magic to any piece of music.  During this particular piece, I felt like I was part of the composer's mission for world peace.  Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Terra Madre, and I think that it definitely achieves unity, in many ways.  Not only does this piece unite diverse cultures and ethnicities, but it also unites chamber music with many different musical styles and with instruments that are rarely paired with strings.

The second half of the concert was beautiful.  The ICCO brought Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings to life with passion and enthusiasm.  It was clear that the students were invested in the music emotionally, mentally, and physically.  I often close my eyes when I'm listening to music, but for live performances I've found that it's good to keep them open because the visual is an important part of the experience.  My favorite thing to do is to watch the conductor, partially because I always learn something new by observing them, but also because I like the thrill of anticipating what's coming next in the music based on the conductor's gestures.  Since I had never heard this piece before, everything came as a surprise, and watching Jeffery Meyer conduct intensified the feelings associated with each passage.  Watching him conduct was like watching a heartfelt dance that would be inconceivable if not performed with Tchaikovsky's String Serenade.  Every aspect of the music was reflected in Dr. Meyer's movements, and like a conductor of electricity, he stood at the center and allowed all of the members of the ensemble to be connected to one another and to the piece.  His gestures were so distinct that it was possible even for me, an audience member sitting near the back of Ford Hall, to identify patterns and associate movement with sound.  I would see his head start to shake and his baton start to bounce a bit, and I'd get excited because I knew that that awesome staccato motif from the first movement was coming back!  In the same way that it's usually more fun to jam to a song you know than one you've never heard before, being able to anticipate the direction that a piece is going to take makes the music feel more present in your body; your reactions happen right at the moment at which the action is taking place.

The Serenade for Strings was not perfect.  There were moments when the orchestra was not totally together, particularly when the dynamics were very soft, but I applauded their efforts to achieve extreme dynamic contrasts.  As a whole, the ensemble definitely managed to communicate the emotions behind the piece and tell a beautiful story; they were all clearly on the same wavelength in terms of the message they wanted to send.  As a whole, the Chamber Orchestra concert was a great experience for me because I am quickly discovering a new appreciation, maybe even a love, for instrumental music the more I am exposed to it!

StrengthsFinder 2.0 Assessment

StrengthsFinder is a method of discovering natural talents by taking an online assessment and then applying the results to everyday life.  The method is based on 34 categories of talent; taking the assessment gives you your top 5 categories, or the 5 things that could be considered your strengths.  Before taking the assessment, I decided to look at the list of "34 Themes and Ideas for Action" and try to predict what my top 5 would be.  Here were my guesses:

Arranger
Discipline
Harmony
Intellection
Strategic

And here are my actual results:

1. Learner
2. Input
3. Futuristic
4. Intellection
5. Deliberative

Because of the nature of the questions in the assessment and the answers I gave, I was not surprised by these results.  Upon reading the descriptions of each of my 5 themes, I found that I identified with most of their contents.  I also noticed that there was a lot of overlap between certain categories; an emphasis on learning and the hunger for knowledge seems to be a common theme.

I think that my results are accurate for the most part, but I found the assessment itself to be quite a challenge!  For each question, you had to choose between two ideologies that were not always true opposites, and I struggled because I often fell somewhere in the middle.  I wonder if my results would be any different if I were to take the quiz again, because I have a feeling my answers wouldn't be exactly the same.

Thoughts on Composing a Symphony

Reading Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky's "Composing a Symphony" was particularly enlightening after hearing the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra performing in Ford Hall last night.  During the concert, as I listened to Beethoven's 8th Symphony, I found myself wondering what sort of thought process one must follow when creating something so complex, so moving.  Tchaikovsky answered some of my questions about the creative process.

In this article, which is a brief compilation of excerpts of letters written by Tchaikovsky, he describes the creative process as being "lyrical," meaning that the music has a sort of flow.  In comparing the process to a seed that grows into a plant, he asserts that no idea is ever fully realized at the initial point of inspiration.  I thought it was interesting that he emphasized the importance of being critical of your own work along every step of the way: "Sometimes one must do oneself violence, must sternly and pitilessly take part against oneself, before one can mercilessly erase things thought out with love and enthusiasm."  Ugh.  Is there anyone who can't relate to that beautifully worded statement?  As I read it, my thoughts were transported to numerous times when I have tried to compose pieces of music for solo piano.  I mean, I'm no Tchaikovsky, but I've sat down at a piano with a feverish desire to create something beautiful, starting with an idea that had popped into my head, and I've scribbled away on notation paper in an attempt to bring my thoughts to life, and my original idea has led to new ideas, and those new ideas have invaded the original "seed" to the point where the work becomes a whole new plant, and I've had to give way to the creative flow and follow its lead, even when it had led me far away from the plan in my head.  There is a horrifying sense of powerlessness in this.  I have found that it is extremely difficult for me to engage in the act of crumpling up the paper and going back to the drawing board.  I'm ashamed to say that I have had moments of selfish cowardice in which I have doubted my creative instincts and have refused to discard an idea that, deep down, I knew wasn't working.  During the process, this feels like home.  This is known as "the comfort zone."  But in the end, the product is quite the opposite: it's unnatural, it's uncomfortable...there's something about it that goes against every fiber of your being, and you feel guilty for not trusting yourself.  You may ask, if I am the creator, why should I have to scrap something that I deemed beautiful at one point in the process?  Isn't that a disturbance of the flow?  Isn't starting over the same as giving up?  It certainly feels that way sometimes!  But I think that Tchaikovsky was right in saying that creative work involves "critical examination, leading to correction, occasional additions and frequent curtailments."  Of course every artist is different, but I think all artists can learn something from the notion that a creative thinker must strive to maintain a balance between free, uninhibited thinking and acute self-awareness to ensure that he remains true to himself.  A paradox?  Yes.  No surprise there.

The second letter in the article begins with a brilliant imperative statement: "Do not believe those who try to persuade you that composition is only a cold exercise of the intellect."  Because great music evokes such glorious sensations from its audiences, it seems obvious that the composer's process should be an emotional one, but there is a far more technical, scientific aspect of music that some composers choose to focus on exclusively, and their work is subpar.  In the words of Tchaikovsky, "The only music capable of moving and touching us is that which flows from the depths of the composer's soul when he is stirred by inspiration."  Instrumental music tells a story.  I did not fully understand this concept until I attended the pre-concert chat with maestro Lanfranco Marcelletti (pictured above) before the Cayuga Chamber Orchestra concert last night.  He likened a symphony to an opera in an awesome way, and I'll not soon forget what he said: "In the first movement of a symphony, the two main themes are introduced.  These are like the main characters in an opera.  In the second movement of a symphony, the main themes realize that they have feelings for one another and they fall in love.  In the third movement, when the minuet is introduced, everyone is dancing and there's lots of excitement to build up to the fourth and final movement, during which the two main themes either get married and live happily ever after, or everyone dies, and either way it is beautiful.  Just like an opera."  This certainly goes along with Tchaikovsky's idea that great music comes from the soul; both statements assert that there is meaning and intent behind every single element of a musical composition.  And what a treat it was to hear Beethoven's 8th Symphony with Marcelletti's "opera" concept in mind!  I had an incredible listening experience, and the main themes lived happily ever after.

Later in the concert, the orchestra performed Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor with cello soloist Steven Doane, and I was forever changed.  Goodness, I'm shaking just thinking about this performance.  I had been sitting in on rehearsals for this piece throughout the week, and every little excerpt I had heard had brought tears to my eyes, so I couldn't wait to finally hear the whole concerto from start to finish.  Upon reading the program, I learned that the composer, Edward Elgar, had written the piece in the aftermath of World War I, in which many of his friends had perished, and suddenly I understood why this piece had made me cry: it was, in fact, laden with sorrow.  Maestro Marcelletti reentered and the concerto began.  You typically expect a symphony to begin with an attention-grabbing tutti section, but this piece began with a lonely, dramatic cello solo, which was gripping in a different way (and actually the full orchestra didn't come together until the very last passage!).  Soloist Steven Doane played from memory with such passion and grace, and the entire orchestra assumed his level of energy.  Right from the start, I was transported.  With the composer and the conductor and the notes and the sounds, I went on a journey through all of the stages of grief...there was denial in the rushed confusion as the melody darted around between the strings and the wind section, like a dog chasing its tail.  There was anger in the pizzicato.  Depressed sobs could be heard in the droning of the cellos.  In my favorite section, the cello soloist played a motif that could only be described as melodic weeping, and the full orchestra echoed this musical idea in one collective emotional release...it was as if the music had been holding back its tears and finally decided to let go.  The sound of the full orchestra felt as if it were being squeezed out of the cello solo, like the tightness of the face of a person who is trying not to sob out loud.

(Here is a link to a recording of the piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpKab6GRBIg  The aforementioned section begins about 25 minutes in).

How can I describe what this moment was like for me sitting in the audience?  As the music rose in intensity, a lump rose in my throat and I too released my emotions, in the form of tears.  This type of reaction in me is ordinarily reserved for choral music; I had never responded to instrumental music this way before, and it was profound.  As this section faded out, a bold restatement of the opening cello solo emerged, but unlike before, it was not lonely and forlorn; this time it was defiant, strong, wise...it had overcome loss.  The piece ended with harsh, powerful chords, both a reminder of the pain of grief and a symbol of courage and acceptance.

In "Composing a Symphony," Tchaikovsky describes music as "a subtle medium in which to translate the thousand shifting moments in the mood of a soul."  Since I had had such a remarkable musical experience mere hours before reading this statement, Tchaikovsky's words resonated with me deeply.  Listening to the Elgar Cello Concerto enabled me to feel what the composer must have felt as he was writing, and that is a sign of true artistry.  The power of a symphony to move its audience comes from the real human emotions that the composer pours into his work, and the vulnerability that comes with this kind of self-expression is an essential part of the creative process.

Oral Fixations: Part II

So, remember Julia Randall and her wonderfully grotesque collection of drawings, Oral Fixations?  Well, last night I actually got to see the artist in person talking about her work.  I headed over to the Handwerker Gallery with all sorts of questions still floating around in my head: Why mouths?  Why bubble gum?  Why does that chicken have teeth?  In her talk, Ms. Randall answered all of these questions and more.  In fact, she made me think about art in totally new ways.

Her talk was appropriately entitled "Mouth as Muse," and it featured drawings from different stages of her artistic life.  From one slide to the next, you could visibly observe how her skills and style were developing, and you could see that each sketch or piece from her past was another step toward the enormous project that she has now completed, Oral Fixations.  She established that the great overlying theme in all of her work is an exploration of "the pleasures and discomforts of being in a human body."  I thought, how interesting...to think of a person as this elusive being that's sort of stuck in a costume that they can't take off, a costume that fits them pretty well but that has a few imperfections, a few elements that keep it from being 100% comfortable all of the time.  She went on to focus on just the mouth, saying that it initially piqued her interest because it's a body part that is "constantly exposed, but it's also very private and secretive," which is really an amazing thing to think about.  Seriously.  Try to think of another body part that is characterized by such paradoxical qualities.  Paradoxical...aha!  That was the first light bulb that clicked on in my brain during the talk.  Her artwork is both repulsive and alluring, erotic and lifeless, fantastic and boring...and she made it so because these are all paradoxical qualities that can be attributed to the human mouth.

Listening to her talk about her own fascination with the human mouth, which evidently began for her at a very early age, made me think about my mouth differently.  (What does that even mean?  Who thinks about their mouth?  It's just this thing on your face that you use to talk and eat and sometimes breathe...oh and kiss...and sing...and taste...ooh, and gasp...and sigh...and emote...and experience almost every beautiful sensation you can think of...and...oh...)  Yeah.  Suddenly, the mouth was beautiful.  (Julia Randall would describe this as a "Haha...huh?" moment!)  As a singer, I do have a meaningful relationship with my mouth, and yet I had never realized what a beautiful thing it is just to have a mouth.  Julia Randall presented a unique perspective when she said, "If the eyes are the windows to the soul, the mouth is the threshold of the id."  Like the title of the exhibit, this is another reference to Freudian psychology, the "id" being Freud's word for the part of a personality which contains a human's basic, instinctual drives.  This assertion, in a sense, claims that the mouth is capable of expressing things that are even deeper than what we might find in the soul, that the mouth is the window to our very nature as human beings.  Already Julia Randall had blown my mind, and I was hooked on this presentation.

Beyond giving her audience fantastic insights into the human mouth, Ms. Randall also discussed her philosophies about art in general.  I thought it was interesting that she discovered her obsession with mouths, tongues in particular, by doodling.  I'm not an artist, so I had never thought about this before, but I suppose it makes sense that a doodle, the thing that you instinctively draw when you're not thinking about it, would be an indication of what your hand is meant to do.  She talked about how difficult it was for her to learn how to create hyperrealistic drawings, since this kind of art requires intense precision and she is a "gestural drawer by nature," and as she went into more detail with this sort of self-evaluation, she said something that really inspired me: "Sometimes, art calls for a certain technique, and that technique requires the artist to physically do something that is very unlike them.  You can't always do what feels good!"  Lightbulb #2!  I realized that I could apply this idea directly to music.  An artist must, on occasion, compromise his or her natural flair in order to serve a specific purpose.  For instance, someone who specializes in realism would have to alter that style if he or she wanted their work to evoke a feeling of fantasy or possess caricature-like qualities.  Likewise, in realizing a piece of music, a musician must find a balance between communicating the composer's exact intentions and bringing originality to the work.  An atheistic singer performing the lyrics "Gloria in excelsis deo" must acknowledge that the piece is about God.  A professional fiddler who loves country and folk music must tap into a different part of his or her brain in order to properly perform a classical string quartet.  This is something to ponder: How do we differentiate between truly creating art and just simply following instructions?  And where do we draw the line between a spin-off of an artistic technique and an amateur's failed attempt at employing skill?  Which brings us to the age-old question of technical skill and creativity: which of the two is more important?  I think that anyone seeking the answers to these questions could learn a lot from Julia Randall.

Randall also included the video portion of Oral Fixations as part of her presentation: a 3-minute montage of bubble gum blowing and popping accompanied by disturbingly loud mouth-breathing sound effects, which she had had playing on a loop for the opening of the exhibit.  She explained that she likes to enhance her audiences' experiences by incorporating different types of media, including sound, lights, and other time-sensitive art forms.  Light bulb #3!  As a musician, I am accustomed to my art being driven by time.  Any piece of music that I perform lasts for exactly the duration of the performance, after which it ceases to exist.  So shouldn't I try to incorporate other forms of media, some visual art forms, to enhance my audiences' experiences?  I began to understand the value of visuals in music performance, whether it be in the form of choreography, formations, colors, or movements: visual appeal adds a layer of durability to time-sensitive art, in the same way that music and video add a sense of presence to visual art.

It was enlightening to hear Ms. Randall's views on these topics, considering she seems to have successfully achieved balance as an artist, in many ways.  As she mentioned, her work is a balance between shocking and commonplace, depending on the audience at a given time.  Her style is a balance between personal and relatable; she puts a lot of herself into her work, but she uses subtleties that make it so that everyone can understand and perform their own analysis of her work.  And she herself strives for a balance between getting her own message across and letting her audiences simply have individualized organic reactions to the art.  I see even more now that art is paradoxical, and I plan to find ways of incorporating this idea into anything I create in the future.  I left Julia Randall's talk with an increased appreciation for art and a new outlook on my own artistry.

Short Story: The Homily

"The Homily"
by Juliana Joy Child

It was all thanks to Father George.  Business was booming at my father's store, W.R. Morse Clothing, due to a sudden surge of new customer interest, which seemed to have been brought on by the full page ad that Father George had purchased on the day of my parents' wedding.  Since then, sales had skyrocketed.  My parents were newly married, my parents were in love, my parents had found success, and therefore, my parents were happy.  I was born.  Juliana Marie, they named me.  The first name was in honor of my great aunt Julie.  The middle name was the same as my mother's.

My childhood was normal, pretty much what you'd expect for a kid growing up in the early 21st century.  My brother Andrew was born a year after I was, and two years later Elizabeth and Ethan came along.  My parents knew that they would both have to work full-time in order to provide for the four of us.  Fortunately, my father was earning enough money from clothing sales to send us to a really nice day care center in town, where we were taught to write our names and allowed to play for most of the day.  Meanwhile, my mother had landed herself a stable job as a medical coder.

I never got to spend much time with my parents.  Mom often worked overtime, and Dad was so busy, what with his business expanding and all.  He ended up opening new stores in three different locations in Massachusetts, and being the owner of the company, he had to travel a lot to ensure that everyone's work was "up to snuff," as he would say.  I understood.  Mom and Dad were working hard because they loved my siblings and me.  When I was 4 I asked my parents to sign me up for dance lessons because I wanted to wear pretty costumes like the ones I saw each year in the local Veterans' Day Parade.  My mother called the dance school and told them my age, and they said that classes for 3- and 4-year-olds met on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4:30.  Mom explained to me that there was just no way, since both she and Dad worked from 9 to 5 each day.

The year I turned 5, we had the best Christmas ever.  Mom and Dad bought these two new state-of-the-art computers for the house, one for them to do their work, and the other for the four of us to use to play games and watch videos.  We were so excited!  The computer presented a world of possibilities.  All of our relatives bought us cool computer games, all themed around different things...Spongebob Squarepants, Sesame Street, and, my personal favorite, The Powerpuff Girls.  Elizabeth and Ethan weren't quite old enough to use the computer yet, but Andrew and I spent the rest of Christmas vacation playing with this new toy.  It took a couple of years, but eventually the twins too graduated from the crayons and popsicle sticks of childhood play and learned to appreciate the world of fun that technology had to offer.

As a child, I struggled in school.  Math was the worst.  I would come home each night and work so hard to try and figure out the multiplication and division problems, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not make sense of the strange numbers and symbols.  Our babysitter was nice, but she was never much help.  By the time I was 10, I had started to hate school.  It was a constant reminder of how stupid I was.  I had friends, but I was still very shy in public.  I remember feeling that everyone except me was good at something.  As my siblings grew, I began to notice that they were having similar problems, and I wished I knew how to help them.  We were all introverted, quiet, average students who found it difficult to connect with other kids our age.  Sometimes I would get very upset, and I would go to the computer and start playing some mindless game that required the player to perform some mindless task, like popping bubbles.  Just pop the bubbles...pop the bubbles...pop the bubbles...

My main source of happiness was the piano.  I had asked to start taking lessons when I was 6, and Dad had agreed to drive me to the music school once a week at 7pm.  I loved practicing the piano.  It gave me a feeling of bliss that I couldn't quite define.  None of my friends knew that I played, though...I was much too shy and reserved to tell anyone about it.  I was afraid that someone would ask me to get up on a stage and perform, God forbid.  It was beyond stage fright; all throughout elementary school, I was afraid to even look people in the eye.

Middle school was better.  By then, Dad had expanded his business to five locations and we were seeing even less of him.  He claimed it was because he loved us even more.  Mom had been promoted to the position of manager in the coding firm.  Together they were making enough money to spoil my siblings and me rotten with toys, clothes, Apple products.  In school, I was still in lower level reading and math classes, but I had finally worked myself up to a point where I at least understood what the teacher was talking about most of the time.  I didn't get to see my elementary school friends as much anymore.  They had always been smarter than me, and they were placed in advanced classes.  It was lonely for a while, but I eventually made new friends.  My favorite thing about middle school was music class.  I was always really happy in music class, and it was there that I discovered something that I was really good at: singing.  And it was weird how it happened.  I was in fifth grade, and we were playing a game in music class where there were two teams and the teacher would call out a category, and the teams had to battle back and forth singing songs that fit into each category.  The game ended when one of the teams took more than ten seconds to think of a song.  The category was TV theme songs, and I knew a whole bunch of them, and I sang them out as they popped into my head, and I ended up winning for my team.  After class, the music teacher stopped me on the way out the door.

"You know, you have a beautiful singing voice," she said.

It had never even occurred to me that my voice was anything special.  "Really?" I replied, surprised and, being a shy child, intimidated by the whole exchange.

"Really," the music teacher said.  "You should join Chorus.  We rehearse on Monday mornings from 7:30 to 8:30."

I asked my parents and they said yes.  And that's how it all started.  From then on, for the remainder of my time in middle school, each week began with music, and I loved it.  I would float out of bed on Mondays, thrilled by the anticipation of getting to do something that brought me...joy.  That's what music was to me: joy.  Despite having a fairly happy childhood, being so well provided for by my parents, I had never experienced real joy until I joined Chorus.  Music taught me the difference between joy and happiness.  And I loved this new thing called "joy."  I had figured out by the time I finished middle school that I wanted to dedicate my life to bringing this joy of music to others.

I presented this notion, this dream, to my parents my junior year of high school.

"I'm going to be a choral conductor," I told them, sure in my heart that that was what my life's work was meant to be.  "I've already started looking at music schools.  I think I'll get a Music Education degree for my undergrad."

Mom looked thoughtful, not quite sure what to make of this.  Dad spoke up.  "Well, of course for college you should probably major in something more practical, like accounting or marketing.  My dream for you is that you'll take over the W.R. Morse Clothing company one day."

"I know, Dad," I said sharply, with an attitude.  I had heard it before.  All he seemed to care about in those days was his business.  "But you must not know me if you think I would enjoy that kind of work."

This was the first of many conversations of this nature, during which I was forced to defend music, my passion, my joy, and its importance.  I learned that my parents did not understand me.  But furthermore, I learned that they did not understand joy, and I guessed that they had never really felt it.    And I felt sorry for them.  Eventually I won; I convinced them that pursuing a Music Education degree was a worthy investment.  But I could not get over the fact that my joy was not enough for them, that it took so much persuasion for them to permit me to embrace that joy.

Senior year came.  This was also the year of my parents' 20th anniversary.  When the day came, we celebrated with a big sit-down dinner, which was a treat.  Afterwards, Mom took out their wedding video, which my siblings and I had never seen before, hooked up the old VCR, and put the tape in for all of us to watch.  It was strange to see my parents together in a world in which I had not yet come into existence.  And it was fun to see all of our family members, all dressed up and 20 years younger. There was my grandmother with only a few wrinkles on her face, her late husband beside her, all of my aunts and uncles with their huge 90s hairdos.  And there was Father George, the priest who performed the service.  All I knew about him was that he had purchased an ad for my father's business as a wedding present for my parents, and my parents credited that ad with the success of the company.

About half way through the service, it was time for the homily.  Father George left the altar momentarily and then returned with a small, plain cardboard box, small enough that he could hold it in the palm of his hand.  The homily that followed was like a wedding-themed episode of The Price is Right.  Father George explained that he wanted to give my parents a wedding present and that he had two options for them to choose from.  The first was a full-page newspaper ad for W.R. Morse Clothing Store, which was sure to bring money that could be used to support the family that they planned to build.  The second was the tiny box in his hand.  Father George would not say what was in the box, but he promised my parents that it was a rare and beautiful treasure, one that was hard to come by, one that must be sought out in order to be obtained.

As I watched, I felt strangely emotional.  I turned to my parents in the room.  "You chose the ad?" I asked.

"Yes," said my mother.  "We didn't know what was in the box and didn't want to take chances.  I think we can all agree that we made the right decision."

My father nodded in agreement.  I said nothing.  I sat in silence for the rest of the homily, unable to focus on it.  My thoughts were wandering.  There was something about my parents' choice that bothered me to the core.  Of course I did not know for sure what was in the box, but somehow I could not shake the feeling that, whatever it was, it was meant to be mine.  I wanted it.  I knew that, given the choice, I would have chosen to take the box from Father George, the box that held something rare, something beautiful, something worth fighting for, because I knew of one thing that fit that description, one thing that my parents had rejected twenty years ago, one thing that I hungered for and that I planned to seek out every day for the rest of my life.  And that one thing was joy.

Joy, I thought.  Joy was truly the greatest gift that my parents could have received.  I thought to myself...if they had chosen joy over wealth and material riches, perhaps they would have spent more time with their children.  Perhaps they would have bought us art supplies and toy drums instead of a computer that one Christmas, and we would have grown up to be more creative, independent individuals.  Perhaps then school wouldn't have been so difficult.  Perhaps if I hadn't heard "No" from my parents so many times, I would have had more opportunities to grow.  Perhaps if I saw myself as the joy of my parents' life, I would have had more confidence in myself, and then, perhaps, I might have found joy much sooner.  Perhaps everything would have been different if it weren't for Father George.



Backstory: This is a fictional story with certain parts based on events from my life.  There really was a priest, Father George, who gave a homily at my parents' wedding where he offered them two different gifts from which to choose: an ad for my dad's store or a tiny box with a surprise inside.  (Not a literal box; he asked them to imagine one).  In real life, they chose the box, and it contained JOY.  The lesson of the homily was that you need to choose joy over wealth and trivial things in life, and that there can be no joy unless you actively look for it.  This idea was so important to my parents that they named me Juliana Joy.  My middle name is very important to me because it represents my family's values.  This story is a glance at how my life might have been different if my parents had chosen the other gift, and, in doing so, chosen to live an entirely different kind of life.