Thinking about Thinking

Photographing the camera, I think to myself, there is something here related very closely to that Zen conundrum of the eye that cannot see itself. That which sees is not seen. By a loosely parallel logic, is there any thinker that can truly think about itself? Can I think about my own thinking? A thought about a thought is not the thought thought about but the thinking of another thought entirely.

Looking at that last sentence, it seems trivial. Yet, let me see if I can apply it to something more useful, something of interest to more people than just me. There is being present, and there is thinking about being present. Where am I when I am thinking about being present? Where am I if I am not thinking at all? Why is being present more important than thinking about it? I think that there is no "I" at all, no presentness at all when I am truly present. So, in a sense, I am present only in thinking about being present, but I disappear when I am truly present.

Obviously, it took another camera to photograph this one. Maybe we are only present when others are around to witness. We are trees falling silently unless someone is in our forest to hear us.

New Year's Day

The idea that the new year should be happy is probably anathema to emotionally challenged persons. I suggest a new slogan, perhaps, "Non-irritating New Year!"

The Problem of a Rocking Chair

There was a rocking chair in the empty terminal. There's a story there. Someone brought the chair specially for someone. Someone who needed special calming before flying. Would they have rushed around, fanning themselves with their hand, comedically, rolling their eyes, wringing their hands as the moment for departure neared? "Here," the helpful young woman in the blue vest would say, "try sitting in this. It will help you relax." Hard to imagine someone in such straits actually stopping, thinking about it with that cocked-head thing and saying, "You know, that just might work!"

But the chair was there, and something must have taken place. There might be another story, too. Someone (like me) wanders around the empty terminal, looking at the chair. Looking around to see if there is anyone to ask: "Hey, d'you know why that rocking chair is there?" Looking, but it's really empty, and it doesn't look like anyone knows why a chair would be there, let alone one of the rocking variety. I wanted to sit in it, but I was afraid of drawing attention to myself. Someone would ask, "Why is there a rocking chair in the waiting area?" and I would be forced to admit I didn't know. Nobody likes to be forced into saying they don't know. Then I would have offered my version of an explanation, which would have sounded better in my head, and then I'd be embarrassed. So, that's why I didn't sit in it.

But, I did take a picture of it. I was almost as cautious about taking the picture as I was not to sit in it. By drawing attention to the chair, I was inviting passers-by to question me, and I would still have to make something up, because I would still be just as loathe to admit I didn't know. I could, however, suddenly appear to be pointing my camera elsewhere, in a pinch. If someone asked, "Why is that chair there?" I could simply pretend to have just noticed. "Oh," I would say, "A rocking chair. How odd."

Things Happen

This little guy was probably just sunning himself when he felt a rumble on the pavement. Sure, his instinct to run was good, but...

Our New Catchphrase

This is our new catchphrase. Well, it has been since my wife and I caught every episode of Portlandia that was available on Netflix (and thank you, season three is up.). Bless you Fred and Carrie! Even when you're not funny, you are. I'm not super judgmental. When a skit is bombing, I remember that I have no episodes of anything on TV. Anywhere.

Reading Lichtenwanger

I am reading William Lichtenwanger’s “Henry Cowell, Composer of Music.” The first couple of pages concerns itself with Cowell’s native intelligence. (Apparently, he might have been a botanist if he’d had a solid academic foundation.) The opening epigraph features a Copland quote wherein he states that Cowell “discovered” tone clusters. Preposterous. Every toddler that ever reached up and banged a pudgy fist on a keyboard invented clusters. From what I can tell, however, Cowell did have the courage of his convictions. He wrote New Musical Resources very early (apparently “borrowing” some ideas about metrics) and wrote music accordingly. What I want to know about Cowell is why he is so important to the American music that followed him. (Of course, the answer to that question cannot be confined solely to an investigation of Cowell himself or his music. We must look at the composers to whom Cowell was important.)

Lichtenwanger leads off by reminding us that Cowell was more interested in sound variety than great originality:

[Cowell] would have argued that his desire to ‘live in the whole world of music’ led him to create patterns of sound in which great musical originality was less important than a variety of sounds and interesting results.

This quote appears to be out of sync with the story Cowell tells about himself. When he was young, he practiced hearing music in his head, even multiple lines. He noticed over time that music would appear in his mind not of his own construction, but unbidden. With effort, he found he could force these moments. This does not appear however to support the idea that Cowell was satisfied with “interesting results.” Anyone who labors to invite such inspiration is more than tinkering. Cowell himself voices his disappointment at finally writing down and playing these ideas. “Could it be,” Cowell asks, “that this rather uninteresting collection of sounds was the same as the theme that sounded so glorious in my mind?”

The foregoing is perhaps just quibbling, but Lichtenwanger does do something that is significant to our understanding of Cowell. He uses psychologist Howard Gardner’s “seven frames of mind” to present a picture of Cowell that attempts to treat this unique intelligence in a holistic way, one which sees an individual’s “scientific” tendencies and artistic tendencies as members of a spectrum.

Jazz in Public Places

As a blossoming musicologist specializing in American music, especially jazz, I am particularly sensitive to public performances of jazz. One thing that years of grad seminars have taught me is that the messages in our environment are almost always scripted. As I sit in a popular coffee and pastry establishment drinking coffee and listening to the jazz coming through the speakers above and behind me, I am thinking about the choices being made in the programming.

I notice something consistent: every track is a small group, anything from a trio to a quintet; it is all firmly in the bebop and hard bop mold, but usually toned down tracks; players on these tracks rarely exhibit the rasping tone that pushed jazz into an expression of culture and protest as it did in the 60's. The tempi do not stray far from a comfortable finger snap on the half note. It is the kind of jazz that is not threatening and allows casual listeners to identify "jazz in the background" but draws no more attention to itself than provide a patina of cool.

In my opinion, the appearance of jazz in this context is a kind of postmodernist repurposing of culture. In other words, jazz doesn't signify the meanings invested in the music by its creators; rather, the music provides an atmosphere, one that perhaps conjures romantic beat-inspired fantasies of hanging out in dark dens where jazz was once actually played.

This is further problematized by the realization that the appearance of jazz in coffee shops and bars had more to do with an economy of jazz in which players found themselves providing the soundtrack to the public's Friday night out, the only viable alternative when real concert venues were few and far between. Jazz's early repugnance to "respectable" classes arose from the economic exigency of employment. Early twentieth century bordellos, juke joints and roadhouses paid. Unfortunately, the associated stigma of those modes of employement kept musicians in low paying club scenes for years, more for the purpose of selling cocktails than expressing the artistic inclination of its musicians. And here, today, through recording, they sell not cocktails but coffee and paninis.