Hooray!

L arrives tonight.

We have a dense itinerary, filled with laughter, merriment, resting, food & drink, some social commitments, and general good times.

Forgiveness uphill

What follows is an excerpt from the diary of Robert Fripp from Friday, 13 July, 2001.

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An apology is not enough to neutralise the repercussions of error.

First, there is a mistake.
Secondly, there is the recognition that a mistake has been made.
Thirdly, there is the acknowledgement that a mistake has been made.
Fourthly, we move to address the consequences of that mistake.

The apology is an external & public acknowledgement of error, and the beginning of addressing & redressing its repercussions. In some traditions, this may include confession. And there are degrees of apology. Nixon's apology, following his disgrace, was not properly an apology: it did not admit error, and accordingly did not permit of forgiveness. Forgiving was then placed upon those transgressed against, who had to make all of the effort from themselves: forgiveness uphill, as it were. Not everyone appeared willing to do so.

The "confession of a contrite heart", which places itself at the mercy of those "sinned" against, precedes "penance". What do these words convey, in a post-Christian, post-modernist, materialist world? Perhaps, an intentional undertaking that generates an energy that then becomes available to "repair" the situation? But we are never able, of and from ourselves, to meet all the consequences of our actions. This is where "redemption" is critical: somehow, when we honestly commit ourselves to addressing our errors, something comes in form the "outside" (but more properly, from the deep "inside"). We can't pay all the bill ourselves, so someone else chips in. This is turn allows for "absolution", where one is declared free of the consequences of our error, and then "atonement" - we become one with our community once more. Our error displaced us from that community, and now we are returned to it and accepted by it. Gagging orders, to silence dialogue, and a refusal to accept responsibility for our actions (even when forgiven) places us outside the circle of healing. This is essentially terrible.

So, why a digression into dodgy theology this sunny morning in Mount Juliet?

Firstly, theology has to be made real if it is to have any useful function, as with philosophy. University degrees in both have little to offer unless they are brought within the realm of the living, on the street, perhaps even the backstreet. I am not a theologian, but I do live life close to the street.

Secondly, because I have recently been reading the comments of a person of my professional acquaintance who gave me great offence. To my eyes, it is clear that the event has not registered with them in the same way that it has with me.

The acquaintance made some unfortunate remarks; apologised for making these unfortunate remarks, once they had became aware of my discomfiture; and I accepted their apology. The form of apology was partly qualified, and not itself entirely honest; suggesting to me that my acquaintance was embarrassed in some way, and knowing that their conduct was inappropriate. They seem to have believed that their apology ended the matter, and remain surprised even today that the consequences set in motion by their comments continue, if not in active motion, then to have an ongoing effect.

"I apologised! Clearly Fripp didn't accept my apology because he acts as if the consequences of my mistake continue to resonate!" This is an exaggeration, but is indicative. And the consequences do continue to have resonance.

The acquaintance does not understand that words alone are not enough, although words are considerable: they are actions, after all. "I'm sorry" is only the beginning of repairing a process set off course by error, of returning that process to its dynamic equilibrium and "forward going" motion. Anthropology reports examples of "traditional" communities that go to great lengths to settle & reconcile situations where offence has been given. Where this fails, in some societies the vendetta looks for redress, without much success it seems. So, in accepting the apology presented I gave up my right to seek redress from the "offender". I did not undertake to absorb all the responsibilities & repercussions generated by their actions. That is, I was prepared to do my own work; I was not prepared to take on theirs (in some situations, it would be otherwise).

The offensive comments indicated my acquaintance's way of thinking, feeling, how they saw the world, & how they perceived their place within it. Is this fair comment, to suggest that in our small actions we can decipher a larger agenda? We are surely becoming increasingly sophisticated in "reading" ourselves, and others. Popular works on "body language", and more elaborate processing (such as eye movements in NLP), have been available in the mainstream press for well over 20 years; the Alexander Technique is well known. Our use of language is also informative: we often use language to conceal our meaning, rather than to reveal it. But language conspires to act against our manipulation of it, to indicate our "real" feelings, meaning and intentions.

So, there was an outburst from my acquaintance: something triggered a default programme that, in turn, launched an attack which took verbal form, and "came from nowhere". I continue to have little idea of the outburst's origination; more accurately, what provoked the outburst. The comments were destructive, suggested to me that a point had been missed, that something had not been seen, that came from a particular kind of blindness: this person's Blind Spot. The particular & individual blind spot was an assumption of superiority. In a word, arrogance.

I have seen this individual blind spot "in action", as it were, over a period of time. This person saw themself as being not so much at the centre of their universe, as the centre of their universe, the point around which the universe moved. Long observation suggests to me this Blind Spot emerged partly as a result of supportive family upbringing, partly as the result of their particular (elite) education, partly their individuality & character, partly their success in the world. The effect of these were to confirm their superiority over others. The forms of expression were various: sometimes an astonishing arrogance or breathtaking rudeness; sometimes shared time taken up regardless of the needs of others, as if time also belonged to this person. And this governing feature was not rational. If challenged, this reasonable, decent, honest, likeable & talented person would have denied their superiority, while knowing simultaneously that their natural station have provided them to be set over others lower down the food chain of life.

In the various professional contexts that, from time to time, have put us together I allowed for this tendency, where possible, "turning a weakness to a strength". But after this specific outburst, on one level I recognised that something had changed. And then, eventually, I acknowledged that something had changed. I realised that I was no longer prepared to continue the attempt to "turn a seeming disadvantage to an advantage" when the person remained blind to the feature themself. Part of an adult's education is to know their default programming, and put strategies in place to work with it. This particular blindness generated repercussions which were not mine to accept.

This acquaintance saw my position, in return, as being an overreaction. After all, why read global implications in a small event? An example from another situation, then:

A manager of my long acquaintance, on the telephone to me in 1991, stopped speaking when one of their employees came into their office. This employee had been long entrusted with tasks which furthered the manager's interests at the expense of his artists, not all of which I believe squared easily with the employee's conscience. CK was, I assumed, considered part of the manager's professional family. Then the manager, in low voice & semi-whispering, came back on the line: "C -- is in the office - he's an employee!" The implication was clear: CK, despite years of loyalty, was not actually part of the meaningful world of movers & shakers. The conversation was not simply private - it was above the lower orders. All this in one word - employee - with a hissing emphasis that conveyed a global position.

So, perhaps I see universes in grains of sand. And perhaps the grains of sand are right to comment that I exaggerate their importance.

~~~~~~~

Whichever way I tilt my head the images passing through my mind appear rightside up

I'm here at Vlindinhauer's, with Vlin, Vlin's wife M, and Josh. Josh is next to me reading something about the Kennedys. He's saying things like "Kennedy scum... moonshine makin' motherf...ers". We're currently listening to It Is and It Isn't, Gordon Haskell's first solo record.

The Now Today Society, in the persons of Josh, Vlindinhauer, Mr. O and myself, were at Mr. O's home earlier, playing some music.


Mr. O has a video projection system which was superimposing the film Baraka onto (some of) us as we played. The good times were recorded, audio and video, on both Josh's laptop and mine.

After Mr. O's, Josh, Vlin and I went to Cam's Garden for chinese. This is the second time I've eaten chinese on this trip, and the second time I've received the same fortune as the person before me.

There has been some discussion of infiltration into the Now Today Society by members of the nefarious Then Yesterday Society.

Josh did some techie updates to my laptop and then we drove back to the South Shore.

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A very short play

A: (picks up stones and begins throwing them at B)
B: Please stop.
C: Won't you two ever quit arguing?

Notes for the actors:

* A is devious and will only throw stones when C cannot see.
* B has many irritating personality quirks, none of which are ever addressed by A directly, verbally.
* C is sensitive, but makes up his mind suddenly and permanently.

Driving

I noticed something three years ago while driving on I-75. I've always been a pretty good driver, generally careful, with reliable instincts about what the cars around me are likely to do. And I've watched other drivers for years selfishly take advantage of me and my passengers. Drivers are forever doing shitty things to each other, only thinking of themselves, and without any real clue of how their actions are affecting fellow travelers of the road. But three years ago I noticed that, at least some of the time, other drivers were selfish because I was careful.

So I decided to imitate the outward behavior of the drivers around me and give the impression I was only dimly aware of what was going on, something like the way people drive when they're on a cellphone. Other drivers seemed to wake up when I did that, and become less likely to take advantage and do shitty things. It seemed like there was only a limited amount of carefulness to go around, and when I use more of it there's less for other drivers. And when I use less, even in appearance, then other drivers tend to become more socially integrated and well-behaved.

I found affecting recklessness distasteful at the time, but I continue to do it because it seems to keep me and my passengers safer. I've recently begun integrating this idea into my social life.

Christmas

Christmas Eve was spent with family and the annual Chinese take-out ritual. Then drinks at the Abington Ale House with Vlindinhauer, and Vlindinhauer's wife and mother.

Christmas was nice. As L suggested to me on the phone yesterday, I like my Christmases like I like my air-travel: uneventful.

Christmas night I went with Josh (a.k.a. Tech Support; a.k.a. Map Quest; a.k.a. Fishsticks), to Quincy, the city of my birth, for drinks at an Irish bar, the only place open. There was an extrovert there, aspiring to become a 30-year old yuppie stereotype, lying to himself about his place in the world, being generally loud and yelling at sports on the tv, who got a little snippy with me over my song choice on the jukebox (Let There Be More Light by Pink Floyd in 1968). But he lost a bit of his steam when spoken to directly.

This was followed by several late-night phone conversations with L, who is house-sitting for me while I'm away but can't fall asleep in my bed without me. And apparently my house has lost heat again.

Favorite Christmas gift 2008: a beautiful photo album, compiled and decorated by my wonderniece, bearing thoughtful witness to all the many good times:

~~~~~~~

'Tis the season...

for Snow...


Merriment...


and Treachery...

Overheard while ordering a drink

Male Barista: Where do you work at?
Air Traffic Controller: You're not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition.
MB: Oh, right...
ATC: You're supposed to say "dumbass".
MB: (looks confused)
ATC: You're supposed to say "Where do you work at, dumbass?"

testing, one two... testing

Awake at 04:50 for my second attempt to reach Boston. Here's how I went:

From the Nunnery;
to L's car;
to the aeroport;
to a line so long and slow that I had to ask, when I finally got to the head of it, to be bumped to a later flight because I was now no longer certain of making my scheduled one;
to an aeroport train;
to concourse B (as in bravo) and an iced 2ble espresso;
to a plane where I took my morning sitting amid the heedless parents of screaming infants. As a side note, it is strangely common for me to find myself sitting next to the only unoccupied seat on an otherwise full plane, and so it was this time;
to Logan Aeroport and an iced coffee;
to a shuttle bus;
to my father's car;
to Staples for brief Christmas shopping;
to my parents' house.

Success!

Things that should not be allowed on aeroplanes

1. children under twenty-four years old
2. anything that coughs or sniffles
3. extroverts

The heat is on

The Nunnery:

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The Tabernacle, where I saw Prince, as seen from my office window.

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This one's called John Was the Neediest and Least Loyal of the Beatles.

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All hail Queen Miffy.

Later on, we'll conspire...

Awake this morning at 05:00 to prepare for my 07:30 flight. After an uncharacteristic struggle with the internet I was able to determine two things:

1. my flight was not delayed, at least not yet;
2. my flight was going to be very unpleasant, due to hundreds of miles of storms caused by a large pressure front pushing across the east coast toward the Atlantic.

As you know, I hate space travel, especially when bad weather is involved. So I brushed my teeth and showered and generally continued to prepare to leave for the airport while L called the airline to ask about the possibility of changing the day of my flight. She was on hold for over fifty minutes before finally speaking to one of the humans. The hold music was holiday-themed and I was surprised I never noticed how many holiday songs refer to bad weather. The hold music was on speakerphone as we drove to the airport and we heard:

1. Let It Snow, which contains the lines

The weather outside is frightful.
It doesn't show signs of stopping.
How I'll hate going out in the storm.

2. Baby, It's Cold Outside, which says things like

Look out the window at that storm.
Never such a blizzard before.

3. Winter Wonderland, the remastered edition, containing the oft excised verse about plane crashes and fiery doom.

As we arrived at the airport and pulled up to the terminal, moments before I got out of the car, I remember I was thinking that hold music should let you choose which songs you hear, when the cheery music finally stopped and was replaced by a real live customer service agent who quickly and politely changed my outbound flight from today 'til Tuesday. And he said that since there was a weather advisory there was no fee for the change, which is something I'd never heard before.

~~~~~~~

The world, apparently miffed that I managed to escape what was probably going to be a horrific flight, decided to dole out that same measure of unpleasantness throughout the day, on the installment plan. Among the things the world sent my way to fuck up my shit:

1. people who don't listen;
2. watching our seats get stolen out from under us by two queue-clueless women at my regular Sunday brunch spot;
3. a violent young skinhead yelling about buying a gun and shooting people;
4. my house has no heat.

That's right - my house has no heat, a fact I learned this morning at 05:01. This is the second time in two weeks I've been without heat, and the phone calls I made to address it haven't been returned.

"So what," I hear you say, "you live in Bedlam, where it's warm and sunny all year round." But that's a misconception. It's 38 F outside and it's going to get down to 21 before tonight is over. And while the Nunnery may be famous for many things, weatherproofing is not one of them.

I'm trying to get to Boston for the holidays.

Difficulties are presenting themselves.

Tannis, anyone?

The city is bleh today. Bleh but warm, which is better than nothing. So here's a cozy picture of the Nunnery for you to warm your hands by.


And speaking of the warming of hands, here' s a photo taken over L's shoulder by a fire in the Nunnery's bedroom.

Falling like forgiveness from the sky

Friday L & I went to the Fernbank Science Center, where we sat through the planetarium show and afterward waited in a line outside in the near-freezing cold for our chance to look through their giant telescope at the moon. The moon that night was the closest it's been to Earth since 1993.

As museums go, the FSC is just okay, but they do have the Apollo 6 capsule, which is pretty sweet. Here's an image of the Apollo 6 interstage falling away back in 1968, courtesy of NASA and Wikipedia:


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And Sunday we took a looong drive out to Rome, GA, by way of Adairsville (which I think I'll be okay if I never see again) to purchase a new camera for Sabitathica. A Digital SLR, the Sony alpha 300, with two lenses, a DT 18-70mm and a DT 75-300mm. Good times.

Then how do you explain the dead unicorns?

Science found evidence of carbon dioxide on a planet outside our Solar System. The New York Times has this to say:

"The planet, HD 189733b, is far too large (about the mass of Jupiter) and too hot (1,700 degrees Fahrenheit) for any possibility of life."

Why do scientists get stuck on the idea that life can thrive only in the narrow set of conditions existing on Earth? With preconceptions like that, they could look right at life and not see it. It's poor science to define what you're looking for before you find it.

All the critics love you in New York

There was a storm in the middle of the week, as much of the east coast knows. Seen from my office window over two days, it went something like this...

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Sorrow never goes away

Or in the words of Buddha Gautama, "yes, that's right".

bad dreams...

Two nightmares this week, both of which left me sweating and dreading falling back asleep.

One was about a house I've been dreaming about my whole adult life. It has an uncountable number of rooms, some of which I'm very familiar with, some of which I've seen only rarely. This was the first time I'd seen this particular area, which was evil and somewhat sentient. The other dream I'm not telling.

I knew this guy at Hampshire who talked about how he mapped his dreams. He drew them out on paper every morning when he woke up. He was trying to figure out how to get from one dream-territory to another, and which doors led to which rooms, etc. Then, he said, there came a time when he found the map itself inside his dreams and he was able to navigate by it, but I didn't believe him.

Then how the reindeer loved him

I saw Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer the other night, the stop-motion animation one with the Burl Ives songs. It's pretty disturbing, more so than I'd remembered. Here's what happens the day Rudolph is born:

Donner (Rudolph's father): Wow, my new son is so cool. He looks just like everybody else! Awesome!
[Suddenly and without explanation, Rudolph's nose begins to glow and make a terrible sound.]
Donner: Ahh! My son is broken! Oh no, this is horrible! Santa is going to hate him! What can I do? I have to hide him quick before Santa comes!
Santa: Ho ho ho! Hello Donner! I've come to see your new son! Ho ho ho!
[As if on cue, Rudolph's nose starts glowing again and making the same irritating high-pitched noise as before.]
Santa: Um, Donner? What uh... what's going on here? Your son is... broken. Is this some kind of joke? What's the matter with you people? I swear to god Donner, unless you repair this demented son of yours, I will never let him perform manual labor for me!
[Santa sings a song about how wonderful Christmas is and then leaves.]
Donner: Aw, gee. Santa's right. My new son sucks...

Things go downhill from there.

Thinking was for the gloopy ones.

The music school used to be structured as a doucheocracy. This is less and less and less the case.

This morning I met with a student (and his mother) who were half an hour late because they went to the wrong office. The student is a good guy who's been in school seven years already and is beginning to panic. Over the last two weeks he's come to see he's in some real quicksand. I oriented him and told him he should stay in more regular communication with me for the next year or so.

I had a quiet lunch in a loud bar and didn't finish eating what I'd ordered, which is unusual. That, and then I cleared a girl to graduate.

A friend and burgeoning composer of quality stopped in to talk about the inspiration for & process behind the pieces on a CD he asked me to listen to last week, an overview of the music he's written since he was 17 (in 1986), from piano sonatas to abstract retro electronica .

However, we were interrupted by a biology student one or two semesters from graduation (he couldn't be sure which), newly come to the realization that he doesn't want to become a dentist like his older brother. This is true. He said he didn't want to look at people's teeth all day. He was very passionate about it, almost upset. He wants to change his major to piano performance, which if he does, it means he won't graduate for another four years. In a very real way he'll be starting over. He thought he needed to become a great pianist, but he was really just confused. I told him he should finish out his current degree and come back to get a music degree afterward if he still wanted. I told him it would be good for him to finish something.

And I'm listening to Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.

But how do you know if you're doing it right?

The sign next to the traffic light cracks me up.


It's like, don't do anything...

~~~~~~~

Pink Floyd's Meddle, playing as we speak, would have been a better record had the piano solo at the end of San Tropez been replaced by a second (and extended) slide solo by Gilmour. And Seamus should have been left off the record altogether.

I know why the caged bird processes paperwork

It snowed here for a minute yesterday. Some years that's all the snowing it does, but I think we'll be getting more this time around. I didn't get any pictures of the snow because I somehow managed to misplace L's camera on Thanksgiving. My brain is changing a little in my middle age: it's different now to what it was in my roaring twenties.

Today I began my periodic process of giving good people bad news. And good people good news. And etc. I tell about 100 people per year that they can study at music school and about 75 they can't. Mostly I tell them in writing but sometimes, like today, I tell them in person.

I meet a lot of people who want to somehow engage with music in their professional lives, many of them with great illusions about their place in the world. But that's part of what college is for, no?

I am 11 days from 11 years at the Greatest Music School on God's Green Earth. Huzzah!