I was sitting on my back porch tonight, enjoying a cool breeze and smoking a cigarette as evening fell. All of a sudden the deepening shadows in my backyard were full of fireflies--bunches and bunches of fireflies. I never see fireflies in California.

A bird just crashed full-speed into the large window I happened to be looking out.

World Cup Predictions

OK, so the Netherlands disappointed and it was a hideous game against Portugal anyway (16 yellows, 4 reds!). Today we'll see about my other wildly unlikely picks: Australia over Italy and Ukraine over Switzerland.

So, the grammar school down the street from my house (St. Margaret's Parochial School), which I attended from kindergarten until fifth grade, just closed. I probably wouldn't care about this one way or the other EXCEPT for the fact that they had to get rid of all the books from their library and wanted to give as many of the books as they could to former student. Never one to pass up a chance to snag free books, I drove down there early the other morning and dragged myself half-awake up four flights of stairs to the very small library, which was hotter than hell (the administration had turned the air-conditioning off days ago). It might seem silly to get excited over a grammar school unloading its books, because the books are bound to all be "children's books". But I love children's books and I found some fabulous ones while I was there--now the bookcases in my room (there are three of them, thank you very much, and a large rubbermaid container on wheels that rolls under my bed and is crammed with less favored books) are more overstuffed than ever. Two of the best discoveries: a vividly illustrated hardcover Canterbury Tales (selected tales only, unfortunately) and the best retelling ever (my sister and I loved our copy of this book to pieces years and years ago and finding it again was like opening a door to my childhood) of St. George and the Dragon (beautifully adapted from Spenser's The Faerie Queen). Children's books rule! And now that I've firmly established myself as a flaming nerd, I'm off.

Those of you who are fond of The Decemberists' The Tain EP might appreciate this website, which offers the complete text of the Tain Bo Cualgne (or, The Cattle Raid of Cooley). Historical/cultural context has a way of making things that much more enjoyable.

I was just talking with a friend

Islamic art gone rad.

Zoomorphic calligraphy.

(I can just hear Akbar-al-Zaid now: "But ossifer, it's not a picture, it's a word!!)

Significantly cooler after sophomore language.

Link of the Day

This is an enjoyable read. (Dissoi Blogoi)

Utterly random but interesting.

The Ask!Yahoo answer to the question, "Who is the highest-ranking woman in the Catholic church?"

World Cup

After that horrendous display of wussiness, here are my picks:

Germany v. Sweden - Germany
Argentina v. mexico - argentina
england v. ecuador - close call but we'll say england
portugal v. netherland - netherland
italy v. australia (1E v. 2F) - i say the aussies
switz. v. ukraine (1G v. 2H) - ukraine
brazil v. usa (1H v. 2) - brazil
spain v. switz. - spain

germany v. argentina - very close, but i say germany because of Klose who is unbelievable
australia v. ukraine - ukraine
england v. netherlands - netherlands
brazil v. spain - i think spain has a serious chance. we'll say brazil to be safe.

germany v. ukraine - germany
netherlands v. brazil - brazil

brazil v. germany - brazil

RE: Modern Art

For Example

Radiohead

A Different Perspective (is very funny)

Something my father and I were talking about yesterday was modern art and its relation to dadaism. They were the practical jokers of art, the absurdists. Modern art now is like some naive fool thought they were serious.

In other words, if John Cage were trying to tell a joke with his 4 minutes of silence, he'd be a comic genius. As it is I think he fancies himself quite profound.

Introducing...

Julie! Graduate of Holy Cross College in Worcester, MA. A student of music, philosophy, and neo-catholic feminism (woo hoo!). Friend.

For NGM

I've always said that Bush is a good man, however much I disagree with him at times.

Impromptu #2

NGM made an interesting point yesterday. He said that, despite the veracity or falsity of common beliefs and intellectual trends, most people most of the time are ignorant and wrong.

This is an interesting hypothesis--it's almost certainly true--primarily because it answers a very common question: why is the modern era so laughably wrong about basic principles (e.g., there is an external reality, there is truth, there is a god, there are essences)?

There is the general tendency among the traditionally educated and pious to think that we live in a particularly ignorant time. But is that quite true? I for one do not think that mankind as a whole has become more or less intelligent, perhaps more or less educated or knowledgeable, but not intelligent. (The agent + potential intellects have always been doing their thing.) What, then, accounts for the general misconceptions and obviously fallacious opinions of the modern world?

The reality of it is this: the majority of people will always attach themselves to an ideology or system of beliefs. In ancient times it was paganism. In the Middle Ages it was Christianity. Now it is what is commonly called science. A non-intellectual in any age wouldn't be able to reasonably defend their beliefs against an intellectual of another age. Democritus would have been able to out argue Barbarossa. Aquinas, Clinton. Russell, Pompey, and so on.

It isn't telling of the enlightenment of the age, then, that the majority of people believe something. For example, one always hears that before Columbus everyone believed the world to be flat. Yeah, if by everyone only the common folk are meant. Today, everyone believes that everything is made of atoms, but so few could defend that position against the very reasonable arguments for continuous matter.

I use "believe" purposely. There is the idea that we "know" so much now. It's a nice idea, but not very realistic. I say without exaggeration that the technology that goes into this computer on which I type is a good 100 years ahead of my knowledge. (I could generate electricity, I think.) In what sense, then, could I say I know that information can be passed along metal wires--or even more mysterious, thin air?

Finally, it seems this holds equally true for past eras. While the commoner 600 years ago "knew" there was an objective and external reality, I don't think he knew it any more than he believed it. He certainly didn't know it any more than a current commoner knows that this desk is made of tiny little particles.

In the end it's the scholar's job to sift through the doctrines of the highly educated: the great books, if you will.

Why I like Beethoven

Talking with my sister today after the concluding concert of the St. Paul's Music Festival, she asked what I thought about a piece for strings by Mozart. I said it was good for what it was, but boring. My other sister scoffed at me; how could I be so unsophisticated as to find Mozart boring?

This is a question that has been posed to me by baffled lovers of music many times. Why don't I give Mozart top place among composers? This is a question I've also never quite satisfactorily answered, or even tried to answer for that matter. I just hoped that people would listen to Beethoven, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Bach, et al. and hear my answer. Here's an impromptu answer, provoked by my conversation.

I think there are two reasons: Mozart composed pieces by the hundreds--probably the thousands. Further, Mozart wrote, for the most part, with a different end in mind than the majority of composers after him. He wrote primarily with the amateur in mind.

First, out of the thousands of compositions in Mozart's hand, many are bound to be less interesting. But, and more importantly, he wrote so prolificly because composition meant something different to him, as it did to pretty much all composers before Beethoven, and almost none after him. For the most part, Mozart composed as an artisan makes an artifact. He would write pieces the night before a concert. He was very similar to an author writing an article for a magazine, trying to beat a deadline. Basically, Mozart did not write music intending to write masterpieces. His end was not to bare his soul, to bare the soul of humanity, to express the divine, the vulgar, the sensational: his music was for some particular entertainment, not for all men of all time. He hated, for example, writing for the organ. He found it dreary, dull, and uninspiring. The pieces for organ, however, are bright and imaginative. His music does not belie his mood or inner-self.

There are, of course, obvious exceptions. The Requiem (which I sang today at the festival), the Great Mass, symphonies 40 and 41, these pieces Mozart did apparently write with universal--or intimately personal--motivations. And certainly many other compositions, whether Mozart intended it or not, turned out to be masterpieces as well, e.g., piano sonata no. 8, or perhaps the violin sonata in G, which he happened to write the night before a concert of sorts.

Second, Mozart had the (good or very good) amateur in mind. (For example, taking part in the concert today, it was only my second time looking through the Requiem. There's no way I could do that for the Durufle.) An amateur in Mozart's day could play pretty much all of Mozart's compositions. Music then was probably more like throwing on some music at a party. It was more a social event than an artistic one. (Of course there are many exceptions, Mozart did after all give concerts, but we're discussing trends and generalities.) If you've seen the movie Amadeus (Ian Watson is responsible for all the solo harpsichord and piano parts in the soundtrack.) the scenes at the opera are not much of an exaggeration.

Beethoven changed this all. First, his output is relatively limited. Why did one of the greatest of all composers write only 9 symphonies when Mozart wrote over 40? Beethoven certainly wasn't scared of the medium, nor did he dislike it. Rather, the majority of these works were meant to be masterpieces. Beethoven intended to write something great. He was conscious of his greatness and position in history. For example, the beginning of his first symphony is already strikingly original. He begins on a C dominant before establishing the key of C. (C dom is the 5th of F.)

His symphonies are also much also much longer. They were also intended for concerts much like a concert at a modern symphony hall, rife with music critics and aficionados. Lastly, his music is not for the amateur. An amateur group could decently sight-read a Mozart string quartet. Ask the same group to take a look at the C sharp minor string quartet or the Grosse Fugue by Beethoven. They haven't a chance to play it well.

This attitude determined the compositional culture thereafter. Brahms, for example, once said (I'm paraphrasing) that he could not compose a symphony after Beethoven. But why? Mozart had no problem churning out 40+. Why did Brahms balk at one? It's not that he was uninterested. Many drafts for a symphony were kicking around, many were even turned into cello sonatas, piano concertos, etc. Brahms was scared his symphonic composition wouldn't match up to Beethoven's, that profundity would escape him. He, too, was concerned with writing something great, something historic. One can easily see that such was the approach taken by almost all composers after Beethoven.

All of these are signs of the underlying point: the majority of Mozart were not intended to be eternal compositions, but that is precisely what Beethoven intended. While he and the rest after him wrote for all men of all time, Mozart, on the other hand, was content to write something to entertain a rambunctious crowd for an evening. A considerable amount of his music could be considered background music. Only a fool would put the 7th symphony on as background music.

For this reason, much of Mozart's music is, frankly, boring. It's not that he hadn't the ability, nor the depth of soul (the works mentioned above attest to his magnificent talent), but he did not have the intention. Music after Beethoven was full of ideological, fantastic, and eternal motifs (mo'teef!). Profundity was a key goal. Historical greatness, too. The result? More interesting, more developed, and more (on average) beautiful and moving pieces.

Perhaps Mozart's harmonics are perfect. But harmonics are not in themselves the beauty of music.

Pitchfork

Good Article

Thanks to my buddy Will.

Boston/Los Angeles

Question No. 6. What's the major difference between writing my column in Boston and writing my column in Los Angeles?

Put it this way: If I still lived in Boston, I would be typing this right now at the Charlestown Dunkin' Donuts, as two 250-pound cops threw down powdered donuts and complained about the Red Sox bullpen and kept ignoring calls to help out at a possible armed robbery at the Sovereign Bank. Instead, I'm at a Peet's in Hollywood, surrounded by wannabe actors and actresses and people wearing bicycling outfits in public, and the dude wearing the lime-green polo at the table next to me just answered a cell phone that had Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel" as its ring tone. I feel like you need to know these things.

from Bill Simmons

real play list

01. Intro
02. Climbing Up The Walls
03. Bangers 'n' Mash (new)
04. 15 Step (new)
05. Morning Bell
06. Kid A
07. Fake Plastic Trees
08. Videotape (new)
09. Bodysnatchers (new)
10. Where I End And You Begin
11. Knives Out
12. There There
13. Nude (new)
14. Just
15. Spooks (new)
16. Idioteque
17. House of Cards (new)
18. Planet Telex

encore 1...
19. Like Spinning Plates
20. Arpeggi (new)
21. No Surprises
22. Everything In Its Right Place

encore 2...
23. The Tourist

Why I Don't Like Other People

Despite the negative title, I think this will be a mostly positive post. On to it, then!

I assume Ticketmaster sells on a "first come, first serve" basis. I also purchased my ticket about thirty seconds after 7:00 AM (west coast time), when tickets to Radiohead went on sale. I found myself in the second to last row.

Being in the second to last row at the Bank of America Pavilion is not all that bad: It's a venue seating only 5,000, so I was not too far away from the band, objectively speaking. My fellow fans, however, did not help to make the show more intimate. I was surrounded by people who appeared only to be enthused when Radiohead stopped playing. At the end of every song they seemed to come alive. The loudest applause was at the end of the show--naturally enough--but here it sounded more like the crowd realized that they had just seen Radiohead live, not realizing it while they were actually seeing Radiohead live. During the show, at least in my section, there was little dancing, little spontaneous cheering or yelling, little sing-a-long, little much of anything...besides pot smoking. It basically felt like all the people in front were having all the fun. The crowd was generally unimpressed by the new stuff. Johnny was trying to get everyone to clap on 15 Step, but everyone was clueless.

The band stuck mainly to Kid-A and new stuff. There was a good mix of their other stuf, although I personally wish they played more from Hail to the Thief. Playlist from memory (something like the order):

Climbing up the Walls
Knives Out
15 Step
Fake Plastic Trees
Bodysnatchers
Morning Bell
Where I End and You Begin
Kid-A
No Surprises
There There
Nude
Just
Idioteque
Arpeggi
Planet Telex
Everything In Its Right Place

Encore - Like Spinning Plates (some other stuff, probably included in the above list)

Encore 2 - The Tourist

(They might have played more new stuff but I can't remember or am unfamiliar with the songs.)

As I said, everything was crisply and energetically played, with minor exceptions. They did a remix of Idioteque that had Thom Yorke fooled, I think. It sounded like he just couldn't quite get together with the rhythm. Also, No Surprises was not quite in tune.

The big surprises of the night were awesome: they opened with a thumping Climbing up the Walls, which set the tone for the whole show--bass and rhythm driving the show. Perhaps the song was doubly good because I was so psyched about seeing them live for the first time.

Another surprise was Where I End and You Begin. I like this song a lot (Hail to the Thief is my favorite album all-time.) but I was surprised by how good it sounded live. One might not believe that the sounds on Hail to the Thief are made my people with instruments, but the live renditions are in no way reduced versions of the album. (Speaking of which, I would love to see them do Hail to the Thief live, straight through...or any album ('cept the Bends or Pablo Honey) for that.)

Like Spinning Plates was also very good. A spinning polka-dot orange spotlight illuminated thom sitting at an upright for this tune.

Arpeggi was awesome. It might be the highlight of the new album.

Songs from The Bends are much better live than they are on a stereo. Planet Telex and Just rocked out. You could tell the band really enjoyed playing some good old rock and roll.

Everything in its Right Place was also very good. The crowd really got into this one.

The highlight of the night, the climax of the whole show, was without a doubt There There. The song was perfect. From its hidden beginning to when the crowd realized what was going on, to the high point of the song when the lights, the band, the crowd all went wild, everything was awesome.

All said, it was the best rock concert I've been to.

First Impressions

Venue: The south shore of Boston, the sun setting behind the city skyline, under the white canopy with the ocean ahead, planes landing in the peripheral right: Bank of America Pavillion

Set: Angled hanging screens with freaky paparazzi camera effects

Highlights: Just, Morning Bell, Idioteque, Arpeggi, Like Spinning Plates, The Thom Yorke Dance, Kid-A

Most Awesome: There There

Surprisingly Good: Planet Telex, Where I end and You Begin

More to come

Is that really our best foot?

Last night I went to my first Red Sox v Yankees game. In New York City. And we had bleacher seats. Needless to say, my brother and I were the minority in our Red Sox wear. And considering the lamentable state of the Yankee/Red Sox rivalry (is it even about baseball anymore?), it goes without saying that any and all Red Sox were booed when in any conspicuous place and due to no provocation except their presence.

You would think that Red Sox fans, though proud of their team and hometown, would refrain from putting themselves in a dangerous open place. (And yes, it was dangerous. I think three fistfights broke out over the course of the game in our bleacher section alone, and many, many more insults were hurled in all directions.) Then the Yankees would've had no food for, er, fight...? But lucky for them there is such a thing as silly college girls who think it is fun to be jeered (and leered) at by a bunch of Yankee sots. So these two girls walked repeatedly down the very many steps of the bleachers, probably to "go to the bathroom" or "get some diet coke", only to be booed, have peanuts thrown at them, and incredibly vulgar chants directed at them when they returned to their seats. But the attention seemed to be worth it, because they repeated this process numerous times, each time responding only with giggles.

I guess it might not have have been such a big deal if the rest of the Red Sox fans hadn't been clinging to their dignity which was being shredded in the 10-runs-ahead domination of the Yankees.

And by the way, I would never, never take my children to a baseball game and sit in the bleacher seats. Never.

Radiohead tonight at the Bank of America Pavillion in Boston

"Ian Watson is an English musician of exceptional artistry, and a prominent figure at the highest levels of the international music scene....He played an important role in the British Baroque revival which brought renowned orchestras and choirs into prominence, such as the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, English Chamber Orchestra, English Baroque Soloists, Monteverdi Choir, and The Sixteen--all with whom Ian has performed as soloist and/or director.

From the director's chair at the harpsichord, Ian gravitated to the conductor's podium, where he has given many high profile performances in a wide range of repertoire, notably conducting Bach's B minor Mass at the Rheingau Festival with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Orchestra and Chorus; the premiere concerts at the refurbished Chatelet Theater in Paris, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra; Monteverdi's Vespers in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen at St. James's Palace, with the City of London Sinfonia; and the first London performance in fifty years of Handel's Deborah with Collegium Musicum of London."

I've had the great honor of singing for Ian the last few years. Next week we will be singing Mozart's Requiem at the St. Paul's Music Festival in Worcester, MA.

Three More Days

Radiohead live

Speaking of Bach, I often forget, but frequently wonder that at least one of his children was a masterful composer too! How did that happen?

"We stopped at an old music shop near the harbor. I began browsing through a bundle of musical scores. Suddenly I came upon a sheaf of pages, crumbled and discolored with age. The were unaccompanied suites by J.S. Bach--for the cello only. I looked at them with wonder: Six Suites for Violincello Solo. What magic and mystery, I thought, were hidden in those words. I have never heard of the existence of the suites; nobody--not even my teachers--had ever mentioned them to me. I hurried home, clutching the suites as if they were crown jewels, and once in my room I pored over them. I read and reread them. I was thirteen at the time, but for the following eighty years the wonder of my discovery has continued to haunt me. Those suites opened up a whole new world...I studied and worked at them every day for the next twelve years. Yes, twelve years would elapse and I would be twenty-five before I had the courage to play one of the suites at a public concert. Up until then, no violinist or cellist had ever played one of the Bach suites in its entirety (in concert). They had been considered academic works, mechanical, without warmth. Imagine that! They are the very essence of Bach, and Bach is the essence of music."

Pablo Casals

Look, guys!

Geoffrey Chaucer has a blog, and I think that right now he's trying to make Chuck Norris jokes about King Richard, (which doesn't work very well) but, uh, the rest of it's funny. (Hee.)

"I don't see any potential party, or potential candidate, on the scene right now who can harness the disaffection of growing portions of the electorate. But a new group or entity that could define the problem correctly--that sees the big divide not as something between the parties but between America's ruling elite and its people--would be making long strides in putting third party ideas in play in America again."

I like Peggy Noonan.