For the Total Artistic Experience…

Did I hear Rothko? Did I hear Retrospective? Did I fly to Paris?

Yes, times three.

(There’s magic in off-season fares, and friends with sofa-beds!)

I’m so color-obsessed I actually got out of bed early (ouch!) and made my way to the far edge of Paris to see paintings by Rothko—a master of color, and much else— in person. (I hereby give thanks to the Fondation Louis Vuitton for this splendid opportunity—never before have obscenely-priced handbags seemed so…justifiable!)

I was expecting a huge hit of COLOR; I was expecting to steep my eyeballs in his stacked threesomes of color-blocking; I was expecting genius.

What I got was: all that, PLUS a total artistic experience, a visual delight that developed over time, as if “listening” to visual “music”. The human brain cannot truly see these (or other) masterpieces in a brief glimpse, or even a lingering glance. It requires a good stretch of time to soak it all in, to feel the colors and shapes vibrating and pulsating, forward and back, drawing you into some other dimension. Details become prominent, then recede into the whole.

What I also got was: a “compendium” of great art across the ages. Not an art lesson, but covert references to what justifies mankind’s presence (so often nefarious) on our small "blue marble”: Chinese calligraphy, Turner’s skies, Homer’s seascapes, Rembrandt’s monumentality, Rembrandt’s dark depths, the patina on a Roman terra cotta wall, the rain depicted in Japanese ukiyo-e woodblocks that in turn inspired van Gogh, Mondrian’s grids, Breughel’s hellscapes…

All these, and even more, to my way of thinking, were assimilated by Rothko, as he transformed them—more magic!—into his undeniably original oeuvre.

So why was I so blown away to see Rothko’s work up close and personal? I mean, his paintings and his powerful use of color were already familiar to me…

Because art simply cannot be REPRODUCED, it must be experienced.

Ah, you might say: if only you had a book that was not A4 or A3 size, but as large as Rothko’s paintings—often something like 2 meters by 3 meters—then they would reproduce.

No, they would not.

There are too many details of texture, sheen, opacity, and optics in Rothko’s originals. Simulate, yes, equal…no. The layering of colors, the brushwork, the splotches, the evidence of spontaneity, the sheer physicality of large paintings—all this and much more just do not translate to the printed page.

And guess what? You simply cannot REPRODUCE music, either!

Ah, you might say: if only you had a very, very good stereo! It is as if (I emphasize your “as if”) the performers are there in the room!

No, it is not.

Because each performance is as unique as a painting. It is always a one-off. Your stereo system (and I was extremely lucky to receive a great system recently as a present, and am enjoying it tremendously) will at best “perform” a facsimile of ONE version of said performer playing said work of music. Over and over. This may be an extremely good version, ideal, even, but artists evolve. Artists are flighty. Unpredictable. Spontaneous. (And when they aim for consistency—as in most orchestra jobs, dare I say—some kind of death is often the result). And I will leave the question of “embodiment" for another essay…

Don’t box us in!

(And don’t pay Spotify to stream us, either! I recently learned that the owner of Spotify earned more in 2022 or 2023 than ALL THE MUSICIANS WHOSE PERFORMANCES SPOTIFY DISTRIBUTES PUT TOGETHER. Cogitate upon THAT, as my dear high school physics teacher, Mr. Cooper, RIP, would say).

Please don’t go to concerts hoping for the perfected balance of a CD unless you are willing to hear a stale performance! Don’t go to a concert to count “clams” (wrong notes). They are the price of being alive as an artist.

Go to a live concert to witness a one-off, to be part of the experience, to see musicians “decorating the passage of time”, as my Chinese friend XD explained once.

The pandemic took a bite out of the concert-going public. We need you, we love you. Let us play and be human—I promise it will be worth the trouble! On a good day, you might come upon a total artistic experience.

I promise to go to more galleries, museums, and live concerts, too! And I won’t leave it just for my fanciful Paris life; Lisbon is also chock-full of wonderful art and music.

Deal?

P.S. - Please DO still buy my CD!

"Disponibilidade" & the Art of Turning on a Dime

Lately I’m keeping busy playing several different flutes “each in order, all together” as F.M. Alexander would say. This is a technical challenge, and naturally, one that I alone threw at myself…why stick with one flute when you can juggle FIVE?? The goal is to be able to pick any one of them up and play well straight off the bat. To go from contrabass to piccolo and back without dropping a beat, to turn from one to another “on a dime”.

(Apropos of multiple flutes, I am reminded of Rossini’s little ditty: “What’s worse than a flute? TWO flutes!” Nonetheless he wrote flute duets in every single opera, so I suspect he was just pleased with himself for coming up with a clever joke!)

Anyway, I have been staring down a small collection of flutes: a bansuri (Indian bamboo flute), a contrabass flute (four times the length of a concert flute), a piccolo (half the length), a baroque flute, and finally the  “normal” concert flute.

Aside from their differing lengths, each has peculiarities of construction that requires adaptation—ideally instantaneously. At first, each one gently ask you to adjust, but in short order outright DEMANDS to be approached differently, else the result fall somewhere between questionable and perfectly dreadful!

This delightful little self-imposed challenge has invited me to explore my ability to adapt, which is to say to respond to a stimulus. Which is to say, to work on my Alexandrian technique. And in order to adapt, I must first be AVAILABLE to adapt. I must make the fundamental choice to be WILLING to adapt. In Portuguese the word for this willingness is “disponibilidade”; I put myself “ao dispor”—open to—adapting.

To clarify, the opposite would be to force the playing of every flute to conform to a single standard, to try to shove one flute into the “shoes”, so to speak, of another. Naturally, I have previously attempted this approach, which results in a squeaking piccolo, an overblown contrabass, a wooly-sounding baroque flute (hmmm, this one is particularly familiar…), and so forth. Nope, we cannot use the “ruler" of the concert flute to measure the others.

Instead, I use the principle of play and experimentation, exploring cause and effect like a scientist, removing—to the best of my ability—prejudices and pre-determined expectations.

The more I practice these (and other) flutes in this spirit, “asking them” how they would like to be played, the better the results.

[Deets for flutists: aside from the length of the flute, other variables include the cylindrical or conical construction of the tube, the size of the embouchure and tone holes, the height and shape of the embouchure wall, and the key system or lack thereof. All these affect the resistance, volume, color, and tuning, which affect the blowing, which affects everything…]

Immersed as I currently am in this back-and-forth experimentation, a sort of feedback-loop, it occurs to me that this spirit of disponibilidade applies to other aspecst of music-making as well, and to life in general. Being “available” for adaptation can be tremendously useful.

In any ensemble, it is handy to be able to “turn on a dime”, adjusting appropriately according to whether your part is the “solo” line, or a secondary or tertiary line. None works without the others, and—like bopping back and forth between disparate flutes—this adapting is one of the delights of ensemble playing. We push our part into the “spotlight”, then duck back into the color, or harmony. In Brahms symphonies, as far as I can tell, there is not a single uninteresting note or less-than-gorgeous line anywhere in the 25 or so orchestral parts. Ah, dear Brahms!! (It is perhaps a particular danger of the flute—top line of the score—to assume our part is always a solo!)

In life, too, it’s surely advantageous and pleasurable to similarly adapt to the demands of any situation. I’m the teacher: I run the show. I’m the student: I enjoy following someone else. I go to a lecture and sit quietly. In the break, I turn to the person next to me and a fascinating conversation ensues. We take turns switching from speaker to listener, and back. I speak to one friend with a specific level of energy, openness, and vocabulary, but with another friend—an entirely different person—I speak entirely differently. I mean, IDEALLY, I do this! (Lordy-me, I am soooo far from a master…)

In sum, we humans have the wits to become virtuosos of adaptation and disponibilidade, as long as we are tuned in!

So, metaphorically speaking, while of course we enjoy focussing on concert flute solos, in the long run, figuring out which “flute” a particular situation demands, what part we play in the whole, and adapting ourselves, can be tremendously fulfilling. There is so much richness and plain old fun in the switching around: being now the flighty star, now the hidden warmth of the harmony, now part of the propulsive rhythm section. Go for it: turn on a dime!

Abracadabra!… My Word for 2024!

Once in a while, I succumb to the zeitgeist, that is, the thing that is au courant, you know, IN FASHION! Which, in this case, has nothing to do with “fashion” and everything to do with… WORDS!

It’s the “thing” of choosing a Word-of-the-Year. I’m unabashedly all for it! I can tell you already—one day into the new year—that choosing yourself a WOTY is a lotta fun, very revealing (or perhaps self-revealing), uplifting, and so so SO much more useful than a…COLOR of the year.

(For 2024, Pantone has chosen a forlornly insipid orangey-pinky color [do you remember early-1990’s interiors? Oh, gosh, you do—I’m so sorry!!], as if we are already dead from climate change and existential angst, and our Aunt Agatha’s ghost chose this peachy-nightmare color for the velvet lining of our collective coffin…. What I’m trying to say is: I’m NOT HAVING a color of the year, sorry, Pantone. I want ALL the colors—except, as it happens, the one Pantone chose. Sheesh!).

And I’ll have ALL the words, too. Can’t live without ‘em. But one of them will be my special companion and provocateur for 2024.

Yet it’s not just choosing a word—nope, I’m not telling yet—it’s the PROCESS, as usual: contemplate what you need more of, what might inspire you, what might nudge you (shaming words need not apply!) into being happier, better, more interesting, more kind, less lazy (more lazy?)…or all of these together.

I spent a day or two with several contenders: “restore” - as in, restore energy, restore the apartment (or at least tidy up a bit, sheesh). “Desire” - as in, choose the things I truly desire—to do, to be; cut to the chase. “Tranquility” - as in, wow, I love the idea so much, so…why am I always crazy running around??

And then, like magic, it came to me: a word that—if you look at it the right way—embraces aspects of all the previous contenders. As in, brings about something special, has a special power, celebrates the invisible, intangible, and/or unpredictable effect. That implies small effort for a large return. Something that suggests the power of “doing nothing”, ease, or simplicity.

And just like that, there was…

Magic.

As a musician, what we do is already, effectively, magic: we touch keys, blow or bow, make sounds, and—BAM—something (possibly everything) shifts. Can you explain to me how that works? No? That’s because it is a form of magic.

All the arts are forms of magic. Literature: someone somewhere at some time writes a story or poem, which changes the life of someone else, unknown to them, somewhere else, possibly centuries later. How does THAT work? Dunno. It’s magic.

To compose, paint, sculpt, write a play or an opera…all involve bringing SOMETHING out of nothing, pulling something out of thin air. I call that magic!

But even in our day-to-day, if we choose to see it this way, is there not an incredible amount of magic going on?

I meet on Zoom with friends and strangers from all over the world, and we create a bond. My dog greets another dog-walker on the street, hoping for biscuits, and five minutes later, I have a new friend. I make up a song with my young students’ names, and they delight in trying to keep the cross-rhythms going, amazed to hear their names turn into music. I put my dirty dishes into a box and push a button, soon they are clean again.

My goal for 2024 is not only to make as much creative magic as I can but to see the magic that is all around us. There are days (I’m not a morning person! I’m not a winter person!) when I truly don’t want to get out of bed—but this year, while I’m lounging, I’ll take note of all the magic of the moment: my cup of tea, the New York Times (tho’ I live in Portugal), the soft sheets, the warm covers, a serendipitous idea materializing, unbidden…

No matter how much of a doozy 2024 turns out to be (NYT predicts…), I’ll lean on my Word-of-the-Year to keep my spirits up. To make 2024 Magical.

Off you go, now, to find your own WOTY. Whichever word you choose, may your 2024 be magical, too!

Certifiably Integrated!

A month ago, a project I’ve been deeply invested in for years came to fruition. Along with seven international colleagues in Paris, I became certified in Integrated Practice. We celebrated with a special workshop, a diploma ceremony, speeches, photos, and wrapped it all up with a três-chic…takeout pizza dinner (in Paris! un scandale!). It was all very low-key, but at the same time, meaningful and memorable: our little group of intrepid explorers of creativity, expression, health, and humanity—we have come a long way, baby! (Sorry—you just cannot get Madison Avenue outta my California-Girl head…). Over time, we gradually shifted from clumsy, black-and-white, fixed-thought habits toward processes of far greater flexibility, range, and imagination.

The 14-module curriculum confronted us with the widest possible array of challenges and provocations, as well as opportunities to… semi-publicly play the fool. Each person contributed their unique perspective, talents, obsessions, and clever ripostes. We have explored giving speeches in languages we don’t know, invented poems in iambic pentameter, and sung heretofore-unheard harmonies to delight in their resonance, harmonics, and vibrations. We designed quaternaries; we explored improvisation and repetition; we zoomed in and out, we sang and clapped and snapped our fingers. We explored gradations and latencies; we vocalised from “ah” through “ooh” to “ee”. We let our necks be free, our heads go forward and up.

We gave ourselves permission, again, as adults, to say “I don’t know”(check out this remarkably-aligned essay by Anne Lamott in the Washington Post), and became devotees of “do nothing”. We learned a bit of Italian hand gesturing and Indian Konakol chanting, and we watched an inordinate number of videos of cute (and beautifully-integrated) babies and children.

To the uninitiated, it might seem pointless; my reply would be: give it a try.

No really, I hear you ask, what IS Integrated Practice??

I shall tell you: it is a form of magic that allows anyone with the chutzpah to engage with it to shake off the mundane, the pat, the simplistic, the one-sided, the stiff, the “stuck”, the boring, the grind of modern living (l’ennui de la vie moderne…or, with both hands making a pistol-shape, point them at each other, palms facing in, and say emphatically: "la noia della vita moderna!”…). Capisci?? (You know the gesture for this from The Sopranos, ovviamente…)

But don’t take my word for it… Wait, do take my word, but also take the words offered by my esteemed colleagues—each will have a different explanation, because each of us is an entirely different person, with a different story, a different way of seeing absolutely everything. Now that I’m certifiably integrated, I know that. Or maybe I don’t…

You may think this weakens the case for Integrated Practice, but I think accepting differences is what the world needs a lot (A LOT) more of, right now. We are not all the same. Every person is a unique treasure, a one-off, the only one there will be, ever. How sad then that is seems easier to lump people into groups, push them down, shut them out… or WAGE WAR.

The world perhaps needs fewer knee-jerk reactions, and more “doing nothing” until a better “doing" can be discerned. More zooming in and out, more reaching across linguistic and cultural divisions, more examining of quaternities, for example, this one showing the intersection of love/hate and action/inaction:

I confess to being both delighted in my new certification (it’s been a while since I got a diploma!) and also alarmed and distraught, in the current historical moment, by how desperately Integrated Practice is needed in the world: seemingly for everything everywhere all at once…

In this season of holiday festivity, let’s remember ALL the beautiful babies and children—the one whose birth many celebrate, as well as the ones every single person once was, the ones yet to come, and the unlucky ones lost or left cowering in fear, for unspeakable reasons.