So this is the end of a man.
A rectangle, ribbons, a concrete slab
dangling from cables and hooks
and the hunched up, bunched up, shivering crowd,
uncertain when to leave.
Everything that could be said has been said:
He was good.
He worked hard.
He never bothered anyone.
Only Christians go to Heaven.
Via con Dios, mi hermano.
I only cried once
and not for him.
To be honest, he looked fine to me.
But my friend, his son,
his face did me in.
the face of a guy who,
smiling for the camera,
has just walked backwards off of a cliff.
and then,
you know,
the sound of the wind
and the long, long wait
for the thing to hit the bottom.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
On Lessons and Classes
Recently I started taking guitar lessons, a drawing class, and (sometimes) a yoga class. For Christmas, I bought D woodworking lessons in Connecticut. We went there and she made a beautiful and subtly crafted walnut jewelry box.
I've been thinking about lessons. When I was younger, maybe as recently as seven or eight years ago, I had this ill-informed notion that taking lessons was a sign of weakness. The cluster of concepts was vast and sprawling and included such utterly stupid ideas as: "Anybody who ever did anything truly interesting never took lessons" and "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."
I have taken guitar lessons a couple of times in my life before now. Once with a great guy called Larry Bader, who taught from an apartment on St. Marks Place in the East Village. He had played backup and studio sessions with, seemingly, EVERYBODY, including (for some reason this is the only one I can remember) Mavis Staples. He had me listening to and learning Freddy King solos, which I was only sort of interested in at the time. More importantly, my very sketchy knowledge of music and what I wanted out of guitar lessons, coupled with my aforementioned weirdness about lessons in general, made learning anything at all from him very difficult. At some point, I think, I just stopped showing up.
In Santa Fe, I was studying with a guy named Tom who taught fingerstyle blues and folk. That was cool. Those lessons changed the way I play guitar. Still, in my shame at ever having been lame enough to have taken lessons in the first place, I think I just disappeared on him, too, at some point.
See, I used to think that lessons must be bad for you because they felt good. Because you felt like you were learning something. Does that make sense? No? It doesn't make a bit of sense to me, either.
Onto the good stuff: I now know that (if the teacher is good and good for you, and it's a subject you're into) Lessons are AWESOME! I also know that it is pure idiocy to think that you cannot learn anything meaningful with another person's help. A good teacher (and there are many of them out there, in many different disciplines) can be absolutely essential, even, probably, if you are a prodigy/wunderkind/complete genius, which I am not:)
FACT: After a wonderful yoga class on Sunday, I felt utterly relaxed, clear and focused for the whole day. The next morning I was a raving lunatic again, but, man, those eight hours were nice...:)
FACT: My guitar playing is getting much more subtle and beautiful under the tutelage of Mr. Jack Baker of the "Fretted Instruments School of Folk Music" (www.frettedinstrumentsnyc.com). He's teaching me old Mississippi John Hurt tunes and other level-appropriate fingerstyle folk/blues songs. The "curriculum" is organized intelligently, so that each new piece steps up the difficulty in a particular way--teaching me new chords, forcing me to make faster hand-position shifts. In short, I'm learning.
Now the skeptics among you might aver that I could have taught myself this same material with old records or sheet music. I mean, isn't that what the greats did? Listen over and over to old records and figure them out? Isn't that the REAL way to learn?
Maybe so. All I know is that I wasn't doing that, couldn't bring myself to do that in any consistent way, and I AM doing this, consistently and with joy. As a matter of fact, I would be much obliged if someone could point out to me the motherfucker who poisoned me with these ideas a couple of decades ago, so that I could a) throttle him , b) ask him what in God's name he could possibly have been thinking or c) both, simultaneously.
Am I the only one out here who grew up thinking like this? Literally not believing in the concept of Learning? Believing that unless you cut a tree down and whittled a guitar out of it, you were not a musician? That unless your dreams were tormented by whirling vortices of words, you were not a writer? Where do these ideas come from?
Art is special. By "Art," I mean writing, music, visual art, theatre, even original thought as expressed in, for example, a shimmeringly brilliant blog post. You must "feel" it, "know" it, if you want to be more than a technician. But a good teacher can guide you in both ways--pushing you technically and helping you to stay connected to that intangible thing that makes it worth doing in the first place.
You can't "teach" art, where "teach" means to give somebody something whole cloth, from the outside in. In this sense, you can't teach much, except for maybe flipping hamburgers (although I'm sure there's a Zen to that, too, if you look for it...). But you absolutely definitely undeniably CAN encourage its development. That's what a great teacher (who also happens to be a right teacher for YOU), can do. She or he can encourage that small, quiet voice that wants to speak out loudly and confidently but is afraid of being laughed at or is just unsure of how, where, and when to go about it.
And may all those who teach people otherwise be devoured by an army of scorpions.
I've been thinking about lessons. When I was younger, maybe as recently as seven or eight years ago, I had this ill-informed notion that taking lessons was a sign of weakness. The cluster of concepts was vast and sprawling and included such utterly stupid ideas as: "Anybody who ever did anything truly interesting never took lessons" and "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."
I have taken guitar lessons a couple of times in my life before now. Once with a great guy called Larry Bader, who taught from an apartment on St. Marks Place in the East Village. He had played backup and studio sessions with, seemingly, EVERYBODY, including (for some reason this is the only one I can remember) Mavis Staples. He had me listening to and learning Freddy King solos, which I was only sort of interested in at the time. More importantly, my very sketchy knowledge of music and what I wanted out of guitar lessons, coupled with my aforementioned weirdness about lessons in general, made learning anything at all from him very difficult. At some point, I think, I just stopped showing up.
In Santa Fe, I was studying with a guy named Tom who taught fingerstyle blues and folk. That was cool. Those lessons changed the way I play guitar. Still, in my shame at ever having been lame enough to have taken lessons in the first place, I think I just disappeared on him, too, at some point.
See, I used to think that lessons must be bad for you because they felt good. Because you felt like you were learning something. Does that make sense? No? It doesn't make a bit of sense to me, either.
Onto the good stuff: I now know that (if the teacher is good and good for you, and it's a subject you're into) Lessons are AWESOME! I also know that it is pure idiocy to think that you cannot learn anything meaningful with another person's help. A good teacher (and there are many of them out there, in many different disciplines) can be absolutely essential, even, probably, if you are a prodigy/wunderkind/complete genius, which I am not:)
FACT: After a wonderful yoga class on Sunday, I felt utterly relaxed, clear and focused for the whole day. The next morning I was a raving lunatic again, but, man, those eight hours were nice...:)
FACT: My guitar playing is getting much more subtle and beautiful under the tutelage of Mr. Jack Baker of the "Fretted Instruments School of Folk Music" (www.frettedinstrumentsnyc.com). He's teaching me old Mississippi John Hurt tunes and other level-appropriate fingerstyle folk/blues songs. The "curriculum" is organized intelligently, so that each new piece steps up the difficulty in a particular way--teaching me new chords, forcing me to make faster hand-position shifts. In short, I'm learning.
Now the skeptics among you might aver that I could have taught myself this same material with old records or sheet music. I mean, isn't that what the greats did? Listen over and over to old records and figure them out? Isn't that the REAL way to learn?
Maybe so. All I know is that I wasn't doing that, couldn't bring myself to do that in any consistent way, and I AM doing this, consistently and with joy. As a matter of fact, I would be much obliged if someone could point out to me the motherfucker who poisoned me with these ideas a couple of decades ago, so that I could a) throttle him , b) ask him what in God's name he could possibly have been thinking or c) both, simultaneously.
Am I the only one out here who grew up thinking like this? Literally not believing in the concept of Learning? Believing that unless you cut a tree down and whittled a guitar out of it, you were not a musician? That unless your dreams were tormented by whirling vortices of words, you were not a writer? Where do these ideas come from?
Art is special. By "Art," I mean writing, music, visual art, theatre, even original thought as expressed in, for example, a shimmeringly brilliant blog post. You must "feel" it, "know" it, if you want to be more than a technician. But a good teacher can guide you in both ways--pushing you technically and helping you to stay connected to that intangible thing that makes it worth doing in the first place.
You can't "teach" art, where "teach" means to give somebody something whole cloth, from the outside in. In this sense, you can't teach much, except for maybe flipping hamburgers (although I'm sure there's a Zen to that, too, if you look for it...). But you absolutely definitely undeniably CAN encourage its development. That's what a great teacher (who also happens to be a right teacher for YOU), can do. She or he can encourage that small, quiet voice that wants to speak out loudly and confidently but is afraid of being laughed at or is just unsure of how, where, and when to go about it.
And may all those who teach people otherwise be devoured by an army of scorpions.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Mos Def show at BAM = Totally Beautiful in Every Way
Last Friday, the 16th, D and I went to see Mos Def at BAM, kicking off the Brooklyn Next festival. Marty Markowitz introduced the Mighty Mos, and kind of rapped, actually. I know next to nothing about MM--for all I know, he might worse than Marion Barry, but I couldn't help liking the guy as he (awkwardly but enthusiastically) spit lyrics from the Black Star album.
Mos' stage presence was great--kind of sly and shy and at the same time quite powerful--like a huge fire contained in an underground furnace. At times he would just flare up and ignite the whole space, then kind of sidestep and burst forth unexpectedly somewhere else.
The band was incredible. I counted 14 or 15 musicians. The pianist, Robert Glasper, started the show with a solo that was effortless and utterly beautiful--as if wind and water and sunlight had suddenly decided to get organized and say something.
Mos seems to have organized this sprawling, collaborative mess onstage as a kind of sandbox/mudpit to inhabit and play in, and play he did--shapeshifting from crooner to mighty rapper to just another instrument among many--always sharing the spotlight, always trying to stay inside the thing itself, rather than selling the idea of the thing. It felt good. I was chuckling to myself like a lunatic the whole time.
Strangely, I was kind of alone in this. Maybe 20% of the audience was smiling, nodding to the beat, or otherwise showing signs of life/enjoyment. Part of the problem was the space--the BAM Opera House is kind of stiff and formal. The seating arrangement discourages movement. More than once I was moved to dance, and was reduced instead to a kind of davening--rocking back and forth and drumming in the air.
I haven't read any reviews of the show, but I imagine that many people there found it confusing--too sprawling or abstract to relate to.
Not me, though, and not D. We loved it. Mos has wit, power, courage, and so much respect for music itself that he refuses to accept even the hype he deserves--refuses even to stay in one place long enough to remain recognizable.
Mos' stage presence was great--kind of sly and shy and at the same time quite powerful--like a huge fire contained in an underground furnace. At times he would just flare up and ignite the whole space, then kind of sidestep and burst forth unexpectedly somewhere else.
The band was incredible. I counted 14 or 15 musicians. The pianist, Robert Glasper, started the show with a solo that was effortless and utterly beautiful--as if wind and water and sunlight had suddenly decided to get organized and say something.
Mos seems to have organized this sprawling, collaborative mess onstage as a kind of sandbox/mudpit to inhabit and play in, and play he did--shapeshifting from crooner to mighty rapper to just another instrument among many--always sharing the spotlight, always trying to stay inside the thing itself, rather than selling the idea of the thing. It felt good. I was chuckling to myself like a lunatic the whole time.
Strangely, I was kind of alone in this. Maybe 20% of the audience was smiling, nodding to the beat, or otherwise showing signs of life/enjoyment. Part of the problem was the space--the BAM Opera House is kind of stiff and formal. The seating arrangement discourages movement. More than once I was moved to dance, and was reduced instead to a kind of davening--rocking back and forth and drumming in the air.
I haven't read any reviews of the show, but I imagine that many people there found it confusing--too sprawling or abstract to relate to.
Not me, though, and not D. We loved it. Mos has wit, power, courage, and so much respect for music itself that he refuses to accept even the hype he deserves--refuses even to stay in one place long enough to remain recognizable.
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