Define "self-indulgent"

I heard a really invigorating concert at Davies Hall Friday night. Esa-Pekka Salonen was the San Francisco Symphony's guest conductor that night, and the whole program was high-energy. They played A Night on Bald Mountain, the Mussorgsky chestnut I remember improvising to as a kid in ballet class; a piece that the conductor himself composed, called Insomnia; Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat (with Yefim Bronfman playing the solo); and Bartok's Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin. Not even the guy sitting next to me, who clearly didn't want to be there and kept looking at his watch, could have fallen asleep during that gig.

I'm kind of cynical by nature about certain things and I wondered, when I saw the piece Insomnia on the program, whether it would be substantive or just self-indulgent. When the time came, I actually really liked it. Parts of it were really good sonic reproductions of late-night motorhead. Other parts of it were very loud and aggressive and not what I'd automatically think of when I would look back on my own late-night experiences, but I guess they were evocative of severe inner torment. Self-indulgent, though, it was not.

That made me wonder what exactly constitutes self-indulgence. I have discarded or rewritten a lot of lyrics over the years in an effort NOT to be self-indulgent. The standard I've worked with is, if it's likely nobody else but you knows what you're talking about, you'd better rewrite it. I know a lot of lyricists don't bother to do this but I feel it's important. One reason is, if you reveal too many specifics about what's informing your work, the listener may (a) find nothing in it to relate to, or (b) be embarrassed by your revelation, because s/he doesn't know you, and why should you be so familiar with your communication?

I have a very strong feeling that not all journal entries should be set to music. (Especially not this one.;) ) Yet, what the Muse offers you in times of your greatest torment or greatest joy may be the most original, or the most universal, statement you have to offer. On Diogenes I let my tunes be informed by very specific trauma, but I edited the lyrics so that they would be more obscure, less embarrassing, etc. (If you find them over-specific and/or embarrassing now, imagine how bad it was before I edited them!!!) For my lyrics to sound like something written by Staind, would be really wrong, I think.

Chrissie Hynde once said, "Ray Douglas Davies is the only songwriter who can write confessional lyrics without being embarrassing." I think "embarrassing" what I'm offering up as the definition of "self-indulgent". So does that mean "my heart on my sleeve" is also a synonym for "self-indulgent"? I think what I'm trying to say is, the music is more important than the self. I am trying to share my music, rather than just share my Self. It would be inappropriate to share my Self with many, many people I don't know.

Joel Krutt, DJ & now, musician

Joel Krutt is a longtime DJ at college radio station WHUS in Storrs, CT. He was one of the first to play my music on the air on his show, "Pushing the Envelope", back when all I had to give him was a demo cassette, and he still plays my tunes to this day. Now all his years of playing music has inevitably led him to make some of his own. His CD, What Next? arrived in the mail recently and it features lots of found sounds presented in classic ambient style. I was awfully flattered to find myself in the "special thanks" section of the liner notes. That is so cool. :) Thanks Joel!

In other news I'm busy with the beginning stages of arranging my song "Road Spiders" for the Punk Rock Orchestra. I've transcribed the Stewart Copeland-inspired drum track for real percussionists, and I'm making the bass line, which I improvised on a bass keyboard in 1995, into parts for contrabass, cello, and low winds. I'm really excited about this project. I can't wait to hear what the full orchestral assault will sound like.

Will Grant and I are busy trying to nail down a time to record that flute part for his piece Dreams in Berkeley. I haven't had much of a chance to work on the About.com piece yet (apologies to Margery), but I will get to it soon. I haven't forgotten.

Long live Other Minds!

Thursday night was opening night of OM 10, the 10th annual Other Minds music festival. I signed up to volunteer at the reception, which meant I got to open countless champagne, sparkling cider, and Pellegrino bottles. It was literally a case of "pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain", since that's where the ice buckets with all the bottles were, behind the bartenders. :) Despite this I still got to say hello to Mary Chun, Lisa Petrie, Amy X. Neuburg, Herb Heinz, Pamela Z, Ellen Fullman, and Nicole Paiement.

The Thursday night concert was preceded by a symposium featuring composers and performers from the concert. I sat with Ellen and Celeste's dad, Ed. Then came the concert itself. I had come particularly to hear Hanna Kulenty's Flute Concerto No. 1 performed by Anne La Berge and the Parallele Ensemble conducted by my former prof Nicole Paiement.

Anne La Berge played the quarter-tone flute and alto flute. The ensemble backing her up was all winds except for piano, marimba, and electric bass. Most of the winds were brasses, too, which made for an unusual sound. Sometimes they played muted, and sometimes not. The flute solo was amplified and treated with reverb. It was interesting to hear the solo with reverb with everyone else dry.

The piece had a lot of sequences in it. My favorite part was the cadenza, which was slow, haunting, and expressive on the alto flute.

In other news, it looks like I will get to record the flute part I wrote for Will Grant's piece, plus write an article for the About.com poetry site, and start working with the Punk Rock Orchestra as a composer-partner!

Proud to be a San Franciscan

It goes way beyond proud -- I'm deeply thrilled and honored to be a San Franciscan. It is amazing witnessing the next chapter of the civil rights movement.

I'm proud to be able to say that I know Gillian Smith, who hurried down to City Hall with her beloved Sarah, to become the second couple to be married there. I'm proud of Gavin Newsom, who I thought was a milktoast centrist Democrat all this time.
I shake my head at those doofus Democrats who are wringing their hands. Don't they recognize history when it's being made? Don't they know we will look back on this heroic moment in time someday and realize that this is how it began? In the future, when all my friends have the same rights that I do, I will be able to say that I was there and I saw all those people standing out in the rain in tuxedos and dresses two by two in a long line waiting to be married.

I got married once upon a time, and it was something I could just go over to the courthouse and do, get a marriage license. I happened to be born a certain way that made it all right. If we are really all created equal in this country, anybody should be able to do that. The mysteries of life and love are the same no matter who it is steals your heart and inflames your passion.

I did not ask to be born such an enthusiastic heterosexual, but it has certainly provided me with a lot of song material the past few years.

Shaky hands

My doctor ordered me off caffeine in September of 2002. This was a very tough transition marked by splitting headaches, low energy, and all the things you'd expect. Overall it has been a great help though. It's great that in the 21st century in the San Francisco Bay Area, a switch to decaf doesn't mean a taste sacrifice!

Nearly a year and a half later, my body responds very differently when I do consume caffeine. I have to be very circumspect about it on those rare occasions. I forgot about that this morning and added about a third of a cup of regular coffee to my decaf at the cafe I habitually go to on Sunday mornings, and now my hands won't stop shaking! It's really dramatic. On mornings when I don't get enough sleep, I'm tempted to add a little regular coffee to the decaf and along with the alertness, I often get anxiety and other side effects.

Celeste commented a little while ago, in a voice tinged with suspicion, that I was "so clean-living". I assured her it was only because the doctor read me the riot act, and that I used to be as wired as everybody else.

Last night the Lads and I met for rehearsal at Jim's place on the Stanford campus. Jim offered me a bottle of water, and when I opened it I found it was carbonated. I have never been able to drink carbonated beverages, because they always hurt my throat. I have tried them from time to time throughout my life and it's always been that way. Jim didn't know this of course because it's never come up.

When Grant arrived I offered him the bottle of water. He was surprised to hear of my beverage deficiency. I told him it was very sad and it isolated me from my peers. He said I could form a support group for non-carbos, but that I would probably get a bunch of Atkins diet folks.

Returning to SFSU

Will Grant and I played music at a silent art auction last night, which was a benefit for the SFSU Marin Headlands MFA program. The event took place in the Fine Arts Gallery in the new Fine Arts building. When I was attending SFSU (longer ago than I care to reveal), that building hadn't been built yet. It was actually my first time inside it. It is very dramatic how new the new buildings look, and how old the old buildings still look, on that campus. I found I still knew my way around the campus pretty well, despite the huge new buildings taking up what used to be open space.

Will and I dealt with technical limitations and the way the space changed when people came in and filled it up. I had written a flute part to go with his electronics and voice piece, Dreams, which has a text by Rose Lobel. He had sent me an mp3 of the electronic background, and knowing there was also a lead vocal part, I wrote myself something that was still in the background but which complented the electronics. This wasn't hard to do. Will's electronic music was really nice and had dramatic movement to it and it was easy to see where the flute would fit.

We'd both been led to believe there was an input on the soundboard for my mic, so I wrote multiphonics and whisper tones, which are really soft and need to be amplified. It turns out there was no input for my mic. I had to go directly into the back of one of the speakers, but that meant Will couldn't hear the electronics very well when improvising his vocal part. So the first time we did the piece, it didn't go so well. I said, I'll do something that is louder so you don't have to amplify me, and then you can hear better. So we made that adjustment and instead of multiphonics and whisper tones, I played with regular flute tone using notes from the multiphonics, and changed the whisper tone melody to regular flute tone also. It went a LOT better that way, and the piece came together in a way it hadn't the first time.

For never having collaborated before, I thought it was a really good start. I hope the MFA program made some money!