Classical detour

You know how it is when you go back to a place where you spent a lot of time as a kid, and everything looks smaller than you remember it?

That is how it's been going back to the Creative Arts building at San Francisco State University lately, for rehearsals. This is strange because I'm not any taller now than I was then, and yet everything still looks smaller. Everything is right where it used to be...the McKenna Theater lobby, Knuth Hall, the band room, the Casablanca Room, the practice rooms, everything just like I remember it. Only smaller.

I'm rehearsing there because the director of the flute choir there, Gail Edwards, got a grant to record a new piece by Alaskan composer Richard Freeman-Toole. It allowed her to invite me and some of my colleagues to bring the ensemble to a full 16 players as called for in the score. I'm playing bass flute. Julie Burkert and Sarah Holzman are playing (who played in the "Remove Before Flight" premiere), plus Martha Stoddard and Diane Grubbe. It's nice seeing them and playing with them again.

The piece is called "Aurora", and it's about the Aurora Borealis (unlike my piece of the same name which is about a top secret aircraft). It's atmospheric and dreamy. I'm also playing C flute in "La Milonga" by Christopher Caliendo, and both pieces are in the second half.

So admission is free, and there's a reception with refreshments to follow, and it's all very informal except for the recording part. (If you have a cough, remember your lozenges.) The concert starts at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, December 15th, in Knuth Hall in the Creative Arts building at SFSU.

Lost in space

As you've no doubt heard, a tool bag floated away during the last shuttle mission. Here's where you can track its orbit!

Eleven months

The eleventh month has seemed much longer than ones preceding it. There have been a lot of difficult occasions in it to be weathered.

I'm only able to write this (somewhat) coherent post because I have the support of family, friends, colleagues, professional caregivers, Wiccan community, music community, online community, and strangers with their everyday sympathetic kindness.
It is all those people and their overwhelming kindness that I am most thankful for. I am also grateful for those qualities within myself that have kept me going. My relentless determination seems to be intact. I don't give up, even when it's arguable that I should. I'm perverse that way.

I am grateful that I am not living on the street. I am grateful that I am financially secure for the time being. I am grateful that I am not being shot at overseas or exploited or beaten.

I don't want anybody to go through what I've gone through and I pray that they don't. I am so sorry for the anguish of everyone who already has. If there is anything more profoundly horrifying than what I've gone through, I don't want to experience it. I don't want anybody to.

Paul made me feel like anything was possible. Now, I have to accept that "anything" is not possible (Barack notwithstanding). If it were, Paul would still be here.

Chaudhary/Moller duo @ the Ivy Room, 11/26/08

Polly Moller & Amar Chaudhary 2
Originally uploaded by michaelz1

Here is the fast-moving Amar Chaudhary and me serving up the "Ode to Steengo".

Abdominal cyclist ultra!

This past Saturday I spent some time in the studio recording my 2008 60x60 submission. It's called "Abdominal Cyclist Ultra", and it's got lyrics bestowed on me by the gods of the Internet. Accordingly the piece is an impassioned plea to those gods, Highfalutin Melanie and Grain Bertrand, to grant me...something. And to protect innocent netizens from Other Abdominal Fluffy Cyclindric Crandall!

Come March 1, 2009 I'll know if 60x60 will include it. Stay tuned.

The Trespasser

On Friday I was browsing SFGate and saw a headline, "Caltrain hits man near Mountain View." It gave me a familiar cold and hollow feeling...Paul lived in Mountain View. Paul took the Caltrain a lot. It's easy for me to visualize Paul waiting for a train in Mountain View, or getting on one, or getting off one. Or me getting off a Caltrain in Mountain View, met by Paul, hugged tight, my long day transformed into a wonderful moment reunited with my best friend, High Priest, and lifemate.

"A spokeswoman says a man described as 'trespasser' was hit by a northbound train around 5:15 a.m. near the Highway 85 overpass," reads the SFGate article.

Within two days I found out that I have a friend who knew the Trespasser. He and I were only three degrees apart. The Trespasser walked deliberately in front of the train, and he is now dead.

In one moment the Trespasser sentenced my friend, his parents, his own circle of friends and family, his ex-girlfriend, his fellow graduate students, the train engineer and the train passengers, and any passersby to a lifetime living with what he did. Judge, jury and executioner of all these innocent people, to say nothing of himself.

Maybe he thought all his loved ones would be better off without him. They aren't. They didn't sign up for their new existence without him. They didn't sign up for a lifetime of nightmares about his body crushed by a train. They didn't deserve the months and years of unbearable anguish, the rage, the confusion, the guilt, the insomnia, the momths or years of medication and its side effects, and the months or years of therapy (if they're fortunate enough to have those last two).

But it's possible the Trespasser wasn't thinking of his loved ones. It's possible his pain was so intolerable he could sense nothing else. It was 5:15 in the morning. He probably hadn't slept. A tunnel formed around him and he could see no way out but the train tracks.

I humbly ask anyone reading this to think of the Trespasser before acting on intolerable pain. I humbly ask you not to believe the demon that tells you that no one can help you, and no one has ever felt the way you do. I suggest you tell that demon that there are people in your life who would do anything, at any time, for any period of time, to save you. And there are people who know a lot more than your loved ones about how to save you and they're ready, willing, and able. I cannot state strongly enough that your loved ones are NOT better off without you. I cannot scream it loudly enough.

Please, no more Trespassers.