Moma.

I saw the Van Gogh exhibit the other day. Haunting. 4th and 5th floors; the Rothkos and Pollocks. What sad depressive men.

These days I have about as much desire to go to a classical music concert as I do to drink the pimple-juice of a diseased chicken from the farm of a third-world country. Concerts uninterest me (is that a verb?) unless they contain either something new/fresh or free champagne. Preferably both.

Andy Warhol. I don't really get it. Am I supposed to?

Girls induce apathy, but the self-loathing kind one has very little desire to escape.

Apathy at 2pm.

Apathy at 2am.

Who needs a psychiatrist?

Analysis: Loneleliness begets depression; which begets insecurity; which bets alcoholism; which begets loneliness. Repeat.

On the 1 train tonight, 12:30am, an HIV-positive lady cries for change. She says:

"People that judge don't matter, and people that matter don't judge."

I'm at Juilliard. Deluged by thought; I can't practice.

Nearly all thinkers in history have been influenced by their romantic life... Are we all the same? Think about Petrarch's poems, or Beethoven's late works, Dostoevsky's novels, Klimpt's and Rothko's paintings, Hemingway's novels - at the risk of ridiculous comparison, Brahms and Schumann's music (both hurt by a girl with whom I share a connection if only by first-name basis); the former who was driven to romantic pessimism and the later to suicidal and psychotic insanity. All of these artists; all of them affected by a girl; all of whose art was somewhat driven by a girl (or many); three of which were eventually driven to suicide by a girl.

What about us? Jeff the Analytic-Romantic perpetually struggling for moral meaning; Mikey the Existential-Nihilistic Romantic; Ran the Optimistic-Moralist; Esther the Spiritual-Impressionist; Stanley the Emotional-Minimalist; what am I?

Mikey and I sat down the other day to self-reflect. Ha, yes, we felt particularly post-modern that day. We figured that as we become exponentially better musicians every year, the more and more we start to really just suck at life. Like, really. Whereas once both of us were optimistic-moralists, now sadly, we are romantics driven by nihilism. Maybe we were Apollonian at some point; now we're ridiculously and hedonistically Dionysian. And we're in our fucking 20's.

Will that change? Is this worth it?

If I shout loud enough, I can hear my voice down three hallways.

For some artists, art is what drives him to suicide. For others, art is the sole thing that prevents him from suicide. Why is this?

Another school year starts at the yard.

I used to be under the misguided impression (or assumption) that musicians and artists do what they do because they value an artistic aesthetic over financial stability - basically, that we care about happiness over money.

But I think I was wrong. All my friends from Berkeley are at heart, happier than most of my true artist-friends. Why is this?

Musicians (the true artist ones, at any rate) are plagued with the inexplicable obsession with some contorted late-19th century ideology of human suffering as a form of romanticism. Maybe this explains why so many of our personal lives are one big fucking mess. Are we addicted to the emotional pain of the starving romantic? We do not what is healthy or logical for us, but instead, what we feel. To feel. Feel. Why are we obsessed with feeling? Be it pain, extasy, nostalgia, joy, whatever. We yearn to feel.

Did I do all I could do tonight? It's 5am; wondering and worrying...

Again. Kaufman. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Why.

Maybe because at the end, Kaufman decides that Joel Barish decides to make the same mistake again (out of pure emotional contact); fully aware of the disastrous consequences.

Surrealism. This screenplay is surreal.

It's Saturday night and I'm sick.

I think, having been doing reading for the last few hours on early-20th century philosophies of thought regarding art, that the substantial core of my emotional being generally yearns for expressionism - that I spend my life resolving the dialectic between thought and feeling, painstaikingly hoping that the latter may bring me some soul-based freedom from the aesthetic (or in life, we probably just refer to it as the hedonistic)...but in life. That made no sense, did it.

But most people know I love to write, and reading through my own writing - there is nothing expressionistic about it...it wreaks of nihilism, depressive discourse, and the grumpy sort of existentialism where everybody realizes there's nothing to look forward to in the end.

Kandinsky - I love him; Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Camus, Dostoevsky, Sartre....I don't like those guys.

How do you write; and how do you play? And whom do you admire? What kind of music, art, and literature are you drawn to? If those aspects of your life don't reflect each other...perhaps you are genuinely unhappy...

Sarah Palin fills me with violent, enraged, depressive, passionately vindictive tendencies.

Girls fucking blow.

Were those two statements linked or mutually exclusive?

Everybody has personal problems. Let's face it. Everybody thinks they've been hurt badly in the past. Everybody thinks they have baggage. Everybody thinks they know what it means to be absolutely miserable. It's cliche and taboo at this age to even bitch and moan about what kind of problems you might be having with him or her.

But sometimes life sucks so much, it's too painful to endure.

I guess I'll go practice.

Mark Rothko, Abstract Expressionism.

I find it depressively disturbing that I'm extactically drawn to the abstractionism of Mark Rothko - what is it about his art that touches me? I look at his works; and I get sad. Ha. That sounded minimalistically ignorant and trite. But it's true...

Rothko never defined his art. His obsession with Nietzsche's prototypical categorization of the universe in terms of binary opposition points (to me) to a visual representation of the Dionysian vs. the Apollonian. Those dark, empty colors; vast nothingness; the sublime; depressive reality.

The Four Seasons commissioned Rothko to do a mural in the 60's. He said: "If the restaurant refused to put up my murals, that would be the ultimate compliment. But they won't. People can stand anything these days."

Why am I drawn to artists who lived tortured lives; attracted to the sublime? It bugs me that Rothko committed suicide. I really wish he hadn't. Why did he do that?

Family. What you might or might not know. A personal post.

Family: I don't feel overly or preposterously presumptuous in stating that my family is particularly unique; anyone who has been to a bbq at my house in Palo Alto will know this is true.

Why: My family is hard-grained rooted in extremist liberal ideologies which engender themselves tangibly on your first 10 steps into our house. You may say "fuck," "shit," "bitch," "asshole," or whatever at your whimsical pleasure, but utter the word "fag" and you will face irreversible consequences from my mother and step-dad who will reign down hell-fire like an eleventh unknown plague. You may take part in pre-marital sex, underage smoking, and petty crime, but come home with bad grades or hint at a future life of ignorance and unhappiness, and my mother and step-dad will hang you by your feet with a 9-inch radius rope and force you to digest the feces of a diseased rodent.

Step into my house for a family and friends bbq. Outside will sit me with a few male Asian-American friends with the same haircuts, higher degree educations, stubborn attitudes, and well-taken-care-of cars; smoking packs of Marlboro lights and sipping Scotch from proper glasses. Inside will be my mom and my stepdad entertaining their guests that include my two favorite "titas": an ultra-left-wing lesbian couple, overweight, chainsmoking, and tattoo ridden; with faces and political law-careers involving left-wing activist pseudo military activity during martial law regimes in various countries.

I love my family because they are a reflection of who I am and the ideals with which I grew up. Personal happiness surpasses the importance of financial success. Catch me sometime at home having a cigarette with my mom and a glass of Russian vodka with my sister; we will inevitably be discussing the work of some post-modern Russian existentialist, the current state of the American economy, or why I'm still single.

In California now, getting ready to leave.

A taste of the past; memories fade. Berkeley. Did I really go to school there? For as long as I've been at Juilliard?

Asians. Americans. Family. Friends. The bay. BBQ. Cigarettes. Whiskey. How do I pronounce this nostalgia; they mispronounce reality. Look at this tangle of thorns.

"An amazing thing happened to me: I suddenly forgot which came first, 7 or 8. I went to my neighbors and asked them what they thought about that. I was really amazed when they told me that they too couldn't remember the counting sequence.... We argued for a long time, but fortunately a little boy fell off a park bench and broke both his jaws. This distracted us from our argument. Then we all went home."
-Daniil Kharms, Soviet-era Surrealist and Absurdist poet of the Futurist movement

"Sometimes when I'm alone
I cry because I'm on my own.
The tears I cry R bitter and warm
They flow with life but take no form."
-Tupac Shakur, "The Rose That Grew from Concrete"

Why am I so drawn to Kaufman's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?" Is it because I have too many memories I'd like to erase? I feel a disturbingly liberating ecstasy pondering the possibility of controlled-memory loss. A clean slate. No baggage.

Cleveland and Ann Arbor; the midwest.

Sardonically defying the antiquated musician stereotype that we never go on vacation; I just did, and to the heavenly midwest at that. No piano.

Even in forced recollection, I can't conjure up any observations of Cleveland and Ann Arbor. Perhaps I really am on vacation, which puts my mind in the same state.

I had a great time.

Dance like nobody is watching and love like you've never been hurt.

Why do some idiotic shit like that?

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns." -Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita"

"My name is Marc, my emotional life is sensitive and my purse is empty, but they say I have talent." -Marc Chagall, uncategorizable-through-isms artist.

It's time to go home now. Thank you for making my trip one that truly surpasses awesomeness: mikey/eric/youngkyung/nicole/sojin/minyoung/jiin/ah-young/yoonjung/jung-ran/onyu/moni/mihai/wayne/sami.

And most of all to Jay. Great times.

Social hegemony; yes, the return of "that" term.

Artificial life flows through the tainted facade of Seoul's complex infrastructure, as if the luminescence of bright colored lights will ever fully disguise a bizarre hegemony that chooses to focus the heart of a socio-economic norm on purely the extrinsic. Wow, that was a mouthful.

Koreans humor me. Fat chicks bond together here like diseased rodents might in an experimental colony; physical emaciation is not just a norm - it's a homogenous ideology synonmous with beauty. The intellectual remains comfortably absent in Korea like a hot girl at Stanford: it's not there, so get used to it. What passes for intelligence/intellect here is exponentially more gratuitous than what might pass for "literate" at Juilliard.

The suicide rate rises and prostitution becomes a social "escape" for rebellion instead of a social problem arising from poverty.

I'm hungry. I think I'll have some soju.

Koreans.

Innumerable count the amount of aspects of this culture I can't stand; but as most of you know, the girls rank high as #1 (with the humid weather, the bad haircuts, and the magnanimously gross materialism on there as well; granted, the antepenultimate is not really 'cultural'). But I digress.

I'd attempt to write a remarkably racist post on the Korean girl, but I don't really have the next few days to spare.

Is it racist if it's true? Probably.

I don't really like white people. I don't really like Korean people either. I don't really know any black people. I don't really understand Chinese people. As Jessica pointed out the other day, I tend to think raucously in terms of ethnic homogeny, either out of brutal convenience or perhaps stereotypical bigotry. Sometimes, the former and the latter blend together like communism and fascism: opposite ideals, same end product.

Racism is for the ignorant; but as many of you know, I am far from culturally ignorant. But I am racist.

It's been a great tour so far. We're 2/3 done.

In Daegu with a fever; temperature of 105 degrees. I am, however, blessed with great friends.

Thank you to my Nicole for taking care of me here. I'd be dead without you. You are the best.

Korean health care system: unbelievable.

In Daegu now.

The ironic paradox: it's impossible to find a dry cleaners in Korea.

I'm in Changwon now.

I stood on the beach last night of Pusan and realized that I truly love my life. Blogging carries with it a naturally embedded pessimism (at least for me) that drenches the viscosity of writing-style (or maybe just mine). From a quick browse of this site, life portrays its image as some barren hole of aridity, devoid of vitality and hope. I'm really not like that.

Jinjoo.

After beach-town Pusan, I'm now in Jinjoo. I haven't seen much, so suffice it to say that I'm staying in a probably-rat-infested sex motel uninhabited by the likes of anyone save old ajushis who rent a room-by-the-hour, if you know what I mean. What character to this town; the Koreans immitate the Japanese in economy, finance, culture, and every aspect of life; even the sex-toy vending machines.

I gave my first masterclass today. What a trip to be on the other side... Only today did I really realize how much I am influenced and how much I have learned from Mr. Lowenthal. He infiltrates, influences, and dominates my entire being.

Pusan.

If Seoul is Manhattan, Pusan is the antithetical equivelant: San Francisco. I can't remember having seen such a beautiful city; filled with bright lights, soothing waves, long-stretching bridges, a bumping night life, and great food.

Crazy Koreans:
As I was walking down the streets of Pusan today, a screaming/crying/hysterical girl ran down the street with her boyfriend chasing after her. She crashed right into me, grabbed me and clung on for dear life as if she might actually die. As Jay later translated for me, her boyfriend kept yelling at her "he's a foreigner! Stop bothering him!" Then she let go, and ran hysterically down the street, screaming at the top of her lungs, and her boyfriend ran after her.

Beautiful city. Crazy ass people.

Currently in Seoul, starting the 10-city tour. Will post my mobile-phone number when I get it.

Korea is weird.

You only live once.

So much to write, not enough time, not enough energy.

Did you know that "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a sentence?

Buffalo (the animal) from Buffalo (the city) are "Buffalo buffalo," and "buffalo" is also a verb meaning "to deceive." You can put the rest together.

I've been reading through my blog; just sort of skimming since I started it in October of 2002. It seems to be my only tangible vehicle for self-reflection these days, though I noticed a distinct change over the course of the years in the evolution of my own psyche.

For the first few years, my blog was almost primarily dedicated to humor, jokes, funny posts of AIM conversations, politics, and observations of the music world. These days, it is almost exclusively self-reflective, distinctly more depressive, quiet, and inane; most of the time, completely devoid of humor.

Just a thought...

On the eve before I play in Montreal. 3:08am.

Sometimes life is so fucked up, that there are no longer distinctions between right and wrong. There are only good people who do bad things, and bad people who do good things.

Preliminary observations of Montreal:

From far away, this city resembles an innocuous variation on San Francisco, albeit with a bilingual charm and sans an overbearing cross-dressing population; 'frisco without the rainbow flags. They say it's easier for a Frenchman to learn English than for an Englishman to learn French, since the English learned English as well.

I barely get it. Ha. Ha.

On Jacob Lateiner.

Throughout my entire senior year at Juilliard, I have hated Jacob Lateiner. This cranky, old, sick, senile, nearly-deaf performance class teacher seemed to make it his purpose in life to ruin mine; a policy-ridden, by-the-rules narrow-minded man who knew how to do nothing but take attendance and threaten to fail students for too many absences. I really hated him. What difference does it make whether I am performing in his class or outside of school? Isn't the latter a more formidable option for students' careers?

Last week, Mr. Lateiner asked me to take him home. He couldn't stand by himself, and after every 20 steps we would have to take a break because he went out of breath. We stopped by his studio on the 5th floor where he took a deep breath from his inhaler, pulled out a Marlboro Red and poured two glasses of scotch before exclaiming, "it helps me with the trip home." I called a car service to take us back to his luxury apartment on 92nd St. and I helped him into his living room. As he was pouring himself another glass of scotch and scarfing down another Marlboro Red, I looked around the living room and talked to him a bit, before I realized a few things.

Here was an old, dying man sipping his scotch, living in the past. Black and white pictures of his adventures with Heifetz and Piatigorsky adorned the walls. Letters from Elliot Carter, Roger Sessions, and even Picasso were framed. Though I'm not sure whether he has ever been married, he now lives alone, and can barely function. I began to realize that his life had been lived for the sole purpose of art and art alone; and because of that, when he dies in the near future, he will go down in history as one of the major giants of the piano. And all of a sudden, I couldn't hate him anymore.

But I also realized something else. Looking at his glasses of scotch, his Marlboro Reds, his old scores, his books on art, and his dedication to American modernism, I saw a glimpse of my own future and I didn't like it. I realized that I want more than this, and I don't ever want to be like Mr. Lateiner. Art alone for me, is not enough; I need love in my life, perhaps even at the expense of art.

I feel like a literary pansy right now. I'm on the 5th floor computers at Juilliard in a completely empty building after school has finished, practicing on a completely empty floor, waiting for my chinese food delivery to come. I leave for Montreal tomorrow in what might prove to be another futile attempt at a career and life for which I tirelessly work.

It's been a long and hard week, and today I finished my first degree since middle school. Sometimes I feel compelled to write reflective posts.

I need sleep.

It's 8am, I haven't slept, my eyes are bloodshot red, and coffee is starting to taste sour.

A memorable trip. But it's time to go home...

Goodbye Seoul. See you soon.

Prices in Seoul, South Korea. (Just cuz they're so weird)

One Bottle of Soju in NYC: $14
One Bottle of Soju in Seoul: $1

One Cup of Coffee in NYC: $1
One Cup of Coffee in Seoul: $5

One Meal of Korean BBQ for 4 in NYC: $120
One Meal of Korean BBQ for 4 in Seoul: $28

One Night of Clubbing in NYC: $50-300
One Night of Clubbing in Seoul: $50-300

One 10 Minute Cab Ride in NYC: $15
One 10 Minute Cab Ride in Seoul: $3

One Pack of Cigarettes in NYC: $8
One Pack of Cigarettes in Seoul: $2

One Pair of Glasses in NYC: $300
One Pair of Glasses in Seoul: $100

One Pair of Hugo Boss Jeans in NYC: $180
One Pair of Hugo Boss Jeans in Seoul: $400

One Large Shot of Whiskey in NYC: $7
One Tiny Shot of Whiskey in Seoul: $8

Observe specifically that for the price of one small cup of coffee in Seoul, you can get five bottles of Soju.

Competitions.

The pressure/adrenaline accelerates the speed and emotion of real life and dissipates reality into self-catered romantic fiction.

My existentialist and Camusian thought of the day.

Preliminary observations about Korea:

What a funny city you guys have - one overbloated, massively multicolored, gratuitous and overpopulated party town where the girls are 50 pounds underweight, the guys are homophobic and ironically all look and act gay.

Apgujeong and Gangnam. Like two vertically-built 32nd streets; is it that different than Ktown? Not really.

I'll be in Seoul, Korea for the next two weeks. If you need to reach me, email me, facebook me or contact me in an emergency at:

Address : 1594-3, Seocho-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul, Korea
. Phone : (822)3486-6000 / fax : (822)3486-6022

Boston.

For the ridiculously horrible review I have Boston's insanely incomprehensibly infrastructure of innavigatable roads, whitey-dominated sports bars, church-oriented noraebangs that lack the presence of alcoholic fuel, and snotty Harvard restaurants filled with pretentious future i-Bankers; I had an incredible weekend. It's a breath of fresh air to both escape the city (albeit to another) and reminisce with non-musicians regarding non-musical content for more than 24 hours at once. A healthy and slight reminder to myself that once upon a time, I was more than what I am now - meaning, I once could converse in non-music-related dialogue.

On a happier note, my deepest and warmest congratulations to Jenny Li on her beautiful wedding. Who woulda thunk? We've all come a long way.

A day at home spent with the New York Times archives. "Music; The Devil Made Him Do It" by Anthony Tommassini, and "Art and Politics."

Karlheinz Stockhausen.
A week after 9/11 in 2001, Karlheinz Stockhausen (as many of you may remember) released a statement during a press conference in Hamburg stating that the attack on the World Trade Center was "the greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos," and that human minds achieved "something in one act" that "we couldn't dream of in music."

Personally, it's easy for me to discount all of these remarks as a fucked up statement from an aging-senile octogenarian whose egomaniacism has sunk him into a realm lightyears away from lucid reality. But should we discount such remarks so quickly? As Tommasini says, "perhaps Mr. Stockhausen is a raving has-been, whose words are best ignored. Still, it is important for artists to reclaim art from such reckless commentary, as Ligeti did recently in suggesting that Mr. Stockhausen be confined to a psychiatric clinic."

"Art may be hard to define, but whatever art is, it's a step removed from reality. A theatrical depiction of suffering may be art; real suffering is not. Because the art of photography often blurs this distinction, it can make us uncomfortable...The image of a naked, fleeing, napalm-burned Vietnamese girl is truth, not art. Images of the blazing twin towers, however horrifically compelling, are not art." -Tommassini.

Truth. Art is hard to define, and the advent of aleatory music and fluxus have made that distinction even harder - but aesthecizing reality, and further, aesthecizing terror, will always produce a very distinct line between art and lunacy. Mr. Stockhausen, may he rest in peace, is of the latter.

But then again, what of politics and music, and its inevitable connection with each other? Must the two coexist? As Michael Gordon claims, "what if I agree with your politics but I hate your art?" And to extrapolate a bit, what I don't agree with your politics but I respect/love your art? The latter is harder to justify.

"I’m not suggesting that we do this anymore than I would suggest you search through your refrigerator and find out the politics of the farmer who grew your broccoli."

Well, I love the music of Charles Wuorinen, but I don't ever want to meet him - a self-involved egomaniacal Republican with an uncanny ability to proselytize eloquently and effectively, who oddly (in the our field of music), is a staunch pro-Bush/pro-War supporter. Too often, the politics of ultra left-wing post-modern artists hurt me by producing horrible works of music; I'm hurt since bad art, ignorance, and stupidity should never enter the realm of left-wing; it makes us weaker than we already are.

I'm happy that we still have artists out there who continually fight for the liberal aesthetic, and the music of Frederic Rzewski, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and George Crumb will always be top form in both its message, meaning, content, and music.

That being said, and on the eve of a performance and presentation I must give tomorrow on Karlheinz Stockhausen, these two aspects of art torture me. For a man who has pioneered such incredibly intelligent eras of aleatory music, electronic music, blended elements of serialism - I really hate him.

I might one day change my mind, but I can't see it happening.

cerebral vs. non-cerebral art/music.

It irks me a bit that 20th/21st century music has become so distinctly divisive amongst artists and musicians - why must cerebral and non-cerebral music be so absolutely mutually-exclusive in the performance world? Does post-modernism necessarily negate the veracity of post-serialism, or for that matter, vice-versa? If one enjoys Carter, must that distinctly and directly affect one's appreciation for John Adams or Terry Riley? Must all expressionists idealogy conflict with neo-romanticism and tonality in general? I don't entirely understand.

Camps. I don't like camps, but it's impossible to escape them. I don't mean summer camps, but rather schools of thought. Marlboro and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center for example, are known for "championing" 20th and 21st century music, yet the only realm of thought in the programming seems to be based in Elliot Carter, Ralph Shapey, Charles Wuorinen, Mario Davidovsky, Milton Babbitt and the like. What happened to post-modernism, aleatoric music, minimalism, and the avant-garde? (Sorry, Mikey)

I don't like to view my own mind-frame as falling into either of these respective camps, particularly since I enjoy both types of music. To fall into a camp (I feel) is intellectually oppressive and altogether limiting an entire breadth of emotional humanity in art.

Cerebral music.

Pros: Generally, extremely complex and more often than not, absolute (as opposed to programmatic). Explores sonority, organization, and structure in a realm that entirely eliminates the hierarchy of pitch. Extreme freedom from tonality and usually based in an intellectual demonstration of complex rhythm patterns, mathematical phasing of sets, etc. Luigi Nono; experimentation with the use of rhythmic pattern set to match the Fibonacci series; to arguably create a tangible connection between the complexity of music/art and basic human function to an audience's ear. Carter; metric modulation and musical set theory. Babbitt; combinatoriality and time-point.

Cons: Intellectually oppressive (a minimalist's and Dadaist's complaint). Disconnected from a direct programmatic meaning, since absolute music "means" nothing, per se. It would be impossible for a cerebral composer to write, for example, a eulogy or symphonic work of much heartfelt meaning and effect on say, the tragedy of 9/11. For that, you need a John Adams or an Arvo Part to give you the transmigration of souls in musical simplicity.

Post-modern non-cerebral music.

Pros: Easily accessible and generally based in simplicity. Minimalism, for an example, was a direct counter-attack to expressionism, claiming it was for the most part, intellectually-oppressive (I keep using this term like I agree with it - I really don't). Usually programmatic, sometimes tonal, always inventive. Also, FUN (this is key). Dadaism and Fluxus for example, were formed on the rebellious pretense that logic, reason, structure, and cerebral thought had basically lead our society to destruction and war. Non-cerebral music carries with it, meaning and subtext - and definitely something to talk about.

Cons: Is it art? This question always comes up. Fluxus, for example, is pretty much attacked by every non-artist who reads about it. Minimalism can be a bore. Many times, post-modernism and the avant-garde go too far into a laughable territory that affects the reputations of not only the artist, but those of us performers and thinkers who fight for the art we make. When Christo put up "The Gates" in Central Park, it was the largest object of art-ridicule in the country - is that because a mass-audience doesn't understand site-specific art installation aesthetics, or is it because "The Gates" was one big pile of post-modern trash? Some Fluxus performance art calls for a cow to be dropped from a helicopter onto a building. Other post-modern music demands for newspapers to be shredded into a piano. Lamont Young's minimalist concerts sometimes go on for 17 hours of inane monotony. "Chance music" and Cage is attacked to this very day, the former for being bullshit and the latter for being one big phony charlatan. Ned Rorem is attacked by nearly every cerebral composer for his unashamed use of french-tonality and unabashed sentiment. Liebermann is constantly accused of sounding entirely unoriginal.

In writing this post, it already appears as though I'm advocating for readers to take a side. I'm not; quite the contrary.

Let's open our minds. Explore. Use our brains, and our hearts. The two are not mutually exclusive.

I practiced 8 hours yesterday. Why? I don't know.

So I go to the Juilliard Health Office and I tell them that my throat hurts to the point where I am unable to drink, smoke, or eat anything tangible other than the broth from a soup.

To my utter dismay, they carry nothing but Advil and condoms, neither of which, unfortunately, will do anything rehabilitative for my throat, but might instead perhaps be used in some retarded combo-pack someday when I have a bad hangover and need to have sex, simultaneously of course.

Sometimes life is retarded. Like the automated toilet flushers that never flush when you stand up and finish, but react to every subtle movement that your ass hole makes mid-shit.

Now, come to think of it. I just made a hell of a lot of errors in that last post. Split infinitives; are they wrong? What about Star Trek's slogan? "To boldly go..."

I don't understand grammar or english for that matter.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." -Hamlet, Shakespeare.

Am I the only one to ever notice the grammatical flaw in perhaps the most famous quote in English Lit? Or am I wrong?

There are more things in heaven and ON earth, right? Things aren't IN earth.

"...and lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil..."

I feel like a feminized dickless pansy just writing shit like this, because in reality, I'm an emotionless gangster who steps on roaches whose tentacles don't move parallel to each other.

One chapter of New York City today has ended. Tomorrow starts a new one. Goodbye Amy and Earl. I miss you both.

"...to turn away from the soulless life of the present towards those substances and ideas which give free scope to the non-material strivings of the soul" - Kandinsky, 1911.

However, in writing that, I just realized, I am very good friends with a half-Chinese/half-straight white boy. Odd.

Stereotypes of people with whom I seem to get along, or not. Immediately.

I get along easily with: Korean fobs, gay boys, and intelligent European musicians.

I don't get along easily with: Chinese fobs, straight white guys, and dumb European musicians.

On self.

Maybe you (directed collectively, toward "us") function as a direct outcome of what you once did in the past, just to be "cool."

If you once smoked, because you thought it was cool, you kept doing it, and eventually, it wasn't to be cool anymore. You became, a smoker. Same with drinking.

If you once fought, because you thought it was cool, you kept doing it, and eventually, it wasn't to be cool anymore. You became, a fighter.

Maybe the truest part of you is the part you never did to be cool. Everything else that is learned can be unlearned. I never thought playing piano was "cool," mainly because it wasn't. Classical music, inherently at its core, is not cool. But that's what I became. A pianist.

On seeing old faces.

Sometimes I wonder how much correlation there is between facade and truth, particularly in human persona. Some of the best people I know are absolute scary bitches on the outside, albeit, truly good people on a basic moral level. On the other side; sweet nice people....how many can you say are absolute bitches?

The old Korean saying. I enjoy this one. "I stay away from shit not because I'm afraid of it, but because it's dirty."

I've decided, I hate people. All people. Just people in general, actually.

I've spent so much time reading beautiful music in the last few days. I feel saturated with musical happiness. And grumpy as shit in every other regard.

Don't tell me to smile. I don't fucking feel like it. But if you'd like to see it, let's play some music.

Thanks Amy/Earl/Mikey/Jessica/Mark/Mihai/Jordan/Lizzy/Elly.

I apologize to everyone for losing my temper so often in the last few weeks. I shouldn't do that, and in the future, I'll try not to let it happen again.

I love you all. Thank you to everyone; you all know who you are. You keep me sane. This includes my mother.

"I'm a concert pianist--that's a pretentious way of saying I'm unemployed at the moment."--Oscar Levant

Modernism, Post-Modernism, and the yet-to-come.

Do you fear or embrace the new era that looks at Modernism as an antiquated throwback to a traditionalist regime? For years, we study "isms" - minimalism, neo-Dada (yes, that is an ism), abstractionism, expressionism, existentialism, symbolism, process art...whatever.

I study at an institution dominated by uncurious students who insist on unintellectualizing post-Modernism through the technique-only-based dissassociation of thought from art/music; why do that? Mark Rothko's exprimentation with abstract expressionism and his divorce from surrealism, Sylvia Plath's modernist experimentation with confessional poetry, or John Cage's break through the advent of chance-music. Is it bullshit? Really?

I wish I would stop hearing the phrase, "I could do that", directed at various modern or post-modern artists and composers. Pioneers in advents of art without whom we would be lost, culturally and societally in a continually divided community that has a particularly difficult time separating and combining tonality/traditionalism with a fast-paced technology-oriented 21st century.

You could do that, but you don't. And you didn't.

So shut the fuck up.

Today was a day of ups and downs, but despite the downs, in five years I will only remember this day for one thing.

This is the day that my Amy Lee won associate-concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra. That's it.

You are in my heart of hearts, girl. And I will miss you.

Without exaggeration and all truth be told, the amount of cigarettes I give to people vs. the amount of cigarettes I take from people is literally 200 : 1.

Literally.

Music.

If you really stop and think about it (if for nothing better than futile analysis), music is inherently ephemeral at its organic core, akin to some hedonistic irrepressibility like say, Pink Berry to a Korean girl (or maybe even a Korean girl to a white boy..ha...). Art encapsulates the "now" via a medium like music and renders the past before it and the future after it inconsequentially irrelevant; even if it leaves the performers in some nightmarish chasm of shame or some ecstatic vastness of pleasure, the former for the humble and the latter for the cocky.

Could this then possibly be a reason why all our lives are filled with insanity? Glorification of the erratically unreal and the stuttering eccentric flow through the norm of a musician's psyche like a drug addicted murderer might in a federal penitentiary. The unhealthy emphasis on the "now" is at the organic core of musical thought...and it also ensures that our lives are distraught with depressives, alcoholics, cheaters, pedophiles, the immoral and the like. I refuse to jump on the bandwagon; I'm enlightened, even if the bandwagon is an institutionalized madhouse of international speakers and homosexuals like Juilliard.

"How long does love last? people ask, meaning the romantic love of passion and heartbreak. Answer: three years. Yet all love is eternal, for love exists outside of time, and is obsessive and selfish. The French call it l'egoisme a deux." -Ned Rorem, 2005

"How do you say, "How do you say 'how do you say' in German?" in Spanish?" -Ned Rorem, 2000

Como se dice "como se dice" en Aleman?

East Coast Chamber Orchestra concert:

An inspiring display of showcase energy; probably one of the best concerts I've seen in years. It's inspiring to watch an oasis of over-talented musicians, making music in one of the last ensembles dedicated to the primary intent of making music - as a friend put it, one of the last bastions of making music for the sake of making music.

I can practice now. Happily.

Resolutions for 2008:

It's 2008, and it just dawned on me that I've been writing in this thing since October of 2002 - what has happened since then? Dreams of Berkeley faded into a dung-heap contaminating an image of Yale, clearly out of tangible focus like a camera lens dropped in a rabble of mud. Art evolved (or devolved) from a philosophical paradigm into a series of academic failures polluted by beaurocracy prohibiting any organic reality from lucid contact. And now I'm in New York, where the cultural Mecca grabs art and forces metropolitan-giggers to constantly revive our emotional enjoyment of impalpable philosophy; and make money at the same time. Does this work? I'm ready to starve. So what are my resolutions for 2008? Nothing drastic.

1. GRADUATE.
2. Exercise and eat healthy. For the amount that I smoke, this one is a necessary prevention of death at the age of 35.
3. Get the vote out. This election is too important.
4. Work harder.

I've had a rough month; most of you know that. Most of you also know of my new enlightenment, whether you believe it or not. Oddly enough, my month and my enlightenment seem to contradict each other.

It's time to get to work. I'm still working on my new year's resolutions. I'll update all of you as soon as I have them.

In the meantime, I'll be practicing.

Reactions to my new reborn enlightenment:

Gabby: YEAH RIGHT
Jessica: enlightened. all i can say is good luck and let's talk in february.
Earl: enlightment...I don't know what to say...
Katie: FULL OF SHIT FULL OF SHIT FULL OF SHIT FULL OF SHIT FULL OF SHIT FULL OF SHIT FULL OF SHIT FULL OF SHIT FULL OF SHIT