AMF 2012 and South Korea.
It's been awhile. Facebook statuses render minute and inconsequential blog posts obsolete, though the inconsequentials are eventually what conglomerate into the consequential. Or something. Or Facebook About Mes. I thought I had untouchable pocket rockets once, but big slick under the gun nailed Broadway on the river. Now I'm on tilt.
Imply what you will. She was all that.
Atlantic Music Festival; like that vast ocean of total hedonism that self-generates high school drama by disguising the idiotic with a shroud of beautiful music that seems to endlessly provide life with a cheesy soundtrack. Think Copland meets Enya. Punctuation makes perfect - he said/she said. He said, "she said"! He said she "said". The era of the man child runs amok through the hilly paths of Waterville, ME, where one summer screams at the other pitiful fifteen through the hoards and masses of still-tonal composers and begs the human soul to tangibly feel. Refusal.
In Korea now, again. Just started. Feeling at home. Seoul, like single-malt scotch, functions identically to other escape routes from a year that has changed your life.
If I added the word "forever" to that last sentence, I'd be a douche. So I didn't.
Inspired simultaneously and erratically by the blog thoughts of both Stanley Lee and Ned Rorem.
Aug 14, 2012
Feb 7, 2012
Beauty.
Beauty is everywhere.
In the starry romantic prayers of an insane Schumann, setting songs from writers whose initials abbreviate palindromically or sound like the decrepit green bottles of a Korean liquor that washed away our 20s into an alcoholic lake of noraebang frenzies and bright K-Town lights.
In the mean Asian curves of the new NSX and its postmodern comeback to howl into the California night down the circuitous curves of the 280 screaming at the invention of a homogenous culture plagued by aerodynamic zero fades and blacking out tail lights with obscenity divine.
In the solidarity of the love affair between solitude and ash trays, where the black spit filled latter wildly cackles at the pathetic visceral reality of the former and clouds perceptions of truth with a thick smoke, and a surgeon general's warning is drunkenly read in retrograde, and inversion, and retrograde inversion and inversion retrograde and noisrevni edargorter.
In the eye of the beholder, unless the beholder is Newt Gingrich.
In the polluted smog-filled night-sky of the New York City river view, discernibly visible only to the fur-coat elite of the Trump inhabiting penthouse whores and the health-conscious or vanity-stricken runners of the Hudson who twist their emaciated necks to the right running downtown to sullenly glimpse at "une barque sur l'océan" then wonder why Maurice was Basque.
In the sordid memories of the quirky alliterative long love lost, where the sea of tormented tornadoes fought voluptuous volcanoes and anti-climactically produced a pianissimo finale, where dumbfounded confusion killed communication and like a Renaissance poet sank into the alcoholic wine of the tumultuous embrace of eternal romantic pain and solitude.
End post.
Beauty is everywhere.
In the starry romantic prayers of an insane Schumann, setting songs from writers whose initials abbreviate palindromically or sound like the decrepit green bottles of a Korean liquor that washed away our 20s into an alcoholic lake of noraebang frenzies and bright K-Town lights.
In the mean Asian curves of the new NSX and its postmodern comeback to howl into the California night down the circuitous curves of the 280 screaming at the invention of a homogenous culture plagued by aerodynamic zero fades and blacking out tail lights with obscenity divine.
In the solidarity of the love affair between solitude and ash trays, where the black spit filled latter wildly cackles at the pathetic visceral reality of the former and clouds perceptions of truth with a thick smoke, and a surgeon general's warning is drunkenly read in retrograde, and inversion, and retrograde inversion and inversion retrograde and noisrevni edargorter.
In the eye of the beholder, unless the beholder is Newt Gingrich.
In the polluted smog-filled night-sky of the New York City river view, discernibly visible only to the fur-coat elite of the Trump inhabiting penthouse whores and the health-conscious or vanity-stricken runners of the Hudson who twist their emaciated necks to the right running downtown to sullenly glimpse at "une barque sur l'océan" then wonder why Maurice was Basque.
In the sordid memories of the quirky alliterative long love lost, where the sea of tormented tornadoes fought voluptuous volcanoes and anti-climactically produced a pianissimo finale, where dumbfounded confusion killed communication and like a Renaissance poet sank into the alcoholic wine of the tumultuous embrace of eternal romantic pain and solitude.
End post.
Jan 25, 2012
2012.
Another long dry spell for the blog. What's been going on? I turned 30 and this blog will soon celebrate its 10-year birthday; when I started it, I couldn't legally drink.
Atlantic Music Festival was fun. Will start second home there. Met Ethan Hawke and I was like all "whoa no way!" and then I was all "way."
I have nothing to say, mainly because I have nothing to feel. Eternal mind of the spotless sunshine. The Dionysian psychology revolves around conceptual fantasies rooted in expectation; namely, that the best is yet to come. But is there a dichotomy when only one side is right? Nietzsche's Apollo and Dionysus function more around inconvenient truths versus reassuring lies - only one is fun.
Ginsberg says that "Truth climbs upon the bed like a black cat purring and Truth is even in the ass. Is truth an objective theory, a way of life? No truth is instant perceptions. I was still taking it up the ass after the house was sold for firewood in the fucking fifties."
The era of the man child; there is no other way to live. Smoke-filled rooms inebriate the emotional cerebrum and monotony blurs consciousness with the right type of bourbon. Lenny once said that "ten thousand people yell your name and then you're alone in a Berlin hotel room." Can you face the night and enjoy it?
Will write more later. Or not.
Another long dry spell for the blog. What's been going on? I turned 30 and this blog will soon celebrate its 10-year birthday; when I started it, I couldn't legally drink.
Atlantic Music Festival was fun. Will start second home there. Met Ethan Hawke and I was like all "whoa no way!" and then I was all "way."
I have nothing to say, mainly because I have nothing to feel. Eternal mind of the spotless sunshine. The Dionysian psychology revolves around conceptual fantasies rooted in expectation; namely, that the best is yet to come. But is there a dichotomy when only one side is right? Nietzsche's Apollo and Dionysus function more around inconvenient truths versus reassuring lies - only one is fun.
Ginsberg says that "Truth climbs upon the bed like a black cat purring and Truth is even in the ass. Is truth an objective theory, a way of life? No truth is instant perceptions. I was still taking it up the ass after the house was sold for firewood in the fucking fifties."
The era of the man child; there is no other way to live. Smoke-filled rooms inebriate the emotional cerebrum and monotony blurs consciousness with the right type of bourbon. Lenny once said that "ten thousand people yell your name and then you're alone in a Berlin hotel room." Can you face the night and enjoy it?
Will write more later. Or not.
Apr 15, 2011
Apr 7, 2011
The Montreal Questionaire. On the eve of my departure for Korea. Hello again, 2008?
To better introduce yourself (Be creative!)
(Answer in a few short lines):
1. How old were you when you started to play? What led you to choose music?
I was about seven years old when I started playing piano, though far from seriously – most of my childhood was dominated by a somewhat “normal” upbringing per se; that is to say, hanging out with friends and playing sports. I didn’t actually “choose” music until age 20, after my third year pursuing a Legal Studies degree at UC Berkeley (a school which I left prematurely). Suffice it to say that my side hobby of playing the piano quickly took over any (totally incompatible and ridiculous) desire to pursue law. I left California and moved to the East Coast.
2. Do you have a career or passion that you would like to follow in addition to music?
Sadly, we are naturally destined to be inextricably connected with that for which we have talent – the rest, I guess, we designate as hobbies or perhaps more poetically, passions. I would like to write like Vonnegut, but I can’t. I would love to sing like Fischer-Dieskau, but you don’t want to hear that. I want to paint like Kandinsky; alas, in my dreams alone. Someday before I die, I want to dunk a basketball. That probably won’t happen.
3. Who is your favourite pianist and/or artist?
Since he fits into both categories comfortably, I don’t even have to think much to answer “Leonard Bernstein.” Aside from his ultra-cool/super-hip “West Side Story,” his all American good-looks and charm, his ability to turn the esoterically intellectual into something colloquial, his charismatic piano playing, and gargantuan intellect, Bernstein constantly reminded every one of us that the power of music goes beyond the merely aesthetic into the realm of the humanitarian.
4. Describe a particular moment that left its mark on you:
While I was attending UC Berkeley, I worked as both a security monitor for the Music Department and later took a job as a “lounge” pianist for an upscale Italian restaurant. I remember the exact moment I decided to pursue music, while playing a Chopin Nocturne for the restaurant; I realized, I no longer cared about anything else. I went home and downloaded the applications for the Yale School of Music and The Juilliard School. The rest is history - it’s been almost exactly ten years since then now.
5. What person, living or dead, would you have liked to meet (performer, conductor,
politician, movie star, etc.)?
Though I’ve seen him around the city (and, sadly, never really had the courage to march up to him and introduce myself), I would love to sit down and have a meal with Elliott Carter, if for nothing other than to hear a first-hand account of every major event of the 20th century. I sometimes wonder what it must be like to look back at nearly 103 years of wars, upheavals, politics, genocides, and most obviously, the evolution of modernism in music. Maybe it’ll happen. It looks like he’s going to live forever.
6. What’s on your iPod?
Ha. Does everybody have an iPod these days? If I owned one, it would probably contain (totally arbitrary): a Schubert song, a Beethoven string quartet, a Tupac track, an old school Mariah Carey song, the Crucifixus from Mass in b minor, and the like.
7. What is your favourite TV show/movie?
TV. This is embarrassing: 24, Whose Line Is It Anyway, Family Guy, Prison Break, Jerry Springer (hush), and lately, The Food Network. Movies: Anything by Tarantino, Wong Kar-wai, Kurosawa, Coppola, Kubrick, Almodovar; or anything containing an Alien, Rambo, or a Terminator.
8. Tell us about something you can’t live without:
Too many. Sushi, Karaoke, Single-malt Scotch, Seamless Web, Wikipedia, the Moma, the Guggenheim, the YMCA, my copy of “The Rest is Noise,” K-town, chamber music, friends and family.
9. What will you do in 2012?
I guess I’m going to continue my efforts to eradicate that popular stigma of the “freelance musician” as a terrible synonym for “unemployed and broke.” I’m based in New York City, the mecca for classical music and the arts, so my plans go with the winds of my own career. Upcoming tours include one in South Korea with a violinist and another with a Baritone. Basically, I’m just going to try and live.
To better introduce yourself (Be creative!)
(Answer in a few short lines):
1. How old were you when you started to play? What led you to choose music?
I was about seven years old when I started playing piano, though far from seriously – most of my childhood was dominated by a somewhat “normal” upbringing per se; that is to say, hanging out with friends and playing sports. I didn’t actually “choose” music until age 20, after my third year pursuing a Legal Studies degree at UC Berkeley (a school which I left prematurely). Suffice it to say that my side hobby of playing the piano quickly took over any (totally incompatible and ridiculous) desire to pursue law. I left California and moved to the East Coast.
2. Do you have a career or passion that you would like to follow in addition to music?
Sadly, we are naturally destined to be inextricably connected with that for which we have talent – the rest, I guess, we designate as hobbies or perhaps more poetically, passions. I would like to write like Vonnegut, but I can’t. I would love to sing like Fischer-Dieskau, but you don’t want to hear that. I want to paint like Kandinsky; alas, in my dreams alone. Someday before I die, I want to dunk a basketball. That probably won’t happen.
3. Who is your favourite pianist and/or artist?
Since he fits into both categories comfortably, I don’t even have to think much to answer “Leonard Bernstein.” Aside from his ultra-cool/super-hip “West Side Story,” his all American good-looks and charm, his ability to turn the esoterically intellectual into something colloquial, his charismatic piano playing, and gargantuan intellect, Bernstein constantly reminded every one of us that the power of music goes beyond the merely aesthetic into the realm of the humanitarian.
4. Describe a particular moment that left its mark on you:
While I was attending UC Berkeley, I worked as both a security monitor for the Music Department and later took a job as a “lounge” pianist for an upscale Italian restaurant. I remember the exact moment I decided to pursue music, while playing a Chopin Nocturne for the restaurant; I realized, I no longer cared about anything else. I went home and downloaded the applications for the Yale School of Music and The Juilliard School. The rest is history - it’s been almost exactly ten years since then now.
5. What person, living or dead, would you have liked to meet (performer, conductor,
politician, movie star, etc.)?
Though I’ve seen him around the city (and, sadly, never really had the courage to march up to him and introduce myself), I would love to sit down and have a meal with Elliott Carter, if for nothing other than to hear a first-hand account of every major event of the 20th century. I sometimes wonder what it must be like to look back at nearly 103 years of wars, upheavals, politics, genocides, and most obviously, the evolution of modernism in music. Maybe it’ll happen. It looks like he’s going to live forever.
6. What’s on your iPod?
Ha. Does everybody have an iPod these days? If I owned one, it would probably contain (totally arbitrary): a Schubert song, a Beethoven string quartet, a Tupac track, an old school Mariah Carey song, the Crucifixus from Mass in b minor, and the like.
7. What is your favourite TV show/movie?
TV. This is embarrassing: 24, Whose Line Is It Anyway, Family Guy, Prison Break, Jerry Springer (hush), and lately, The Food Network. Movies: Anything by Tarantino, Wong Kar-wai, Kurosawa, Coppola, Kubrick, Almodovar; or anything containing an Alien, Rambo, or a Terminator.
8. Tell us about something you can’t live without:
Too many. Sushi, Karaoke, Single-malt Scotch, Seamless Web, Wikipedia, the Moma, the Guggenheim, the YMCA, my copy of “The Rest is Noise,” K-town, chamber music, friends and family.
9. What will you do in 2012?
I guess I’m going to continue my efforts to eradicate that popular stigma of the “freelance musician” as a terrible synonym for “unemployed and broke.” I’m based in New York City, the mecca for classical music and the arts, so my plans go with the winds of my own career. Upcoming tours include one in South Korea with a violinist and another with a Baritone. Basically, I’m just going to try and live.
Mar 22, 2011
Mar 20, 2011
Mar 10, 2011
Feb 20, 2011
"Now I know we said things did things that we didn't mean and we fall back into the same patterns same routines but your temper's just as bad as mine is you're the same as me but when it comes to love you're just as blinded baby please come back it wasn't you baby it was me maybe our relationship isn't as crazy as it seems maybe that's what happens when a tornado meets a volcano all I know is I love you too much to walk away though come inside pick up your bags off the sidewalk don't you hear sincerity in my voice when I talk told you this is my fault look me in the eyeball next time I'm pissed I'll aim my fist at the dry wall next time there won't be a next time I apologize even though I know it's lies I'm tired of the games I just want her back I know I'm a liar if she ever tries to fucking leave again I'ma tie her to the bed and set this house on fire."
Feb 19, 2011
Self-sovereignty attaches to it the imprisonment of emotional chaos; how can that logical former possibly overcome the naked potency of that all-destructive latter; as if the concept of choice were at all inextricable from that of the pitiful reliance on emotional necessity. Need. Want. Must. Have?
Detachment forces itself to engender artificial facades. Wait, isn't that redundant. Wait. What?
I don't remember what I was talking about. Remind me?
Detachment forces itself to engender artificial facades. Wait, isn't that redundant. Wait. What?
I don't remember what I was talking about. Remind me?
Feb 13, 2011
Valentine's Day.
Artists wade into the ocean of poetry and painting, assumedly searching for self-connection to those thick brush strokes; or those words scattered on a page. But art, at heart, is a lie. Why not use pop song lyrics?
Eminem wails away, but what really happens when a tornado meets a volcano?
Imagination and the self-pity of late night thought paralyzes sleep; like a clown, I put on a show. Yearning again for that eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
Wait a minute, this is too deep. Gotta change the station.
Artists wade into the ocean of poetry and painting, assumedly searching for self-connection to those thick brush strokes; or those words scattered on a page. But art, at heart, is a lie. Why not use pop song lyrics?
Eminem wails away, but what really happens when a tornado meets a volcano?
Imagination and the self-pity of late night thought paralyzes sleep; like a clown, I put on a show. Yearning again for that eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
Wait a minute, this is too deep. Gotta change the station.
Feb 7, 2011
Feb 5, 2011
Jan 31, 2011
Isolation, sunrises, and Schubert.
The snow tips of the steel bars rain down on the Metropolitan Opera plaza; the Chagalls fight each other - who is prettier? Nobody cares, the fountains are dancing and the Phil is playing. Iphones are ubiquitous. I swim, sweat, then drown into those helium harmonies of 960.
Ginsberg says about New York City in 1960, "three men sprawl drunk in the birch thicket on the small dump road they finished the whiskey."
"The universe is so airy, you need only get up cold and walk the dirt road at dawn to be in Heaven."
The snow tips of the steel bars rain down on the Metropolitan Opera plaza; the Chagalls fight each other - who is prettier? Nobody cares, the fountains are dancing and the Phil is playing. Iphones are ubiquitous. I swim, sweat, then drown into those helium harmonies of 960.
Ginsberg says about New York City in 1960, "three men sprawl drunk in the birch thicket on the small dump road they finished the whiskey."
"The universe is so airy, you need only get up cold and walk the dirt road at dawn to be in Heaven."
Jan 29, 2011
Jan 25, 2011
Back to the sweat-filled confines of the YMCA; steams enshrouds the air and that brownish rust glossing the metal lockers distracts enough from the air-drying revitalization of a miniscule sauna, a vague reminder of an era not too long ago.
Schubert, be flat. When you were my age, you were about to die soon. But Pergolesi had already been dead for three years.
Mallarmé says “I am alone, while all these men around me live in the idolatry of a mirror reflecting in its depths serene.” That probably sounded gayer in French.
Facing the night.
Schubert, be flat. When you were my age, you were about to die soon. But Pergolesi had already been dead for three years.
Mallarmé says “I am alone, while all these men around me live in the idolatry of a mirror reflecting in its depths serene.” That probably sounded gayer in French.
Facing the night.
Jan 23, 2011
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