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.

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.

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.

Generally, if you wait long enough, confusion will turn into apathy.

Last day in Seoul.

This could have gone better.

Michael Jackson once turned an antonym into its own synonym, and it was bad (bad, as in good). These days, the word "epic" has, in effect, come to mean "trivial." That's bad, as in bad.

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.

Facing the night.

Lost.

Insert faux-emotional, pseudo-wise-but-garbage, wannabe-deep statement regarding "love/life" here.

Then vomit.

"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."

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?

Looking for hope. Desperately.

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.

Nobody knows it but me. The Tony Rich Project.

Notes from the Underground. Truth.

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."

Soaked knee-deep in the crystalline mud of more snow than an abandoned Polish perogi; time to man up.

Not having a phone = higher probability of serendipity. Or isolation.

RIP Milton Babbitt. I care. I listen.

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.

Rest in peace, Mr. Stessin. You once meant a lot to me.

"I'd catch a grenade for 'ya /
Put my hand on the blade for 'ya"

"To resist the resistance, to make peace with this score on its own terms, may not be possible in our time. It would signal recovery of an optimism that our century's wars, upheavals, atrocities, and holocausts - and the despairing attendant cynicism that has from the beginning undergirded the modern movement - may have precluded once and for all. Yet the fact that we continue to insult and distort Beethoven's gigantic affirmation shows that it is still under our skins, that it still troubles the conscience of trivial artists like Ned Rorem, that it still awakens in us longings for what we can no longer believe in, but wish we could. We are still in the valley of the Ninth. And that gives hope."

-Richard Taruskin, regarding Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (1989)

Cheap shot on Rorem, Richard. Cheap shot!

2010 in retrospect.

Oh, that torturous dichotomy between the visceral and surreal, that vast chasm where music and dreams lie, where the impalpable drowns into pitiful thought.

What happened this year? An earthquake demolished the entire country of Haiti and the United States took one step closer to choosing a psychotic woman to run for president. David Soyer died. Jacob Lateiner died. Spain won the World Cup. Health care still blows big sweaty balls, and tax-cuts for the wealthy were extended by another two years.

Oh, the predictability of monotony, “the obsessions are wistful, even morbid. I grow self-pitying, alas.”

What else? Hotel room upon hotel room of squalid nothingness. Played over 70 concerts this year. Bank account healthy; mind in disarray. Hotel treadmills start to formulate emblematic meaning, running in the middle of nowhere, towards nothing, and going nowhere. South Korea is becoming a second home; decision to do mid-west tour resulted in sacrifice. Worth it?

500 years after the era of Renaissance poetry, and men still moan about unrequited love.

Allen Ginsberg howls into the night, seeing the best minds of his generation “who faded out in vast sordid movies, where shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams and stumbled to unemployment offices.”

Jay won New York Phil, Mikey moved into town and the future is full of hope. Friends and family fill me with endless love, the undying and unconditional love. The love that looks beyond the fence into your yard covered with dog shit. That was gay.

In 2005, Rorem wrote that “Tomorrow will be like today. The men will get up and go to work again. Those green needles at the top of the 80-foot pine will be wafted by that high wind as they are wafted now. The wisteria smell at dusk will be inebriating. The sun will rise once more, as the television sends out more pictures of a hopeless war. Everything will be like today.”

Happy New Year .

American Airlines: "Would you prefer a window seat or an aisle seat, sir?"
Me: "Window, please."
American Airlines: "Window is not available."
Me: "Um, ok. Then aisle?"
American Airlines: "Actually, aisle is not available either."
Me: "Then why did you ask me what I prefer?"

Tour, day 45. Eve of departure.

I think I've been tourstitutionalized. No desire to return to reality and face the questions and talking.

I received an apology from the Cheyenne YMCA this afternoon. Carlos = 1, YMCA = 0.

Cheyenne, WY.

One would think that it would be difficult to be permanently banned from the Wyoming YMCA in just one day, but it's not. My response to the ban:

[To whom it may concern,

The following is intended to be not only a letter of complaint, but a higher question regarding values, ignorance, and etiquette.

Ordinarily, I would ask to file a formal complaint regarding Marge, your employee who insultingly spoke to me today as though I not only didn't speak English, but as though I must have had an extreme case of Down Syndrome. Unfortunately, it is quite clear to me that the staff community at your particular YMCA is not only tight knit, but blindly defensive of its employees (regardless of the offense and damage they may cause an individual).

Due to the fact that I know my complaint will amount to nothing, I only wanted to write in order to help Marge - to prevent her from living the rest of her life in cultural ignorance, and to ensure that no other member of an under-privileged community would be further hurt by her.

Please convey to Marge that I will not only be praying for her (praying, that is, for the hope that she may someday be blessed with a higher education level than the pitiful amount she displays at the front desk), but also that I would be happy to help recommend reading material on ethnic studies in the United States for her.

Inevitably, whomever receives this email will forward it to those of you on the employee-staff who remember me from the incident today, and the large majority (if not all) of you will disregard my comments as that of some possessed lunatic.

I urge you, in the most exigent and importunate way (tell Marge to look those words up), not to do such a thing - particularly since your community seems to cling dearly to a misguided notion of Christian values.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Please feel free to contact me at the above phone number or email address if you so wish.

Regards,
Carlos Avila]

I find it humorous and ironic (humorously ironic?) that I noticed multiple publicity posters of my concert tomorrow on the YMCA billboard, which means that some (if not all) of these hillbillies, unbeknown to them now, will be attending my concert tomorrow. See you soon, you ignorant pieces of shit.

Jacob Lateiner: again.

Mr. Lateiner died today and I found out 15 minutes ago from the New York Times. A few years ago, I wrote a sordidly emo entry regarding Mr. Lateiner and my (perhaps ridiculous, at the time) visceral apprehension at what I thought to be some sort of inevitable transfiguration into his life - as if the Marlboro Lights and single-malt scotch would end up representing a manifestation of dread.

The truth is that Mr. Lateiner and I never got along, for whatever reason and unbeknown to him, I had quickly (and perhaps injudiciously and psychologically) formulated and assigned a number of facades to him: the grumpy octogenerian professor with a hearing aid, the colossal legend of 20th century chamber music, the lifelong advocate of American modernism, etc.

But beyond that and on a purely personal level, he was something I'm sure he never thought he could be to a student: a symbol. To me, Mr. Lateiner was the symbol of a man who had dedicated his life to art, all the while squandering his personal life and attributing it to the sacrifice of his trade. In 2008, I wrote that "art alone for me, is not enough; I need love in my life, perhaps even at the expense of art." Well today, I change my mind.

Years ago, a book was published called "Pianist, scholar, connoisseur: Essays in honor of Jacob Lateiner." Dozens of letters and essays by the likes of Pia Gilbert and Gary Graffman fill pages and pages thanking the man that filled their lives with music and joy. Was Mr. Lateiner lonely? Or was that a myth? Maybe he was comfortable with the solitude, satisfied by his immersion in art and pleasure?

Whether or not it's a coincidence that Mr. Lateiner's death fell on the same day that my insecurities caused the love of my life to dump me like a bad habit is irrelevant, but trippy at best. I'm sitting here now in a hotel room in the middle of Cheyenne, WY with nowhere to go and nothing to look forward to but the concert I'm playing next. And that's ok.

Mr. Lateiner, I would be honored to live a life like yours. RIP.

Sheldon, IA.

Losing my mind.

Divorce.

Move over, marriage, I guess. The new post-modern phenomenon of under-30-and-educated divorce is sweeping over the cliché phrase "everyone is getting married" like a 21st century cultural tidal wave. I'm 29; I know four people my age already divorced. Is this normal?

Examination and analysis. All four are Asian-American (though, of course, the people I know are predominantly Asian-American), all four divorces instigated by the woman, and all four under the age of 30.

The Census Bureau reported in 1997 that 84% of all Asian-American children were living with both parents, a number not only significantly above the national average, but significantly above other ethnic groups. In addition, according to the U.S Government Accountability Office, red states have a divorce rate 29% higher than blue states; a figure that might seem counter-assumptive considering the Christian contingent embedded within the philosophy of Republican states. Also, according to the Census Bureau in 2002, less than 10% of marriages end in divorce within the first five years.

This confuses me somewhat; though empirical data is questionable at best, if less than 10% of marriages end in the first 5 years in 2002, why is the number of weddings I have been to fewer than the amount of divorces I know of at age 29 or younger?

Something to think about, particularly if you're thinking of getting married. Don't become another statistic on my blog.

Tour - halftime in Minneapolis.

Kristina Reiko Cooper, who recently embarked on an identical mid-America tour to ours, was recently quoted in "All Things Strings" as saying: “Being on the road can be pretty lonely. You perform, you get all the adrenaline running, you get on a high, and then you have to go back to an empty hotel room, with nothing to do but watch Law and Order."

Perhaps. I spent today, however, eating blueberry pancakes at Perkins, swimming a mile at the YMCA, resting in a sauna, getting coffee at Caribou, and shopping at the largest indoor mall in the United States. And now I'm going to watch Law and Order, and it's going to be the shit.

Rock Springs, WY.

Concert tours magnify my human tendency to realize satisfaction in the small things; nothing cries awesome better than a hot tub and a solid wi-fi connection, though the ingrained bi-coastal snobbery rooted in my genetic makeup can't help but find an equal amount of enjoyment in tattoed middle-aged hillbillies with names like Starla or Ginger.

Tours are therapeutic in so much as they force an intense focus on only one thing; most of the time, I can't answer a cell phone call even if I wanted to.

A girl in Montana told me I was good looking. I barely had two seconds to revel in this compliment before I noticed that she had extreme Down Syndrome.

Thief River Falls, MN.

The simplicity of the rural midwest wreaks of small tales of urban escape; broken down signs next to rusty tractors, the excitement of deer season, christmas carols at expansively large high schools and the like. On the whole, the Norwegian contingent screams native with the majority, but I sense a general bliss in the ignorance of city affairs.

Leonard Bernstein wrote "On the Town" over half a century ago, the primary musical number "Lonely Town" detailing the below quote by Mark Twain - "whether you're on Main Street or Broadway / if you're alone / they're both the same."

In December of 2007, police discovered the skeletal remains of Christina Copeman, an East Flatbush resident who had been dead in her apartment for well over a year. Oddly enough, the story made her an immediate posthumous quasi-celebrity; a symbol of the dire theoretical (or inevitable?).

Examine the dichotomy: "Unless there's love, the world's an empty place; and every town is a lonely town." - Leonard Bernstein, 1944

"Urban Loneliness is a myth" - The New York Magazine, 2010

According to a new study conducted by the New York Magazine in an article entitled "Is Urban Loneliness a Myth?", 50.7% of the population of New York City are single-individual households. In Manhattan, 57% of those single-individuals are women as opposed to Brooklyn, where it is only 29.5%.

Mark Twain once said, "the coldest winter I ever spent was summer in San Francisco." But the heat wave in SF these past few summers was stifling.

Mark Twain also once said that New York City is a "a splendid desert — a domed and steepled solitude, where the stranger is lonely in the midst of a million of his race." But in the wake of quantifying human emotion (a study was recently done by the Citizens Committee of New York City on which borough of New York is "happiest"), loneliness is now so much the norm that it is no longer lonely. Lonely, it seems, is the new happy.

Mark Twain is so yesterday. And in case you were wondering, the happiest boroughs of New York City are (in order from happiest to least-happy): Queens, Staten Island, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and sadly (literally) the Bronx.

Day 1 of the 45-day long mid-west tour. Minneapolis, MN. Begin.

Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

We partied yesterday for the hell of it; now we party to stay relevant.

If I could live any person's life in history, it would be that of Leonard Bernstein.

In writing previous statement, just realized how gay that may have come across. Addendum: it would be that of Leonard Bernstein, but minus the gay sex.

Favorite cheap domestic meals; out-of-the-country meals don't count since they are (rarely) any help to you and serve you no purpose but to drool. In no particular order.

Hobee's: Sonoma Browns. Hashbrowns topped with grilled chicken breast strips, diced tomatoes, cheese and Classic Basil pesto sauce. ($7.95)

La Taqueria: Chicken Quesadilla with avocado, fresh melted mozzarella cheese, and sour cream. ($6.95)

The Kitchenette: Cherry Vanilla Baked French Toast - made with homemade bread. ($11.95)

Hyodonggak: Jajangmyun and Mandoo. (total $18.00)

The Hummus Place: Hummus Masabacha. A creamy, thick, hummus with fresh whole chickpeas. ($7.95)

Yuka: All-you-can-order Sushi. Fresh, reasonable, and not buffet-style. ($19.00)

Pisticci's: Prosciutto e spinaci. A light, rustic pasta tossed with prosciutto and fresh spinach in garlic and e.v. oil. ($9.95)

Joe's Shanghai: Soup Dumplings. Boiled pig fat dumplings. ($12.00)

Boom Boom Chicken: Korean fried chicken. ($19.00)

Yakitori Toto: Exotic/authentic Japanese Yakitori and half-priced Sake. ($20 each)

Palo Alto.

Currently drinking a scotch nobody would ever drink with me, watching a movie nobody would ever watch with me. The beauties of being home alone.

Red label + Best of the Best 2.

Banff.

If the absence of blog entries is at all indicative of my summer, suffice it to say that I haven't had such an amazing summer, possibly in my entire life. Thrown from the bright-colored vitality of Seoul directly into the snow-covered mountains of Banff, the hills here are undoubtedly alive, and with the sound of music at that.

John Perry says that music "really isn't so difficult," - a usual slogan uttered by the consortium of pessimists who are actually trying to say that music is a bitch, and then you die; to the slow movement of 960.

But that's ok!

I wonder if the concept of hypocrisy and the act of being entirely judgmental must necessarily coexist simultaneously.

Haters.

We all know haters; their presence is so irritatingly ubiquitous that the minor jab begins to feel like the inflamed sting from a radioactive insect.

Take weight-loss for example. One who decides to change his/her lifestyle to get in shape, eat healthy, and workout will inevitably and undoubtedly always take shit from haters - fat haters, more often than not. If you decide to lose weight, you will hear things from your fat friends like "stop already! you're too skinny!" or "you should really eat; it doesn't look good," when in reality, their favorite celebrity idol is some effeminate pansy celebrity who resembles something not much wider than a chopstick. When a hater tells you "you are too skinny," you should immediately reinterpret the statement to read "you look much better than you did before when you were fat, and I'm jealous because I don't have the willpower nor the diligence to do what you are doing."

Or at the very least, offer him/her a cup of haterade and a plate of shut-the-fuck-up.

Post-tour.

Feverishly attempting now to snap back to the reality of normality; Korea has an uncanny ability to delude a classical musician into the phantasmagorical deception that we are cooler than we actually think. Alas, such is but a cultural fairy tale.

Naju. Like the sewer-smelling equivalent of an infrastructurally-absent suburb in Detroit.

I learned today what agglutination is - but does Busta Rhymes know? For serious, mysterious.

Thanks jay/mikey/stefan/jiyong/lowie/youngkyung/kristin/yoobin/naikohl/dawn/wayne for making this trip memorable. And to Kim for putting up with me.

Korea Tour.

I've changed, but Korea hasn't. What's new this time?

Attribute the pessimistic cynicism of cultural observation last time to the clinical depression brought on by alcoholism and chaos - maybe I was too busy to find the beauty of this country I see nightly on borderline-homoerotic night walks with Jay down the main river of Jinju. I'm in Changwon now, where the unabashed cheese of fountains dancing to techno-ized classical music propels an aura of melodrama that seems to saturate the atmosphere.

Either the girls are getting uglier or my girlfriend is just hotter.

I'm in town for awhile - call me on my cell: 010-8062-3205

I graduated. How do I feel?

"The Bacchic non-Euclidian ecstasy of liberation is proof that the paramount artistic aesthetic is expectation. The best is yet to come. Maybe." - Tony Kushner, Juilliard commencement 2010.

David Soyer.

An inherent problem inextricable with the music world will always be that our mentors, ones that become particularly close to us, are already at the last chapter of their lives when we enter them.

I'm 28 now and it's 2010. The death of Isaac Stern didn't affect me at all, and although Mr. Frank's wife passing was a shock, she had been dying for years.

Not having Mr. Soyer around, though, is different. His death sent a shockwave around this generation of musicians like none other I've seen in my life so far.

I left him a message the day before he died, simply wishing him a happy 87th birthday, reminding him that "that's pretty damn old," and letting him know that I'm getting a big head now that nobody bothers to tell me that I'm stupid anymore.

We love you, Mr. Soyer. RIP

"You can do it your way...if you want to sound like shit." - David Soyer

Don Giovanni.

Zerlina. Operatic (and perhaps artistic) proof that women truly haven't changed in the last 220 years. When she begs Masetto to beat her ("Batti, batti o bel Masetto [beat me, oh lovely Masetto]"), he should have taken five knuckles and smacked that bitch with the backside of his hand. What a pussy.

2010.

Tarantinoesque historical revisionism enshrouds the start of a new decade; the press is calling this hell of a decade "the decade from hell."

Many have commented that the only time I post any entries in this blog is when I'm frustrated or angry - perhaps, but I'm changing that now.

Things are gonna change, they say. But who is they? And is the phrase "they say" an idiosyncratic anachronism for the indulgent-nostalgic yearning for outside justification?

Love is a many splendored thing - all you need is love! But a Louis Vuitton bag doesn't hurt.

Eight years ago, I vowed to give up the word "fag." It's 2010, and I still use it, but I never mean it in "that" way. But then again, I never did.

The mind blurs logic.

I like tangents.

Let's start the decade.

Cured.

Not quite sure how I ever got like this; and not quite ready to admit it. Trying. Failing.

xxkrnqtchunsaxx: u r kinda cold to me
xxkrnqtchunsaxx: and detached
xxkrnqtchunsaxx: ur numb to everything

carloco69: am i emotionally shut down and cold?
diwupiano: yes
diwupiano: u never answer anything!

Seattle. Don't think I've waited this long just to write that I'm literally sleepless in...never mind.

In Portland, Oregon. On art, expressionism, and suicide.

Suicide is the 20th century self-legitimizing defense mechanism for accused-to-be-sensationalist artists. For all the fuss about higher-based intellectually stimulated reasons for suicide, alas, most fall upon the fuss about a girl.

In 1907, Arnold Schoenberg discovered that his wife Mathilde (the sister of Zemlinsky) was having an affair with Expressionist painter Richard Gerstl; and promptly confronted the two. Gerstl, upon realizing the futility of continuing the affair, burned his paintings and hanged himself naked in front of a full-length mirror. Schoenberg spent the next few months contemplating suicide himself, but as Alex Ross puts it, "suicide just wasn't Schoenberg's style."

Expressionist philosopher Otto Weininger shot himself in the room Beethoven died in Vienna; some say, it was about a girl (despite his raucously misogynistic magnum opus). Alban Berg, at the age of 16, impregnated and fathered the child of a house-servant, and soon later began drafting suicide letters.

Mark Rothko slit both his wrists in his studio in his 60's, Ernest Hemingway shot himself in the mouth. Stefan Zweig, the Jewish writer and Strauss' librettist for "The Silent Woman" self-exiled both himself and his wife and the two took their lives in South America during World War II.

Beethoven contemplated suicide in his Heiligenstadt testament (directly after an unrequited love affair with the purportedly beautiful Guilietta Guicciardi), but decided to forge ahead into a life of misery. Schumann jumped into the Rhine.

Virginia Woolf drowned herself poetically, silently walking into a lake, her clothing laden with heavy stones. Sylvia Plath stuck her head in an oven. Diane Arbus, the demented photographer, slashed herself with a razor.


After possibly the roughest summer I've ever gone through, it's time to go back to work. Forging ahead, I have seven different jobs this year, on top of being a full-time student. In Seattle on Sunday, and back to New York late Monday night.

Breathe.

The term "concert pianist" is synonymous with "professional musician" which is synonymous with "freelance musician" which is synonymous with "unemployed" which is synonymous with "I'm a douchebag." If the geometric transitive rule applies to the above statement, we're all in a lot of trouble.

My sister says I have what is called "terminal insomnia."

...now re-reading Peter Ostwald's Glenn Gould biography.

I have problems showing love, gratitude, and any of the synonymous like.

Thanks, mama.

Unable to sleep past 7am, no matter how late I go to bed. Wake up.

When Oscar Wilde created Dorian Gray, I'm sure he wasn't thinking about a new Gothic perspective of decadent hedonism on Faustian proportions. I think he just wanted a 6-pack forever, and still be able to eat a Big Mac every day. But if Dorian Gray never opened up what ended up being his own personal Pandora's box, wouldn't he still just be beautiful today?

You'll never catch me looking at that painting, much less plunging a knife into it. What a douchebag.

It seems as though people (friends) think of me as the unmaterialized facade of some contorted image of intimidation. I've been asked in the past few weeks alone for help with situations involving the temper of a psychotic boyfriend, ridding an apartment of three Irish subletters continuously causing a disturbance, and police-help with an attempted robbery in Bayside.

It struck me that although I continuously receive these calls, in none of those situations was I actually able to provide any help. I am, but a facade.

2nd mvt. of Schumann Piano Quintet.

..defines torture, madness, insanity, redemption, love, betrayal. But ends in depressive acceptance. The poet speaks, as always, though possibly zu leipzigerisch.

So here's the dichotomy.

The essential necessity for apathetic calm gets more and more difficult to cultivate; but I guess at heart, "necessity" in itself carries a bitter implication of forced-will.

In addition, I hate self-pity in others; yet, self-pity is what I fight, day in, day out.

Dichotomies of internal self-reflection that require a constant emotional battle force every living organ in my system to face a new unfounded desire: that to escape. To leave.

In short, get me the fuck out of here.

"During a lecture the Oxford linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin made the claim that although a double negative in English implies a positive meaning, there is no language in which a double positive implies a negative. To which [Sidney] Morgenbesser responded in a dismissive tone, 'Yeah, right.'"

I never didn't not not think that.

What's worse? Unrequited love, unrequited respect, or unrequited fucking everything?

A meal is merely that which precedes a cigarette. A lie is merely that which precedes an apology.

A cocky challenge.

I've taken a lot of shit from many of my friends for various aspects regarding the way I live my life. So...

If you think I smoke too much, outrun me.
If you think I drink too much, eat as healthy as I do, for even a week.
If you think I eat too little, outlift me.
Then we'll talk.

And if you just rolled your eyes while you read this post, maybe I can offer you another cup of haterade.

A fictional short story. Emphasis on fictional.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Ching. Her last name was Chong. Ching was a sweet girl in her 20's who had immigrated from Asia at a young age and attended college on a full scholarship in the United States. Ching was a precious girl. She was very careful not to mess up any of her opportunities for which she was so thankful, and she crossed the street only when the light turned green. She thought this to be proper.

Ching owned a couch in her living room. It was a modest old thing that some people might call a sofa and she had bought it brand new from Ikea, which she thought to be the most splendid store in the world. The couch had a very octogenarian feel to it and was decorated with the prints of tiny daisies, and the anthers were purple.

Anthers are the parts of the flower that contain pollen sacs.

Ching was deathly afraid of guests spilling coffee on her couch. It was a paralyzing fear and she couldn't stand the thought of someone accidentally spilling coffee on her couch. So she wrapped it in plastic. The plastic covering was disgusting. It made the couch look much nastier than it actually was. She knew this, so sometimes she would remove the plastic; but, one could never know when she would keep it on and when she would remove it.

Down the street lived a friend of hers by the name of Bernard. Bernard was in every way the opposite of Ching, and it was amazing that they got along. He attended a university in the city nearby, but rarely went to class. Especially on sunny days. Why, after all, go to class on a sunny day? At night, Bernard would spend time deciding on what type of white wine would go well with the fish he was about to cook; white wine and fish made him extremely happy.

Bernard owned a couch as well - but it was a boring white couch. There was really nothing special on it, and he didn't much care for the prints of daisies with purple anthers. He had only four guests that had ever come over to his apartment in his life, but all four had spilled coffee on his couch and stained it. He cared at first, but now he didn't really care.

One day, Ching came over to his apartment. She saw that he had four distinct coffee stains on his couch, and she kindly suggested that he put plastic over the couch in order to prevent another stain from occurring. He told her, "Ching. If I put plastic over the couch, it will be even uglier. Plus, there are already four stains on it. Who cares if another guest spills coffee on it?"

Ching was holding a cup of coffee, but she never spilled it on his couch. She was very careful. Then she left.

She never visited again.

I ran into Joel Sachs today while I was munching on a stale-overpriced piece of mochi from my cup of Pinkberry. (Professor and Director of New Juilliard Ensemble)

We talked for a good 10 minutes. Though I didn't ask (nor was I even vaguely curious), he proceeded to bestow upon me an intellectual diatribe regarding my [in]ability to think - according to him, my "vast knowledge of history, literature, art, and music is impressively unimpressive." I am, apparently, unable to formulate a coherent intellectual opinion regarding any aspect of art without "falling" against a wealth of completely irrelevant contextual information. I am, apparently, able to tell you when, where, and why a painting from the 20th century was conceived and exactly what was going on in the world at that time; but unable to tell you why it is beautiful. Or even if it is. Furthermore, he said, I completely defy the old cliche "knowledge is power" because I replace that power with the inability to make aesthetic value judgements without separating content from context; the latter for which I am a junkie.

On a normal day, I'd usually tell him to either eat a dick or take a long walk on the short pier. But for some reason, this hit me hard. Nobody has ever accused me of not thinking before. Is he right?

Oh hell. Eat a dick.

Uh oh. This is when you know that your reputation is not quite what you envisioned it to be.

mysteriouslove06: hey my sister is coming to Juilliard this year
carloco69: oh wow nice. let me know if she needs help acclimating herself to the school.
mysteriouslove06: stay away from her.
carloco69: jesus...

The summer of Michael Jackson, Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Rothko, and Alex Ross.

Having faked a facade of apathetic recovery while jointly losing an easy 25 pounds, I've found my immutable patience threshold to have evaporated into an ocean of quick-tempered hot oil.

Vonnegut says that beautiful girls "do everything they can to give lonely, ordinary people like me indigestion and the heeby-jeebies, and they wouldn't even hold hands with me to keep me from falling off a cliff." [Welcome to the Monkey House, "Miss Temptation")

No wonder they gave him a Pulitzer - that statement redefines the sociological implications of literary Humanism by the ankles of its fundamental roots. Ha.

"I've been here times before / But I was too blind to see / That you seduce every man / This time you won't seduce me" -Michael Jackson, "Dirty Diana"

The rest is noise.

Michael Jackson. My two cents.

Last week (a day after the MJ memorial), the New York Times published an op/ed article by Bob Herbert called “Behind the Façade” which made more-or-less raucously unsubstantiated correlations between the constantly-declining cultural hegemony of the United States’ (spiraling into an escape-from-reality) and the symbolic embodiment of American descent into fantasyland; namely, Michael Jackson.

The dude obviously hasn’t been laid in years. But I digress.

Cross-generationally speaking, the multiple allegations of child abuse and pedophilia will always remain taboo and inextricable from the truly eccentric weirdo that was Michael.

Not to sound intellectually immature and overly-defensive, but I don’t remember too much of a fuss in the classical music world when Maynard Solomon released his equally raucous and highly-substantiated article “Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini” detailing with unarguably solid proof that yes, Schubert also did take a liking for little boys. Henry Cowell was imprisoned for four years for his sexual relationship with a 17-year old boy.

Of course, Michael Jackson was undoubtedly one of the weirdest fools on the face of the planet. But to Bob Herbert and my classical music colleagues out there attacking MJ, what can I say?

Maynard Solomon said about the music of Beethoven: “masterpieces of art are instilled with a surplus of constantly renewable energy – an energy that provides a motive force for changes in the relations between human beings – because they contain projections of human desires and goals which have not yet been achieved (which indeed may be unrealizable). It reaches as it does beyond the merely aesthetic dimension to touch the domain of the heart.”

Well, Bob Herbert, here’s my two cents, you cold fuck: for a jaded politico, war veteran, and witness of multiple genocides, the power of music is one that you might not readily comprehend – you are, undoubtedly, of the same camp that believe a $100 million private donation to the arts is gratuitously irresponsible. And for the record, you look almost as strange as Michael Jackson, dude.

It’s been a rough summer for me, in many ways; filled with emotional ups and downs. I wake up in the morning and listen to the emotional breadth of Michael Jackson’s output and I am not being sensationalistically pansy by saying that he gives me the energy to get through the rest of my day, in what-would-otherwise-be a pretty nihilistic existence.

It's going to be a long month. 6 months can pass by in 48 hours. Materialization of drastic realization spells danger with all the wrong letters.

Still listening to Michael. Very far from over it.

"Music is what happens when a smart, group-living, anthropoid ape stumbles into the evolutionary wonderland of run-away sexual selection for complex acoustic displays."

Or something like that.

New apartment. A fresh beginning.

I also find it hilarious that on Facebook, everybody born before 1984 has some kind of homage to Michael.

Everybody born after doesn't even realize he's dead. Y'all ain't nothin' but babies, nahm sayn. Rekhanize greatness.

Michael Jackson.

Rarely am I inclined to post such touchy-feely entries; and at a celebrity I don't even know at that.

But today, I saw Thriller LPs selling on broadway starting at $200. I saw a man moonwalking on 63rd to buy coffee. I saw a black guy on the benchpress at the Y singing Billie Jean at top of his lungs. I bought a white glove. He was the greatest ever and the biggest celebrity death (for me) since Pac in '96.

I stood in front of the communal TV at the West Side YMCA today next to a yoked out, 300 pound, tattoed up black guy who started tearing up. Under his breath, he muttered "damn, I'm goan miss that crazy motherfucka."

The greatest ever died today.

My sister.

I guess in typical sibling tradition, my sister and I used to fight endlessly - most often, about stupid shit.

Watching her transform into a beautiful and intelligent person endlessly more mature than I, has been both humbling and inspiring.

Back off, skank whore. This is your last warning.

Most sweat-filled, inspiring, in-the-moment performances of the last few years:

Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata, 3rd mvt, with Earl at Juilliard.
Schubert, Impromptu Op. 90 No. 3, Montreal and Spain.
Brahms, Piano Quartet in c, with Eric/Kristin/Milena in Florida.
Franck, Cello (violin) Sonata, with Mihai in Louisville.
Rachmaninoff, Piano Concerto No. 2, with Henry in Berkeley.
Piazzolla, Nightclub 1960, with Jay in Korea.

Reliving the moment.

Mikey, it's due time.

Lies.

Extreme rage/anger enshrouds logical thought [slash] pain like the fog from the grapevine on highway 5 hides the beauty of the life of L.A.

In twelve hours, I play a recital (for seriously, artistically-minimum-wage) of Schumann's Fantasy Pieces; mostly about subjects of love or the like.

Trying desperately to prevent rage and anger from consuming me.

Failing.

But on another note, Dave/Jerry/Allen come over tomorrow to roast wild boar from Texas (kill from a random-hunting-vacation) on my outdoor grill. Life is still good.

What a ridiculously absurd night in San Francisco.

...and found both at the MoMa today.

Searching for meaning in the sweat filled confines of the YMCA; searching for redemption in the windowless enclosures of the Juilliard practice rooms.

Wow. More lies.

The title of Ned Rorem's final diaries: "Lies."

Midnight hits. Pathetic self-pity.

Man up, they say. Man up...

Days are filled with the pluralism of emotional thought; exhausting to juggle daily rage, acceptance, and apathy.

Do oxford commas really provide clarification?

Movies. Is taste an indicative Rorschach test?

Seung-Hui Cho gunned down 32 innocent people in 2007 at what is now-known as the Virginia Tech Massacre - prior to that, his seemingly-innocent obsession with Chan-Wook Park's "Oldboy" went unnoticed, in spite of his already-psychotic tendencies.

As Mikey loves to point out, "My Sassy Girl" in perspective is much more of a horror film than a chick flick, per se - influencing thousands of Korean girls to further glorify the self-centered ignorance of an entire culture.

Or how about "Serendipity." An entire movie glorifying the phenomenon of emotional cheating, disguising the psychotic nature of the female obsession with chance - an engaged girl leaves her wedding at the altar (cliche enough) to pursue the surely-tangible signs of fate from a telephone number written on a dirty five dollar bill. Vomit in my anus. You have a girl obsessed with this movie? Chances are she's a dirty whore.

I like Rambo, Aliens, and Pulp Fiction. I gladly welcome any analysis.

So...

Yes, I've been casually discussing the utilization of this summer to quote-unquote put my life back together - since that phrase seems to be abstract at best, let me tangibilize it. Here's my day.

I wake up in the morning, and cook myself breakfast.
I head to Juilliard and practice for a few hours.
I go to the YMCA where I pound out an hour of cardio and some light weights, before hitting the sauna to discuss America's constantly-declining hegemony in the wake of the recession, with half a dozen 50+ naked men.
I come home, and I attempt to memorize a few more opus numbers and finish the Vonnegut book I started months ago. Have a drink.
Sleep.

No woman, no cry; the corollary implication being that the existence of woman (singular) necessitates crying. Thanks, Marley.

Professor Ronald Takaki, the chief pioneer of Ethnic Studies and the professor most responsible for the intellectualization of my otherwise complete distaste for beer-drinking white frat boys, committed suicide last week. RIP.

As most of you know, I have a particularly distasteful aversion to the cliché loathings of love's loss; usually over-generalized hyperbolic statements pseudo-intellectually (emphasis on 'pseudo') intended to demonstrate wisdom - and most often induce my vomit-reflex or the mandatory roll of the eyes.

You see it from a girl, usually, who says some retarded shit like "nothing is harder than love," or the like. So here's mine.

Time goes by, and the raucous nature of filthy whores engenders self-pity once again in the solitary confines of blogs, alcohol, and pathetic self-loathing. All at once, in some higher act of twisted simultaneity, the coexistence of pain and extreme relief begin an emotional dialectic; albeit, this time hopefully, without the bottle.

In another mandatory act of gratitude, a special thank to you to all my friends and family; all of whom have put up with the fact that I've been a douchebag for the last 7 months.

These posts are getting all too familiar. As Jon Stewart says regarding the daily search for material, "as long as they keep being absurd, I'll still have a job."

It's been awhile.

If you are as gay as I am, no problem too large exists that can't be solved with a home-cooked omelet breakfast, a mid-afternoon chamber music reading session with Beethoven and Brahms, a late-afternoon museum run to see Gertrude Stein-Picasso portraits at the Yale University Art Gallery, an evening of chinese take-out, and a night of single-malt.

But only if you're as gay as I am.

"Bitch is the new black, but black is the new President, bitch!" - Saturday Night Live

The obligatory New Year's post. Reflections on 2008.

Another sordidly potent year, albeit this one infused with the psychological disaster of futility and the materialization of apathetic discourse. What did I do this year? Countries upon countries of squalid thought; reinvigorating the necessity for self-reflection in order to combat my own hedonistic life style. At the end, what will I think of 2008?

Minimalistically: I got a lot done this year. I had great musical experiences. I saw a lot of the world. I played a lot of gorgeous music. I met a lot of people. I had a lot of adventures; some good, some bad; always fun. I smoked a lot of cigarettes. I drank a lot of whiskey. I did a lot of bad things. What about 2009?

For everyone that is worried out there; don't be. I'm not gonna die. I'm in mandatory counseling for alcoholism, I have a great family, and supportive (for the most part) friends.

Here's to heading in the right direction; or at least figuring out which direction is right. Happy New Year.

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

"Love is the answer - but while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty interesting questions" - Woody Allen

Oh Woody. Grow up.

OK, assholes. A lot of you think I'm full of shit, so I'll document it in writing.

I'm enlightened. Oh yes, laugh not, you immature retards - you, whose life is driven by the physically carnal and the spontaneous passion of hedonistic desire - this is no longer me! I'm all about something else.

I'm all about just holding a girl's hand that I truly care about (and not that clasping shit; I'm talking the real interlocking fingers kind), and maybe taking a walk down a moonlit river or through a tourist infested area before buying overpriced icecream after hours and retiring to over-indulgent cheese like "Love Actually."

You may be about middle period Liszt and the hedonistic harmonies of Rachmaninoff. Me? I'm all about the D900's, baby - I'm revamping my moral system to Opus. Posthumous's and 132's.

I'm enlightened; not driven by the necessity of desire and at the risk of sounding patronizing (ha), I am ABOVE you. Yes, read that again.

Grow up, bitches. Grow up.

A memorable Christmas Eve.

Richmond, Virginia: Looks like LA.

Oh Koreans. You know I love you guys. I kid, I kid.

I don't like to complain in real life - so I use this blog as a vehicle for bitching. Excuse me.

In the next two weeks, somehow I'll have to get an inhuman amount of notes ready. Mendelssohn d minor Trio, Rachmaninoff Cello Sonata, Debussy Cello Sonata, Brahms Quintet, Beethoven Magic Flute variations, Casado crap pieces for cello. How is this possible.

"A work of art is a stuffed crocodile." -Alfred Jarry, ridiculous writer of the Dada movement

This post will probably get me into a lot of trouble. Suffice it to say that despite the raucous content, I do truly believe that intimate association with an ethnic breed in no way justifies contempt. That being said....

I don't really like Koreans. Yes, I said it.

Sure, yes, all my closest friends are Korean and I love them all to death, but the stereotypes that stick to the ethnicity I'm sure even they would agree with - it's as if my friends are a bunch of numerous outliers on a disturbed-homogenized curve.

What don't I like? I don't like how the large majority of them at school are a waste of space; a disgusting influx of apathy where the social norm of acceptablity makes it cool to purposely misspell words, promote intellectual ignorance, and not give a shit about career, music, or life beyond the occassional noraebang, cheap immature romance over stale bottles of overpriced soju, and a blindly clueless Christian mentality that often has nothing to do with Christianity.

I don't like how the large majority of them overtly read K-Pop magazines in performance class in front of legendary professors and often I actually and sincerely wonder whether most of them ENJOY music. I mean, really. Do they? I don't like how most of them are here to get a degree for the marketability purpose of a better marriage, but you know what I really don't like?

I really don't like how I feel like I could take a humongous shit (I mean, really, the kind you get after a huge meal), scrape it out of the toilet, and drop it on a keyboard - and this would sound better than most of their music-making. Sitting in on my performance class on a tidal wave of an oceanic deluge of Koreans, I honestly feel like taking my own life by slitting my throat with a blunt spoon.

I don't like these things. I've always thought this. I just never say it, partly because some of the most amazing people in my life are Korean, and some of the most amazing musicians I know are Korean. That doesn't really eradicate my racisim.

At any rate, I'll probably delete this post sooner rather than later. But I just had to get it out of my system.

Is it really that cool to be dumb?