Eerily (and unknowingly) repeating the past

*I'm at a serious writing block and a block in general for academic stuff right now, so I decided to take the time and finish this blog entry....* I started writing this on Halloween, and am finishing it up now.

It's funny how elementary some of our thesis topics can sound. Alex and I were at Dr. Fox's tonight after the Park Slope Halloween Parade, and we were sitting around chatting, when the topic of our theses came up. The conversation went something like this:

Alex: I'm doing my thesis on Hulu!
Cynthia: I'm looking at Classical Music on YouTube!
Alex: Man, it's we're in 2nd grade, how simple we can make our thesis sound!

Anyway, the funny thing is, it never occurred to me how eerily similar my "journey" to find my Master's thesis topic echoes my senior thesis project at Northwestern, until this morning (in the shower, where most of my epiphanies happen, I suppose).

For those of you who don't remember (I mean, why would you?), my senior thesis was a 25-minute film called "The Ship Game", based on three childhood friends who ended up going to the same college - a music composition major (Sarah), a violinist (Audrey), and the third character (I actually can't even remember the character's name - I just remember Henry Martone played him) - but he was the violinist's brother, and the music composer's boyfriend). The story focused mostly on the violinist, having something to do with getting into Juilliard and getting accepted into some violin competition (you know how I found it? I googled "international violin competition" and picked one that sounded good and foreign - hey, I never said this movie was well-researched)

Oh wait, I think I remember. The competition was called Hanover. I think. Maybe I just think it's Hanover because that's where my brother goes to school.

Anyway. Before settling on this particular narrative, I shot a film the previous year that was completely cast Asian American, and echoed some of the soap operatic story lines of Korean dramas. It was natural to think about doing something involving the community again for my senior thesis, but, for some reason, I wasn't excited about it. I don't think I even got as far as any sort of outline or storyline before I settled on a story that was based on a childhood game I played, then took it further to explore themes of drug dependency and suicide. Hmm. Ok, anyway. The point is, I went back to my roots in classical music. Strangely. And, on top of that, no one in my cast was Asian American (which I got a little bit of flack for).

Ok, so this pattern is repeating in grad school now. My original thesis topic was looking at Asian American artists in the digital realm, and this whole idea of "making space" because on the Internet, we can "publish, then filter" rather than in the real world, where we must be filtered first before publishing. I just wasn't excited about it though. I came to this realization when I found myself talking more about Alex's Hulu's project more than my own...and more excitedly.

After much soul-searching (and many a late night watching too many YouTube videos), and Hahn-Bin's concert at Carnegie, which I couldn't seem to stop talking about for the next two weeks, I decided to tackle questions I had about how we perceive and consume classical music, and how that changes on the Internet (because I just love the Internet), or in general, when the venue changes.

So, interestingly, I'm back to this whole classical music thing. Who says history doesn't repeat?

I apologize for the discombobulation of this blog. They started banging and clanging and doing construction on my apartment complex very VERY early this morning, which kept waking me up over the next four hours. I tried putting earbuds in and turning up a lullaby very loud, but that only seemed to help marginally. Grrrr.

Grace cracks me up

Grace: who are u mtg with tomorrow?

me: lisa gitelman

I have a paper due for her on Wednesday

11:10 PM Grace: oh

the death of paper thing

11:13 PM me: what?

no no

social life of paper!

LIFE of paper!

Wet, Rainy, Windy, COLD

...is how Chicago welcomes me and Ray back home. We just got in, immediately inhaled Jimmy John's, bought some snacks for the weekend, and are holing up in the hotel until we have to brave the weather and head downtown to meet Teresa for dinner! Tonight, Lou Malnati's deep dish pizza. That is the mission.

Chicago food consumed so far:
Jimmy John's

pink netbook

I'm at the Best Buy near my apartment right now typing this blog out on an HP Netbook - Intel Atom Processor N270. I've been thinking about getting a Netbook, but then I think, why bother? I am going on two trips before the end of a very VERY busy semester and was thinking a Netbook might help in terms of making sure I get work done on the road. But, Netbooks cost money, and I already have a laptop. I'm just not sure I need one, although it would be nice...

Ahh decisions. I thought I was better at this decision thing than most people... if I get one, I'd like to get one before my Chicago trip on Thursday (yea, Thursday, and if I get it before then, I think I'd be wondering if it were just an impulse buy).

Ahhh!!!

Oh, I just noticed that this one is out of stock. Splendid. I guess that makes my decision (at least for tonight) easier.

Unsentimentality

I received this email today:

"Dear Steinhardt Graduate Student:

Are you in graduating in January or May? Would you like your picture taken in
academic attire to give out to family, friends or as a souvenir of your
accomplishment?"

(and then there were more details of when and where and who and what and all that good stuff that I didn't read because...)

Am I just way too unsentimental if my gut reaction was "Uh...no, thank you."

Really bad keyboard, and what I think is TMI

I'm at home for the weekend (will actually be coming back to NYC tomorrow), and this keyboard is really bad...I thought I was going to write a blog about how bad this keyboard was, and how funky my typing looks on it as it skips letters and spaces and such, but it seems to be cooperating quite well now. So, if that's the case, I'll actually post a thought about a recent tweet I posted on Twitter, which many of my friends have said was TMI.

The tweet said, "King Taco: the best GI cleaning agent ever. My entire digestive track feels like it's on fire. Love it."

I was at dinner with Juliana tonight, and she apparently blocked that tweet from her memory. "TMI", she kept saying, echoing what a couple people said in the comments for that status on Facebook. Here's the thing though. What IS TMI? (and for those of you who aren't in the know of weird Internet acronyms, TMI = Too Much Information, but that isn't really the question) And what's appropriate or not for a tweet or a status update (as the case may be, as my tweets automatically feed into my status updates)?

Obviously, status updates and their appropriateness vary from person to person. Maybe it's my background in health care, but bodily functions just aren't really considered TMI for me. I happily share them with anyone who's curious (thankfully, I suppose, most people aren't). Other things - my financial situation, my family, my interpersonal relationships, my insecurities, my emotions. Deep emotions (not surfacey stuff like "NU just beat Purdue! Booyah!!!") - these ARE considered TMI for social networking sites. That information is for my friends, and not for entertaining status updates. Which, I guess, is my philosophy on status updates. Everyone can see them. I have over 1,000 friends on Facebook. Why not make it interesting/entertaining, so if people have to read it, it won't be 1) boringly superficial and overdone or 2) about something in which the person reading has very little context and honestly might not care about?

For example, everyone's entitled to their own status update rules, but I just don't get people who post things like "Cynthia is happy!" or "Cynthia can't believe that just happened." or "Cynthia is depressed and having a bad day." Because, you know, that just leads to more questions. It's almost like begging people to ask about it, and if you really wanted people to know, why not just post about it in the first place? I'm telling you, it's much more entertaining for those of us who are too lazy to take our hand off the mouse to type a question in the comment box.

Ok, that was a segue. Back to the point.

So, because I have no qualms, and apparently no shame, about bodily functions, since they don't really touch on things I consider "sacred", I don't have a problem posting tweets about them. I'm sorry, Juliana and others who may have raised an eyebrow at it. Live with it. At least I tell you about what really matters in person.

Night at Carnegie aka "You Clearly Didn't Get It"

Violinist Hahn-Bin's sold-out debut at Carnegie Hall last night was, in a word, exhilarating. Other words I'd use are amazing, edgy, revelatory (for me). The entire night was mind-blowing - not just because great music was being performed by a phenomenal musician, but because of the audience dynamics. This post isn't meant to be a critique of Hahn-Bin's performance, but rather a rumination on how we listen to classical music concerts, and think about the conventions of music.

We sat in the balcony in the last row, which lent itself to a lot of interesting observations, not to mention a prime people-watching spot. And boy, were people restless! I think New York suffers from that wanting-to-be-all-cultured-yet-can't-sit-still-through-a-concert syndrome. I don't think I have ever heard that much talking and rustling between pieces, as my friend Brittany pointed out.

Hahn-Bin's repertoire for the night was, in a word (it's a night of things in one word), unconventional. He played pieces from Schnittke to Cage to Kriesler, interspersed with some Chopin and Mozart. For those of you who don't know, Schnittke's music "was regarded as so radical that his musician friends did not dare to program him in the Soviet Union" (taken from Hahn-Bin's program notes), and one of Cage's most famous pieces is called 4'33", where the pianist comes out and sits at the piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds without playing a note. The whole idea behind it is to listen to what goes on in the ambiance, then to question whether such a piece is considered music, or some excuse for a cultural studies experiment.

I'm not qualified to talk about the intricate details of the music (that, and I can't remember the details), but it was clear (at least up on the balcony) most people enjoyed the Chopin and the Mozart the best. Conventional classical music. Expected. Dare I say it...manufactured consent of what "music" and "high culture" are supposed to sound like. People in the row in front of me (four older women) were actually talking to each other during some of the non-Mozart/Chopin pieces. Talking!! Two of them left during intermission, and two others left during his last piece, Ludoslawsky's Partita. Now, I don't know if this happens all the time in New York, but I rarely see this happen, and I've been to my share of concerts.

The best part, though, was at the very end, when Hahn-Bin played his encore piece - a trope on "Silent Night" by Schnittke. This one I remember a bit more. Two verses of "Silent Night" interspersed with atonal chords, evoking laughter from the audience (you know, the part of the audience that actually "gets" it). One audience member, however, was not impressed. During the piece, I heard "not funny" and "poor taste" coming from this erm...rather large, hair follicle challenged and heterochallenged Caucasian (you'll see why his race is important) sitting in the row below me. He had to be shushed by his partner and the audience members sitting behind him. When the encore was over and the applause died down, everyone got up to leave, and he and his partner ended up walking out of the concert hall right behind me and my friends. Here's what I heard (in an almost-monologue, the same phrases repeated over and over indignantly)...and he was ANGRY and very LOUD:

"That was such poor taste. He shouldn't make fun of other religions? How would he feel if we made fun of his religion? What is he...Buddhist? How would he feel if we made fun of Buddhism?"

Of course, because all Asians are Buddhists.

**Ok, here's my academic take on the night...feel free to skip - and much thanks to Howard Becker for helping to inform my thoughts on this**

Moreover, the entire night brought up these questions that keep bouncing around in my head about music conventions and how these forms of music and "high culture" as we conventionally know it have become naturalized. Brittany brought up an interesting point that in our society, major keys are generally "happy", and minor keys are "sad". This dichotomy seems very biologically determinist to me, and I do not agree that we naturally feel happy when we hear things in a major key and sad when we hear things in a minor key (we had a lively discussion about this during intermission)...especially because concept of major and minor are based on the Western 12-tone scale. Middle Eastern music, Indian music, music from other cultures that do not adhere to the Western classical music conventions of a 12-tone scale don't even HAVE major and minor keys. Funnily enough, the reason why we think music is so universal - that we hear stories of people in other cultures (usually cultures that are seen as "inferior" to our own) who cry when they hear Mozart for the first time - is probably because of the history of Western imperialism, especially for those of us who live in a Western society. Aren't these stories simply perpetuating the naturalization of Western cultural imperialism in society? Of course, we'll never hear of the stories where Mozart is played in another culture, and the other culture goes "WTF?" Not in our society.

I strongly believe that the way we listen to music is learned. We learn that "major" is happy, and "minor" is sad. We learn that Mozart and Chopin are beautiful, melodic, and Schnittke makes us go "WTF?" Our learning gets so internalized that we perceive it to be natural, and we dangerously lose the ability to enjoy things that don't fit in our little box labeled "Music". After all "music" is just a definition. What are its limits? Should it even have limits? (no...!!)

The classification of "classical music" in and of itself is a vehicle for an invisible authority of the so-called "high culture". The setting of Carnegie Hall is another. The fact that we don't wear jeans to listen to a concert (usually). All of this feeds into this pre-set system of aesthetic values, social status, and high culture that we associate with a certain type of music. When the preconceived notions of "classical music" are shattered, especially in a "high culture" venue like Carnegie Hall, people tend not to like that. It's traumatic, like trying to make a circular peg fit in a square hole. You might have to shave off some of the peg, and some of the wood, to make it fit. I'm telling you, it's traumatic. Almost physically. I won't go too far down this road of how these concepts of venue, musical genre, contextualization, etc play into bigger ideas of authority, power, and credibility, but hopefully you get the point. Or, I'll leave it to your imaginations.

All in all though, if it were your debut in Carnegie, would you rather play pieces that have been played hundreds, possibly thousands of times in the same hall before? Or would you try to be edgy and play something fresh that challenges the boundaries of classical music conventions - something really memorable? I think Hahn-Bin achieved the latter beautifully.

Birdseye view of London

One of my favorite moments in cinematic history has to be the moment in "Mary Poppins" where, after Mary, Bert, Jane, and Michael get all sooted up after flying up the chimney and go gallivanting on the rooftops of London, after the chimney-smoke staircase, they get to the tallest chimney and look out over the city. The music goes from a variation based on that famous clock chime melody and transitions into an orchestral recapitulation of "Feed the Birds", while the sun sets over the city and the night lights start glimmering in the buildings below.

But...that is not the scene I'm doing for this paper.

New Song! "Evanston Rain"

Yes, I know I'm on hiatus, but I have a couple new songs that I wrote/am writing/got finished in the last two months or so. So I think I can still call myself a musician. Somewhat.

The main one I'm ready to talk about and reveal to the world is "Evanston Rain". It's a companion piece to "Boston Rain", and goes right into it. The recording on my Facebook site is really raw (I recorded it after a very long day, and kind of spur-of-the-moment type thing) and includes both parts (Evanston and Boston). I played it as such twice this summer, although sometimes I feel like the quality of "Boston" now sucks because there's no break between the two songs, and both together is about 9 minutes of non-stop playing, and "Boston" is the second half.

Please check it out.

I also got a keyboard last month and have been writing new material and playing covers on it (as well as figuring out new things to do with "Atheist's Prayer"). There is another (finally) piano song that I wrote, but is definitely not ready to be recorded or shared yet. More on this when it is.

Too young...?

As you can see, I've been on a classical music binge lately, thanks to being treated in recent weeks to some truly amazing violin playing, courtesy of Jennifer Liu (remember this name - seriously, folks), and I've been happily getting back in touch with my classical music roots and meshing them with my current research interests by looking them up on YouTube (I'm being a bit facetious here - the only meshing with current research interests is the digital media aspect and the fact that it's probably preventing me from working on actual research), which has everything ranging from Heifetz playing Zigeunerweisen (a favorite of my brother's, who played it, and Sabi's, who sang along) and Cziffra playing Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody #2 (probably one of my all-time favorite piano pieces...and one I've NEVER played, and never attempted) to fun things like "Rachmanioff had Big Hands", to first-time musicians braving the scathing comment boxes of the Internet by posting clearly amateurly-played pieces (many with good humor).

Today, I ran across a 6-yr-old violinist named Mercedes Cheung playing Zigeunerweisen. Impressive? Absolutely. Does it sounds good? Umm...let's say I choose to take the 5th on that one. Watching these brings up questions about the spectacle and sensationalism. Let me be a classical music purist for a second and leave aside all my academic training about the myth of high/low/pop cultures. Let's forget about Howard Becker for the moment. Why is this girl such a big deal? If she were older, say, even a respectable 10, and played like that, she'd probably be laughed out of the hall. Instead...well, I'll let you read the comments for yourself. Ok, the thing is, the mass media doesn't seem to have picked up on the fact that this little girl is playing some of the hardest pieces ever written for violin, but just like in the case of Connie Talbot on Britain's Got Talent, the special part of it all is the age.

What's even more interesting to me (here's where this production vs. consumption side comes in) are the comments. The VAST VAST majority of the comments are about how good she is. It leads me to question this idea that I've REALLY learned to resist in the last year...the idea that you need to "learn" how to listen to "high culture". I'm cringing as I write this, because in any other case, I'm strictly against this idea of high culture vs. vulgar/low/pop culture. I don't feel there should be a distinction...for reasons I won't go into here. I also don't think there should be a judging of even classical music, since the classification of "good" in classical music simply hearkens back to the conventions and authorities that define what "good" is in music. The question is, are the viewers deaf to the music because of the fact that Mercedes is 6? Because what she does is impressive? What does that say about the type of music we look for? What does it mean then, to play music? Is it always tied to the identity of the musician - that we would settle for, or indeed in this case, praise, mediocre music because of who the musician? Is the identity of the musician, then, especially in this digital era of YouTube and easy publishing (publish, then filter, remember) more important than the music itself?

I've always worked with the philosophy of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" when it comes to playing classical music. I feel like it totally applies in this case. The thing is, I would say I'm definitely being a little bit unfair, because mass media hasn't descended upon her with its vulture-like claws so I'm probably just picking on Mercedes a bit here as an example of something that happens on a regular basis (sorry, Mercedes - you're cute as a button, and talented for your age to boot, and I can't wait to see where you'll be in 4 years, but...yea). Because this happens ALL THE TIME. Kids playing songs they're simply not ready for - either technically or in musical maturity. In Mercedes' case, it's unfortunately both. It's not music - it's a stunt.

Let the hate comments begin... I really struggled with whether or not I should post this, because I feel like I'm being really mean...but in the end, well, here it is. Maybe I'm just too apologetic sometimes?