The music of what actually happens

Among many stories told about the legendary Irish hunter-warrior-hero Fionn mac Cumhaill (also known by the Romanized version of his name, Finn MacCool), is this little one:

Fionn and his soldiers were sitting around a fire in their camp at night. Some of the men were discussing the question of what is the most beautiful music in the world, with each man offering his own opinion on what was the most beautiful music, some saying flute music, some saying harp music, etc. One of the men asked their leader Fionn his opinion. He said, “The most beautiful music in the world is the music of what actually happens.” l

Be direct

Years ago, not long after I moved to Ithaca from Florida, I took a class in basic drawing at the CSMA. It was taught by David, a local artist. David was cheerful, spontaneous, and enthusiastic, and I thought his approach to art and to teaching were very interesting although I didn’t always get what he was talking about sometimes. He sometimes gave us odd assignments, like “to draw motion.” Not to draw a particular thing in motion, mind you, but to draw motion. I recall that I spent some time experimenting with that, trying different things in an effort to draw motion itself, but without any success.

Sometimes I was perplexed at David’s response to some of my drawing efforts, because he would occasionally respond with great enthusiasm and encouragement to a drawing of mine that I thought was only so-so, and he would be only lukewarm-encouraging about a drawing that I had labored long and hard over and that I thought was pretty good. He seemed to be all about “being direct.” He mentioned this thing about “being direct” quite a few times throughout the drawing course, and although I was intrigued I didn’t really feel that I knew quite what he was talking about.

This “directness” thing of David’s was something that kept returning to my thoughts over the years, and now several years later I think I understand, at least to some extent, what he was talking about. I now think that all of David’s exercises that he assigned to us in the drawing class were aimed at trying to get us to draw with a quality of directness. This directness is a quality of strength and boldness in a way, but not too much strength and boldness! It is just enough, and no more! It’s a quality of approaching your activity with full attention and full sincerity, and not filtering your activity through a lot of unnecessary thinking, planning, analysis, evaluation, etc. It’s a subtle thing actually, something of a Zen-like quality. Because at least some thinking, analysis, etc. is necessary, but how much? To pare the mind’s intellectual interference down to the minimum and to rely instead, as much as you possibly can, on your awareness, on your intuition, having faith in the inherent integrity of your effort and without fear or equivocation, this is the quality of directness that I continue to work toward in my musical practice, my writing, my drawing, and everything else that I do.

Eclectics

J and I heard the Eclectics play at the Oasis for happy hour. We’re big fans of this band and the guitarist, Alex, is a friend of ours. Their playing was great and they played a lot of great old classic rock, blues and jazz songs. We ran into our friends Sally and Jim there. Sally happens to be an excellent singer in her own right, and has just come out with a new CD of her own music. During the band break there was a dance lesson by local dance genius James Bower. He taught a beginning lesson on the cha-cha. Both J and I did this lesson along with about 30 other people. It was fun, and was my first real lesson in the cha-cha.

Lunchtime performance

Played a performance yesterday at mid-day in Lincoln Hall at Cornell with some musicians from CMEMME. It went well mostly, and I had fun.


We started out with an instrumental piece, the Egyptian folk dance tune “Saba Samir,” then went into the Turkish song “Ada Sahilleri.” Most of the rest of our program was Turkish, with the exception of one Ladino song and one Armenian song. The audience was kind of small, but no matter. I and the other musicians had a good time playing this gig.

A couple of Greek songs

Last evening CMEMME played a very brief gig as part of an event called “Poetry and Pastry” that took place at the A. D. White House on the Cornell campus. It featured readings of poetry, mostly from the Mediterranean region. Our group kicked off the event by playing two Greek songs. The first was “Sto Perigiali to Krifo” (also known as “Arnisi”) whose lyrics are a poem by Giorgis Seferis, set to music by Mikos Theodorakis. The second song was “Naxa T’athanato Nero,” whose lyrics are a poem by Yannos Ritsos, also set to music by Theodorakis.

I played the kaval on both of these. I thought we sounded good on these two songs and I was generally pleased with our gig, although it was somewhat awkward playing conditions. The room we were in was WAY, WAY too small for the crowd of people in it, and we found ourselves incredibly cramped as we played. I kept trying to adjust my music stand so that our violinist Maurice didn’t keep bumping it with his bowing arm. Who knew that there would be such a crowd of people showing up for a poetry reading? I love poetry readings myself, but my experience has always been that poetry readings tend to be sparsely attended, so the huge crowd that showed up at this event was quite a surprise. After we played our songs I hung around for a while outside, talking to people. My poet friend Fred showed up and we had a nice chat.

A little bit of the Apple Harvest Festival, dance, art, etc.

I’ve always been a fan of the downtown Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival, despite the fact that it’s usually raining whenever this festival occurs! This year J and I didn’t go to the festival much though. I think we were both feeling tired and were rather preoccupied with other stuff that is going on in our lives. We did manage to get downtown to the Apple Harvest Festival in the Commons on Sunday, for a brief time anyway. It was raining like hell. We saw the Chandani bellydance troupe perform, which was interesting. It was a fun performance, although it was a challenge for the dancers to perform in a small space where they had only a small roof to shelter them from the rain. J and I ran into a few friends of ours there in the audience.

After the dance performance we strolled around the art and craft booths. There was one that caught our attention. There was a guy who had some very interesting photographic art. He had taken photos which he had artistically manipulated in Photoshop so that the resulting images turned out to be some beautiful and imaginative abstract art, which he printed on post cards. I thought this fellow had some really original and interesting artistic ideas. We bought some of his post card artworks, and I’m planning to frame one of them and hang it up in my office. I don’t know who this guy is but I will be looking for him again to see if he shows up at other festivals. He was a tall African American fellow probably in his mid-50s, who called himself a2rd (i.e. a-squared). He had a dog with him that he called “Zen.” I noticed he had a well-worn copy of the classic book The Fourth Dimension by C. H. Hinton lying on one of his tables. Altogether a very interesting guy. I hope I run into him again sometime.

Short performance on Thursday

The Cornell Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Music Ensemble had a short gig on Thursday in the A. D. White House at Cornell, as part of an event celebrating the life and work of the great Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, who died last year. We started off the evening’s program with three songs. Two of them were Algerian Rai songs, “Yal Menfi” and “Ya Rayah,” and the other was a song by the great Lebanese singer Marcel Khalife, with lyrics by Darwish himself. We had a fairly good representation of the ensemble at this event, i.e. a lot of musicians showed up! And this room we were playing in is not very big so we were all kind of scrooched up together in there. I stood (instead of sitting like I usually do) while I played the ney, due to the space limitations, but actually I was glad to stand because I find it easier to play that way.


It was a short gig, just those three songs, and after we finished we quickly packed up our stuff and got out, leaving the rest of the evening to the scholars to talk about Darwish and read from his work. I would have liked to stick around and listen to the speeches and readings (being kind of interested in Darwish’s poetry myself) but I had to rush off to attend a CSI Board meeting….

Lesson with Ronnie

I drove up to Rochester again Sunday with my friend Tony for shakuhachi instruction from Ronnie Seldin. It went well for the most part. In my individual lesson with Ronnie we played through the whole of “Hachidan.” Then we started working on a new piece called “Yugao.” We only played through the first part of it. It’s complex but it’s musically very interesting and I think I will enjoy practicing it. Tony had his lesson, and then there was a group lesson on a honkyoku piece called “Kumoijishi.” I found it to be difficult but I no longer allow myself to get all frustrated about stuff like this! I’ve decided to just do what I can and then just let it go….

Ronnie and Tony

The artistic life?

When I was young I was obsessed with scientific stuff, and always assumed that I would eventually have a career as some kind of scientist. That did not come about, perhaps in part because my personality and interests underwent a slow shift over the years. While I’ve always retained a certain amount of curiosity about scientific subjects, over the years I’ve gradually come to be more and more interested in the arts. To the point where I am now almost fanatically devoted to music, literature, art, theater, etc. of all kinds, and artistic concerns are the major element of my thought and attention. From the classical to the experimental, I love it all. I’ve often fantasized about somehow finding a way to get the hell out of my job and devote myself totally to a life of artistic work, but I know such a life would be very difficult, at least in my current financial circumstances! I admire and envy those who have someone found a way to devote themselves wholly to artistic work of one kind of another.

Perhaps some day I will be able to retire and then really live the artistic life. Or perhaps not. Or, maybe even if I did retire I might find it not feasible to devote so much of myself to artistic work. But, since I am fantasizing here, I’d like to mention a few things that I would love to do, if I ever got the time, i.e. if I didn’t have to work at a job! Note that these are in addition to my current activities of playing various flutes and writing poems:

1. Write a novel
2. Learn to play the snare drum and join a Scottish pipe band
3. Learn how to do ceili dancing
4. Learn to play the bansuri
5. Draw every day (mostly portrait and still life)

I don’t know though, maybe if I actually had the opportunity (like if I didn’t have to worry about my income) to do all this stuff I would find myself getting burned out and exhausted by it all. How long would my enthusiasm hold out, I wonder?

A small gig in the Johnson

Friday I had a small gig playing some background music at a reception for the Cornell Institute for European Studies. The reception took place in the large conference room way up on the 6th floor of the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell. A few days earlier, a call had gone out to members of CMEMME, asking for volunteers to play this gig. I of course immediately volunteered, as I always volunteer for any kind of performance opportunities that come my way! Only three other people from CMEMME volunteered also: Mahbud on the oud, David on darbuka, and Mike on mandolin. We played through several songs for about 40 minutes or so, while a crowd of people gradually accumulated. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, talking very enthusiastically with their friends and colleagues. I recognized a couple of people from my department there. The crowd got so large and the conversation so loud that it got to the point where it was hard for us to hear what we were playing, even though we were miked and had amplification. We took a break for a while so that the director of the CIES could make a speech. We helped ourselves to some snacks and wine. Then we went back and played for about 10 more minutes. It was kind of a fun, informal, low-key gig. It seemed like the whole event was very successful, insofar as everyone there seemed to be having a good time.