little boy

Y and I went to the Japan Society to see the exhibit "Little Boy" which was curated by the artist Takashi Murakami. It was crowded, and we didn't feel like paying the $12 admission, so we just wandered around the lobby and saw the parts of the exhibit that didn't require a ticket. Like these machines:



It is some kind of gambling device, like a slot machine I guess. I have never used a slot machine, so I am really not sure. For some reason, there were so many people wearing black leather at the Japan Society that I was surprised.

We had taken the subway from Brooklyn and were not paying attention to the stops, so we missed Grand Central, and got out at Fifth Avenue instead. Since we were on the same block, we went to Barney's. I used to be such a shopper, but lately every time I have gone shopping I've left empty-handed. This was no exception. After Barney's we decided to walk downtown to 47th Street, and got tangled up in one of those generic street fairs. Y liked it but I didn't (I hate crowds) but then my sister called me so I was able to ignore the crush of people while I chatted with her. But she was driving and I didn't want her to talk and drive at the same time, so I told her I couldn't hear her because of the noise from all the people and loud music.

We saw this incredible green tree around 53rd Street, off of 2nd Avenue. I took this picture, but it does not do justice to the color.

Carandiru

I rented this movie on Friday. I still have not watched it. I do that frequently. I rent movies that I end up never watching. However, I just watched the trailer (click on CARANDIRU above) and I am fairly certain that I will watch it tonight.

I wonder...

My eyes are still burning. They say that if someone is talking about you, your "ears are burning." So someone must be looking at me...but who?

burning

jade
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

My eyes are burning. Maybe if I saw in black and white they would not hurt so much. I don't know why they are burning like this, but it is annoying.

rainy saturday night

blue

Tonight is the first night of Passover. When I was a kid my mother prepared elaborate seders, and we would have guests, and the reading and prayers seemed to go on forever. My first time getting drunk was at seder, when I was young, maybe five years old. I am not going to a seder tonight. In past years my aunt or my cousin would have the seder, but this year no one let me know if one was planned. My father does not observe Passover; my sister will go to her husband's family's seder. So I feel a little blue, because the memory of our family seders, back when my mother was alive, are happy ones, and I wish I could relive them tonight. But I will try to be good and eat no bread this week. My gesture of compliance.

cat's eye view

red
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

This is something my cats see, I think. Of course, I can't prove it. They talk to me, but in cat language.

lightness

lightness
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

But today, unlike yesterday, I feel content.

barking, but not biting

Yesterday I spent the morning deciding on the exact timing and substance of my swimming session. I would leave my apartment at 1:30 and swim for one hour. But when I got to my gym, it was closed; there had been a water-main break. I felt defeated. I had planned, after swimming, to go buy some kind of storage for my files. So I went to "The Container Store" on Sixth Ave. and 18 Street. I was feeling very tired and grumpy. The swimming was supposed to revive me, but since I had not been able to swim, I was not at all revived.

By the time I got to the store I was in a bad mood. It had started to rain and I had no umbrella. I could not see clearly because my glasses were streaked with rain. When I walked into the store, a very tall guy smiled a huge smile and said "hi!" I forced myself to say hello, and walked inside. All the employees were smiling, and each one of them said hello. "Do you need help?" a smiling woman with short brown hair asked me. "No, I'm fine," I said, not smiling. I wanted them all to leave me alone. I found my file boxes, and paid for them; the clerk put them in an absurdly huge and cumbersome bag. I was trying to imagine how I was going to negotiate my way home on the train with such a package. Feeling even more tired and annoyed, I walked toward the exit. Tall guy was still there. Smiling even more than before, he said "have a great day!"

things

I have numerous decorative objects that I like to look at and arrange in ever-changing configurations. Here are two of them. If I were more of a queen maybe I would be an interior decorator. Not in a million years...

rapture

B. wrote about "Rapture" by Blondie. I had not heard it in many years, so I went to iTunes and downloaded it. Listening to it, I was overwhelmed by an intense burst of memory from a time in my life that I remember with some confusion, some embarassment, but also pride and nostalgia...during a time when I did a lot of things that now scare me, when I walked a tightrope--or as one of my concerned professors once said, I burned the candle at both ends--and my friends used to joke (or maybe they were serious) with me, saying "you are going to die young." Well, I am no longer all that young, and I am not dead. And this song still makes me want to dance. Her voice is haunting, and despite the bouncy groove of it, there is something very dark about this song. It reminds me...

?

head
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

What do you think it is?

jade

jade
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

I bought this plant yesterday. I had a beautiful jade plant but in a wild windstorm it fell from the window sill where it lived, and was damaged so badly that it died. I was very sad, but this one is beautiful too. In California they grow outside, and become huge. In my apartment, which is bright but has north light, it is a challenge to keep them thriving.

remember?

Last evening I had dinner with Thierry. We met first at Angel's Share, which is a very charming and calm bar upstairs near Saint Mark's Books. To get to Angel's Share you walk through the Japanese restaurant, which is busy and noisy. Once you enter the bar, it is surprisingly quiet, as if, in passing through the door, you enter another world. It was great to sit there, drink scotch, and converse. Thierry is a person who I feel I've for years, even though I haven't known him for long.

After dinner, we went downstairs to have a cigarette (I shouldn't smoke, but I weaken from time to time) then back upstairs to the Japanese restaurant, Yokocho. The food was good, and we continued our bar conversation. Despite having had a few drinks, I did not feel drunk, although when I got on the subway to go home, I realized I had a buzz. Then I realized that it was that same restaurant where Y. and I had dinner with Arto, Diego, Hiroshi and (to my surprise and delight) the amazing Brazilian singer Marisa Monte, very late at night (we were the last people in the restaurant). It was the night that Y. and I had met.

[We had gone to Tonic to hear Arto perform. After the show, Arto said he would be joining us at the restaurant with Marisa. I thought to myself that maybe he meant Marisa Monte, a singer who I loved, because Arto had produced some of her records. Sure enough, a little while later they walked in. I managed to talk to Marisa for at least twenty minutes before I let on how much I totally love her work. She was so cool, so beautiful, and I told her the story of how I went to her concert at the Beacon Theater the previous summer, when I had the flu and a fever. The whole night seemed unreal, and it is one of my best memories. I was so excited the next day to call my brother and Solange and say to them "guess who I had dinner with last night?"]

So thanks, Thierry, for taking me back to a very happy time.

thrill

I remember when I first moved to Brooklyn Heights. My apartment was on Columbia Heights, the last street before the promenade. Walking home, I could see the water in front of me. I will always remember the thrill I felt then, the excitement of finally living in New York, the beauty of the view in front of me, the feeling of living so close to the water (having grown up in a land-locked state, I always wanted to be by water; one good thing about Chicago was living so close to Lake Michigan). I still get that feeling when I walk back from teaching and see the harbor stretched out before me. It's nice to know that the thrill can last this long.

in memoriam

Niels Henning Orsted-Pedersen was one of the great bassists in jazz.

art and life

I am reading the de Kooning biography, and it describes the close-knit artist community in 1930s New York. At that time modernist artists -- Rothko, de Kooning, Gorky -- were not selling any work, no one was famous, and there was little bitter enmity and competition among the artists (so the authors claim). And I think back to my idyllic view of New York, before I moved here. I thought that there would be a lively, supportive artist community, that I would find the camaraderie of like-minded individuals, all of us dedicated to the artist life. And then, the first summer I lived here, I was invited to the MacDowell Colony. And there were many well-known and very successful artists there in residence; I felt shocked, intimidated, and surprised that I was there at all. And what really took me aback was the intense competitiveness, the sniping, the bitterness among many of the composers there (the "famous" ones). And while I made some very nice acquaintance with other painters and writers, once we all returned to our city lives (most of the people there were from NYC) the bonds broke down; everyone was too busy hustling and trying to pay rent and trying to "network." I don't think there is an enviable world for artists now. Everyone is obsessed with "making it" and being famous and finding a fancy gallery or getting a big commission. New York has become too expensive. Art has become too much of a business. So I have become a bit of a hermit, content to ply my own "trade" and hope that it will be appreciated.

music

I don't listen to music so much, since so much of my day is spent practicing, teaching, and writing it that I need silence for balance. When I listen I choose my material carefully. Lately I have been listening to the following:

Stereolab: assorted
Bill Evans: "You Must Believe in Spring"
Todd Rundgren: "A Dream Goes on Forever"
Beethoven: First Piano Concerto

Here are more strawberries, for spring.

flowers

Sunday, lying in the grass in Prospect Park, the flowering trees overhead made a tangled web. The sun was so bright that it hurt to look for long, but by taking a picture I was able to capture this, and now I can look as long as I want without blinding myself. Oh, and by the way, my eye is all better. I even went swimming this afternoon.

art and life/life and art

I have been reading, with great interest and enjoyment, the biography of Willem deKooning that recently won the Pulitzer Prize. I have always worshipped deKooning’s art, and now, learning of his life, I am faced with many questions about my own. There are parallels in our childhoods and our respective concepts of the artist life. I will not enumerate them in detail here, except to say that, like deKooning, I have always been caught between the need to establish a kind of secure “comfort zone” in my own living situation which often conflicts with my desire to dedicate myself totally to my creative work. Anyone, it seems, who has had a childhood marked by traumatic instability usually needs to create at least the illusion of stability. Artists who come from more affluent or secure backgrounds often are better able to throw caution to the wind and live the truly bohemian life, because they come from a level of safety that I don’t have. But I have been lucky. I have never had a “day job”, or even an adult job that wasn’t in the world of music. And I don’t work 9-5. So I really should spend more of my time composing, instead of just thinking about composing. Or are they one and the same?

Years ago, midway through my second year of graduate school, I won a prestigious composition prize, with money attached, and then a week later I was awarded a sizeable fellowship intended to support my work as a composer. I took a trip to France, planning to take two quarters off from school, and I planned on staying in Europe for months, or even more. I had no solid plan, not even a real itinerary. I arrived in Paris without a place to stay and no worries. I was emboldened by being a foreigner, by having a world of possibilities and newness. But it turns out I could not stay; my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I returned home. My mother died a few months later, and I felt lost, and nowhere was home anymore. A year and a half later, I finished my degrees in Chicago and had decided to make my way in New York. My old teacher from college, a composer whom I admire and respect, who has helped me a great deal (and who was instrumental in getting me the fellowship) suggested that I not take so "safe" a route, and instead travel to Asia and Africa and wander about, soaking up the music and the people. I felt like a failure when she wrote that to me, for I knew that I could not do that. How could I explain that the bottom had fallen out for me? That to embark on a solitary journey, when there was nothing concrete to come back to, or to leave from, would be impossible for me? She was right, but the timing was not.

haze

The sky has that dull haze, making the pure blue of the past few just a happy memory. I love spring, but it also is ominous, because I dislike the heat of summer. If I were in the country, the summer heat would be tolerable. I could sit under a tree, in the shade, and wait for evening. But here, in the city, the heat is torturous: it makes the dirt and trash on the streets ferment and reek, turns the subway platform into an inferno, and forces me to live in air-conditioned chill. So when the sky appears dull, the sun a vague brightness, the edges of the horizon a pink-tinged gray color, it is a warning of what is to come.

lost

I will miss Thierry's blog. It was one of the ones that I read every day. Is it selfish for me to want him to resume? The thing I find so troubling about the internet is that while it can connect us with a wider world, our exchanges do not take shape in real time, and a person can disappear without a trace. If I suddenly erased my blog, I would no longer exist to those who casually come across my words, or who visit this site from time to time. As it is I may only be a fiction, conjured of words and images, but intangible.

age

Yesterday, taking Mabel to Prospect Park, and then meandering through Park Slope, I must have walked ten miles. And so today, and last night too, my poor arthritic knee is in sad shape. I can actually feel the two bones scraping together; years ago, when I had surgery to fix the knee, they discovered that some cartilage was damaged and had to be removed. My doctor told me about a new procedure in which some kind of foam is injected into the joint, to replace the missing cartilage, thus protecting the joints and cushioning them. I hope my medical insurance will pay for it.

reading list

DE KOONING (biography)
ALMOST TRANSPARENT BLUE (novel by R. Murakami)
THE BUDDHA MIND IN CONTEMPORARY ART (essays)

expectation

I think that I have posted an entry here every day since I first started this blog, back in December. That says that either I have no life, or I am a hopeless narcissist, or that I am predictable, or perhaps that I need this vehicle of self-expression.

for thierry

blossoms
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

groceries

The beautiful weather was not good for Key Food. It was virtually empty. I bought these amazing strawberries.

park

park
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

Even though the sun was brilliant in the sky, in black and white the scene from the park looks more sober. I prefer this version. It seems closer to the truth of things.

sun

Today Y and I took Mabel on the subway to Prospect Park. The park was crowded with people: families, sun-worshippers, soccer players, drummers. I walked down my old block of 5th Street. The crazy lady who lived underneath me still lives there, after all these years. I wonder if she still has her windows covered up with old newspapers.

amazing photographs (click)

reason

There is reason, thankfully. Let us hope it prevails.

for Bao

klee
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

coincidence

Theo and I have China on our minds today.

never discuss politics

This morning, remarking about the recent anti-Japanese protests going on in China and Hong Kong, I said that I felt that if Japan just offered an apology, this whole situation might be defused. Otherwise, it seems dangerous. Y replied that the allegations should be proven before Japan apologizes to China. I argued that there was certainly enough proof to render that point moot, and that to claim otherwise is to be like those people who claim that there is no proof that six million Jews were killed by the Germans and their cohorts in WWII. Y refused to acknowledge any similarities, telling me that I simply don't know enough about the situation; that the Chinese claimed that 300,000 were killed in Nanking when the population of Nanking was only 200,000. But there are many more accounts of atrocities beyone that. I was getting angry. The stubbornness of the Japanese is dangerous. What is so difficult about a simple apology? After all, if the late Pope could apologize for hundreds of years of wrong-doing by the Catholic Church, couldn't Japan admit that, in the course of war, it committed violations of human rights?

Sunday

I had planned to drive to Pennsylvania this afternoon for my nephew's first birthday party. I am not sure if I can do it, though, because my eye, which has improved somewhat, is still troubling me, and driving will probably make it feel worse. I feel bad if I miss the party, though. Ugh. I need a driver, that's what I need. Wouldn't it be nice?

blue night

blue night
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

Going through old photos on a lazy afternoon. This reminds me of that Seurat painting, the really famous one, that lives at the Art Institute of Chicago. "Sunday in the Park..." but I don't know if that is the real title. But I should call it "Blue Night on the Promenade in Brooklyn." It matches my mood, in any case.

Bill Evans: "Haunted Heart"

In the night though we're apart,
There's a ghost of you
within my haunted heart.
Ghost of you, my lost romance,
Lips that laughed, eyes that dance.
Haunted heart won't let me be,
Dreams repeat a sweet but lonely song to me.
Dreams are just,
It's you who must
belong to me,
and thrill my haunted heart,
Be still, my haunted heart.

music

In this early morning, my favorite part of day, I listen to John Coltrane play ballads. His intensity constantly threatens to burst through the elegant walls that McCoy Tyner, Paul Chambers and Elvin Jones create to define the tunes. It is so powerful that I feel my mind and body can hardly contain the feeling it gives me.

silence

Last night when he came home at 11 he told me "I feel sick." I asked what was wrong. "From drinking," he replied. He had been at a party. I did not answer. I became annoyed. I was annoyed because I had been home all day, the pain in my eye was severe, and he had not called but once during the day, and had not asked me if I was ok, or if I needed anything. "What's wrong?" he asked, sensing that I was not happy. "My eye hurts," I said.

amendment

Normally I would be annoyed by a statement like "I am not a big fan of opera" because it refers to such a broad category of music that it reflects a simple mind. Really what should have written is that I don't usually enjoy going to the opera. The music is fine, wonderful even, but the scene, the seats, the culture of it is not something I enjoy.

Puccini

I am not a big fan of opera, but some of the music is unbelievably beautiful. Now on my iPod I listen to "O mio bubbino caro" from GIANNI SCHICCHI by Puccini. It is almost too much.

angles

angles
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

The small hall from the bedroom to the dining room in my apartment...

scream

pain

morning fog

Behind the house, facing away from the road, was a river. Across the river the hills rose suddenly and steeply. There was a bald eagle that flew, hunting, in the early morning. I would try to watch it, but some mornings, like in this picture, the fog was so dense that I could see little. Today I can see little, because my eye is so painful. I will go back to the doctor.

stray eye

black shirt
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

In this picture you can see how my right eye does not focus or direct itself to the same focal point as my left eye does. For this reason I prefer wearing my glasses to my contact lenses, because they distract the viewer and make my wall eye less noticeable. Right now my left eye hurts so much, even more when I shut it than when I leave it open. I will have to call the eye doctor if it is not better tomorrow, since I am supposed to drive to PA on Sunday--my nephew's first birthday party--and I can't do it if I can't see.

fog

That horrible summer of 2003, late August, I was in Pennsylvania and so depressed that I was having anxiety attacks even in the bucolic countryside. In the early early morning, when I could not sleep, I would take photographs of the fog-shrowded meadows and fields. As the sun climbed, burning off the fog, and the day progressed, I would long to be transported away, somewhere where I could feel happy and safe. One morning, unable to take my feelings anymore, I packed my stuff, got Mabel, and drove away, leaving my friends bewildered. I drove in a panic, back to New York, too fast. Luckily I did not get a speeding ticket. But the tailpipe on my car was broken, and the noise of the unmuffled exhaust pounded into my skull.

But at least I have this beautiful photograph to show for it.

corners

corners
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

A corner in my bedroom.

so tired

I'm so tired. I taught my classes today. In between, I mailed my taxes (!) and did some errands. I tried to fill my prescription for cingulaire or whatever it is, but my insurance will not pay for it. So I got only a new inhaler. Then I had a rehearsal in the early afternoon, after which I came home and promptly fell asleep for almost three hours. I would have stayed asleep, but I had to walk Mabel, who started making little noises at the side of the bed to remind me. Now my eye hurts and it is swollen half shut. It looks bad so I wear my darkest sunglasses. I keep having problems with that eye, which is troubling. Maybe tonight I will work on this sculpture of toothpicks. It has been sitting untended for a long time.

driving

Speaking of cars, yesterday, having decided that the snow season is over, I took my car to Red Hook to get washed. I love my car. It is an old Volvo 240. It is the first "nice car" I have ever owned. All my previous cars were beaters, as we used to call them when I was growing up. My sister and her husband, who buy new cars frequently, like to suggest that my car is too old and that I should replace it. I plan to drive it until it dies. It is, by most standards, not a fashionable or fancy car, but I admire its efficient design, its lack of frills and gadgetry. It is also comfortable, reliable and safe. I try to keep it in good condition, and I try to be a responsible city car owner. I don't drive in the city unless absolutely unavoidable; I use it only to leave town, or when I have a gig that requires moving equipment. I take the subway 99% of the time. Sometimes in summer I drive around the city, when I know I can park, and I am transporting Mabel, but that is only because there is far less traffic then and I don't feel like I am contributing so much to the noise, congestion and smog that driving creates. I take Mabel on the subway, but she does get a little nervous.

exploitation

My brother has a friend who has become quite wealthy owning a taxi business. He owns many medallions, and like most in this business, leases them to the drivers at exhorbitant rates. The drivers work in stressful conditions for long hours, and at the end of a good day they take home about $50. Meanwhile this guy collects expensive cars, lives in a huge Tribeca loft, and travels around the world, buying expensive watches. When my brother mentioned that the friend had just purchased a new Porsche, I said "nice that he can get rich off the backs of his drivers." My brother was disgusted with me, and said "there you go on your Marxist harangue" and I replied "someone has got to say it." The thought of someone so selfishly amassing wealth this way makes me sad.

catalog

can't breathe
head pounds
legs hurt
painful left eye
muscles sore

today

Dear Jonathan,
Here is your horoscope
for Wednesday, April 13:

You're so capable of casting a romantic spell -- without even trying -- that it's scary. So when you notice that someone you're not at all interested in is watching you talk with that smile on their face, reel it in. Fast.

hmmm. interesting.

sun

I am waiting for Jeff to bring me my taxes. I hope I will get a good refund. If I do, I will buy a new bed, because my back hurts too much from this old one, and I am myself too old to suffer such indignities. The sky is bright blue and the sun is shining, and it felt good to stand in it. I am ready to go back to bed, soon.

dreaming

Last night I had a dream, or maybe it was a series of dreams, that were more bizarre than most. The first that I remember featured a number of musicians. Some were musicians I know, but the main character was a trumpet player, a youngish blonde guy, cute, for whom I was to write a piece. I went to hear him play at the Brooklyn Museum, which looked like a Las Vegas casino, and he performed in a glittery costume, with a chorus line of dancers. I am not sure what type of piece I would be writing for him. Also, we met, but I did not reveal that I was composing something for him. He gave me his card. Later in the dream I was preparing various kinds of raw ground meat for my cats to eat. I would take the dishes of raw meat and place them in a chest that was in the backyard of the house I lived in; the backyard was identical to the backyard of my childhood home. The chest was like the one in my apartment. I would leave the dishes of ground meat in the chest, baking in the hot sun (it was summer in this part of the dream) where I assume they would rot, since the cats did not eat any of it. While doing so, I discussed mosquito control with Greg, a french horn player I know. I was also picking up the dead bodies of those giant mosquitos that used to scare me so when I was a kid. I remember that in that yard the grass was brown, dried from the hot sun, and that the house was in Chicago.

I dreamed all of this in the latter part of the night. I had fallen asleep early, feeling feverish, and woke when Y came home from dinner, which was very late. After waking, I did not fall into a very satisfying sleep, and the dreams were sufficiently disturbing to keep me in a state of agitation. Now I feel as though I did not sleep at all.

sick

tired mabel
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

Here Mabel looks like I feel.

I'm so tired...

I feel totally exhausted. Thinking that some exercise might pick me up, I went to swim. After only about twenty minutes I was ready to lie down on the pool deck and sleep, so I stopped swimming and came back home. Now I feel like I might sleep for a week. I wonder if I am sick?

dreams

Today I have canceled my classes and will stay home. I have been feeling quite tired the past few days. My allergies are atrocious and my throat hurts. I could teach, as I am not that sick, but I have decided to attend to my own mental and physical health by having a day of relaxation. It is a deceptive day; the sky is amazingly blue and promises spring warmth, but the air is quite cold. I wish that I could remember my dream from last night; it was complex, baroque even, but the details are now cloudy. It did involve a trip, along a highway, and a train. My brother was in my dream, and shoes. Perhaps as the day goes by more details will emerge from the murk.

for Theo

a view

It has interesting how context determines the evocative potential of a scene. This was taken as I walked down Columbia Heights to go to Grimaldi's for pizza last evening. The sun was setting and the light was beautiful when I took this photograph. But in this view, it looks bleak and industrial.

We were riding up in the "dog elevator" after taking Mabel to the park. Y was tired and he sat on the floor with Mabel. I remained standing.

Eating continues, with a pizza from Patsy's which we consume sitting on a bench at the Fulton Landing. We would have had ice cream afterward but the line at the ice cream place was much too long.

eating

This was an eating weekend. First, we had guests in the daytime yesterday and we began by eating udon in sesame sauce. Then we worked on songs, very productive.

In the evening JRae made gyoza, and we ate like pigs. We finished our meal with Japanese cake, and drank Asahi beer.

Today was lazy, although I kept to my promise of de-cluttering the apartment, and have made good progress in that direction. Visual clutter bothers my brain, and makes it harder for me to focus. But to eliminate it completely I would have to get rid of a lot of stuff.

tired

Mabel went to the dog park. She ran around and she got tired.

For the last several days Sunrise Mart has been having a sale on soymilk. Every day we accumulate more. We are building a wall of soymilk boxes in the kitchen.

Dear Jonathan,
Here is your horoscope
for Sunday, April 10:

Did you enjoy your day off yesterday? Your day off from worrying about what might escape from your lips before you got a chance to think about it? Well, good. Because today -- well, today is up for grabs.

Ok. Today I will be a man of mystery. I will say nothing.

tilt

tilt
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

leaning out my living-room window, yesterday at sunset; I used the "digital zoom" on my camera, which gives that grainy look. It's no Andreas Gursky, that's for sure.

money makes (people frown?)

When I moved into my apartment, a little over ten years ago, the real estate market was in a deep slump, which is the only reason I could afford the place. The people in my building, which is a very nice building, were friendly and I quickly got used to the comparative luxury of a doorman, a dishwasher, a laundry room, and a quiet apartment. My previous apartments in the city were variously dark, loud, ramshackle, and with one exception, old and damaged. This is not to say that I minded; I was happy living in New York. But this apartment seems like true luxury to me in contrast.

In the last few years, as any city resident knows, real estate prices have gone sky-high. Is it a coincidence that the people who paid $1.3 million for their apartment, who moved in last year, never smile? They don't ever say hello, even to the doormen, and their small children look depressed. The same is true for the couple with the baby that paid $800,000 for a dark two-bedroom on the first floor.

spring is here

GertrudeStein returns to me...

April the eighth master-pieces fairly surely surely carefully carefully entirely, entirely fairly fairly carefully carefully surely surely carefully.

(from A BIRTHDAY BOOK)

paradox

Thinking today, after two weeks of intense reflection on my life and my circumstances, I realized that I am satisfied with my life. I am happy in my work and I am happy at home. I am happy with Mabel and Tuna and Pomona. I like where I live. There are things I wish were different, but nothing crucial, just small things, mostly desires that are not essential: I would like a new bed. I would like a new sofa.

So I think that my depression is not tied to my circumstances, and I understand more than ever that it is chemical; my brain chemistry is unbalanced. While walking in the oddly warm humid air to my doctor's office this evening, I thought that, even though I have been depressed the past two days, it is not because I am unhappy. Does this make sense?

for Nghiem

my blue and green flag of peace
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

I will miss reading Surangama. Peace.

window

Sometimes a picture says more than words ever could.

down

I was feeling pretty good the last week or so. My mood stable, I was able to sleep and get work accomplished and deal with the various decisions that swirled around me. Now I am feeling like I am sinking; it is inevitable, I guess, that when my mood has been good for a while, soon it will either catapult up and then crash, or do as it is now, and slowly sink. So all I want to do is sleep, lie in darkness, until this passes.

This picture is pretty much the opposite of how I feel right now. No atomic passion for me.

goodbye

I just found out the sad news that Saul Bellow died. This news brought a flood of memories.

Many years ago, when I was in graduate school, Cynthia worked as his assistant. Through this connection, she and I were chosen to house-sit his huge apartment during the summer, when he and his wife went to their home in Vermont. Although he was one of the most famous professors at U. Chicago, he was reclusive, and I had never seen him on campus. His apartment was in a building nicknamed the "Nobel Buiding" because several Nobel Prize winners lived in there: Milton Friedman, the economist, and a physicist with a long amazing Hindi name that I cannot remember, among others. The apartment had walls of glass. On a high floor, it had four bedrooms and two bathrooms and a panoramic view of the lake. Best of all, from this vantage point you could not see the university, so while it was practically on campus, I could pretend, while staring out at Lake Michigan, that school did not exist, which was very helpful for my psyche since I was finishing my dissertation and was riddled with anxiety over it. The central air-conditioning was a godsend (Chicago can be an inferno in the summer, and in previous summer, in my top-floor apartment on Harper, with no AC, I sometimes had to sleep in the bathtub to keep from getting heat stroke). From Mr. Bellow's bathtub you could see the storms roll in over Lake Michigan. The bed I slept in had a hand-made mattress, the most comfortable bed I have ever known. Two cleaning ladies came every Saturday and scrubbed, and most amazing, did the laundry, going to far as to iron my boxers.

The previous April Cynthia took me to meet Mr. Bellow for his approval (to make sure that we were suitably appropriate to live in his house and guard his privacy). I was quite nervous. Mr. Bellow had a reputation for having a sabre tongue, and while it was clear that he was not one to suffer fools, he was quite charming, gracious and funny. I met with his approval and we moved in five weeks later. I sublet the Harper apartment to two undergraduate women, who it turned out were such slobs that the landlord was furious. I didn't care, as I never returned to that apartment; I moved to NYC at the end of August, leaving everything behind except my music, books and clothes.

In that apartment was able to successfully finish my dissertation. I will never forget living in a place that was suffused with the presence of a great genius, and I had never lived in a home of such subtle affluence. We were instructed never to reveal Mr. Bellow's whereabouts or phone numbers; such a famous writer was constantly beseiged by all sorts of lunatics, and well-meaning but persistent admirers. One evening the phone rang (the private line), and I answered as I had been instructed, revealing nothing. "This is Philip Roth," a voice said. "I need to speak with Saul Bellow." I was frozen. Was I to treat Philip Roth, whom I knew was a close friend of Mr. Bellow's, like another anonymous caller? Then I grew suspicious. Philip Roth was a close friend of Mr. Bellow's, and surely he knew that Bellow never spent the summer in Chicago. Suddenly the voice burst into laughter. It was my friend Richard. He was just goofing on me.

Saul Bellow as a great writer, perhaps one of the greatest, and behind his bristly intimidating façade I sensed he was a man of great humanity and sympathy. It is a sad day.

success/ambition

Apropos of my last post:

Once I asked B. what he wanted, in a relationship. Because I was crushed. I wanted to know why...

"I want someone who is successful, who is ambitious," he told me. I was deeply wounded; I felt stung by his words. Because I was successful, and ambitious, but not in a way that might be obvious in the eyes of many. I am not rich, or even close to being rich. I am not seeking fame or wealth. But I have achieved success in the most important way that I have wanted: to be seen as an artist by other artists, to have my work taken seriously by musicians and audiences, to have achieved success in my studies, finishing my PhD at UChicago at a very young age, too young perhaps. But I have never been one to boast, although it might appear I am doing so here. But I do so only in explanation. I am too shy and too self-conscious to toot my own horn in any kind of public way, except perhaps through the cover of anonymity that this blog provides me. Unlike many of my composer peers, I have never had a huge ego. Even having to go the front of the hall after a premiere or performance is a kind of torture for me. Sometimes I wish that I had a bigger ego, that I saw myself as a genius and that I then pursued attention in the way that creates success for artists, at least in terms of fame. But I think I know about fame, and that it is not a measure of merit. Fame is material, it is for gratification and validation, but I get those things from my work.

I know, in my heart, that B. did not mean to hurt me; on the contrary, he was trying to explain something that was not easy for him, and it was not an easy situation, and I was already very upset. I forgave him long ago. But thinking about things I wrote about in the previous post stimulated this one, and I want to explore.

pessimism/optimism

To anyone who reads my blog, I might appear a pessimist. I am certainly not an optimist, in the sense that I don't generally appraise situations in the best possible light. I am more a realist: I do not like to expect the worst. I base my expectations on my experience, and I look for the possibility that seems most likely. I used to be much more of a pessimist, in that I lacked belief that good things could happen to me. This is the legacy of a childhood marked by unhappy events, traumas, and by my bipolarity and my tendency to be depressed. But when I look back, I realize that as I took control of the bipolar situation, my pessimism abated. Now I look at myself and I feel lucky. I never would have envisioned a life in New York as a composer and artist and teacher, although it is what I sought. No person in my early life had done such a thing, no one I knew, and I had no model to follow. Not until I left Pennsylvania and went to college at Vassar, and met interesting and ambitious and talented people, did I think that such a thing might be possible. Though even then I had no confidence that I might actually succeed. And each step, and with my increasing objective success, surprised me, and started to make me think that maybe I could make it. So I achieved one goal, but ignored my own personal happiness. So in the last fifteen years or so, an eternity, it seems, I have been more content with my "material" life (work, career) I have delved deeply into trying to make sense of my emotional life, and to understand how my bipolarity has colored my views and led my behavior in what are sometimes dangerous and self-destructive directions.

When I was starting to get recognition as a composer, in my early years in Chicago, I won a series of prestigious prizes and awards. Being young and naive and energetic, I thought that this procession of recognitions would simply continue, growing in scope and size until I became "famous." In time, though, I realized that my music was too obscure and "difficult" for that to happen, and in order to be happy as an artist I had to follow the example of my teachers, especially Annea Lockwood and Ralph Shapey, and follow my instinct without worry about worldly success. Making this realization gave me a sense of contentedness as a composer, although I have struggled, in the past two years, with "writer's block" for the first time. But I don't worry; I know that this means I am working out ideas in my mind, allowing my subconscious and my consciousness to take time to solve the problems.

tripping

I am wishing Bao an amazing trip. Safe trip, B, my intrepid traveler.

assessment

Today, I thought a lot about the last two weeks, during which I had to reassess my professional life, and in doing so, my "personal" life, although it is either my good fortune or misfortune that the two are not really distinct. And in deciding as I have, I have come to a new appreciation for my situation. I love teaching at my school; I have no desire to leave, really; the things that I am dissatisfied with are surface matters, not of real significance. And I don't want to leave Brooklyn. Walking Mabel today, especially this evening as we walked toward the water, with the sunset turning the sky scarlet, I realized that living here makes me happy. It was unnerving, being at that other school, in the lily-white precincts of Princeton. I am used to the mixed-up world of New York, where we tunnel underground to get around, where we walk everywhere else, where we hear dozens of different languages, and where oddballs and crazy people are normal.

sun

blue corner
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

This morning, at least for a bit, the sun was out. I was happy to see it. The rain and clouds of the weekend were oppressive, and affected my mood. But today I have to teach again, after more than a week off. I don't mind, although I would like to sleep some more. Lately, for the first time in a long long time, I have actually been able to sleep past sunrise.

bars

I have never liked bars. I do not go to gay bars, and have done so in the past only because friends have wanted to go. Yoshi sometimes wants to go out, and I have gone with him, but I have a very difficult time even pretending to enjoy myself. I remember, a month or two ago, going out at his behest to the Phoenix and to Starlight. At the Phoenix, which was not at all crowded (it was early in bar-time) I waited at the bar to buy a beer and was ignored for a long time by the bartender. A few days later I asked a friend why this might have happened. "You are not the Phoenix type," he explained. Why that would mean that the bartender would resist selling me a beer is still a mystery to me. But I don't like to be in a bar full of nothing but gay men any more than I like to be in a bar full of only straight people.

Back in my post-college days, I would drink in bars with my friends, straight and gay and in-between, but that was not for the setting but more for the company. I have never picked someone up in a bar. I am too shy that way. This is not to say that I am a prude, or have always been "proper." I am, after all, only human. But when I read of debauchery in bars, described in such detail in so many "gay" novels, or hear about it from friends, I am always a little rattled.

This morning in the NEW YORK TIMES there is an article about the rise of new strains of HIV, and how the bar culture, the use of crystal meth, and gay men's mental health issues are intertwined. And I read it, feel concern, and understand even more why I dislike Chelsea, Fire Island, and the "gay scene." I am such a non-conformist deep in my bones that the sight of the stereotypical "Chelsea Gay Boy" makes me wince. Once, only once, I went to the Gay Pride Parade, dragged along in a spell of compliance by a friend. Afterwards, walking through the streets of the West Village which were crowded with shirtless men, I felt panic and had to leave. This does not mean I am a self-loathing gay man; on the contrary, I feel enough confidence in my identity that I do not need to surround myself only with people who share that same, arbitrary, connection. I despise anti-gay sentiment and politics and discrimination in the same way that I despise racial- and gender-based discrimination, because it is cruel and unfair. But I don't believe in segregation either. Maybe it is because I have always, since my earliest memories, felt like an outsider, and now am comfortable in feeling this way. I will never be a sheep in a flock, I think.

caleb

caleb
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

My nephew, Caleb, is like a little Buddha. He likes to play the drum I bought for his brother. He will be one year old in a few weeks.

coincidence

Bao wrote of arrows a few days ago, and then his patient mumbled about arrows in the sky. Last evening, after dinner, Nani and I were discussing our character's birthday. "I think she is a Pisces," I said. "Late February or in March." I thought to myself, March twenty-third. "March 23," Nani said.

And now I realize that March 23 is Aries, not Pisces.

Happy Birthday, Pomona

pomona looks up
Originally uploaded by madabandon.

Today is proclaimed Pomona's birthday. She is sixteen. I don't know her actual birthday. I got her from Kym, who used to cut my hair; now she lives in Berlin or maybe Portland. Someone had given Pomona to her as a gift, but she was allergic to cats. So I drove to Staten Island, where Pomona was staying, and took her home with me to Park Slope, on Fifth Street between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West, where I lived with a crazy fat lady in the apartment below mine. Pomona was tiny and round, and that is why I named her Pomona. Kym had called her Velcro because she would fling herself around and seemingly stick to vertical surfaces. The fat lady in 1R claimed that my piano playing was giving her cancer. When I would practice she would call my phone and hang up the moment I picked up, or she would buzz my doorbell incessantly. She also banged on her ceiling with a broom or something. She would sometimes scream. She had all windows in her apartment covered over with old yellowed newspapers. She used to steal mail from the other tenants in the building, and the day I moved out one of my neighbors told me that she managed to drive out every tenant of my apartment within a year. The previous couple had been a black woman with a white boyfriend, and she obviously harassed them. That is why they were so eager to show me the apartment, and why they left their brand-new expensive air conditioner there. When I moved I wanted to make a tape-loop of my piano playing and leave it running on a boombox in the apartment 24/7. Once her puny husband came up and buzzed my door at six in the morning to tell me that "the goddamn piano playing has got to stop." I told him that he had to leave and he didn't leave and I didn't open the door and I called the police and they came and made him go back inside his apartment. The landlord let me break my lease and even paid my expenses for moving, and so I came to Brooklyn Heights with Pomona and Tuna, whom I had found one month after Pomona. So Tuna's birthday is May 2, because I don't know his real birthday. But he comes from Staten Island too, but that is another story for another time. I lent that air conditioner to my brother, who had moved to a duplex on Union Street, and when he moved a year or two later he sold it to someone for twenty-five dollars. I was annoyed, but I didn't take the twenty-five dollars anyway.

lost in translation

My ex-sister-in-law Solange, from Rio de Janiero, was describing a rooster. She called it "the husband of the chicken."

could not

Despite how tired I was from yesterday's interview and drive, I could not sleep. I tossed around all night and was wide awake at six a.m., although I tried hard to will myself back to sleep. I would think the rain would help. But it just mirrors my mood and makes me feel tired still. But my mind does not rest; it races and jumps, and so sleep is just a wish at this point. Of course, Pomona, Tuna and Mabel are happy that I am awake.

friday night

Last night, having dinner with Bao at that loud Japanese place--the music was good, but loud loud--I told him that I wanted to become a music monk. He smiled.

This evening, after returning from a grueling day-long interview/visit at another school, I read Thierry's blog. I think that Thierry and I are somehow embryonically linked.

Lately I can only read poems. I don't want to read fiction. Now I agree with what Thierry said earlier. I know I will only agree for a finite period of time, though. Then I will go back to fiction, or it will come back to me.

broken?

Some things, being broken, cannot be fixed, no matter how hard you might try, or how badly you might want it.