Maybe this is my four-hundredth migraine in this decade. Maybe it is not. But no matter. I have a bad one. The left side of my head is pounding. I see flashes in my left eye. When I move my head even the slightest amount I want to scream. And yet I have a busy day ahead of me. Will I make it? Or will I have to surrender to the migraine, crawl into bed, pull the blinds, and lie in darkness til it passes? Tune in later to find out what happens.
Today is the first day of spring, but you would not know it. The snow is still piled up on the curb. It is cold. My back hurts from digging my car out of the snow on Monday; it was all for naught, as Mayor Bloomberg canceled the parking rules on Tuesday. But they never make the decision until the wee hours, so I dug it out thinking I would have to move it early. In the past they would announce that the rules were suspended for several days at a time so we don't have to play the guessing game.
I am feeling quite irritable lately. I am not sure why. Little things are setting me off. Tomorrow evening my father is coming to the city to have dinner with my brother and I, which will be nice. I have not seen him in a while, and it has been a few years since he came up here. We used to see him twice a year or so; he likes to go to nice restaurants, which are definitely not in abundance in the corner of PA where he lives. I hope he and my brother--both lawyers--do not spend the whole time talking about work stuff, but they most likely will, and I will be left to sit, bored out of my mind, with no one to talk to.
I don't see any problem with his asking for money on his website. He is probably putting himself out there as his financial situation is not so rosy. You can choose to donate, or not to. This money 'asking' thing might alienate friends or peers, given the 'indignity' of it, perhaps he is really in dire financial situation to resort to this? It must have taken him a tremendous amount of courage to do this. As someone you respect and like, I reckon you should not be too hasty in judging his action. I'm sure he has thought long and hard about it.I did not give out all the relevant information in my post, and perhaps I should have. The composer I wrote about is not in dire financial straits, but in fact has received a number of large grants and awards in the last few years, including a hefty one (one that I myself was awarded years ago) which allowed her to live abroad and compose and perform around Europe. I am not against anyone asking for money if there is dire need. It is the act of essentially creating your own "club" in which the members simply support the artist that I find troublesome. And asking other artists to contribute money to allow you to do the same thing they are trying to do is odd. Perhaps the composer should have had a targeted list of potential patrons to whom to appeal, rather than sending a request to fellow artists, all of whom are in the same boat, trying to scratch up money for performances and new commissions.
Here's the situation: a composer colleague with whom I have a long acquaintance--we have both studied with the same teacher, and have appeared on concerts together, and I've performed on a concert series this composer curated--is having some upcoming performances in NYC. The concert series featuring my friend pays a fee to the composer, and handles the publicity. The fee rarely covers the total cost of paying performers. The composer provides whatever other funds are needed.
Maybe several months ago, this composer sent an email to a list of people asking for contributions to help fund this concert. I was taken aback by this approach, and did not respond to the email except to say that I was looking forward to the event.
After getting an email the other day about the upcoming performances, I followed a link to the composer's website. It seems out that my friend has created a "performance and commission club." One can donate (through PayPal even!) a sum to fund future works and performances by this composer. There are suggested levels; at the highest, the donor gets a mention on the concert program, a signed copy of the score, a CD of the composers' older works, and a recording of the live performance. These trickle on down; everyone gets a CD.
I was dumbfounded. All artists, or most anyway, know the tedium of applying for grants and awards, fellowships; the stuff that helps fund work of a non-commercial nature. But to ask, outright, for your friends and fans to give you money so that you can write seems just way too...too something...crass? I am not sure of the right word for what I want. To me it is like approaching my friends and musical admirers and asking for a handout.
At the same time this is a person I genuinely like and with whom I have a good professional and personal relationship. But now I feel funny. I don't want to be judgmental but at the same time I can't deny that I find the whole concept disturbing both ethically and professionally. I can't imagine asking my friends to contribute money to me so that I can keep composing.
It reminds me of a far more savvy version of the old story: you go to a concert or an opening or some performance and go out to dinner with friends and some young artist or musician comes along and when the bill comes said artist or musician has no money. I never had the gall to do that myself.
Crossing 14th Street I saw this car parked on the street. I didn't get to see what kind of car it is, but it is beautiful. It is the same color as my humble Mazda, but much more memorable. When I was little, around age eight or so, I was fascinated by cars--the design, not the mechanics--and was constantly sketching ideas for new ones. I could name the model of any car I saw, down to the year. When I was nine my father bought a black Audi sedan, available in the US for the first time; no one we knew drove foreign cars (except Volkswagens), and it seemed exotic to me.
My plan was to go to PA today to see my aunt, who flew up from Miami this morning. But my car was half-buried in the wake of the snow plows and I felt totally tired even after seven hours of sleep. So instead I walked around the far west village into the "meat packing district" and then to Chelsea Market. The sky went from blue to cold icy gray in the space of just a few hours. I was freezing.
The morning is my favorite time of day. And luckily I usually, most days, have the mornings largely free to think, compose, read, do nothing. I would never be able to function if I had a 9-5 job. So far I have never had one, and if all goes as planned I never will.
General Pace, a Marine, has proclaimed that homosexual acts are immoral. Interesting conclusion coming from someone who's job it is to kill people.
I was waiting for an elevator at school. I was trying to carry a clipboard, several books, a cup of coffee, and a paper plate with some food. As I carefully balanced this precarious pile of stuff a colleague from another department came over. She asked me how things were going. "I am trying to balance all this stuff, and I am afraid something is going to give," I told her. She paused for a long moment and said "I don't know. You seem like a pretty balanced person. You'll be fine."
I feel the weight of many obligations on my tired shoulders. As I have probably written previously, I am over-committed, work-wise. Basically as it appears the dust will not clear until mid-May. I love my work, almost all of it, but I do not do well when I have many pressing obligations. I have a way of losing focus and seeing only the totality--which, looked at objectively, seems impossible to manage--rather than taking each task one at a time. So I feel a time crunch, and yet I am tired and am not able to get much work done the last two days. I keep trying to go to bed early to catch up on sleep, but somehow I end up staying awake past midnight.
This ad for the gym is on the side of the Crunch gym on DeKalb Avenue in Fort Greene. I walk past it frequently. Yet I only just noticed that it advertises "things to punch" as an attraction. Am I the only one who finds this odd and a bit unnerving? Do we want to encourage people to punch things?
My friend and colleague gave a recital yesterday. It was a wonderful program with a few rarely-heard pieces plus the Chopin Sonata. It was a great way to spend a beautiful sunny afternoon. Her accompanist was the venerable pianist Seymour Lipkin. Lipkin, who studied with Rudolph Serkin and Horszowski at Curtis, is 80 now, and is not nearly as famous as he should be. He played with such immaculate control and musical wisdom that I was entranced. His technique was so effortless and gentle, and yet he could summon awesome power without any visible tension. What a world of sound he created? I love to see old pianists play. They have removed all excess from their technique. I like it so much better than watching some young hotshot flailing around and "emoting."
Nothing is clear to me. Some people believe in absolutes. Some people see things in clear definition, oppositions neatly arranged, issues falling onto one pile or another. Lately I have wished for such simplicity, although I know that for me it is not possible. So I struggle in the shadows, darting anxiously, and it tires me out.
I had a good rehearsal yesterday. I took the train up to Poughkeepsie because it was snowing and slippery when I left, and in addition the city government seems to have decided to tear up the many of the streets of Brooklyn Heights, resulting in a precarious situation for anyone hoping to park on the street. The train was nice. It rides directly along the Hudson River the entire trip, and if you sit on the west side you have a wonderful view. The only problem was that I had a huge coffee and there were no cup holders and I was worried it would spill.
After a fine rehearsal and a meeting with some of the musicians, I got back on the train. I was relaxed and hoping to enjoy some quiet time. But a moment before we left the station a young girl and a guy--who turned out to be her brother--got on. The girl was quite pretty, maybe fifteen or so, but her trash mouth rendered her grotesque. They created constant noise, either yammering on their phones--both in a kind of profanity-laced ghetto-speak--or singing along with what I presume was an iPod. Their singing was that kind of tuneless loud singing you hear from reject contestants on American Idol. It was horrible. The boy, in particular, was awful, with a whining nasal falsetto that set my teeth on edge. What was really interesting was that everyone on the car seemed annoyed by their carrying on, but no one asked them to quiet down, including the train conductor. I would have loved to see them thrown off the train, preferably at one of the smaller stops where there is not even a train station. They were that obnoxious.
As a committed urbanite, I try to be cooperative with those around me, not creating more than an appropriate share of noise, nor taking up more than my share of space. It is interesting that there are so many who simply don't seem to consider their own behavior. Or I am being generous. Maybe they do consider it, and thus maybe their behavior is a general "fuck you" to the world around them.
But I read my book--A LONG TIME GONE--the story of Ishmael Beah, who was forced, at age 13, into the civilian army during the long, horrific civil war in Sierra Leone. It is a wrenching book. He is an extraordinary writer telling a chilling and unimaginably sad story. It is not for the faint of heart. I let my iPod drown out the sound of the rude kids.
I am starting to feel better. In fact, I am starting to climb into the rarefied realm of hypomania. How do I know? My insanely energetic teaching this morning, complete with sound-effects, flying balloons, and other amusements. This would not happen when I am depressed. It would not happen when I am "normal." But it is to be expected, after a depressed cycle. I tend to flip-flop a lot in winter, more so than at other times of year.
Tomorrow I will go up to VC again to rehearse the chorus. I have just completed the beautiful "Death Chorus" and have only the short closing chorus and the instrumental prologue left. The prologue is sketched out so it won't take long at all.
For someone who lived four years in Chicago and four years in upstate New York, not to mention eighteen years in rural Pennsylvania, I have surprisingly low tolerance for the cold. This was not always the case. I remember having to be convinced to buy a hat in the Chicago winter, because of my vanity and the fact that I did not suffer in the cold there, which was far worse than here in NYC. But lately when it is cold I am just freezing and shivering, no matter how aptly dressed I am. Ever since I got very ill, almost eleven years ago, I have not tolerated the cold well. There are a few good schools with open positions (that I would be quite well-suited for) in the Los Angeles area. It doesn't seem so far-fetched. Except I would not like driving so much. I prefer walking, the subway or the bus when possible.
Every day I take my pills. In the morning I take my budeprion and sometimes, based on what I sense is the level of crazed energy inside me, I take half of a clonopin. Then at bedtime, another budeprion and my trazodone, without which I would never fall asleep. I have been taking one or another or all plus others in various combinations for about fourteen years. I don't really like to take pills and I find it difficult to keep track. But maybe they are just keeping the depressed energy petrified in some deep hidden crevasse of my brain, so that it will suffocate from a lack of bloodflow and ultimately die.
I have stopped the regimes at various times, with the cooperation of my doctors. But it never does what I expect. I feel strange for a while, then ok, and then my moods--ever erratic anyway--start to careen and veer precipitously from up to down.
Depression must be the price that we creative ones pay for our "gifts." So many artists/composers/writers that I have known have had this problem. The whirlwind of creativity that I enjoy periodically gives way, as it has now, to bleak darkness. I expend a great deal of energy keeping it together to teach and go through the day, but, as I have written before, it is exhausting, and it becomes harder and harder to do. I went to the gym, because exercise often helps. As I was walking home, up Atlantic Avenue toward the water, I thought that I might just keep walking, past the BQE, past the piers, into the harbor, and just keep going, straight toward the sun. The water must be freezing, and I would start to sink, but by that time the cold would have numbed me and I would simply fall asleep so that when I hit bottom I would not even be aware of it.
It is as if I have passed through some portal into a gloomy place that I recognize but abhor. I want to sleep, I want to disappear, my head hurts, I feel overwhelmed by simple things. The sky outside, sunny blue when I walked Mabel early in the morning (my sleep constantly disrupted by some kind of turmoil), has turned. Wake me up when it is over.
I am feeling sort of disoriented and out of whack the past few days. I am extremely busy with work--composing obligations mostly--and am expending most of my energy trying to keep on top of things. At the same time I am fighting off a creeping, insidious depression. I can feel it nipping at my heels. I keep myself busy as a way of fending it off. Will I crash? I hope not. At the same time, there have been some developments which may present me with some very tough decisions to make. I don't know if I have the clarity of mind to make any big decisions right now. Yikes.
I am feeling sort of disoriented and out of whack the past few days. I am extremely busy with work--composing obligations mostly--and am expending most of my energy trying to keep on top of things. At the same time I am fighting off a creeping, insidious depression. I can feel it nipping at my heels. I keep myself busy as a way of fending it off. Will I crash? I hope not. At the same time, there have been some developments which may present me with some very tough decisions to make. I don't know if I have the clarity of mind to make any big decisions right now. Yikes.
I am simply too tired to post anything of substance. So here is a little snapshot, a slice of my everyday life. On the right is a piece of one of Mabel's treats. On the left is my espresso scoop/tamper. In the middle is my Global paring knife, very very sharp. There is a black teapot in the background, out of focus.
There are so many things I don't understand aabout how people think, and these things trouble me greatly. John Edwards was just on NPR, on the Brian Lehrer show, asking these same questions. I hope people listen.
The rehearsal was a success. They love the music. I am so relieved. I am almost never satisfied with my music. That is not to say that I don't think it is good, but there are always imperfections, things I just can't seem to get. This is a personal thing, not something I can easily explain except perhaps to another composer. But I don't have many close composer friends. We are all too competitive, in a congenial way, to get too close to one another. I have friends who are artists, writers, theater people.
I worked with the singers, helping them with phrasing, breathing, diction, and ironing out some tricky rhythms in the first chorus especially.
The drive up was awesomely beautiful. It had snowed the previous night and along the winding Taconic the tree limbs were outlined with pure white. The sky was clear blue, like it is now today, and I felt very peaceful. I am thinking more and more of living outside of New York City. The quiet of trees and clear air is something that makes me feel fantastic. God knows I could not bear the suburbs. But someplace in the country, close to a village, but with enough of a sense of isolation to give me tranquility and inspiration. I am not sure that NYC is inspiring to me anymore. The wheels in my head are turning...
Since I recovered from my cold I have been working quite hard to finish the third choral song from OEDIPUS. Tomorrow I will go to Vassar to rehearse the chorus for the first time; they have been working without me, making good progress (I am told), and they are ready for some more refined direction. I work quite diligently lately. I attribute this most of all to the two filing cabinets I have recently acquired. The filing cabinets have enabled me to clear the clutter from my work area. Visual clutter is tremendously distracting to me. Now my desk is clear and I can focus on writing, and it is just me and work at hand. There is no pile of bills awaiting my attention, or the sundry debris of my rather hectic life. I have also taken on a few new piano students. It's not that I particularly want more students, and I don't even care so much about the extra money it will bring. It is more that these are students I want to teach, and they are very eager for lessons, so I don't have the heart to turn them down. Now if they don't practice...well, that is another thing entirely. I have no qualms about firing students. I don't have the patience, if they don't do their work.
Twenty years ago today, that day the sun was bright and the sky was clear blue just like it is now, my mom died. She died very early in the morning, peacefully, at home, the way she wanted. The number of years does not seem to matter, though. I miss her the same powerful way.
So from me and Mabel and Patsy, hi mom. You would love Mabel and Patsy, and I hope that somehow you can see us and know that I don't have any words to say except that I love you always.
Gay relationships are hard. Most relationships are hard, but gay relationships lack the type of glue that holds many straight relationships together: children, marriage, family obligation. There is little in a gay relationship that prevents one or another party from leaving if the going gets rough. Society still doesn't recognize gay relationships in the way it does hetero ones, and so the end of a gay relationship is, symbolically at least, not the same kind of social problem that a failed marriage is. This knowledge, this essential instability, is a subtext for my own relationships, exacerbated by my own experience as a part of a family shattered by divorce. So I hold on hard to my relationships, trying to make them work. I hope that I am doing the right thing, in doing this. Since my own family was broken apart, I live in fear of my own stability breaking down, the bottom falling out, so that I am left in the same bewildered, confused state that I was as a kid when my dad left. I try to be rational as best I can, but I would be a fool to try and deny the power of my fear.
Maybe I should have taken him as a warning sign when I walked past him heading downtown on Broadway yesterday. Because shortly thereafter, things turned bad. A few words spoken with the best intentions somehow turned to poison darts, and now I am sitting at my desk, bewildered by what transpired, exhausted by thinking, and I would like to just disappear. For me, at the moment, things in general totally suck. I am not going to succumb to the urge to hibernate; I can't hibernate, there is too much going on. Sorry to be cryptic.
Last evening, relaxing at home before I went with Y to see "Children of Men" (a harrowing, brilliantly-directed film by Alfonso Cuaron*) I noticed a faint burning, rubbery sort of smell. I looked everywhere in the apartment but could not find its source. The smell grew stronger. Suddenly, the lights overhead in the corner of the living room, above the sofa, flickered, and I went to check. The transformer that plugs into the socket must have short-circuited, because it was starting to melt. I quickly unplugged it, snipped the wires, and now I will have to make a visit to the lampman. Good thing I was there. I never leave those lights on when I am home, but I might have been sleeping and a fire would have started. It took a while to disperse the fumes, even with fans running and windows open.
*His son was my student, and so I had occasion to meet him and then see him repeatedly over a four-year period. He was--and I am sure still is--down to earth, energetic, and struck me as extremely cool. Of course, I did not know who he was the first time we met. "Y Tu Mama Tambien" had not yet been made. But I was impressed with his knowledge of music--modernist music, Ligeti and Berio and so on--and for his utter lack of pretense. It is great to see a man like him become so successful. Maybe I can score one of his films someday.
The title Living, Breathing Earth came to me in contemplating the image of the rainforests as lungs of the earth. I felt our planet, alive with all variety of creatures and plants living in symbiosis with each other, breathing in and out, and the planet as a whole, pulsing with breath. I also contemplated the earth rotating through space, a spinning orb of blue and green, at just the right distance from the sun to support life, and our protective blanket of air, the atmosphere of the earth, providing the medium for our breath.
Your personal ruling planets are Uranus and Venus.
This is a very glamorous number as it is ruled by Venus. You are fortunate in terms of your creative ability and you should never turn your back on those impulses which indicate a possible career in Fine Arts or Music. You will always obtain favours and respect from your superior and in work you will be given some sort of assistance to achieve your goals.
You have a great power in speech - use it wisely. Whenever you speak it's as if some soothing element to people around you attracts them and endears them to you. You have an incredibly dramatic nature which is possibly the power behind those words The number 15 has been considered a magical number, mysterious, conferring on you higher occult powers. You will start to note that at times these powers can be used to achieve what you want. Be sure not to use them for your own selfish ends.
Well, here I am, at home. The storm and my cold conspired against me, and I canceled my rehearsal; or rather, they will rehearse, but I will not be there to help them. I am feeling somewhat better today, my maniacal sneezing having receded into memory. If the storm continues through the night it will be a replica of the day I was born on my actual birthday. Interesting.
Birthdays are, for me, a time of reflection, and while I could write a book about my reflections, I will offer only a summary of a few major ones:
Ok, enough for now. Back to work...
Well, I don't know if it is a self-fulfilling prophecy or just fate, but every year for years now I have gotten sick this same week of February, which is, coincidentally, the week of my birthday and also the week that my mother died twenty years ago. I have this cold which is driving me nuts. I sneeze and cough and can't sleep because I can't breathe, so there is nowhere for me to hide from it. Normally when I don't feel well I just go to bed and sleep it off, but I have failed to succeed in my many attempts to do this. I am canceling my engagements. I am scheduled to go rehearse up at Vassar tomorrow but a wild storm is predicted for tonight and tomorrow, and if I don't feel better I don't think I will be able to do it. Ugh.
I got slammed with this wicked head cold Saturday morning; well, really it was Friday night. I guess that the cold was just waiting until I stopped moving to latch on to me and bring me down. Saturday I made chicken soup--the jewish mother trick--in an attempt to kill the cold, but it persists. I had such a frantically busy month that I think I just wore myself out. So my head has that dull feeling that comes with a winter cold. I tend to always get sick during this winter break, which also coincides with my birthday, which is this coming Thursday.
Yesterday in the late morning I drove with Y to New Jersey (to the "Design Within Reach Annex") where I got this sleek Italian low filing/office cabinet. Now my desk is devoid of clutter. The cabinet sits very nicely under the desk, on wheels, and so now I have a place for my MacBook in here too. I can have both computers buzzing away while I work, which is important for my audio projects. I like to call Design Within Reach "Design Within Reach of Whom?" because their stuff is so expensive, but if you can find your way to Secaucus--not the easiest task, given the confusion of New Jersey roads--you can get some deals.
Oh, here's another tune from last Monday's performance. It is "Solar" by Miles Davis.
Even if she were not my dog I would have to say that Mabel's cuteness is off the charts. And to top it off she is incredibly sweet and friendly. I have never seen her act mean toward any person or any other animal. But I could tell she was sweet the moment I saw her, seven years ago when she was a ten-week-old puppy. It was her eyes. She makes me very happy. Even when I feel miserable it is impossible not to feel better by having myself a little time with Mabel.
My mind is playing tricks on me. After my performance last evening I was really down. I felt that I played badly. We did not have adequate time for a proper sound check, and the guitar and the drums in particular were so loud that I could hardly hear myself or the bass. While I was playing I was actually thinking that it was disastrous. Then after I got home and got up my nerve I listened to a recording of the set, and it actually was about one million times better than what I had expected. So I then felt relieved, because leaving the concert I was so down that I had a hard time being gracious receiving the usual compliments and congratulations. Once I edit the tracks I may put one or two on my website.
The dry freezing air and the brilliant light today reminds me, intensely, of certain days in Chicago. In a Chicago winter today would be utterly normal but the brilliant sun would cheer me up. Days were short there and winter was cruelly long.
I have this concert this evening and I am thinking it will all go fine. My head seems strangely in another place.
Since Friday I have felt depression creeping up to me. It is in my apartment, following me around. I busy myself in various ways to avoid any conversation with it, in the hopes that by ignoring it it will simply leave for fear of overstaying its welcome.
e. e. cummings wrote: "To be nobody but yourself in a
world which is doing its best night / and day to make you like everybody
else means to fight the hardest / battle any human being can fight and
never stop fighting."
Yesterday, despite my ear infection, I had an extremely busy day. Meetings, rehearse with students, rehearse with colleagues, teach, more rehearsal--this time with my quartet for Monday's concert--errands and then finally, home to bed. My new piece sounds good. Some complications with ensemble issues. But the jazz rehearsal left me feeling glum. We had to use a small room upstairs, one with a really beat Yamaha upright, and I pounded my fingers until they literally were bleeding. And my playing did not feel loose; I felt stilted. And spacey, due to my exhaustion. The only saving grace is that generally when I have a bad rehearsal the performance goes well (and vice-versa). And I will have to practice a lot this weekend so that I actually have some real ideas when I perform.
This building now occupies the space where a parking lot once was, next to the old Carl Fisher building across from the cube at Astor Place. It looks ridiculous, this glass behemoth, slick and corporate in the heart of what once was a thriving counter-cultural community. Sadly, the East Village is like most of Manhattan now, populated by finance-industry types and trustafarians, with Duane Reades and Starbucks on every other corner, and expensive restaurants to feed the well-heeled clientele.
In the "Styles" section of the Sunday NEW YORK TIMES there is a piece about a Brooklyn artist and his purchase of a $25,000 watch, and how much joy it gives him. I wanted to scream when I read it. Since when does an artist care about such things? Since when does an artist have $25,000 for A WATCH???? And another article, in Friday's paper, documented the difficulties owners of country homes have trying to repair their SubZero refrigerators and Viking stoves. Poor things.
New York City as I know it, the city that I felt drawn to since childhood, is disappearing. Yes, we are happy that crime is down and that the streets are clean. But the only ones enjoying it are the wealthy. Since when do you meet any young artists? There is nowhere for them to live. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in such a place. I came here for the community of artists that didn't exist in Chicago, or Philadelphia, or the other places I'd considered living.
Ironically, the head of our school held a meeting yesterday in which he announced the board of trustees' commitment to substantially raising faculty compensation and benefits. While this is welcome news, the kind of people that made my school so great--not bankers or lawyers or CEOs--will no longer be here, and I don't want to be teaching the overindulged children of the bloated money generation. My values would be lost on them.
I think I look scary in this picture.
"She" commented on a recent post of mine, saying she wondered what made me laugh. From this picture one might guess I never laugh or even smile. But I do. My pets make me laugh. So do my friends. My nephews make me laugh, and my students often do too. All of the above make me smile. I like to laugh with people. It bonds us. But today, when I took this picture, my ear was killing me--as it still is--and I felt exhausted and feverish, as I still do. I will go to bed soon. I hope this ear thing goes away soon, or I will go crazy. And I have a concert on Monday, and so going crazy is not a good option. So I am neither laughing or smiling, just feeling overwhelmed.
I have never been a conformist. It is simply not in my nature. As a kid this brought me some grief, but I didnt suffer too much because I was scrappy and fearless. I got in more than my share of fistfights. I was small and often took on larger opponents so I usually got beaten but I would always get in a first, fast and effective blow, which earned me points in the strange social/animal hierarchy that kids understand. Luckily, since then I have always been in environmentts where conformity is not the gold standard. I would never survive working in a corporate world where I would have to wear a dark suit and talk sports around the water cooler (if such places actually exist). My school is really a community of complete nonconformists, although among the younger kids a kind of creeping materialistic conformity is starting to emerge, much to the dismay of many of us.
Last night I had dinner with my brother at Savoy in Soho. It is a veteran restaurant, having been around for years, with very good food and a comfortable setting. But still I was surrounded by suits. They were making cassoulet in the fireplace. I could not resist. Everyone seemed to be ordering it and the NYTimes had even mentioned the dish in last week's food section. But having not eaten meat in a while now, I feel weirdly heavy and restless. It was really really good, but I won't have it again.
Normally I spend a lot of time in reflection. My success as an artist and teacher depends on my ability to reflect, to consider, and to express my ideas. The last few days, though, have been so hectic that I have hardly had the time for such things. There have been too many demands on my time, culminating in a school concert last evening. My students played very well. As usual, though, when people came to congratulate me on the job I did, I immediately deflected the compliments back to the students themselves. Part of this reflexive response is entirely appropriate, because the students, not I, are the ones performing. But what lies behind this inability I have to truly believe the compliments I receive? What kind of insecurities do I have? Or do I just not trust people in general? Something to reflect on...
* * * * * * *
After the concert I ran home to see the "State of the Union" address given by W. I could have had dinner, on the school's dime, with some of my colleagues instead. But I was committed to watching that sad, tired speech. I should have gone to dinner instead.
It's hard to believe that just a few weeks ago I was walking on the beach and the temperature was in the seventies. The last few days I have been freezing. I think the cold affects me more the skinnier I get. Maybe I should eat more.
I happened to catch Patsy making this monster face. So if you never knew Patsy and all you saw was this photograph, she would be some kind of monster to you. In reality she is as sweet a cat as you can imagine, although she is still not even two years old and remains impish. Funny how one slice of time can represent the totality of someone, archivally speaking, so that once personal memories fade all that remains is a monster, perhaps, or an angel. But everyone should remember that things are never so simple as that.
Well, it was not like this picture. But it did snow late last night. I noticed when I woke up to feed Patsy. Mabel would have loved it, but unfortunately for her, I fell back asleep and by the time I took her for her morning walk most of it had melted. But the cars parked on the street still had a covering of snow, and it was beautifully glinting off of the tree branches too.
I have a new regime which I am following in an effort to find "alternative" ways to treat my bipolar depression without medication. Years ago, while summering in Vermont, I followed a macrobiotic diet and quit caffeine, and I felt great. While I attributed my feeling great mostly to the beauty of my surroundings, I can't downplay the effect that my "lifestyle" habits had in keeping my mood stable. So I have resumed a vegan diet--not dogmatically, but generally avoiding all animal products--and have cut way back on my caffeine intake. In two weeks' time I have lost six pounds, have more energy, and I feel generally calmer (and I sleep better at night). I don't want to jump the gun and say that it is all due to what I am eating, but it clearly makes a difference. And for me to lose six pounds is considerable, given that I didn't know I had six pounds to lose. I will see my physician on Monday. I am curious to know what other effects this change has wrought.
But in any event feeling better makes me get better work done, and I don't feel so stressed. I wonder if it is really working, or if this is an example of the "placebo effect." I will let you know as time passes.
Yesterday was one of those days: I did not leave my place (except to walk Mabel). I considered going out to do some errands in Manhattan, but never got up the energy. I worked at home, several things at once, "multi-tasking," something I have always done even before the term was invented. Why didn't I go out? Agoraphobia? Depression? I think it was a little of both. One of the reasons I love the country so much is that there is not any pressure to "go out." Sometimes I wonder why I live in this city if I have so many days like yesterday, when I have no desire to see people, to walk down a crowded street, interact with strangers. But in the country it would be far too easy for me to become some kind of scary hermit with a long beard and twigs in his hair.
