Nico
Muhly,

On this tour, we have been variously staying in hotels and with friends — one of my favorite things about staying with people is when they have a dog. We have been very lucky on this trip: our hosts in Sebastopol, CA have a border collie / Australian cattle dog, Ace; our hosts in Portland have a frisky Weimaraner called Castle with googly eyes, and finally, our hosts Eddie & Willie (is there anything more fabulous than gay couples with matching names? I know a Nora and Laura in LA, too) have an eager pitbull, Rider. There is no better thing than being woken up by an eager dog’s snout snuffling on one’s person; I have been promised “big” dogs at our hosts’ house in D.C. tonight and am very excited to see what that means. A Newfoundland, I hope! The tour was off to an auspicious start because Thomas’s little sister came over to our rehearsals with her dog, Katrina Bartlett:

Ace (he had burrs in his tail which I removed; which reminded me very much of my childhood, where a burr on a dog was one of those trust games where you had to convince the dog that you had its best interests in mind when ripping something from its fur):

Castle:

Ræður:

We are all six of us hurtling from LAX to Washington, DC on Virgin America; I am stuck in one of those Rules & Regulations emotional disasters where my seat won’t recline because it is directly in front of an empty exit row and the famous power outlets are on the fritz; I can’t move to the empty exit row because the Nice Lady pursed her lips in a particular way and said that she “just couldn’t let me sit there.” I need to track down the exact quote, but I remember Gayatri Spivak once speaking (or writing?) about a ticket agent saying “I can’t let you on board;” she wrote that a better way to phrase it would be “the regulations are against it, thus, we are both victims.” Actually, here is the original:

“… I was supposed to take the airplane from Heathrow on Sunday. Air Canada says to me: ‘we can’t accept you.’ I said: ‘why?’ and she said: ‘You need a visa to go to Canada.’ I said: ‘look here, I am the same person, the same passport… ‘ Indian cultural identity right? But you become different. When it is from London, Indians can very well want to jump ship to Canada; I need a visa to travel from London to Canada on the same passport, but not from the United States. To cut a long story short,[...] I had to stay another day, and telephone Canada and tell them that I could not give my seminar. I said to the woman finally before I left, in some bitterness: ‘Just let me tell you one small thing: Don’t say “we can’t accept you” that sounds very bad from one human being to another; next time you should say: “The regulations are against it”; then we are both victims.’”

Quite so: in a situation like this, I can either a) stage an Episode and make a scene or b) sit back (theoretically, rather than actually, as this seat doesn’t recline) and pretend it’s not happening or c) try to befriend the Nice Lady and hope that she will turn the other way as I claim one of the empty seats. Is there any merit to any of this circular thought? Am I going to end up poisoned by stress? Should I just order a canister of Pringles and a glass of white wine and shut my pie hole? All this has reminded me of is that I wish Gayatri would just blog; she is so wonderful when she deals with the anecdotal, the Barthesian Mythology rendered severely Marxist and Feminist. The para-psychological peripatetic shuttling of the aboriginal subcontinent is the kind of stuff that she & Terry Eagleton can fight out in the academy; I want her to blog about Heathrow and the Subway and Yoga Pants and shit. Maximum length, 450 words. 123 go.

I’ve been very happy with the reception of Mothertongue in general, it’s been really positive and kind and indicative of good listening and productive curiosity. It’s a weird album, a difficult album, and I am really interested to see what people get out of it. I did an interview with a guy in Seattle – totally random, I had never met him before – who had such a smart, interesting read on the piece, I wanted to gay marry him right there on the phone. On the other side of things, I got a very mean review on Pitchfork by Jayson Greene (whom I think had interviewed me before), which is too bad, because it would have been nice to have a good one from them. Every time I get a bad review, I always take it to heart, because what they’re saying is usually stuff I tell myself in the middle of the night or in Glummer Mómentz. What’s particularly unfortunate about that review, though, is that it obsesses over other press coverage that I’ve gotten, of which, of course, I am neither author nor source. I’m happy to be evaluated by the notes, the rhythms, the sounds, and the textures but not by something that’s been done to me, like my height or the way I spell my name (for instance, it would be a similarly low blow for me to discount anything Jayson says because he spells his name in that silly fashion, in the same fashion that disgraced New York Times reporter did! OMG! j/k, j/k). Here, I am being called to task for the way the music relates to the press materials, which I suppose is “fair” but not necessarily in what we call good faith (or, for that matter, is going to make me want to gay marry you on the phone). Anyway, read it for yourselves and see what you think. In retrospect, I should have taken a more aggressive stance about how to write the press release for this album, because I can see how it can be reinterpreted as Pretentious and Overambitious Faggot Makes Indefensible Artistic Statement rather than OCD Church Musician Gets Archive Fever (which is the spirit in which the album was meant), but when the release was getting written, I was feeling really overwhelmed with the whole thing. This is not to say, however, that there is nothing to be gained by a bad review. In fact, if Pitchfork had loved on it, it would have seemed too easy, too much of a sweep of enthused press. Jayson makes a lot of good points about the chaotic nature of the album as a whole, and essentially tells me not to quit my day job, which is good advice, because I really like making arrangements for people. Read it and tell me what you think. Check out his use of the word “apparently” in case there’s any doubt of the attitude behind the review; it is viciously barbed and occupies a proud grammatical ledge in the sentence. Oh grammar: hoisted by my own pétard!

I had a funny encounter last night in the men’s room of the gig — sometimes, venues have different areas for performers and audiences and other times, not so much. One of the totally fascinating things about touring like this is to see the kinds of people who turn up for these shows. I had been doing an interview just before the show and was looking around at the people who were streaming in, buying beers, leaning against the side wall. I decided to find out as best I could who these people even were; I talked to a few people who had read about it in the paper. One woman, a fashion designer wearing a really good Rick Owens cropped leather jacket, seemed to have heard about it through friends. Anyway, in the bathroom, a tall, handsome younger guy with decidedly LA hair (floppy, blond, fully over the left eye) emerged from the stall and was like, “Nice Show” and I sort of half-aggressively said, “okthanks how come you came here?” Evidently he had seen a piece of mine at the Los Angeles Ballet and liked it and bought tickets to the show; this, to me, is amazing and really, really heartening not just personally but for the way that music is disseminated.

One of the advantages of getting all of this press has more to do with the idea that a young composer can make people pay attention to the fact that we exist; ideally, everybody should know a composer, just as everybody should know a butcher and a place to get your shoes re-soled. The fact that I’ve gotten a lot of press is, obviously, useful for me personally, but I hope that the net result is a wider interest in people in their 20’s who are thinking seriously about classical music, thinking about notation, thinking about being responsible citizens of not only the musical community but the world. If part of this includes a backlash against me, that’s fine; I’m a big girl and I know how these things go. Anyway, I like the crotch on the idea that people I don’t know are behaving in a non-cynical, almost linear way with music (“I saw this thing that I liked, I want to go see more of that thing that I liked, even though I don’t know much about what-all is going to happen”) rather than in a jaded, non-exploratory way (“new music is bullshit, whatever”). If you like something, find a path through it and then follow the path outwards, to other pieces, other composers, other musics. If you don’t like it, close your eyes and think about Brahms; it soothes the mind and calms the bowels.

Speaking of the Bowels & Pétards, this has not been the most adventurous culinary tour. Thomas and I are both huge enthusiasts of Taco Bell, despite their insane advertisements. We have discussed how their meat is the Ultimate Braise: slow cooked over, presumably, days in its own oily juices. I’ve had a Cambodian ground beef with a similar texture that had been on my friend’s mom’s stove for a long weekend; you won’t hear me complaining about eating a Crunchwrap Supreme. That said, yesterday, we wandered around Hollywood and found the most delicious bouge-gasm taquería called La Loteria, where we had The Margarita of Necessity and the Tacos of Gluttony, which set the tone for a really good show (click through for a review with good pictures) last night. One of the tacos consisted of pork rinds in a poisonously green puréed tomatillo sauce. It was really, really good – so good that Thomas and I called Nadia and Dan from their coffee & internet stop to come and partake.

Now, some photos. This is us, in Seattle, acknowledging Dan Bora, our intrepid sound engineer:

Sam Amidon, Nadia Sirota, Oren Bloedow, Thomas Bartlett, Nico Muhly

Photo by Dean Wenick

While we were driving from Portland to San Francisco (which is a long-ass drive; don’t do it!) we pulled over in a dire little town called La Center, and had lunch in the restaurant attendant to the casino. The following interchange took place:

Nico: Hi, could I have a burger with bleu cheese, medium rare, please?
Waitress: Oh, we don’t cook to order. Yeah, um, in the restaurant industry, you can’t cook anything to order anymore. It’s not medium rare, rare; it’s just cooked.

I love this idea of an industry-wide moratorium on cooking to order. Julius, a gay bar that time forgot, on the corner of 10th street and Waverlý in New York, is one of the skuzzier places in the universe (I think the only time I have witnessed a true Crime against Nature was in the corner booth there) still cooks a burger to order, although maybe they haven’t gotten the memo from The Industry yet. The other amazing thing that happened on that leg of the drive was that we espied a boobie that exists in a sort of Zaha Hadid architectural universe. It reminds me of spilt amoxicillin, or that runaway breast in Sleeper. Maybe you had to have been there to appreciate it, but here is a picture anyway:

I have not been able to watch a single Olympic; I sort of watched a gymnastic out of the corner of my eye in some random Sheraton in Seattle, but for the most part the whole thing has been so chattery that I can’t really deal. When newscasters take the Olympic Tone it is really unspeakable; I wish more coverage was of the explicitly sexual variety:

Indeed. Don’t they have editors to deal with this kind of thing? Or maybe there was an editor, Travis or Chad or some shit, who is giggling in a hot tub right now. Or at Julius.

Sam and I are continuing our Modern Dance Extreme Poses…

…In front of a redwood tree:

On the street in Mount Shasta:

As an Estarbucks Advertisement:

Nadia learned how to Hula Hoop (note Ace in the background, as well as Mark, our host)

Thomas and I are wearing funny outfits:

And two final thoughts: An advertisement for Viagra just said, “Ask your doctor if you heart is strong enough for sex.” Can you imagine the way your doctor would say that to you? “I’m sorry, your heart is not strong enough for sex. Also your cholesterol is a little high.” That sounds like a really good goth album I could make with Ben Frost. I’ma call him the minute I land. The other thing is that in all this discussion of Estarbucks, Essheraton, Escoop, I realized that it works like that in Arabic too, where the definite article “al-“ takes on certain initial consonants of the words to which it is attached. Instead of saying, for instance, al-salaam, you say as-salaam, and the s sound is doubled, with a shadda, which looks like the tiniest, most italic little w hovering over a consonant. Es-strawberry. اِسّطرابري – I wonder if that would be the proper way to render this out in English.

So, we are on tour! So much information to tell, so many shows to play. Check out this useful website for specifics. Even though we’re only gone for a hot minute, we’re trying to get a lot done. Please come out and see us! As an especial incentive, look at some photos:

We totally bought onions rinng:

Nico & Sam performing Modern Dance

Sadly, we had to cancel our show in Vancouver, which is particularly sad because my hairdresser told me that there were “mad Asians there” and that the food was delicious. Additionally, I was excited to visit on this store called Kómakínó which seems like it’s completely up my alley. Sorry, people of Vancouver!

So I am watching a marathon rerun of what I think is last season’s Topp Chef, and am watching the finale: a showdown between this boy Ilan who must, at this point, be my age, and this total nightmare called Marcel. Ilan, it seems, specializes in Spanish-inspired dishes. Fine. He has a nicely shaped head and seems to be nice to his friends. I like him. This other dude is mad irritating. You know when people have just a bad vibe.? People like that turn up at such places as: College & also Realitý TV. There was a boy who lived near me freshman year who had the dueling affectations of baby-talk and ostentatiously poor hygiene; does anybody else remember that Hot Topic’d-out heifer on The Real World who quat the show because she was “too punk rock” for it? And also she was scared of, like, large ships or something? I used to think that it was required to be polite to these people, but I have since learned that the best thing to do when somebody totally freaks you out is to just tip on out of there and leave them be; they’re like sick animals who might bite you as soon as accept your kindness. Anyway, the Other Dude hearts on some Molecular Gastronomy, which is one of these totally fascinating new developments in food.

Molecular Gastronomy is essentially the space where chemistry and cooking interact, or, more specifically, an explicit acknowledgement of the fact that there is an overlap. Molecular Gastronomy plays on turning texture on its head, so, you can end up with, for instance, a slice of foie gras transformed into the shape of an udon noodle, or, a cauliflower purée rendered meringue-solid by the addition of a chemical. It’s actually totally awesome when done right; one of my favorite restaurants in Christendom, WD-50, is the few places pulling it off in New York with consistent aplomb and deliciousness. So it is terrifying to watch this douchey guy on TV be really into it.

I feel the same way, though, about self-avowed Minimalist Composers. I love minimalism; it is my emotional summer home (Anglican choral music being the winter residence). I get very, very anxious when people confess to using minimalist techniques because I suspect that the technique is leading the emotions rather than the emotions requiring the technique. The internet is filled with people who are very quick to acknowledge their stylistic allegiances, as if style is a political party; I always thought style was the process by which you judiciously (and daringly and provocatively) apply the fabrics that best suit the body that you have been given.

When done right, molecular gastronomy can be unspeakably evocative. There is a drink at WD-50 which consists of tequila, dried thai long chilis, and smoked pear juice, which all sounds too cool for school, until you taste it. I got the tiniest sip down and was immediately reminded of the smell of an censer a friend of my mother had sent me when I was a child: it was a little pueblo house with a couple of poncho-clad figurines standing out front of it; this same friend later wrote a book in which she analyzed gruesome fin-de-siècle crime scene photographs of mutilated bodies in Paris; all of these memories were immediately available to me on first sip.

Minimal composition, for me, should aspire to evoke similarly specific emotions; whereas Romantic music appeals to the Jungian journeys we “all” supposedly can relate to (the home, the woods, the lover, the villain), minimal music, for me, is unspecific in origin but specific and very personal in destination. You take six pitches, and oscillate between them in some sort of pattern, and one person in the audience remembers playing a broken pump organ, and another remembers a childhood spent playing underneath high-tension electric wires.

When on the road, I like to start playing shows with this piece called Twitchy Organs., which is a cycle of six pitches that can be played by any combination of musicians. Mainly, it’s an experiment in seeing how I react to it; while the other musicians play the pitches in order but not in time with each other, I start playing a specific melody that can happen at any speed that works around the notes. I had a very specific idea in mind when I wrote this piece, which is a very high-tech train station in the middle of the countryside, almost entirely unpopulated. I’m not sure if I’ve been to this train station – I think as a kid, I went to a train station in suburban Bern wot had LED displays and a low, electrical hum; there are regional rail stations in Parisian suburbs that share, I think, the same emotional content – but I know that it’s a specific idea. However, under no circumstances do I want Twitchy Organs. to mean that same thing to anybody else; that’s why it’s not called This One Time I May Or May Not Have Gone To A Railway Station up in Switzerland that was Very Beautiful for Reasons Mysterious.. Ideally, somebody will listen to it and remember a very specific, very difficult to pin-down memory, and that, for me, will be a success.

One of the things I used to always struggle with with the masterpieces of classical minimal composition is the resistance, on the part of the composers, to suggest narratives. I’m sure that was particularly frustrating in the 1960’s and 70’s, when they were being written, but for me, the pieces (I’m thinking specifically of Music for Eighteen Musicians and Music in Twelve Parts.) now suggest the time in my life when I first heard them: the Reich in high school, sitting on the floor, and the Glass in Freshman year in college, on a discman, taking the N train slowly down Broadway and getting out early to be able to finish the piece while walking the rest of the distance. Mm, Music in Twelve Parts.

Last night I had an amazing language experience. I ate with B— and T— at Gemma which is the surprisingly delicious restaurant in the Bowery Hotel at 3rd street. As we got dessert, the runner put it down and said, “this is a chocolate cake with an escoop of vanilla ice cream.” I am obsessed with this idea of knowing the grammatical rule that the indefinite article in English works like that (a + consonant noun/an + vowel (or h) noun) but still maintaining the Spanish-language inflected idea that the letter S has to be prefaced by a vowel.

t’s random list time! But this time all questions? How come my iPhone can speak Chinese now but can’t make the Icelandic letters eth (ð) and thorn (þ)? What happens to these people who win Top Chef or who lose Top Chef? Where Marcel at? Where Ílan at? Was Salman Rushdie married to Padma Lakshmi when he got his eyes de-hooded? Can cook people still call that kind of strainer a “Chinois” or is it too racist? Speaking of which, did everybody take note of the Spanish Basketball Team? I haven’t seen a single Olympic this year and it doesn’t look good for seeing any in the future.

Finally, the people over at Parterre Box have finally gotten a hold of me, you have to read the comments, they are amazing, ranging from the curious to the outright mean (”Has anyone else listened to excerpts from his MotherTongue album on YouTube? What crap. Composing an opera for the Met? Talk about having greatness thrust upon one.”) I wonder what is even up from Mothertongue on YouTube! Or did they mean iTunes? This kind of attention is pretty wild; I feel like these people know more what this piece is going to sound like than I do. Maybe I’ll just give them a little peek to calm their nerves: it’s going to be good! See the embedded: it looks like music, it’ll sound like music, and it will be ravishing. I hope.

Sometimes I am just amazed at People. Sprint, which is a phone company I used to have a million years ago, has released the most Chinatown-ass, Parda-bag-ass, discount-looking fake iPhone I have ever seen. Feast your eyes on this monstrosity:

Yikes! Baby, what it DO!? If you are so compelled can click on this insane website, which is — Instinct the Phone Dott Comm, following in the grand grammatical tradition of “Pizza the Hutt.” If you click there, you can watch a lot of bad movies and stuff, too. Work with me here for a minute: open up that picture of the phone in a new window and let’s go through this. What appalls me about something like this is the number of people who worked on this entire advertising campaign. At no point did anybody say, this looks like the most janky, broke-down, iPhone that ever there was. Some poor designer had to design that mushroom-head home button at the bottom: is that even stylized or is that just existing in a land outside of style? The “phone” icon on the bottom right looks like one of those clamps they try to sell you in the in-flight magazine so you don’t fall out the tub. Then, there are the angles of the icons in the navigation buttons. Beloved, I am Vertiginous! Why is “photo” in the singular? Look at the kerning on TV/Video. I’m not saying that I’m William Caslon up in here, but somebody — at least one human being — must have seen that. And that person must have said, yes! This is a good idea! Let us sell this to people, for cash money! This kind of stuff breaks my heart, though, because it is so hideous to behold, and took so many hours of people’s most precious time: smart kids, who went to RISD or whatever and have to stay up all night splitting Adderall with each other just to flesh out this sad campaign that presumably some dude in an Ugg Boot thought up and jotted down in a Moleskine.

Ugg. Whenever I get down, I put trust in my iPhone alway to soothe with its ability to pick just the right music. Yesterday, it offered me John Adams’s Shaker Loops, which is one of those pieces with which I enjoy a scary intimacy. I totally worship a Shaker Loop. Sometimes, if I start listening to it, and then take off the headphones, I’m not sure if the music has stopped because I can keep it going in my face all the way to the end. The piece is organized in four sections, the first of which I offer below just as an incentive to buy the rest. Shaker Loops is a piece that banks on simultaneous quick motion (the ecstatic bowstrokes of a string orchestra) and a glacial harmonic motion. The result is sort of Google Earthy, where you can move from a wide shot of Asia to a detailed view of your friend’s house instantaneously. It is also painfully, twitchingly emotional. Buy on it here, and read what the composer has to say about it on his website here.

John Adams Shaker Loops Part 1: Shaking & Trembling
San Francisco Symphony / Edo de Waart

My phone also decided that I wanted to listen to a Rachmaninof Vesper (just the one), which was pleasant unto the ear.

Oh my god! Bernie Mac Died! He was so funny, so funny. I used to religiously watch the Kings of Comedy DVD.

Here is one of his best, and most famous bits. It’s all about the use of the eyes. Also the following — so genius:

I came in the house the other day, 1:30 in the morning. The two year old gonna send the faggot downstairs for some milk and cookies. I’m going upstairs, he coming down: he gonna walk past me like I’m a visitor. I said, “where you going?” He said, “To get some milk and coooookies.” He goes upstairs, the two year old, I hear the two year old say, “Where the cookies and shit?” He gonna tell her, “Him downstairs.”

Is there anything more heart-rending than seeing somebody walking a dog, and the dog is carrying the leash in his mouth? I feel like that moment operates on a variety of different levels, but the one most touching to me is the dog taking an implicit command of his confinement. My experience, though, is that dogs who have this habit are happiest not to run away with the keys to prison, but to happily trot on with a sense of pride. I like it.

I have been listening to this amazing Buxtehude cantata, Mit Fried Und Freud Ich Fahr Dahin. Buxtehude is the composer & organist whom Bach once famously walked 250 miles to hang out with. This cantata was evidently written on the death of Buxtehude’s father in 1674. Hermann Keller writes:

These two chorale movements, entitled by Buxtehude “Contrapunctus I and II,” are from the funeral music on the death of his father (1674) and are in quadruple counterpoint, i.e., the 4 voices can be mutually interchanged. In the “Evolutio” these possibilities are developed: in the 1st the soprano becomes bass, bass becomes soprano, alto tenor, and tenor alto; the whole is transposed into the dominant. The 2nd “Evolutio” brings (except for a few notes at the end) the mirror form; the voices are not only interchanged as in the first example but are also brought in inversion. source

Essentially, what this means is that Buxtehude took this chorale melody (which is a tune that most people would know, like a hymn), put it down, flipped it, and reversed it. The theme exists right-side upp and upp-side down. This sounds super clever-clogs, but in reality, the effect is the spiritual equivalent of being able to see your house from a plane: familiar but distantly pulsing. The most explicit example of this effect is five minutes in, when the sopranos slowly intone the melody.

Dietrich Buxtehude Mit Fried Und Freud Ich Fahr Dahin
Collegium Vocale, Jos van Immerseel, Orchestra Anima Eterna & The Royal Consort

The other night, I went to a free screening of Philip Glass’s Powaqqatsi in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. It is, for those of you who don’t know it, a wordless exploration of what we now call the Global South. The camera fixates on manual laborers: miners in Brazil, dhobis walla in India, cattle herders in sub-Saharan Africa. The score, which the good people from the Philip Glass Ensemble performed live, is a sort of riotous, Benettony world musicgasm which I think was probably really necessary and urgent in the 90’s, mildly racist in the early 00’s (when I was in school) and now, joyful and riotous again. I had a great time. I was struck, though, by the sorts of free-associations my mind went through while watching the movie (which is, of course, meant to be the point of a wordless movie with a Hopi title: you can make of it what you will). I was most struck by the fabrics. I had spent a bit of that afternoon perusing the Rick Owens store in the weirdest possible neighborhood to perform commerce (by the mouth of the Holland Tunnel). Rick Owens is a wonderful, wonderful, designer whose whole Þingg is unfinished hems, quasi asymmetrical silhouettes, and slightly oversized cuts. I’m being reductive, but what I’m trying to say here is that while I was watching this movie about, like, workers in mines in Brazil, immediately I was thinking about the most extremes of luxury. Maybe that’s part of what you’re meant to do, too, but I just thought it was insane. Perhaps it was the case that the delightfully flamboyant Baritone next to me was brown-bagging champagne that got me in the right mindset. Shh. Also: just look at this fabric:

A few things, in list format, for clarity.

Last week, I experienced an unbelievable sequence of Travel Nightmares, including one that I hadn’t experienced before, which was getting to the airport two hours before my domestic flight and still missing it. What happened was that the interface between the AirTrain and the Delta terminal at JFK was the most confusing and undernotated experience I have ever had. I ended up behind a large family with a huge pile of luggage blocking all possible exits to the train. If we had had a fire, it would have been over. Then, a family having just adopted children from China (four of them!) was waiting in the line in front of me at the Delta domestic terminal (I guess they had arrived to a different terminal and were transferring domestically to their final destination?) was in front of me, and there was Major Passport Confusion. No amount of my begging could get somebody to help me, and I ended up missing the flight. It was unbelievable.

I have just downloaded with great delight the King’s College Cambridge recording of Bach’s Jesu Meine Freude motet, which they sing in English. Check it out here. I am so glad they are putting up all these recordings from King’s from the 60’s up on iTunes, too. I also just love love love love love how iTunes renders titles like C*m Sancto Spiritu. I would love to see them write the code that goes through all the titles and blanks out all instances. However, it is amazing to me that anybody who writes a Gloria setting gets expurgated while R. Kelly can still have the song, “I Like the Crotch on You” unblemished. PS, that’s a great song. Download it here. Maybe I’ll make a Dirty Latin Playlist featuring such outrageous classics as, “Antiphon: Facta est c*m Angelo (mode VII)” and Byrd’s “Ad Dominum c*m tribularer” and Handel’s “C*m dederit dliectis suis somnum” and Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s genius “You have C*m in your Hair and your Dick is Hanging Out” which actually is one of the most beautiful songs from the late 90’s. Buy the whole album Here. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun as when I worked on The Letting Go. He is such a weird genius.

My album Mothertongue came out last week officially in the states, which is pretty exciting. I noticed that the top review on iTunes is by a certain “JOHN WILLIAMS CLARINET CONCERTO FAN,” which is a pretty insane way to identify yourself online. Evidently he didn’t like the music very much, which is too bad! I always feel bad when people don’t like what I’m up to, especially if they paid cash money to see it. A few years ago, I had this show at Carnegie Hall, and there was some h8r blogger who kept on leaving comments everywhere saying that he and his friends bought tickets and were desperate to leave. I wish he (or she) would send me his (or her) routing number and I will wire his (or her) ass the $80 or whatever it was.

As always, check out information about the 802 tour (more on that soon) on the main Nico page.

First of all, don’t say “Rihm.” But having established the ground rules, everybody should read this article by Tony Tommasini in the Times. It’s a couple days old, I know, but I was in Vermont and I didn’t have Access. In it, Tommasini interviews Thomas Morris, an orchestra consultant:

Yet what exactly constitutes an adventurous program? The term is thrown around by critics who routinely prod stodgy American orchestras to be more challenging. Mr. Morris is probably right that in the public mind “adventurous” has become code for “contemporary music.” But the issue is more complicated.

Quite so. And, Tommasini goes on to articulate that programs of all contemporary music (All Rihm All The Time!) are actually less “adventurous,” because they don’t constitute, as it were, an exciting juxtaposition. I totally agree; I have to say that orchestral programs of entirely 21st century music are a little bit daunting to me; I like Classical Music because I like feeling the weight of all that history, both acknowledged and unacknowledged, lurking above and behind contemporary output. I wrote about this (and other issues) earlier this year for the National Performing Arts Convention’s Blog this year; it’s good to see these ideas in print every few months.

It’s not hard to program adventurously, just as it isn’t hard to eat adventurously. It’s actually pretty easy. Even the New York Philharmonic is doing it! May 14 2009: Lutoslawski: Concerto for Orchestra, Szymanowski: Violin Concerto No. 1, Sibelius: Symphony No. 5! Rock it out! None of that is particularly outrageous, those are all classics, but I like the juxtaposition a lot.

I’m even excited for October 2, 2008: J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, Bernard Rands: CHAINS LIKE THE SEA (World Premiere: New York Philharmonic Commission), Tchaikovsky: Suite No. 3. Bernard Rands, whose music I have heard piles of but never remember, wrote a piece for the Phil. On the season overview page, it is listed thus: Bernard Rands, chains like the sea. Then, on the specific concert page, it is listed in all caps, as we see above. What is up with the capitalization? Is it because it’s just a fragment of a Dylan Thomas line? People need to calm it down because inevitably it is not going to get listed right in one context or another, or it’s not going to fit into the design scheme of the presenting organization, or it’s going to look stupid in print. I know nothing about this Rands piece, for all I know, it’s the most genius thing since Caller ID, but I’m just worried that he gets his title printed in a way that is pleasing unto him.

The Phil is doing something slightly better with their website, too, even though the design scheme and copy still resembles a page of instructions for a suppository (”* Insert suppository (round end first) into the back passage * Wash hands”; “It is a season to remember. The kind for which Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic are so justly renowned. A season like no other. And you’re invited.”) All kidding aside, pages like this are really, really good, with embedded wideo and more information than you’d need about the concert.

Anyway, I think what the Tommasini article is skirting around is that everybody is really excited for Alan Gilbert to come up in here and kick some ass vis à vis programming. It’s sort of an Obama-level Expectation, and while I’m sure it’s not going to please everybody, I’m totally excited.

For reasons completely incomprehensible unto me, I purchased, for cash money, a copy of the film adaptation of The Da Winci Code. I have no idea why I did this; I read the book and it was just wretched, an assault on language and punishingly irritating. Anyway, maybe I subconsciously was aroused by the idea of Paul Bettany applying a cilice to his person. In any event, I would love to know the history in film of people speaking heavily accented English rather than just speaking whatever it is that they speak. I know this is a time-honored tradition but even as a kid, I was interested in this phenomenon. I suppose a lot of this comes from Cold War anxieties, where you need the enemy to speak a perversion of English, rather than a fluent, eloquent version of his mother tongue.

I have posted before about my perverse excitement at being able to read Osama bin Laden’s eloquent screeds; the shock was, of course, to find how “un-accented” the language was, and how smoothly it flowed and developed. It must be somehow important to maintain “accented English” as this politically charged level at which English can exist, although I wonder the extent to which it reverse-engineers xenophobia among children.

The other day, I totally saw Hancock, which was, you know, 2.5 hours of air conditioning, and in it, our Hero torments a carful of teenage Chinese thugs, who, through subtitles communicate such delights as, “You pay for new roof!” – The whole thing was so outrageous that I turned to N— and B— and delivered what I think is a good analysis of filmic accents: “When Chinese people speak Chinese they don’t sound like Chinese people; they sound like People.” Fair enough: words to live by.

Anyway, so what is even going on: Paul Bettany in this movie is some kind of homicidal albino Opus Deiid-out monk, and his accent is like, a combination of Mandý Patinkin in The Princess Bride and English people on a gap year in Spain. It is Wildly Inappropriate. Also, some of the time he seems to be speaking Latin. It’s outrageous. Doesn’t he have a nice, plummy accent he can trot out? Isn’t that the whole point of hiring him? As I write this, I am cleansing my mind with an episode of A Shot at Love with Týla Tequíla, who just shouted, “Shut your f***ing trash-hole, bitch!” which is sort of a nice interlude. I love that you can even say “Trash-hole” on TV. How times have changed.

Things I have recently consumed: Many instances of BBQ Brisket. A giant steak that was beyond delicious. A baked potato, for the first time in what I would guess is six years, with bacon bits upp inn. An enormous amount and variety of queso, including one abstractly composed one featuring a pile of beef in addition to a red tortilla chip suspended like the interior of the Louvre pyramid in an abstract puddle of surprisingly good guacamole. I totally love Tex Mex. Where do I even get it in New York that isn’t horrifying?

In my adult life, I have now been to Texas twice. The first was a last-minute impulse ticket purchase to visit my friend C—’s parents in Houston, see her play with the Houston Ballet, and go to the Art Car Parade. This time, it was a really last-minute impulse ticket purchase as an excuse to sit in an air conditioned room and write a piece for these twins. B— was down here attending this conference, which was predictably intense. Like a New Music concert, there were a lot of people with walking problems at this event. There were also a lot of Mutterers to Selves, Sighers To Selves While Blogging, etc.

Something I wish I had time to deal with: making leftie people stop using the word “folks” and the phrase “ordinary folks.” Just fuckin’ stop saying it. It’s horrifying, blood curdling, smarmý, and disingenuous. Check out this from MoveOn.org: “And in fact, MoveOn.org Political Action is mostly funded by people who give less than $100 – folks who don’t have a lot of money but want to see a change.” Stoppit. Every single event at this conference had descriptions like, “Mother Jones Readers Caucus: Connect with like-minded folks and talk with others from your community in our identity, issue and regional caucuses.” Is it just me who sees that word and thinks immediately of the Volkssturm? In any event, what it’s meant to do is remove the possible taint of elitism from left-wing politics, which is fundamentally a good goal, but I wish it didn’t have to happen like a Chinese water torture to words and their meanings.

[An aside: in running around Wikipedia this morning, I discovered this totally fascinating entry that I had been wondering about since I was a kid: It has survived in the English word Dutch, the German words deutsch and Deutschland, the Dutch words Diets and Duits, the Yiddish word taytsh, the Danish word tysk, the Swedish word tyska, the Icelandic word þjóð "people, nation" and the modern Italian word tedesco "German". I also found this kind of amazingly edited Wikipedia page on the region "Chhachh" in Punjab. I was actually looking for a recipe for Chhach, which is like buttermilk, but then I typed in an extra h. Scroll down. Also this.]

In my awkward attempts to make friends with these bloggers, I mentioned casually to one of them (who seemed to have a fancy job for a Big Girl newspaper) that I really liked Stanley Fish’s blog at the Times. He was like, “Who’s that.” Now, am I crazy? Do I only know him because he’s from Rhode Island, and Rhode Island is famous for Him? (If anybody dares brave it, Mandy Patinkin has recorded a really scary version of that song with a really out of control arrangement featuring a very out-of-place violin ricochet on the lyric, “Cotton comes from Louisiana.”) Okay but back to Stanley Fish. Don’t you gotta know who he is? I would recommend that everybody either buy or Google Fondle his essay “Speaking in Code” because it seems to me like he figured out a whole bunch of really useful things in 1994. Gonna talk to me about who’s stanley fish. (Muttering to self)

This morning, I turned on the GPS as I was coming down the five floors of parking garage and told it to please head towards the airport, to the rental lot (a pre-saved location in its little mind). As I drove in circles, the GPS was continuously recalculating its position based on where it thought I was: “Go straight to ninth street. Recalculating. Go straight to eighth street. Recalculating. Go straight to ninth street. Recalculating. Go straight to eighth street. Recalculating.” The rhythm of her voice combined with my dizziness was pretty spectacular, and I entered a sort of trance state where I was spinning in circles, and a computer was trying to orient my spinning on its own homewards itinerary. Isn’t this an inversion of what computers are meant to be? Capital-I: figure out the itinerary, the curves, the nuanced slug-shaped information flow, and the computers spin merrily in circles as I guide myself home?

All in all, L.A. has been really fun, actually. The Hollywood Bowl is my homegirl, and seeing Carmen last night was great. They had slightly shortened it, which I must say I didn’t even notice. Jessica Rivera, for whom I am writing a song cycle, sang Micaëla, which is normally a small role, but she OWNED it. We were sitting next to some really serious opera queens who were, like, screaming “git it!” and “brava/i/o/e” before the reverb had even faded. I fear an opera queen, I have to tell you, but I’m sort of excited to see what they will make of my efforts in the genre; they are the bread and butter of the audiences for opera, which I wish people would write more about in the press. Yes, it’s old white people, but it’s old, gay, intensely educated about opera white people. In New Music, you see, we have Crazy People who, like, pack a lunch to come to an evening concert and unwrap it loudly (an Icelandic friend of mine came with me to the Bang on a Can Marathon and quite correctly observed: “There are a lot of people with walking problems here!”) – New Music is sort of like the Bus Station of the classical music spectrum, for better and for worse. We are talking tuna fish sammich eaty high quality CD player talky khaki pant with relish stain weary crazy here. Opera Fans, on the other hand, are a whole other conversation. Check out the comments on some of these entries.

I have been listening to this one particular track from the new Sigur Rós album called Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur. It has one of my favorite tricks in the world which is two different rhyming schemes, in this case, weak rhymes across the lines, followed by tight, single line rhymes. Check out the lyrics for the first verse, and listen along:

Sigur Rós Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur from Með Suð í Eyrum við Spilum Endalaust

Á silfur-á
Lýsir allan heiminn og augun blá
Skera stjörnuhiminn
Ég óska mér og loka nú augunum
Já, gerðu það, nú rætist það
Ó nei

Then, the chorus, which has the most delicious tight rhymes:

Minn besti vinur hverju sem dynur
Ég kyngi tári og anda hári
Illum látum, í faðmi grátum
Þegar að við hittumst
Þegar að við kyssumst
Varirnar brenndu, höldumst í hendur
Ég sé þig vakinn
Ég sé þig nakinn
Inní mér syngur vitleysingur
Alltaf þið vaða, við hlaupum hraðar
Allt verður smærra
Ég öskra hærra
Er er við aða, í burtu fara

Then, you get some of the same lines repeated, but this time on different cycles of the chord, so it’s slightly reorganized:

Minn besti vinur hverju sem dynur
Illum látum, í faðmi grátum
Ég kyngi tári og anda hári
Þegar að við hittumst
Þegar að við kyssumst
Varirnar brenndu, höldumst í hendur
Ég sé þig vakinn
Ég sé þig nakinn
Inní mér syngur vitleysingur

There are about sixteen million things that work really well about this. I am particularly excited about the grammatical implications: in Icelandic, grammatically similar parts rhyme well with each other, so, in the third line, “tears” and “hair” rhyme because in the first instance they are being swallowed (að kyngja) and in the second blown up on (að anda). When I was listening to them play it in New York last month, I was struck by something: it’s totally the Same Scheme as that “For the instruments are by their rhimes” section from Benjamin Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb! Check it out. The text is from Christopher Smart’s poem of something like the same name, Jubilate Agno:

Benjamin Britten Rejoice in the Lamb (excerpt)
Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
Stephen Cleobury
I think this is from my old Argo recording, has this been re-ish?

For the instruments are by their rhimes,
For the shawm rhimes are lawn fawn and the like.
For the shawm rhimes are moon boon and the like.
For the harp rhimes are sing ring and the like.
For the harp rhimes are ring string and the like.
For the cymbal rhimes are bell well and the like.
For the cymbal rhimes are toll soul and the like.
For the flute rhimes are tooth youth and the like.
For the flute rhimes are suit mute and the like.
For the bassoon rhimes are pass class and the like.
For the dulcimer rhimes are grace place and the like.
For the clarinet rhimes are clean seen and the like.
For the trumpet rhimes are sound bound and the like.

For the trumpet of God is a blessed intelligence
And so are all the instruments in Heav’n.
For God the Father Almighty plays upon the harp
Of stupendous magnitude and melody.
For at that time malignity ceases
And the devils themselves are at peace.
For this time is perceptible to man
By a remarkable stillness and serenity of soul.

Britten’s is the emotional reverse of the Sigur Rós, where the hysteria comes before the gentler, doughy rhymes. The two examples here, though, have more in common: harmonically, both take advantage of a reverse pedal point, which is to say, keeping a note constant in the treble while the bass moves around. In both cases, the trebles (Jónsi) agitate the fifth scale degree of the chord. Check it out on “…for at that time malignity ceases” (my emphases) or on “minn besti vinur / hverjum sem dynur” (”my best friend / whatever comes to pass”). An aside: when I first started paying attention to stuff, I used to sit at the piano and play the chords on the line “and the devils themselves are at peace” over and over and over.

I have decided also that attempting translations of Icelandic is a good way to get better at it. Now that Sigur Rós are using 4-real bygg-gurl lyrics it’s gotten a lot easier, let me tell you. Like Steve Reich, whenever Ice people get really pumped about something, they go into primal scream makeup language time, like that moment in the Desert Music where Reich is like, “The mind is listening dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee,” which I think is the crotchety minimalist way of either listening to the Light Within or putting your fingers in your ears and singing the national anþemn. Beej does it too, in that song “Modern Things,” where she’s making total sense, talking about dinosaurs, and then all of a sudden she just sets it out when the beat comes in. Anyway, I am really into how audible the lyrics in the Sigur Rós song are, too. Check out a really quality rolled R on the word “smærra” (”smaller”), too. Ídiþ Píöfsdóttir.

So, in summary:

LA is not that bad as long as you rent a car with GPS upp inn.
The new Sigur Rós album is Good.
Benjamin Britten is also Good.
I fear an Opera Queen.
If you’re going to roll an R, set it out for me.