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Michael's Diary -- 2001-2003 Archive
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4.19.2003
OK, so, I was going to catch up on office-type work, errands and some personal things yesterday as I had some time available, but jobs appeared and off I went. Oozed into the weekend. G & I dined out at an Italian restaurant down the street last night. Decent food, reasonably priced, but it took forever to get to us. We were both feeling tired after a long and irritating week. We rented a movie, The Importance of Being Earnest, which was quite amusingly done. I didn't care for the wacky musical score -- something a little more sly perhaps would have served it better -- but a good evening's viewing, for sure. Interesting to note there have been over half a dozen screen adaptations of this, including two in 1992 alone!
Went to bed early, for us on a Friday, around 12 or so, I guess. G injured her neck somehow while rubbing her eyes (!). Medication and general pain really made her day off from work pretty sucky. I felt bad for her. She has had a crap week also.
She was feeling better as we went to bed last night but this morning it plagued her anew. Seems not quite so bad as yesterday though. We're picking up friends for dinner at a nice seafood spot and a cocktail or two afterwards. Both feeling like, "we have to get out of the house."
4:44 PM
4.18.2003
Posting this using a new Blogging tool. Seems pretty cool. If only there were one for my Pocket PC. The web-interface thingy I was using doesn't consistently stay logged on and is very limited in terms of its editing capacity. So, I haven't used it. I want to have something working soon, but for now cut-and-paste from my daily record will have to do.
Backtracking: This has been a bizarre week. It began oh so pleasantly but quickly became frustrating. I need to be circumspect when I write about work issues in this diary, but like any job, it has its good days and bad days and 12-hour days. On the personal front, when I'm tired it is very difficult for me to focus on long-view plans and goals, because I'm exerting all my energy on the job. One consequence of that is a feeling of derailment in the personal areas of my life. One response is to spend some time getting back on the rails, so that's on deck for me today.
So. Wednesday night after a long day, met some friends to celebrate a chum's birthday. Had an interesting conversation with SC and MB regarding the funk we've all been feeling for the last year -- a kind of depression, driven by the state of the world, the degree to which the uncertainties of our present time throw any sensitive person's priorities into question, and the degree to which one does or does not respond to the sensation that something more is possible in life. Or, the degree to which one feels able to respond. In part, we agreed that any right-thinking person should feel a little depressed and disturbed by the amount of killing and blood shed in the name of God and/or Truth -- to not feel this way would be unhealthy, or at least unnatural.
In general we seemed to agree that there is an innate desire to participate in the unfolding creation by creating something ourselves, and that this is a prime and ultimately positive motivation in the human animal which is either squashed out by the educational system, or encouraged by parents and teachers but generally unwelcome in the "real world" of the business world we occupy to pay the bills. To varying degrees some of us are fortunate enough to have some creative leeway in our work. Others are not. Some don't care, but I would argue that on some level they probably do, and being "cut off" from the ability to create is an unhealthy state. There are so many layers to the human psyche, and there is certainly so much going on that our feeble senses are not able to access, except perhaps in brief moments of intuition, or out of the corner of our metaphorical eye. Another way of putting this is, just about everyone has experienced something they can't explain, whether it is a flash of creative inspiration -- playing the guitar and finding music appearing beneath your fingers, only to disappear again; writing in a full flow of ideas, streaming the words onto the page one day, and the next, staring at an empty page in despair -- or a "sixth sense" experience in which you know, just know something is happening, without any obvious sense evidence to back it up, and it turns out to be true.
I don't claim to have any understanding of these phenomena, and I am willing to accept the possibilities proposed by various philosophical, scientific and religious schools of thought -- with a few exceptions -- but it's something worth pondering. Most "explanations" seem, to me, to fall short of the mark in one way or the other, but each illluminates a different little piece of the puzzle. Interestingly, all involve some sort of leap of faith -- and I include scientific notions in this; the more we "understand" about the nature of phenomena, the less we really seem to know. Much of the breakthrough work in mathematics and physics of the last 30 years seems to point to some sort of underlying structure to what we perceive to be reality, a structure so dense and chaotic, yet so ordered and rational. "Conclusions" are based on our observations, which change the nature of the object observed, or so they say, so it seems at best we have a flawed view of the structures which govern our existence, leaving us with intuitive leaps over chasms in our systems of logic and reason. A scientific atheist might dismiss religious interpretations of phenomena as "divine," but just as often will make leaps in judgment every bit as subjective or intuitive as a religious "leap of faith" in crafting a "rational" explanation. At bottom all we have our our subjective interpretations of what little we can quantify and really perceive of the natural world. I'd argue that there is the potential for every human being to have some sense of the larger "rules of the game" which govern our existence. For some, pondering these "rules" is too much to bear -- it's too big, unwieldy, intellectually cumbersome or discomfiting; for others, the end result is a kind of fruitless navel-gazing. Is it enough, I wonder, to simply be aware and alert to these things which happen outside the bounds of our ordinary perception? Is this making any sense or is it just a bunch of sophomoric babbling? You be the judge.
Just received this from Amnesty International. You can help someone right with just a few mouse clicks.
As Easter approaches, a Catholic priest in Vietnam remains imprisoned because of the peaceful expression of his beliefs. Please urge your Representative in Congress to sign the Congressional letter on Father Ly's behalf. The letter urges Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai to secure the release of Father Ly and others in Vietnam detained solely for the peaceful practice of their religious beliefs.
To take action, click on this link.
10:20 AM
4.16.2003
Up at 5:30, dressed and ready to go right now, at this horrible, beastly hour of the day. Off to a coffee shop to make an attempt at beginning the day with a modicum of relaxation. No time for meditation this morning. Got to get to a customer by 7:30 am.
6:03 AM
4.15.2003
Feelin' like crap tonight. Today did not go very well. Many challenges throughout, from leaving the door to coming home.
The first person I saw today was the scary old man fondling his cacti in the yard next door. He put the whammy on me, I just know it.
There now. Aren't you a little ashamed of yourself?
9:34 PM
Bits of a good meditation session this morning. Mind wandering off too much, drifting almost into a dozey state. And I even got a good night's sleep last night.
8:08 AM
Another balmy day in Chicago. Had my breakfast -- oat bran, banana, bagel w/light cream cheese, Earl Grey and sugar-free Tang -- on the back porch this morning as the sun was coming up. A nice way to start the day. Some Bach tuning my room as I write this and do my daily planning. Then my meditation, a shower, and into this very busy day.
7:22 AM
4.14.2003
What a great day, all around. Pleasant, not too busy, started with beautiful music and a good meditation, ended with cookies and milk following a Cubs game which was not in the least less enjoyable for the Cubs blowing it badly. A grilled chicken breast sandwich, a hot dog with grilled onions and some peanuts & Cracker Jack made up my sumptuous, just a bit off the diet plan dinner. What the hell, the spirit was flowing tonight in the ol' ballpark. Just one of those rare nights when going to the ballpark you've been to dozens upon dozens of times feels like magic, feels like something special, even though the game itself was ugly and dull to those who were not scoring it and paying attention to every pitch. Scoring is great. Makes even the dullest game interesting, to the last. G helped on smoke breaks, and Mick was scoring too using a more basic system than my anal-retentive pitch-count system. It's great to be able to check your scoring against someone else's.
A real treat to score great seats for G & myself and our friends Mick & Tami -- 4 rows off the field in the right-field corner. Hangin' with Moises, baby. Saw a foul ball bounce right off the top of a guy's head tonight. Not on the field (although given last night's performance by the Cubs that it not beyond the realm of possibility by any means) -- a guy sitting a few rows behind us.
When I came home it felt like a typical summer night. But it's not yet May, and Mother Nature, that rancorous old sow, has a few tricks up her dowdy old sleeve yet, I fear.
OK. Time for bed. Lotta business early in the day, and determined to keep the positive vibe rolling after my grouchy Sunday.
11:19 PM
Weather in the '80's today, brilliant, sunny day, the kind of day that makes you feel the dead skin of winter sloughing off you like so much mud. Cubs are playing their first night game of the season, so in true Chicago fashion I coerced Genevieve into playing hooky from school to go to the game. Couple of friends are coming with us; have a few beers, soak up some of this rare, much-needed, unseasonably warm April day in Chicago.
Up early this am to get down to a couple of customers on the South Side. Not the busiest day, but time consuming. Ran some errands, home now for a bit before going to the game, casting the rest of the to-do list away for the day -- it's been a positive one and that means I can stay flexible.
4:10 PM
Up at 6 this morning. Tuned up the house with a DVD I recently purchased of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, after being blown away the other night by a close listening of the 3d. These are pieces which are so familiar to people, having been used (and abused) scores of times in advertisments for Lexuses (Lexii?) and poorly-advised gold investments, PBS programs and so on, that it's rare when one gets to listen to them with fresh ears. Rather like the Mona Lisa -- it's so familiar to us and has been reproduced, parodied, and imitated so often that it's difficult to appreciate on its own terms.
I read the piece below one evening and decided to find the concertos on the Internet, and had a wonderful experience of listening to the 3d. The way in which it seems to fragment, dissolve, and then coalesce again at its conclusion in a triumph of order over chaos is mind-boggling. That a human being is capable of such a composition -- it's really quite breathtaking. The DVD I purchased features a German ensemble on period instruments with an evident joy in the performance of these pieces, recorded in sterling 5.1 Dolby Digital.
The piece below is by the late Douglas Adams, science-fiction writer, polymath, and all-around funny and interesting man. He is missed. It appears in a posthumous collection of work entitled The Salmon of Doubt.
Brandenburg 5
Whatever new extremities of discovery or understanding we reach, we
always seem to find the footsteps of Bach there already. When we see
images of the strange mathematical beasts lurking at the heart of the natural
world -- fractal landscapes, the infinitely unfolding paisley whorls of
the Mandelbrot Set, the Fibonacci series, which describes the pattern of
leaves growing on the stem of a plant, the Strange Attractors that beat at the
heart of chaos -- it is always the dizzying, complex spirals of Bach
that come to mind.
Some people say that the mathematical complexity of Bach renders it
unemotional. I think the opposite is true. As I listen to the interplay of parts
in a piece of Bach polyphony, each individual strand of music gathers hold
of a different feeling in my mind, and takes them on simultaneous
interweaving rollercoasters of emotion. One part may be quietly singing to
itself, another on an exhilarating rampage, another is sobbing in the corner,
another dancing. Arguments break out, laughter, rage. Peace is restored.
The parts can be utterly different, yet all belong indivisibly together. It ís as
emotionally complex as a family.
And now, as we discover that each individual mind is a family of different
parts, all working separately but together to create the fleeting shimmers we
call consciousness, it seems that once again, Bach was there before us.
When you listen to the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, you don't need a
musicologist to tell you that something new and different is happening.
Even two and three quarter centuries after it actually was new, you can hear
the unmistakable thrumming energy of a master at the height of his powers
doing something wild and daring with absolute self-confidence. When Bach
wrote it, he put himself at the harpsichord instead of the viola he more
usually played in ensembles. It was a happy, productive time of his life
when he was at last surrounded by some good musicians. The harpsichord
traditionally played a supporting role in this kind of group, but not this time.
Bach let rip.
As you listen to the first movement, you hear something strange, new, and
terrifying giving birth to itself. Or maybe it's a giant engine, or even a great
horse being prepared for a Herculean task, surrounded by (you can't help
jumbling metaphors when language tries to keep up with music) a flotilla of
helpers fussing around it. You hear it ticking over, trotting having a little
canter here and there, getting a bit frisky, and then taking a trial run as its
helpers encourage it onward, keening with bated breath. It hauls itself back
in again, does another quick circuit. . . and then the other instruments fall
silent. It stands free and alone, pawing at the ground, breathing deeply,
gathering its strength, trotting forward . . .
And then it makes its move -- running . . . hurtling. . .flying . . .
climbing. . . clambering. . . pushing. . . panting. . . twisting. . . trashing . . .
pounding at the ground . . . pounding . . . pounding . . . suddenly breaking
away, running onward desperately, and then, with one last little unexpected
step up in the bass, it's home and free -- the main tune charges in
triumphantly and it's all over bar the weeping and dancing (i.e., the second
and third movements).
The familiarity of the Brandenburgs should not blind us to their magnitude.
I'm convinced that Bach is the greatest genius who ever walked among us,
and the Brandenburgs are what he wrote when he was happy.
Penguin Classics Vol. 27: Bach - Brandenburg Concertos 5 & 6,
Violin Concerto in A Minor (English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by
Benjamin Britten)
7:55 AM
A busy day. Did you ever have one of those days when you are busy and you actually complete a great many tasks but at the end of the day you still feel like you haven't accomplished much? Today was kind of like that.
I woke up feeling kind of cranky and a couple of little annoyances during the day made me spiky. I was feeling a little bedraggled from a late evening jawing with the fellas. Only had a few beers but stayed out until 1:30, finally went to bed around 2:30. G came home mighty late from dancin' with the girls. Had a great time but she was hurting today as a result. Started the day with a good breakfast, then cleaned house (G had a ton of reading and schoolwork going on), cleaned off the back porch in anticipation of several days of beautiful, warm weather we're supposed to have. G put in some laundry, and I went shopping for our dinner and a few things we needed for the week. Came home with a little piece of beef tenderloin, which I grilled, sliced and served with some sauteed spinach with garlic, some nice spinach linguine and some tasty marinara. A little french bread made it complete. Such a nice meal made me feel better and less frustrated.
Sometimes I get very impatient with life. Sometimes Joseph Conrad's words describe exactly how I'm feeling: "For art is long, life is short and success is very far off." There are some key areas in my life I would like to get moving in -- some life changes that are definitely coming on-line in about a year to 18 months but can't happen now for a variety of reasons. I sometimes (often, actually) get really impatient and want to be able to do them now. It's a crummy feeling, sort of feeling stuck in corner and sometimes no amount of focusing on the future will do. But I spent some time tidying up some loose ends on my to-do list, went through my weekly planning process and revisited my goals and tasks, etc., and felt much better about resigning myself to be patient.
There is a lot of work to be done just to get to the launching pad for this next phase of my life. Focusing on that helps too. Following through on meditation and exercise this week are absolutely vital to keeping my head on straight.
Finally, felt very good about a couple of pages I wrote of my screenplay tonight. A few small choices I made are influencing the whole direction of the piece. Had a few "aha!" moments as I wrote. A real pleasure to be able to write and wrtie and write and not feel like I'm writing a load of bollocks. Finally, I have taken to heart the aphorism "write what you know." When I read it, instead of seeing something that I think is crappy and derivative (like almost every other screenplay attempt I have made) I'm hearing, in a sense, my own voice. It's rough as hell, of course, and I am forcing myself to not change much as I go along unless it's necessary to support an idea I come up with later on. But I definitely see the proverbial hunk of granite taking shape before my eyes, and once it is complete I can chip away at everything that's not right. Anyway, it's heartening after a long creative drought.
After crossing off stuff from my list, and planning out most of my week's tasks, I watched a film, Amadeus. I like this picture quite a lot, even if it does have its weaknesses. F. Murray Abraham is quite marvelous as Salieri, I think. Any creative person who has struggled, who has lost their ability to make contact with the creative impulse can sympathize with him even though he's quite a despicable monster, inf the film at any rate. A complex and not wholly unsympathetic monster. How fascinating that the real-life Salieri had Beethoven and Schubert as pupils!
Tom Hulce is occasionally grating as Mozart, but I think that's the point. It's a very oversimplified view of Mozart's life and career, for dramatic purposes, but watching this director's cut afresh it's quite plain it's Salieri's story that's the focus.
Anyway, the flick just ended and I am getting ready for bed. A fresh week awaits, albeit with some staleness embedded.
1:01 AM
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