Reasons

Earlier last week, some friends and I at work had a conversation about the demise of classical music. One coworker admitted that he doesn't see the decline of classical music as a great loss. I argued that while society should try to sustain new composers such as Nico Muhly, it might not be that tragic if live classical performance was reduced. After all, I thought, who needs to sit for two hours in a concert hall when you can hear multiple recordings of any great piece of music. Moreover, classical music is perfect for multi-tasking. I listen to it all the time at work while writing. It would be a waste to merely sit for two hours. As you can probably surmise by the title of this post, I spoke too soon. Two recent live classical music experiences (John Adams Perspectives at the Kennedy Center and an anniversary performance of the Cathedral Choral Society) have demonstrated that the live listening experience is very powerful in several ways that the recording just cannot capture.

First, the sound quality is just incomparable live. Now, this might be due to my wimpy speakers at home, but I'm willing to bet that the average ear will be able to pick up aural cues such as the entrance of a different instrument much easier live. Crescendos and diminuendos
occur much more dramatically when you are in the audience; there's no dial to adjust the volume. Also, just like how seeing someone's mouth moves helps you make out what they are saying, seeing the orchestra play helps you understand which instruments are in dialogue with
another. For example, John Adams conducted the the National Symphony Orchestra to Aaron Copland's Billy the Kid. Though this ballet suite conjures up every single western cliche (think wooden blocks making hoofbeat sounds), it was still powerful to see and hear the strings
respond to the drums in the "Gunfight" scene. This conjured up images of a crowd assembling before the gunfight, the scrambling around, and ultimate victory.

Second, all of your attention is focused on the music. There are no distractions like books, work, or housework. Such focus makes you more tuned in to the work, and forces you to ask what the music is actually about. Though Elgar's Nimrod is often played at funerals, listening to the Enigma Variations as a whole piece made me realize that fragments of Nimrod echo throughout. It's not as much dirgelike as it is a celebration of Elgar's friend Augustus Jaeger, whom Nimrod is about.

Third, there's more variety. Live performances are going to differ from your definitive recording, whether something is played faster or louder. In addition, a live show may expose you to different pieces you hadn't heard before. Though I was drawn to the John Adams
performance by his fame, I hadn't heard The Would Dresser before. The Reilly and Friends performance even included a specially commissioned piece by Dominick Argento called the Choir Invisible, set to a George Eliot poem. Reilly and Friends also put together many short pieces that would never appear together on a recording, from the Aria of Bach's Goldberg Variations to William Walton's "Coronation Te Deum"

These three points bring us to the fourth: live performance leads to rediscovery and an expansion of knowledge. For example, in Adams' introduction to The Wound Dresser, he explains that he means it as an allegory for AIDS and as a recognition of the American ordeal of
nursing, something that is rarely acknowledged. Reilly Lewis paired the Aria from the Goldberg Variations with a contemporary dance, which really brought the piece to the 21st century.

The one downside is the knowledge that classical music does not hold the place it once did in American society. Looking around the NSO concert hall, I saw that many prime seats were painfully empty. But at least in the seat I was occupying, one more person was in the
process of conversion.

The Ask Questions Social Class in America

The Slate Culture Gabfest is discussing Sam Lipsyte's new novel, The Ask, next week as part of its first live show in New York City. Loyal listener that I am, I picked up this novel and was immediately surprised to find that cultually-minded Slate readers are both the target audience and the target of its biting satire.
The Ask's central character is a university development officer, Milo Burke. The book opens with him losing his job after telling off a development student. But when Purdy Stuart, a billionaire and Milo's college housemate, becomes a potential "ask" for the development office, the university hires Milo back. Milo soon realizes that working Purdy for a donation means working for Purdy, as Milo gets enlisted in a series of unsavory tasks for his ask.

Meanwhile, Milo's not doing so well on the home front either. He lives in Queens, which is the closest to Manhattan that he and his wife can afford. His wife, Maura, is a sometimes lesbian who may or may not be having an affair with a male coworker who may or may not be gay.

What makes Milos situation more pathetic is his self-awareness. Written in first person, Milo's witty sarcasm reveals the derailment of the American dream. He sees himself as a loser. Purdy's accountant scolds Milo, "For heaven's sake, the system's rigged for white men and you still can't tap in." Indeed, Milo does feel like someone who once had opportunity, and now doesn't. He admits, "Maybe I wasn't going anywhere...I had always been bitter, was still bitter, was bitter about the bitterness." He tells us about the the story of a stay-at-home dad neighbor who was a chef. When Milo read that the chef and his young family died in a car accident, Milo feels an empathic sense of relief. "He would never go down in history, or case history, as a shitty father. Whereas me, I still had a decent shot." But it isn't clear if Milo's failure is simply due to Milo's lack of trying or to a larger, systemic American problem.

But Milo isn't only pointing out a flaw in his life trajectory; it's also a flaw in the trajectory of the thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Bachelor's in Liberal Arts toting, wannabe artist twenty-somethings who flooded New York City over the past decade, only to become disillusioned thirty somethings who have resigned themselves to real jobs. When the novel opens, Milo reflects on the disdain he says for the privileged students who squander their parents money at his university. But then he realizes "I'd been just like these wretches once. Now they stared through me, as though I were merely some drone in their sight line...They were right. That's exactly what I was."

As Milo's story moves forward, he also takes us back to moments of opportunity in the past, and how he never took advantage of them. For instance, after college, Purdy actually asked Milo to become involved in an online music store. Milo brushed this off to work on his painting. Soon enough, Purdy sold his store for hundreds of millions; Milo didn't sell any paintings.

Milo and others' bitterness comes across as a rant against America. His coworker, Horace, opens the novel ranting, "America...was a run-down and demented pimp. Our republic's whoremaster days were through...We're the bitches of the First World." America's a bitch because Americans were either bitches or bitch masters. Milo sees himself in the bitch category, serving Purdy in his quest to cover up the existence of a twenty-something son who lost his legs in Iraq and is now determined to get what's his from Purdy. Though I found myself classifying each character as either servant or served, I started to realize that this book isn't exactly about such clear divisions. Each character has some limitations in their opportunities, no matter how wealthy they started out their lives. In addition, Milo's life isn't all that shitty compared to others in the novel. Milo has no skills, squandered his time as an artist, and still managed to get a cushy job, after all. Milo is a sympathetic character, but is also the butt of the joke. Instead of beating down on America, Lipsyte suggests there is still hope yet. It's not about the class into which one is born, but what they do with it once there.

Amy Bloom: The God of Love Doesn't Exist

Amy Bloom’s new short story collection, Where the God of Love Hangs Out, is ironically titled. Ironic for the way it insinuates that there is such a thing as the God of Love, when the behavior of the characters in these short stories suggest otherwise. If there were a God of Love, Bloom suggests, then He lives in each of us, as both the angel trying to save us from poor decisions, and as the devil egging us on.

For each of the stories in Bloom’s collection features people who need to decide if they are going to pursue one relationship at the expense of another. Bloom’s characters are not driven by selfishness or passion—the usual culprits of poor decisions—but by various other psychological factors which she deftly explores. The title story is about a man and his daughter in law who find themselves questioning if they are married to the right spouse. Don’t worry, the two do not hook up, but do bare their souls to each other. We learn that they are each suffering from a case of feeling outclassed. Macy, the daughter-in-law, married into the family to gain a sense of middle-class security. Ron married his wife “for better or for worse,” but he doesn’t know when the better ended and the worse began. Now, he is thinking of trading Eleanor, she of Emily Post’s manners, for a bartender, Randeanne. Bloom sets up these doubts so that it makes sense for a young newlywed and a recent retiree to think about dumping their spouses.

The collection also includes two sets of related quartets. The opening quartet is about Clare and William, a couple “with one hundred and ten years between them,” who start having an affair when their respective spouses are in the same house, fast asleep. Clare and Williams don’t do this out of boredom, but out of an extreme comfort with each other. It’s as though they feel like they have already been married for decades. We, like they, think “hey—this isn’t so immoral, especially since the spouses seem not to care at all.” Again, Bloom hints at the psychological rationale behind this subversion. Both Clare and William feel kind of inadequate compared to their spouses. Charles and Isabel are always impeccably behaved, dressed, and fit. Clare, in contrast, is grouchy, while William is overweight. Their getting together can be seen as self-punishment for having “gotten the better end of the deal” married to their spouses for the past thirty years.

The most powerful story arc in the collection follows Lionel Jr. and Julia. Julia is 34 year old white woman married to a black jazz musician, Lionel Sr., who has just passed away. The day following the funeral, she has a carnal encounter with the 19 year old Lionel Jr, Lionel Sr.’s son from a previous marriage. The rest of the stories in this quartet trace the fall out from this one night. But while other authors may attribute all the mess in the son’s life to his stepmother’s actions, Bloom directs the real question as: how much of Lionel Jr.’s decisions through the rest of his life are really a reflection of the encounter, and how much is due to everything else? As one might expect, Lionel lives abroad and goes through women like others go through shirts. But is Julia really the cause, or just the justification? In the story’s final twist of events that permanently separate Julia and Lionel Jr. Bloom leaves us to make our own decisions.

American Buffalo doesn't Buffalo

Saturday's performance of American Buffalo at the Studio Theatre was my first introduction to "Mametspeak," David Mamet's brand of dialogue. Mamet, a playwright known for Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-the-plow, and American Buffalo, writes characters who use crude language to mask their insecurities.

The two main characters of American Buffalo, Don and Teach, fling around "fuck," "cunt," and political incorrect slurs whenever they get the chance. After all, they have little control over the other aspects of their lives. The play opens in Don's scrap metal shop. He has just lost $200 the night before in a game of cards. He has also just sold a buffalo nickel for much less than what he thinks it was worth. Though Don maintains a commanding exterior, these two losses clearly still weigh on his mind.

His younger, feeble-minded assistant, Bob, tells Don that the wealthy man who bought the buffalo nickel has just left down. Don throws around the idea of breaking into the coin man's house and stealing the nickel back. Meanwhile, Teach, a slick, leather jacket type, has entered the stage cursing out some women who disrespected him with a snide comment. Once he gets wind of Don and Bob's plan, Teach tries to reclaim his respectability by taking over the robbery plan. He convinces Don to drop Bob. Though Don originally feels buffaloed by the coin collector, the rest of the play forces us to ask who is really buffaloing who here as it explores the consequences of Don's decision to sacrifice Bob's loyalty for potential riches.

Written and set in the mid-70's, during our last serious recession, American Buffalo is a very timely pick for the Studio Theatre today. Don and Teach's insecurities surrounding their masculinity reminds me of the vandalism committed by a laid-off neighbor in a recent Dexter episode.

In the Studio Theatre's intimate theatre-in-the-round environment, these insecurities were even more palpable than if the play was performed on a traditional stage. Sitting extremely closely to the actors, I could see the emotion on their faces--Don's quivering jowls, Teach's hurt pride--clearly without the aid of inches of make-up. Such proximity also made the show one that I won't easily forget.

A lot of night music of Stephen Sondheim

"Instead of requiring people to take Philosophy 101, they should require people to take Sondheim 101," conductor Marvin Hamlisch remarked before the final number of Friday's Stephen Sondheim retrospective with the National Symphony Pops Orchestra. He implored us to listen to the lyrics for the closing song, "Move On," also the closing song of Sunday in the Park with George.

Then Liz Callaway and Brian D'Arcy James then came on stage to do the final duet. "Stop worrying where you're going/Move on/If you can know where you're going/You've gone/Just keep moving on," they sang. Though Liz Callaway's Disney voice was a little weak at times, Sondheim's message came on strong: Put the past behind, and you'll be fine.

"Move On" was just one of many songs that displayed Sondheim's rare talent as both a profound lyricist and a lyrical composer. Until Sondheim came on the scene in 1954, musicals usually had a division of labor between the lyricist and the composer. Think Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Leowe, etc. Not only did Sondheim pave the way for solo songwriting, he also came to dominate the field for the next fifty years. Hamlisch's selection of Sondheim songs did a great job displaying Sondheim's range.

Hamlisch's introductory notes for many of the pieces helped the audience appreciate the diversity of Sondheim's subject matter. He covers single life in Company, life's regrets in A Little Night Music, early Broadway in Follies, and--most impressive of all--revenge via a demon barber in Sweeney Todd.

But through it all, a few common themes emerge. Many of Sondheim's musicals are about choice. Looking back on choices not yet made, fearing future choices, weighing choices in the near future. In addition to "Move On," "Send in the Clowns" explores choices made at the wrong time; "On the Steps of the Palace," from Into the Woods tells of Cinderella's first decision to leave her shoe on the steps of the palace, and the ramifications of such a decision. Brian D'Arcy Jame's rendition of "Being Alive," really made

In addition to these themes, the show also highlighted some Sondheim signatures that explain why he's in a league above other musical writers. First, he's great at squeezing really fast lyrics into his music. This creates comic effect and also allows Sondheim to fit in most of what he's best at -- his words. Second, Sondheim moves forward his plots with his songs; they are not simply pauses that reflect on a character's emotional state. Sondheim's characters achieve epiphanies during songs. For instance, in "Being Alive," the main character goes from hating on being in a relationship "Someone to hurt you too deep/Someone to sit in your chair/To ruin your sleep" to conceding that relationships are good, "Alone is alone, not alive."

In fact, many of Sondheim's songs can be summed up in pithy take-aways, which is what Hamlisch probably meant by "Sondheim 101." Not only does Sondheim deliver his messages clearly, he also delivers them with more joy than any course of Philosophy 101.

Local Natives' Tonality

Last night's Local Natives show at the Rock "n" Roll Hotel on H Street was a test of small venues. More specifically, it was test of small venues for bands that harmonize. I was last at this venue in March to see the double-billed Real Estate and Woods show. Even then, it seemed like RnR is more conducive to instrumentals than vocals. Real Estate, which has more instrumental songs, sounded much better than Woods, which relies on harmonizing that involves much falsetto. At the time, I attributed this aural dissonance to the fact that simply liked Real Estate more.

With the Local Natives, the venue's effect on sound quality was more palpable. Their album, Gorilla Manor, features a dozen lyrical songs set to a backdrop of upbeat drums and keyboard, with African influences (think less aggressive Animal Collective). One thing that shows off the band's talent on their album are their incredibly controlled crescendos. Many songs open with barely accompanied vocals that drag the listener in quietly before burgeoning into loud, emotional choruses. For example, "Shape Shifter" opens with one band member singing with a keyboard and a few chords:

"My king I'm humbled before you, I bow
Moods like you're pulled by the moonlight, somehow"

At this point, the other band members join in with harmonizing vocals. The drums kick in.

"How is the language we're speaking the same?
Shape shifter have you discovered a change?"

Just as the tone of this song is established as possibly mournful about a mercurial person, the song immediately pick up pace. Now all four singing band members are heard:

"Why does the soul hallucinate?
I've got control, I shift my shape."

Unfortunately at the show last night, the band could not compete with the screaming throngs of off-key fans. It seemed like the band members had a difficult time hearing each other, and became off-key themselves.The strain in their vocal chords as they tried to make themselves was visible. In contrast, the opening band Suckers, which is more instrumental, sounded great. Though the lead singer was kind of drowned out, he was less out of tune since hearing others was not so much of a problem in his situation.

At the same time, maybe hearing the vocals is besides the point. The Local Natives were energetic and enthusiastic. They marked each key change with sharp, moves. Their stage dancing also kept the pace of their crescendos. The whole room was bouncing along to their rhythms (we had no trouble hearing those). By the time the encore, "Sun Hands," came around, we all had our hands in the air. An enjoyable end to an enjoyable evening.

Joan Didion's America

"Didion voted for Goldwater in 1964. Since then, she has voted only twice," Michiko Kakutani wrote in a 1979 profile of Joan Didion for The New York Times. I was shocked when I first read these words. After all, Didion, now 75, is known for contributing to such liberal outlets as the New York Review of Books.

But reading her collected non-fiction, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, over the past few weeks, I've come to recognize that Didion's reluctance to participate in American Democracy, and her once affiliation with Barry Goldwater, stems not from apathy but from an inability to take things at face value. Didion does not simply report on the stories and ideas that her subjects convey to her; instead she reads between the lines to uncover the origins of her subjects' tales that they didn't even know about. Her style of journalism is about showing the misunderstandings between groups of people to illuminate the tensions in society. As such, the forty years of reporting covered in this collection give us a history of a post-War America that is broken due to Americans' refusal to do anything other than talk past one another.

The collection begins with Didion's first and most well-known book, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. This book is famous for giving readers a peek of the hippie lifestyle in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the 1960's. Didion goes beyond mere description, however, to explain why exactly the hippies seemed so foreign to non-Hippies. After interviewing many illustrious residents, from teenage runaways to drug dealers, she concludes "We were seeing the desperate attempt of a handful of pathetically unequipped children to create a community in a social vacuum." In other words, the hippies were lazing around not because of some rebellious streak, but because they were lost.

Didion next collection, The White Album, published more than ten years after her first, picks up where Slouching left off. The focus of this second book is to discuss the groups that were left out by the revolutions of the Sixties. She profiles a group of churchgoers who feel misplaced in a world that didn't deliver on the promises due to those with good behavior. In this world where the values seem to change on a daily basis, "we tell ourselves stories in order to live," Didion claims. By this she means that we rationalize our behavior and place ourselves in neat narratives to avoid dealing with actual issues:

"The naked woman on the ledge outside the window on the sixteenth floor is a victim of accidie, or the naked woman is an exhibitionist, and it would be 'interesting' to know which. We tell ourselves that it makes some difference whether the naked woman is about to commit a mortal sin or is about to register a political protest."

Her next four books, Salvador, Miami, After Henry, and Political Fictions, give detailed examples of just the sort of stories that we say to ourselves and to those who agree with us at the expense of others. Didion shows how these generalizations translate into cultural isolation. In Salvador, she pitches the American foreign service officers at odds with the Salvadoreans. In Miami, she shows how the white Americans see the Cubans as foreign even though the Cubans have in many ways been more successful than their more native counterparts. This has led to a variety of willful misunderstandings including the belief on the Floridian side that all Cubans are Communists, and the belief on the Cuban side that JFK purposely lied about toppling Castro.

In her next two books, After Henry and Political Fictions, Didion takes on the political establishment. She paints a damning picture of how Washington insiders, including both politicians and the press, are completely out of touch with "the average American." Instead, Washington insiders basically battle each other over the airwaves at everyone else's expense. In a devastating portrayal of Ronald Reagan, Didion reduces him to nothing more than an actor playing the role of the president, like a puppet to powerful lobbying interests. She handles Whitewater and Clinton's affairs deftly, accusing both Democrats and Republicans of opportunism. She points out the irony of the leaders of a country where "the average age of first sexual intercourse ...[is] sixteen,"--a country where "six out of ten marriages...are likely to end in divorce...after engaging in extramarital sexual activity"-- calling for "full contrition" or even resignation from the president. Didion points out the hypocrisies in many political trends to emerge over the last decade, from Newt Gingrich's popularity to "compassionate conservatism."

Despite Didion's acuity about political issues, she is still best when writing about herself. She is famous these days for her memoir of grief, The Year of Magical Thinking, which centers on the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Where I Was From, Didion's most recent book included in this collection, gives her an opportunity to reflect on her life's work. She discusses her obsession with California by using many anecdotes about her own family's 200 year history in the United States. California is a land of cognitive dissonance. Californians value independence do-it-yourselfness as fiercely as they cling to government contracts for jobs in the defense and prison industries. Californians are as quick to call themselves "old-timers" for being in the state for five years as they are to shun immigrants. Though Didion only brings up these points explicitly in Where I Was From, it doesn't take much to realize that these are exactly the points she wants to make about America in all of her books. That we live in a land of contradictions, that we tell ourselves stories in order to make sense of it all.