view of Miami from the MacArthur Causeway 

remembering my Grandma

I've been thinking a lot about my Grandma, who died a year ago today. She was such a wonderful, sweet, and generous woman. Even though she lived a very difficult life, she seemed to be perpetually sacrificing her own needs for the happiness of other people. Here is a letter she sent me, just after I moved to Miami:

10-27-03

Dearest Matt,

I hope sincerely that you'll be happy in Miami, and that your career progresses to your own satisfaction. Be patient and hopeful - it's always difficult in the arts and music to get started.

Here's a bit of an emergency fund until money starts coming in - don't be bashful about using it - do what's necessary. I love you and wish for your success and happiness.

Best regards to Karyn. I still would love to have a picture of you both.

Much love,
Grandma

Note: Be careful - I understand that Miami is a rough city now - I visited there when your mama was about four, and Barbara was seven - it seemed like heaven after living in Cleveland. - H

It's sad to think of all the things I might have said and done for her, that might have given her a little bit of happiness - like sending that photograph she asked for. She was sometimes difficult to talk to, because she would recite all her worries and anxieties, which of course were born of her great compassion but could seem overwhelming.

I loved to write to her, though, and to read her gracefully handwritten replies. When she died last year, I felt like I had lost the one person I could always confide in. I suppose this blog, and a journal I began writing shortly after her death, have been my way of trying to make up for a small part of that lack. Nothing I write could encapsulate the person she was, though, or console all of us who still miss her terribly.

Spilling Clarence: a novel worth remembering

"What we can infer from Freud's theories is there is something innate about the tricks our mind plays. Perhaps we are biologically programmed to distort the past. Memory is associative, and we are surrounded by its cues all the time---smell, sensation, word, place---without these screens, perhaps, we would be constantly wallowing in trauma. Forgetfulness is not a sign of disease. It is natural, and may even be biologically positive. Perhaps the mind's ability to make the past malleable is essential for our survival."

Bennie begins to pace back and forth on the stage, as he usually does at the half-hour point.

"Because we've all made horrendous mistakes, suffered trauma, committed troubling acts in our lives. What would happen if we could remember them all, call them up with just a smell or a word? What would it do to us if we remembered our childhoods, our whole lives, every day?"

- Spilling Clarence by Anne Ursu, page 69

Anne Ursu's novel is about just such a situation: a pharmaceutical factory disaster in the small town of Clarence releases a chemical which renders people prisoners of their own memories. Ursu's novel is full of clever, heartwarming touches, especially in the character of 8-year-old Sophie, but it also has a dark and tragic side, in the psychology professor (and Sophie's dad) Bennie, who lost his wife to a car accident five years ago.

I always seem to be wishing my memory could be better, more detailed, more accessible - yet this novel reminded me that forgetting has its merits as well. Sometimes our most powerful memories, like the presence and impressions of a lost loved one, are best kept secreted away in some hidden corner of the mind, where they can't overwhelm us quite so easily.

A lot of my memories are locked up in pieces of music, I think - as in the Bruckner symphony I wrote about the other day. When I listen to that music, a whole other period of my life seems to come into focus, a time when I was tremendously determined and ambitious, and tremendously lonely. These are memories I never want to lose, because they make my life so much richer; yet to think of them every day might be painful and crippling.

Ursu's characters are beautifully drawn, sympathetic and funny, and their struggles through the obstacle courses of memory are fascinating and moving. I imagine Charlie Kaufman could write a great cinematic screenplay based on Spilling Clarence - as in his movies Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the tension and action takes place largely inside the characters' minds. No adaptation is really necessary, though, to appreciate what a lovely and sweet little novel this is. I suppose it would be an exaggeration to call it unforgettable - even the sweetest things in life are destined to be forgotten, but they are still worth experiencing!

Anne Ursu has a great website with lots of reviews and information about Clarence and her other novel, The Disapparation of James. She also blogs daily on a very funny Twins baseball fan site, www.bat-girl.com, which is how I first heard about her.

Bruckner's 8th Symphony

If I had to pick my one favorite piece of music, it might easily be Bruckner's 8th. I first heard the piece when I was 18 - I had just moved to New York to attend Columbia University and Juilliard. There was an audition for the Juilliard orchestras, and one of the excerpts was from the third movement of Bruckner's 8th. I didn't know yet that I wouldn't be allowed to play in, or audition for, Juilliard's orchestras - that was one of the main reasons I left New York after just one semester! For the time being, though, I was preparing diligently for this audition.

I went to Columbia's listening library one day around lunch time, thinking I'd quickly find the excerpt, listen to it a couple of times, then pop over to the dining hall. What I didn't realize was that the third movement of Bruckner's 8th is the longest slow movement ever written, usually lasting nearly half an hour. The excerpt was nowhere near the beginning, either, so with no measure or rehearsal numbers to guide me, I settled in to listen to the whole movement.

By the time it ended, I was completely spellbound by the beauty of that music - I realized I had completely forgotten to find the excerpt. So I listened to it again. Then I listened to the symphony straight through in its entirety. Twice. I think the librarian had to kick me out around 5.

It's wonderful to have a piece of music that moves you so powerfully. Unfortunately I rarely find time to listen through the whole 90-minute symphony, though, or even that monumental slow movement! I've only heard it performed live once, with David Zinman conducting the Baltimore Symphony, which was quite thrilling.

Another performance I remember fondly was on television the summer I was at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Germany. Lorin Maazel was conducting the Munich Philharmonic in a huge cathedral. There is a passage in the third movement that (like so many passages in Bruckner!) returns obsessively: the whole orchestra seems to climb out from a state of unrelievable tension and dissolve into a celestial harp shimmer. Each time the orchestra played this, the camera would pan up to the ceiling of the cathedral, as if God Himself were creating the music. I guess sometimes it can seem that way.

I wonder occasionally at all the things I've chosen to give up in order to play in an orchestra - like dropping out of that Columbia/Juilliard program. Then I listen to a piece like Bruckner's 8th, or play in a great orchestra, and all those sacrifices don't seem so crazy any more. Today was our first New World Symphony rehearsal, and so things were a little rough. Still, the memory that sticks with me is looking around while we were reading the first movement of Brahms 3rd, and seeing this amazing sense of giddiness in everyone. We were like a bunch of little kids playing after the first thick snowfall - "wow, it's been a while." I wouldn't trade that for anything.

a room (and maybe a recital) of own's own

This morning the New York Times reports on the plight of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra members. Like everyone in New Orleans, including some cousins of mine, they have been scattered all around the country, looking for work and places to live. I especially liked the composer in Oklahoma who "said he did not have much money but could offer a room and the chance of a recital."

It sort of reminds me of my own experience with the ill-fated "Atlantic Southeast Ballet Orchestra," which was based in Charleston, SC with plans to tour the southeastern United States. The day before the first rehearsal, though, the orchestra manager sent out an e-mail with the subject "CATASTROPHE." The orchestra's funding had just disappeared, and after we played a benefit concert (for the orchestra) on 9/11, so did the orchestra management. They left the country, fleeing creditors. The orchestra members were left to pick up the pieces, break their apartment leases, and find somewhere else to work, since Charleston is not a hotbed of classical music activity, at least for 11 months of the year.

That was how I came to live in Miami, and worked in the Palm Beach Opera Orchestra before joining the New World Symphony last year. I still have a part for Adolphe Adam's ballet Giselle, stamped "Library of ATLANTIC SOUTHEAST BALLET," as a souvenir.

A.S.B., 2003-2003, R.I.P.

flesh wounds

my frisbee injury

Yesterday I got smacked in the eye by a fast-moving frisbee while playing with some other NWS musicians and their church group friends. All day it's been modulating through various shades of blue and purple, which I've found quite interesting and entertaining. Sorry if you don't.

Jimmy's passing

Talk about fatal coincidences - yesterday I wrote jokingly about our front desk manager, Jimmy, and his penchant for strongly (and strangely) worded notices. Just a moment ago I learned that Jimmy had passed away some time this weekend. I'm not sure if I should delete what I wrote yesterday, now that my attempt at humor has become tasteless as well as lame.

Jimmy was a wonderful, kind person, and those notices only added to his idiosyncratic charm. He always called me by my full name, Matthew, and many times I found myself getting into long conversations with him while collecting the mail. He loved to cast ridicule at the bizarre attempts at modern art in the park across the street from our building, especially when the Art Basel festival came to town. He asked me once what I thought of Picasso, and I started some blather about discovering whole different ways of seeing, and he said, "Well, me, I just don't get it. Are those supposed to be people, or what?"

One of my favorite Jimmy memories was a conversation I overheard before Thanksgiving last fall. He, Joe, and Mitch were discussing their dinner plans, and apparently Joe or Mitch had made some comment about a restaurant with "a nice atmosphere." Jimmy replied, "Atmosphere? Atmosphere is what you worry about if you're taking a girl out. You're going alone, you want to worry about the food!"

I feel a little silly and more than a little sad trying to sum up this unique, funny person based on my limited experience of him. I guess it's a reminder to get to know people better, before we're all gone. One thing I can say: Jimmy will be missed.