Word Games

 Word Games

When I was at Sonoma State University studying in the Music Department, my attention was drawn to the very small tiles on the walls and floor of the bathroom. The tiles had wonderful names scrawled on them, names like reptile, infantile, etc. Of course, I felt it imperative for me to come up with new ways to name the tiles, like erectile, turnstile, and of course the Scopes Monkey Tile. 

You just never know when a new skill like this will be needed. When I visited Southwest Philadelphia, where I grew up, I went to see St Francis De Sales, the Parrish where my boyhood friends attended parochial school. Throughout my entire childhood I’d never ever been to that church or school, prevented from visiting by social and cultural boundaries. Of course my Irish Catholic friends never visited my Hebrew school or Synagogue either. Surprisingly, I found out that St Francis DeSales is well known for its tile decorations. When I reported to my wife that the roof and interior of this edifice are covered in tiles, she repeatedly asked the question, “What kind of tiles, what kind of tiles?” Knowing nothing about the technicalities of tile making, what materials they’re made of, or where they come from, I was confused by the question. I didn’t know how to answer until my new found naming skills kicked in and my brain produced the answer. “Gentiles!” I said.

Along similar lines, I had to give a lot of thought to the restaurant industry when restaurants began charging corkage fees for bringing your own wine to dinner. So naturally I thought it follows that if you bring a crib for your baby, you pay cribbage. Let’s say you habitually drop food on your clothing when you eat like I do, so you bring some spare garb. Then they charge garbage. Of course If they get a cab for you, you pay cabbage. And a bag for taking home your leftovers yields “baggage.”

The advertising industry is ripe with opportunities for this kind of stuff. For instance, the married woman who is the spokesperson for the beverage industry is of course Mrs Sippy. And the single woman who doesn’t like people but nevertheless insists on using and rating the dating services badly is Miss Anne Thrope.

I have shared some of this material with my friend D., who has a PhD in English Literature and she was a teacher at a local university. I can only say that her response was yet another unanswerable question, “Have you no shame?”

 Chroitzmach, A Christmas Story

My mother’s name for Christmas was “Chroitzmach.” It made me wonder how she would wish you a Merry Christmas. I think she would say, “Maury Chroistzmach.” “Oh yeah, I know Maury, Maury Chroitzmach, he went to Hebrew school with me.”

Christmas was a magical time for the only Jewish kid on the block. I visited my Irish Catholic friends; Tommy McLaughlin, Sammy Stubbs, Johnny Tonelli (who was Italian), Ronnie Burns, Frankie Scheffhouser. We played with their Lionel trains, whistles that whistled and smoke stacks that smoked. 

We played miniature basketball pushing levers to operate the model basketball player. Whoever could sink the most baskets in a minute won. Vibrator football was not an X rated game. A vibrating metal game board moved the magnetized runner trying to push through the magnetized linemen while our ears wheezed and hummed along with the vibrating metal board and the smell of ozone invaded our nostrils.

Piling snow outside was a deep white readiness for sledding or for skidding when a kid attached himself to the rear bumper of a passing car. Snowballs whizzed overhead, and the Philadelphia streets became the theatrical setting for snow forts that were threatened by attacking marauders.

There were red stinging ears and red runny noses all around, and the smell of soaked-through woolen scarves and mittens. There was the sound of snow crunching as it was compressed by rubber boots with iced-up metal latches so cold they stung your fingers when you unlatched  them at home.

Deep crunchy watery Snow. Just try to run in this stuff as it turned into into water-ice under your feet. But run we did, sweat pouring down our backs under layers of soaked wool, ear muffs coming loose and falling off, scarfs coming untied.  Running and snow and sweat and wool and ecstatic company.

Parallel Worlds

 For Jeff and Alice

I went to Bodega Head with some dear friends.

I was struck with the abundance of “Worlds” 

that were there, depending on where I placed my attention.

There was the World of the parking lot:.

The path, the rock, the gravel and sand

leading to the edges of cliffs overlooking the ocean.

There was the World of oceanic action:

foamy waters swirling among the rocks.

And the World of transparent shallow water

where remnants of waves lapped onto the sand,

bringing bits of seaweed running

in and out of the water like sandpipers.

There was the World of seagull covered rocks,

birds mating and nesting.

The World of seaweed tufts 

that looked like distant ancient towns

built on isolated rocks rising from deep ocean waters

with all the mystery and adventure 

that such towns might hold.

There was the World of eons old-rock bridges and arches

like entrances to underground kingdoms.

And the World of dragons' teeth rocks;

rocks like sailing ships;

rocks like walls encompassing their bit of the Sea.

The World of those birds who choose to nest

on the furthest and most precarious edge

of rocks jutting out to sea.

On the land there was the World of flowers:

ferns, and ice plants all clumped together.

The World of day-glo bright orange blossoms, 

small yellow lilies,

the rust-colored ground cover

contrasting green and violet flowers that roll over the hills,

the grey texture of dead plants covering the ground.

The World of all ice plants with blossoms of pink and violet

butting up to the edges of cliffs

and then hanging from rocks that descend to the sea.

There was the world of four geese who chose their forage area 

and then were joined by sparrows.

There was the World of the whale watcher,

his beach chair high on a bluff.

He sat motionless, watching the water 

for spouts of creatures he loves.

He smiled at me from his wizened face:

I nodded back at him.

I thought he was the same man I saw ten years ago

sitting in the same position...

We are watchers together, he and I,

sentient brothers and lovers of the wildness.

Thermostat and the Heat

 

A Book Club Story

An ingenious literary friend advised me to jump ahead and read the last 60 pages of our current book club book instead of trying to read whatever’s left of the book before the meeting. This ingenious technique elevates the act of not reading the book club book to a creative art form. First, it provides enough information to attend the book club meeting and join in the discussion just a little. Second, the time and effort it takes to read the last 60 pages together with what is already read reduces the guilt and embarrassment of not finishing the book by a significant amount!

D. wakes me up at 4 in the morning. The young Siamese Tonkanese cat we got from a local shelter is awake. Unlike our previous cat who ate, slept, and cuddled through life, this cat is a wild thing of lion like grace, cheetah speed, squirrel climbing power, and 10 lives at least for risk taking. The other day this cat jumped from our roof to the top of a sun umbrella on the deck. The umbrella didn’t survive the onslaught. She burst through the umbrella, tearing a gaping hole in it with her claws. Then she crashed down on the table holding up the umbrella. Its metal legs could be heard complaining from the impact. This cat is a furry and muscled wrecking ball who flies through space, her paws barely touching the ground. Now she is ready for pleasure, play, or battle at 4am in the morning. But she does respond well to affection, so I spend time petting her.

 “The heat is on,” D says. She is not referring to the cat or to the fact that I have a rehearsal and music gig to prepare for later in the week. She is referring to the fact that neither of us turned the heater off when we went to bed last night. I haul myself into vertical sitting position. Still groggy, I push a hand through the hair on top of my head. I search the gloom for my glasses, and attain my feet without incident. I sheathe my feet in slippers with each foot miraculously in the correct slipper. Momentarily, I appreciate my luck in getting this right!  After all, I’m not nearly as graceful as the cat. But after accomplishing all that I do something that no cat has ever done unless the cat we’re talking about is a jazz musician, and not many of them have ever done this. I think about oboe reeds.

 Those of you who may have read some of my blog writings and others of you who know an  oboe player realize that 90% of an oboe player’s cerebral matter is devoted to thinking about oboe reeds. The question is this: Should I start making oboe reeds at 4 in the morning?  That’s what I usually did when I served as principal oboist of a local community symphony orchestra. A good start on oboe reeds at 4am meant I could continue to work on the reeds later that very same day after they thoroughly dried out. But I decide against 4am reed making.  Retired now, I’m not performing much and I’m setting new habits for my retired existence, like sleeping instead of 4am reed making. Hmm, 4am reed making. Do I really want to do that? The answer seems to be a big fat “NO!” 

I go downstairs with my phone phlashlight in hand and stare at the offending thermostat for the time it takes to decode its numbers, verifying visually what my body’s thermostat has already told me, and what D. has stated. “Heat”, it says. I turn it off like the urge to make oboe reeds.

 I have rejected reed making. Instead, now that I’m awake, I can take up the bookclub book, Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain. The book club meets in less than a week. The book is over 10,000 pages on my phone (where I have read many a book club book) and over 2000 pages on the iPad. I’ll be doing well if I can reach page 700 on the iPad in the time remaining before the meeting. The last 60 pages technique is calling to me like sirens to Ulysses. 

 Thomas Mann was one of my mother’s favorite authors. My mother was a professional singer in opera choruses. She appeared on stage in most of the opera repertoire with the famous singers of her day. One of her favorite arias was Delilah’s aria from “Sampson and Delilah” when Delilah is tempting Sampson to reveal to her the secret of his strength.

 Recently I thought to play Delilah’s aria on my English Horn in honor of my mother. I can  hear it in my mind performed in a way the performance  does justice to the memory of my mother’s gorgeous contralto voice. It was a beautiful voice she inherited from her father. He was a kind man who along with my father and step grandfather became examples of kind men in my life. These men were all married to women who were emotional pistols, women who wanted active lovers that were enamored of their beauty, but who who were also kind men. I don’t know that they got the active lover part, but they did get kind men. And these women responded well to kindness, much like our cat.

The English Horn playing for Delilah’s aria needs to express the soaring emotions felt by Delilah in her most dramatic moments. It should express her ambivalence, her revenge-powered devotion and loyalty to her tribe, as well as the tragic dualities that are the hallmarks of human existence. She is led simultaneously by love and hatred. In some way she actually has a tender love for Sampson while betraying him to the Philistines. She is goaded on by the stature and validation she will achieve by taking the Philistines' revenge on Sampson. 

But enough about art and my mother and kind men. I now need to treat myself with kindness. And so I yield to the beautiful temptation of Delilah, the Siren song that lured Ulysses. I read the last 60 pages of Magic Mountain. My book club assignment is finished.

Darkest Night of Oboe Reeds and The Joy of Being a Musician

 Darkest Night of Oboe Reeds

And the Joy of Being a Musician

 The reed lamp is lit. Its magnifying lens lights the way as I commune with the fine grains of orindo donax cane. I’m back at the oboe reed making table at 4 in the morning, a time usually reserved for the dark night of the soul, but not for me. Instead, it’s the time of heightened concentration and focus when I start making oboe reeds, and I begin the process of making multitudinous changes over the next few days as I guide the cane into making the most beautiful sound  I can produce on the oboe. This was my practice in the years I was a principal oboist of a local orchestra. The reeds I produced that day ultimately would conform with the needs of my physiology, my mouth, my windway, my breath control. But mostly, I concentrated on accurate intonation (tuning). Without fine tuning, the reeds were useless no matter how intrinsically beautiful their sound.

I love the dark sounding reeds, the woody sound that echoes in the room. These are great for the Russian composers, the sound of deep sorrow and suffering in the Russian soul. But in the concert I was considering, we were performing Rossini, a composer of comic genius, like Mozart. Rossini was much honored in his own time. For Rossini, I needed a sound without a hint of suffering, a sound that doesn’t take itself seriously. It requires a silken beauty that reflects the slipperiness of the trickster, a sound that expresses comedic insight and irony.

The magic of instrumental music is that it evokes moods, emotions, thoughts and character without words, only with sound gestures that have their life and meaning within the cultural conventions of their time. If the music succeeds at being more universal, the composer is able to transcend the cultural limitations of their own time, and convey emotional meaning for all times. All with sound. True magic.

The musician takes on the character of the music much as a good actor personifies his or her role. If the musician succeeds at this, the music will be alive with the appropriate sound quality.  Then the musician can perform inside the same emotional mood and head space the composer is trying to convey, adding their own emotional spin to the music.

It is this kind of magic that makes audiences show up. I tell my tentative students the audience never comes to hear you “mess up.”  They come instead to hear you unify with the music and convey it beautifully. They give you, the performer, something precious, the gift of their attention. They desparately want you to succeed at your art. If you do, then if only for a few moments, they will forget their problems, their sick mothers, issues with their children, personal crises, and instead they will be lifted into a transcendent experience. And if you are a young person and you are brilliant on that day, then this gives them hope.