Wyzard Ways

Final Hours

2011-12-31T23:59:00.020-05:00

This is the final post for a difficult year, a year filled with extremes, with challenges and stellar accomplishments, with gains and losses. Posts to this Blog this year have been infrequent, but they have been serious journeys of inquiry.

Perhaps the greatest gain has been the discovery that the only we gift we really have is time and that whatever time might be, it becomes transformed when we create something which indelibly stamps the moment with a tangible and palpable presence that carries its beingness into the present and into the continuing ongoingness of Time. We are creating the fabric of meaning that is inextricably the texture of Time itself. This transformative act is intertwined as the process and product of humankind enriched by the depth and multiplicity of consciousness that erupts into singular awareness.

Time is the essence of creation. It is original burst of awareness that created the texture of becoming. We can literally look at the past, since we exist in the context of the speed of light, which we use to measure the presencing of now and to peer backward through Time perceived as Space. With more powerful instruments we can look ever further back into the "beginning" of Time, in search of that moment of ignition that launched the flow from nothingness into somethingness.

My last post, until now was on my birthday, that marked the beginning of Time's gift to me of itself. I didn't post again because I thought that maybe that was my last post, and that I was in my final days. But then I realized that we are all in our final days. All of us confront each moment just as each moment confronts us to extract meaning, to experience and savor the essence unfolding as conscious awareness of the present, of Now.

Central to the creation of Now is the understanding of its finite properties. Nothing is forever, and even as we create to savor and deepen our awareness of being, the knowledge that our possession of Time is limited, is finite, is hurtling to the edge of a singularity. The singularity of the Black Hole remains a metaphor and mystery... there is a sense that Time itself stops and a dimension unknown to our understanding redefines reality, perhaps dissolves into another parallel reality. Perhaps the universe itself is simply the conscious awareness of the evolving isness.

The Mayans are said to understand that the year 2012 would be the final days of the universe, observing that the universe will end on 12/21/2012. Yet, I celebrate this new year knowing that the hours unfolding hold the promise of fulfillment, of extraordinary creation and wondrous discovery. Our experience of Time is not arbitrary. Our connection with Time unfolding is the only reality we witness... it is an energy exploding, illuminating consciousness as dynamic awareness. Each possession of Now is unique and singular and in this incandescent aliveness we embrace the possibilities on the leading edge of Time as our gift of choice and creating.

In these final days of 2011 I have written new text, poetry, and music... each instance as a connection of time and celebrating the discovery of what each moment contained... I think I look back on those moments of creation, but actually those moments are contained in my awareness of now, which is pulse of Infinite Awareness. I can see that everything is the yin and the yang, but there is that infinite pause of silence where opposites meet... some call it the silence, the emptiness... and from that comes the substance of our creating. In these final moments I am punctuating time with text in our electronic consciousness. For me it is an act of creating meaning for these final moments, not as what is being said, but as something that is in the act of becoming.

So for this planet at this time, we end an old year and begin a new one. It belongs only to us, but is infinitely replicated. It is our celebration of Time itself. This is the one true religion that unites us all in spite of ourselves.

The Integrity of Conscious Awareness

2011-09-05T04:01:00.014-04:00

I am passing through uncharted waters at the point where conventional practice is to note the moment of coming into the world and to celebrate it. So I have friends who click me as is the custom in these modern days, and one or two have sent electronic cards full of the right words and images to call attention that today is passing by, and I'm still here. These waters are uncharted as each day that carves out a place in Time is always new. It is the newness of things that attracts us, but looking back at these days, as they enter memory and gradually crumble into fragments of remembrance, becomes more complex as you reach that point when the days grow short. And indeed they do, "the days grow short when you reach September." Would that I were really at September of my years, but I know the year is late and "I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."

In the incandescence of intense awareness I embrace those who continue to define my existence, who have nourished me through their response and their dialogic challenge to my conscious awareness. Thought is the one dimension that moves faster than light, and I have entered parallel universes with such astonishing speed that I see our notions of reality are so primitive and uninformed. We have such richness and depth in our experiences that we could spend lifetimes trying to decode them, and we do. Isn't this what authors do all the time in their exploring and constructing new realities?

It has been observed that nothing in the known universe contradicts Newton's law of entropy where energy (and matter) dissipates until finally all order disappears. The ordered universe is rushing headlong into disorder. But there is one problem with Newton's observation: it doesn't include life, or the emergence of thinking, and finally consciousness. Life indeed does evolve toward greater order. Newton's universe is a machine, running like clockwork, but running down. We are not in that universe, but standing somewhere observing it.

What has energized my thinking and action has been conscious awareness which is more than just consciousness. This awareness is powerful and faster than the speed of light. It can leap to new realities and new awareness in an instant of insight and understanding. Some might describe this as a spiritual dimension, seeking some way of accounting for experience that is outside of our physical world bound by Newton's laws.

So now as I receive the best wishes in passing from friends and acquaintances, I appreciate that they are celebrating an event I had no control over. I do have prebirth memories, and I do note the days of birth and immediately following. I still can see my father's blue eyes and his smile as he held me on a pillow in his lap and smiled down at me. I had an instance of insight that I had been particularized, and there was no way out, and what followed was an journey of learning how to survive, how to overcome each day, how to follow some path whose destiny was yet to be revealed.

I understand Hemingway's observations and the comments of existentialists who posit that while we have no control over how we come into this world, we do have a choice as to when and how we leave it. From the standpoint of existentialism, life is meaningless. We have the choice to create meaning, and our integrity stems from creating meaning and to understand that death is inevitable, but meaningless. Hemingway had reached a point where he believed he could no longer create meaning with his life. The one remaining act was the deliberate choice to decide when and how to die. I do perceive we each must make meaning through our acts and choices. Creating meaning is our means for overcoming existential angst.

I just finished reading Yukio Mishima, a Japanese author who took his life in 1970. He wrote an astonishingly lucid book about a Japanese officer and his wife who chose to end their lives as a final act of giving meaning to their life. Their deaths were an act of honor and bravery. The wife witnessed his death to celebrate his courage and a life of commitment to his country. She cherished her role as witness and followed him in death. Their final shared moments served to climax a life of constructed meaning. Their awareness of life and each other was never so vivid as in their final moments.

All of this now leaps out in vivid clarity in these unfolding days of September. Where once I looked for the meaning of life, I know that there is no answer to that question except the palpable destiny of my journey that constructs significance in an ever unfolding context. At this juncture of my 75th year, I have more ideas, creative energy, and concrete projects than in years past, and I attribute this to new connections with others at a deeper level of conscious awareness. There are those in my life that infuse me with a deeper sense of commitment to pursuing a universe of consciousness where life actually transcends and moves in the opposite direction of entropy. This maintains an integrity of conscious awareness at a level I have not experienced until now. But the most exciting prospect is that it is continuing to evolve.

IMPACT 2011: Exploring Slices of Time

2011-08-20T22:15:00.006-04:00

IMPACT 2011 at New York University was an exciting panorama of collaborative invention from July 25 through August 12. The production of "works in process" was performed in Frederick Loewe Theatre August 11 and was streamed live on the Internet. Interdisciplinary production teams collaborated and collected their work under the title Creating New Worlds. A breakdown of the scenes may be seen at IMPACT 2011: Creating New Worlds.
The opening Urban Jungles was derived from daily movement and visual arts activities, beginning with texting, and reflecting the process by which many individuals intersected to form interlocking groups working together.

The focus of IMPACT (Interactive Multimedia Performing Arts Collaborative Technology) is about collaborative process. Interdisciplinary production teams of international participants explore ideas in various media which are shaped into structures of media, theatre, with elements of all the arts permeating each scene conceptually powered by some paradigm or theme developed through interactive process. For convenience, eight interdisciplinary production teams were established to create and shape time and scene as a collaborative artistic entity. Material was derived from daily experiences, including warm ups, focused or specialized workshops, and combined arts workshops.

The striking images here are from the camera and artistry of Dr. Chianan Yen. These are "snapshots" of dynamic moments in scenes of movement and media interaction. This documenting of moments transforms the essence of the content. What emerges from this is an essay in visual content with description and explanation that creates new material from the old content. We begin to realize from these images how multimedia can transform the scale of the experience.

Suddenly performers are the content of the eye peering out from the screen. We glimpse them in an unexpected moment. Unexpected because they are in the flow of the moment, in the transformative action that segues into successive moments in a steady flow, but the camera enables us to trap time, to freeze it for our scrutiny. We gain insight into the moment. The moment is performed again in a transfixed texture where we can see each detail. Structure and form leap out at us because we are not distracted by the motion.

The power of camera is to slice Time at a particular moment. The fixed image often contains dynamic kinesthetic power like a spring tightly wound about to be released. We sense the energy and imagine what the release will unleash. Proportion changes the relationship of objects and we can experience parallel movement in different dimensions and different scales. The still image releases the imagination to speculate on what will unfold in the next few instances. The still image communicates the power inherent in the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas and images. In the differences we discover the similarities. It doesn't matter if you have actually witnessed the movement inherent in the single frame. Still images engage the imagination in ways quite different than moving images. Still images allow us to look at the details embedded in that single instance. We submerge ourselves in the details of the moment, the isolation and implied connections.
Although the photographer has chosen a fixed position to snap the action in quick succession, the actual moments captured are a random guess that something significant is happening or about to happen. In some ways it doesn't matter which particular instance of time is captured, we have the luxury to review the results and to edit by selecting or discarding specific instances of Time. That editing goes on at very subtle levels, often not consciously derived, but with an instinctive perception that something significant is revealed about the whole in this particular session.

Even as we concentrate on the visual elements, each image is a window into the moment with implications of what happened before and what is about to happen. In video terminology it is a frame that we have chosen to isolate and its very existence defines it and gives it shape and meaning, an inadvertent relationship to the whole, and at some point might be viewed as an embodiment of the process.

We are mistaken if we consider that the images are merely the visual representations of the moment. They are a window into time, a window for the imagination to build a context of all that is implied. The visual content contains context, but it

is also highly mysterious, evocative, and kinesthetic. This remains true even if we have viewed the work performed or have access to a video representation. It is possible to consider the still image as more powerful than the video record. Even the video is an edited instance of the event captured by specific lenses and camera operators. Video is less evocative than the still image because it is controlling the our view of the context. Still images release us from the confinement of the succession of moments to focus on a particular moment where energy is compressed and imagination is challenged to create the context.

There is a natural tendency of the mind to insert meaning and context, even where none is intended. Perhaps this is why still images are so profoundly interesting and arresting. We seize the moment to enter into the context, to shape what we see and to make meaning, to experience a revelation that leads us to creating something new. So we celebrate these not so random moments from the camera of Dr. Yen. Embedded in these images is his years of experience capturing live moments and his countless hours of processing, where he is editing and refining each single image into an instrument for the imagination. In some ways the moments he captures are accidents, but if they are, they are happy accidents, and we are all the better for his efforts. But there is a point of view that nothing is accidental, which helps us distinguish that Dr. Yen provides a sense of excellence and meaning to the moments he has chosen to share with us.

But we also need to honor those participants creating content in time, of unraveling the essence of an idea into an iteration that is packed with so much meaning and information that we will never decipher it completely. That is the wonder and mystery of it all, with still images providing us glimpses of that infinite continuum. Bravo to the IMPACTORS of 2011 for creating such moments of artistic discovery, and Bravo to Chianan Yen for his experience and practiced eye, and his instinctive sense of capturing the moment as it is about to happen.

A Walk on The Street of Dreams

2011-08-20T21:02:00.033-04:00

It is so delicious to be utterly vacant. To have no thought that you should be any particular place at any particular moment...to be severed from schedules, time, and appointments...to wander freely. So I permitted myself to wander down one of my streets of dreams... to mingle with so many walking along the street and to indulge myself in the fantasies of the past and the moment. To take snapshots of the mind and explore without any sense of accountability.

So I started toward Houston Street. On the way, I came upon one of my favorite haunts, The Mercer Street Bookstore. It is a haven of quiet discovery. There is always something that catches my eye. On the shelves are so many possibilities that beckon like beacons. Currently the most attractive section for me is the poetry section. Here I discover poets with rich imagination... I stumble upon them in a much more meaningful search than Google could ever hope to deliver. I touch the covers, leaf through pages, my eyes wandering over words and lines in random paths.

Today, as I walked into the store, sitting on a prominent display shelf was a book on American minimal music that I had never known. It was an electrifying moment of discovery. Then I explored the books of poems and found many gems, but two caught my eye and ear right away. Celia Gilbert's voice in Bonfire was strong and sensuous with a clear sense of poetic rhythm and shaping metaphors that were inspired and insightful. I often like to read the poems aloud, and these seemed so so rich with possibilities.

In addition there was classic rough news, a profoundly erudite poetic voice of Kenneth Fields, who seemed to echo the tone and sensibility of Robert Graves. I always have loved Graves, and here I thought was a new found friend.
Both of these volumes reached out to me. I had gone in with the intention of just securing one new book to keep me occupied for an afternoon, but I left with three books. Even so, the cost for these is minimal compared to buying as new books, but they are usually mint condition, for the fate of poetry is that many poets publish, but few of us really listen to our poets. So these books have never been opened, never been read. Somehow poetry was something we learned to avoid in our classroom encounters in public school. I never understood this since so many of my high school friends "secretly" wrote poems that were expressive of the anguish that most of us go through as teenagers.

I left with three books that are always a rich resource for my thinking and planning, for dreaming about the realities that lay ahead, for hoping to discover something of myself in these new voices, these new singers for a 21st century. How can one not succumb to the mystery of a a used bookstore, the filled shelves of books that have already taken a journey to end up on those shelves, lying like explosives ready to be ignited by the some incandescent insight triggered by the power of language.

My journey had barely begun and already so much was discovered and uncovered. I headed east on Houston Street, crossing Broadway and migrating to haunts that were once part of my younger days... most of them gone now, and most of the friends that inhabited these east village streets are gone. Crossing Mott street, the Rodgers and Hart tune of We'll Have Manhattan sounded in my head and I found myself singing "and tell me what street... compares with Mott Street..."

Not far from Mott street, on Elizabeth street, a dear friend had a serious struggle with drugs that removed her from my life for a while. We finally renewed contact and she had developed a promising career as a site specific composer... and then she disappeared and I have not heard from her again.

Crossing Chystie Street, I see the Sarah Delano Roosevelt Park which connects with Canal Street at the other end, an oasis amidst the brick and cement. The trees are verdant green and the afternoon is punctuated by basketball players and people strolling almost aimlessly. The afternoon sun is bright, but the air is fresh and pleasant from the rainstorm the night before.

I continue east and soon I come to a poster for Another World, a film about Earth II possibly from a parallel dimension. The film is about synchronicity and dual existences, a subject that has caught my attention and imagination. It even figured into the idea of Creating New Worlds recently performed by 2011 IMPACTORS. As I look at the poster, I begin to realize that maybe there was a subconscious destination of the Landmark Sunshine Theatre, an Indie House that I haven't visited in a long while. It really isn't so far away, but psychologically, across the great divide of Broadway, it seems remote and inaccessible.

I check the time and the film will start in about ten minutes, so I decide this will be a deviation from the journey. Another World is metaphoric, for it is clear as the film begins that this is an investigation of alternative paths, of parallel lives where something creates a rift and a new possibility. The film is focused on the narrative. All though the film, I couldn't help wondering why such a large planet so near to us would not create extensive flooding and earthquakes, but that would be more the sci-fi element and not an examination of parallel possibilities.

The sun is starting to slant toward the western horizon as I emerge from the Sunshine Movie House. I start back west along the the same path, now reversed, eerily aware through the movie that this route has been altered by Time. I come upon the Puck Building, which once figured prominently in fundraising efforts for the Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy Center. It also was to be a major asset in the plans for creating a new commuter university, The East West University of Art, Science and Culture. It was to be the second acquisition of a bold new venture in higher education, a venture of the spirit of Donghwa, the blooming and exchange between East and West.

A few yards further is the building that would be the first building acquired for the new university, a perfect location where subways converge. The Addidas Building would lend itself to conversion with classrooms, a technology center, and the beginnings of the library. It would be the primary building that would become a first class commuting university where students would find an alternative through collaboration to the current competitive paradigm of higher education. But it would also offer the world's best collection of Asian culture, literature, art, and science in the midst of the mecca of the West. It would be a true meeting of East and West defined in new terms for a new era.

I found myself at the Angelika, another Indie film house. I realized my journey of dreams had film palaces at each end like book ends. Not long ago, Woody Allen's Paris at Midnight opened in this theatre and helped me understand how the past erupts in the present and always colors our experience. We all long for the greatness of times past, to be part of it. But I realized that today my journey was a mixture of past and future.

Inside the crowd was intent on the latest openings, and Paris at Midnight had no line. I could have walked right in to that showing. But I was busy watching people and feeling the rhythm of the universe in the random collisions of people vying for position in the lobby. Over the entrance to the theatres, Angelika loomed as radiant as ever, a harbinger of dreams created with light and shadow on the screen... a dim reflection of reality like Plato's shadows in the cave in The Republic. Plato's allegory of watching the shadows in the cave has become a reality in our universe. We go into our caves and watch the shadows on the wall, more convincing and commanding than whatever we once understood as reality.

As I left the Angelika and continued toward the falling night, I passed Picasso's Bust of Sylvette as cryptic and alluring as ever. She had sprung from the imagination of Picasso and had been rendered and enlarged, executed by Norwegian sculptor Carl Nesjär from a smaller original sculpture by Picasso. I realized that we seek to create permanence as best we can. Stone survives the ages much better than film in canisters. Picasso's Sylvette is poised to survive wind and weather, even earthquakes. But we have outwitted the physical world through our reduction of the world to binary code. Films now exist as code transferable to various media until the end of time. Somewhere in the dreams of this afternoon's journey, reality flirts with imagination within the structure of awareness. It is a Donghwa, a flowering of the essence of a new spirit, with new generations uncovering a world that has been waiting for us beyond our dreams.

Crises: Our Co-Existence with Dark Energy and Dark Matter

2011-08-15T23:18:00.045-04:00

Almost everyone I know is going through some personal crisis. And we are all aware that culturally and metaphysically we are engaged in a global crisis that has prompted visions of Mayan doom in 2012. The basis for these crises is our perception of our lives, the universe, and experience as undergoing immense acceleration. Newton had prophesied that everything would gradually slow down until the universe was out of energy. This was the so-called dismal law of thermodynamics. Now the Hubble eye on the universe has detected that indeed, everything is speeding up. We also have become aware that there must be matter and energy that cannot be seen, and that this mass accounts for almost 95% of the substance of the universe (dark energy or dark matter). It is this accelerating gravitational force that appears to be pulling the universe apart and our lives as well. We are not immune from the force that created us. You and I are part of the Big Bang or whatever it was that ignited conscious awareness.

Several of my friends are depressed after their great achievements and success. I know that feeling well. I know what it is to ride the roller coaster of highs and lows as you engage in creating new work. It is a cycle of success where the intensity of the moment is suddenly extinguished and you are left lost and empty, feeling that everyone has deserted you. And they have. No one can continue that intensity indefinitely. Inevitably the super nova burns out, and space is dark and empty. But the emptiness is an illusion. In riding the wave, you must inevitably pass through zero, to the silence. We all come from the silence.

In the silence is the birth of everything new. It all comes from the nothingness between the zenith and the nadir...that moment between the plus and minus, that nothingness that always precedes the "Big Bang." Probably these eruptions are continuous and infinite. That is why we are beginning to perceive that there are parallel universes that completely redefine our concepts of dimension and time. It is a reality that is both singular and plural. Gradually we have come to understand that what we call Space is just another word for Time. For the moment we appear to be trapped in Time, irreversibly caught in the endless expansion whose only direction is outward or forward, Even when we seemingly reverse directions, it is never the same space. Einstein glimpsed the reality for a moment, but never really understood it. Perhaps that is why his attempts to unify two opposing theories failed. Some think they have solved the riddle, shredded the Gordian Knot, since finally experts concluded it could not be untied because it wasn't really a knot.

Some imagine that the dark energy is consuming matter and storing it as dark matter. Although Black Holes have been thought of as the creator of new stars and solar systems, they are also being studied as converters of substance into the hidden dimension of existence. Somewhere in this equation is the secret of ourselves, is the secret of conscious awareness. Without the awareness, the universe is an empty charade.

IMPACT 2011: Creating New Worlds

2011-08-15T23:08:00.029-04:00

What is IMPACT? It is an acronym for Interactive Multimedia Performing Arts Collaborative Technology that describes a workshop designed to promote collaboration and creative expression among international participants. It originated in the Steinhardt School of New York University and has now completed its fifth year. Every year the workshop changes, grows, and develops, and IMPACT has come to mean a process of collaborative experience that is evolving. Each year the faculty, staff, and participants come away with an understanding that has built upon the past but added new layers of meaning and interaction. Most recently IMPACT has added the layer of social networking, using FaceBook as a means of communicating all aspects of the workshop as it evolves pragmatically and conceptually.

The posters above represent three planning stages for 2011. The first poster represents the collaborative and international nature of the workshop through the hands of different cultural backgrounds working together through technology, artistic expression, and multimedia to change our perceptions of the world and bring us closer together. The second stage represents a thematic process by which the participants agree upon a theme to explore for a realization on stage combining technologies and expressive artistry in collaborative production teams. Each production team took the name of a planet and the organization of each team had as its goal to establish an interdisciplinary group that worked together to develop concepts and materials that would eventually be expressed through media and stage craft. The final poster was designed by 2011 participants giving credit and reflecting on the nature of collaboration with a focus on collaborative process.

Though the description above attempts to answer the question of "What is IMPACT?" on a basic, descriptive level, it is clear that its meaning is deeper and continues to resonate long after the workshop is completed. Many new energies and visions interlocked and worked together intensely. New personal insights came from this collaborative process, and the embryos of new ideas are still emerging and growing. We continue to interrogate the process, because at the heart of this process is the idea of artist as researcher and collaborator. At the heart of this work is how we generate new ideas and new content. Ultimately the mentors are reciprocally mentored by the participants creating a cycle of interaction where the meaning deepens with each new coming together as collaborateurs. Activity becomes active engagement generating material through documenting the action and transforming it into various iterations across media. Documenting becomes a way of capturing process and gives meaning and structure to activity as a means of exploring and developing content.

On August 11, the participants collaborated on the "works in process" for an audience in NYU's Frederick Loewe Theatre while also streaming their work on the Internet as a live performance.The material was generated through actions designed to explore movement, images, moving images, sounds, and music using digital and stage craft techniques as well as exploring visual arts as expressive performance. Emerging was a spontaneous process of collaboration and interaction. This interactive energy enabled these young participants to engage the moment as dynamic, emergent content.

CREATING NEW WORLDS

Multimedia Works in Process

Prelude: URBAN JUNGLES

Every day, we create and recreate our environments through technology, architecture and human interaction.

FULL COMPANY

Scene 1: Inner Voice
VENUS
(Ji Eun Kim, Yeji Kim, Hsuanyu I, Yoo Jeong Nam)

Freedom is neither white nor black, but the possibility of painting our canvas of whatever color we choose. No matter our origins or upbringing, we are free to know and to experience, to mingle and to party, to expand ourselves and to forge who we really want to be.

Music and Movie: Ji Eun Kim Cello: Hsuanyu I Dancers: Yoo Jeong Nam, Yeji Kim,

Scene 2: IMPACT around US

EARTH

(Sun-Mi Kim, Hyun Mi Jung, Chae-Won Song)

Having a trouble with artistic expression? Searching for something creative? Our video might suggest the answer for your concerns to just look around and fulfill your needs.

Music: Sun-Mi Kim, Chae-Won Song, Hyun Mi Jung Video: Chae-Won Song

Dancers: Hyun Mi Jung, Kyung-In Kim, Su Min Jung, Seo Youn Lee, YooJeong Nam, Yeji Kim

Scene 3: Exploring Myself

JUPITER

HyeYeun Lee, Kyung-In Kim, Perla Vargas)

Where am I? I am a stranger. Everything is going different and makes me confused. But I try not to lose myself and stick with the strange path. Then I finally meet someone else familiar. Is that an alter ego?

Background Music: "Klavierwerke" & "I Mind" by James Blake

Art Directing & Video: HyeYeun Lee Choreography & Dance: Kyung-In Kim

Actors & Dancers: YooJeong Nam, Seo Youn Lee, Su Min Jung, YeJi Kim, Hyun Mi Jung, Hwan Soo Ok Lyrics & Singing: Perla Vargas

Scene 4: Birthday Girl

SATURN

(Yulimer Almonte, Eunsong Noh, YooJin Choi)

This comedy will make you laugh and have a nice time together with the birthday girl and her friends. The Birthday girl is at a restaurant to celebrate her birthday, but nothing goes out as planned. What will happen?

Video: Yulimer Almonte, Eunsong Noh Costume: YooJin Choi Music: Yulimer Almonte

Actors & Dancers: Yulimer Almonte, Eunsong Noh, Youngmi Ha, Seo Yeon Lee, Hwan Soo Ok, Youngin Ko, Heejung Nam, YooJin Choi, Mariam Chebly

Scene 5: S.O.S. (Side-Effect Of Social-Network)

URANUS

(Kahyun Lee, Yunjin Cho, Jeemin Ha)

We can express our feelings and happenings without restriction of space by social network. However, it sometimes make people exposed to others unintendedly too much. Also people feel the sense of inferiority and isolation by watching other's privacy. "S.O.S" sheds new light on the effect of social network!

Video: Kahyun Lee, Yunjin Cho Actors: Kahyun Lee, Yunjin Cho, Jeemin Ha

Costume: Kahyun Lee, Yunjin Cho, Jeemin Ha

INTERLUDE

(YoungMi Ha, Perla Vargas, Deanna Jackson, Hsuanyu I)

Title: Pingu, Bouncy Fun

Music Making Penguins

Scene 6: A Chat with Cunningham

GUEST ARTISTS: SPACETIME

(Chingwen Yeh, Yea-Chen Wu, Sunyoung Park)

Touching your spirit I move. Watching your work I touch. Feeling your aura surround me.

Art Direction & Video: Chingwen Yeh, Yea-Chen Wu, Sunyoung Park

Choreography & Dance: Chingwen Yeh Live Music & Composer: Sunyoung Park

Scene 7: Dream Your Reality

MARS

(Deanna Jackson, Yoo Jung Shin, Hwan Soo Ok)

Imagine, you’ re who you want to be; doing what you want to do. Believe in the impossible and explore the incredible potential. Take one step and hold on to your dream.

Performed by: Deanna Jackson, Yoo Jung Shin, Hwan Soo Ok, Jee Yun Hung, Yeji Kim, Seo Youn Lee, Su Min Jung Music: Hwan Soo Ok Video and Lyrics: Deanna Jackson

Scene 8: Neptune Avenue

NEPTUNE

(Ebru Yetiskin, Seo Yeon Lee, Youngin Ko)

One flees and creates a path to become a part of a different world. We will show aquarium video. Enjoy our beautiful blue scene!

Video: Ebru Yetiskin, Youngin Ko Dancers: Seoyoun Lee, Youngin Ko, Yeji Kim, Sumin Jung, Kyung-In Kim, Hyun Mi Jung, YooJeong Nam

Scene 9: One World

MERCURY

(Whanee Choi, Su Min Jung, Mariam Chebly, Yea-Chen Wu)

The end of society as we know it has arrived. After a nuclear warfare a few survivors from different cultures take shelter in the last "Eden". How will they interact and communicate with each other?

Video: Yea-Chen Wu Audio: Mariam Chebly, Whanee Choi Choreography: Su Min Jung

Actors & Dancers: Perla Vargas, Deana Jackson, Yulimer Almonte, Mariam Chebly, Whanee Choi, Su Min Jung, Sharon I, Hyun Mi Jung, Kyung-In Kim, Yeji Kim, Seo Yeon Lee, YooJeong Nam, Yoo Jung Shin, Hwan Soo Ok, Jeemin Ha, Kahyun Lee

Music: Mozart Requiem Lacrimosa Original Music : Mariam Chebly, Whanee Choi

BOWS

FULL COMPANY

IMPACT 2011 Faculty, Staff, Guest Artists

Dr. John V. Gilbert, Director

Dr. Youngmi Ha, Music Director

Tom Beyer, Tech Director

Dr. Chianan Yen, Digital Imaging & Photography Director

Julie Song, Administrative Director

Dr. Carleton Palmer, Visual Arts Director

Jee Yun Hong, Dance Director

Kevin Pease, Theatre & Stage Director

Joellen Dolan, Assistant Tech Director

Yea-Chen Wu, Lighting Designer

Sunmin Kim, Stage Manager, Researcher

Nicholas Marchese, Tech Assistant

Yeejung Nam, Production and Administrative Assistant

Dr. Chingwen Yeh, Impact Guest Artist, Educator

Ebru Yetiskin, Guest Researcher In Sociology & Media

Sunyoung Park, Guest Artist

Restless Nights

2011-08-15T06:43:00.002-04:00

So I have struggled to rest this weekend, and I am still waiting for sleep which somehow eludes me. Thoughts of the summer, of IMPACT, of Prayer, of Korea, of A Song for Second Avenue, urgent business, of classes, of friends, of music and beauty, all flood my mind at once... Images and sounds... Thoughts of Blogs and Logs... and songs and poems... And .... all the dilemmas secret and public that tease the human spirit ... All the temptations and fantasies... all that confounds us and conspires to sleepless nights...

But even so ... I will go in and try to transform this desperate state into something productive. There are those in my life that inspire me to transcend the way of all flesh...

Summer has been an avalanche of ideas and activity... all of it positive and promising. I have been buried in the debris of summer, a rich composite of lives and conscious awareness that now call for a reflective production of new material... some of it waiting... urgently in need of expression.

I have been absent from myself for so long... and there are thoughts and ideas waiting for words... these words started as an email and started to take on a larger life... one can get so busy that he stumbles through the night forgetting all that really matters, caught up in the dancing trivialities of virtual realities.

The Past is Present

2011-05-21T18:30:00.007-04:00

Woody got it right, but the past doesn't only erupt at midnight. The past is a seething tsunami overrunning the seamless present. I have tried to avoid the vapors that seep through the crusting surface of moments as they become the shimmering crystals of reality, facets that glisten in the light of a shifting awareness. But the present is just as unavoidable as it is inevitable. It is all we have, even though the future seems irresistible and relentless.

I realize how much I have tried to avoid the contradictions of myself. The long intervals of silence where I let the present pass unnoticed... the sad marking of time with obituaries of restaurant reviews and other irrelevant nonsense... our FaceBook sensibility where all that matters is "hello and goodbye" and" see where I am now" or "where I was a few moments ago"... my ephemeral pathway through the present which disappears in the nondescript passing of inglorious, insignificant moments. All that matters is to twitter the present.

Yet the richness of the present is the past, if we embrace it or allow it to engage us. The new social technologies are basically tools of avoidance. We are isolated by clicks and metal surfaces that are meant for tapping and texting. Images are meant to be captured and substituted for tasting and and touching. Everything is for the eye filtered through screens meant to seduce through the illusions of imaginary worlds.

Yet the only moments that seem filled with the luster of reality, with a tangible essence of something that will last through memory and linger in the fine filters of the mind, are those vividly present through engagement in the nowness of awareness alone, or in the presence of others so engaged in the moment. This conscious engagement is the poetics of making ourselves.

So it is with deep regret that I note the passing of Now unnoticed. Such moments are undistinguished because they are unnoticed. I am saddened by my neglect of Now so often that many of my past moments are vast deserts filled with nothingness or the blurred mirages of wishful thinking. I regret those moments of absence with no tangible presence of those who have noticed me and the emptiness of my failure to seek them out, to relish the reality of their being.

Our simple joy is the noticing of Time passing and to relish how it passes, and to add to its passing. Our simple joy is to notice each other, to appreciate the unique qualities each adds to our passing moments. Within that singular appreciation is the quality of loving and hating, of regretting and celebrating... appreciating those who have touched us profoundly, loved us, changed us, and made us become someone and something different.

Everything's Organic

2011-02-20T16:09:00.006-05:00

Everything's organic at Bareburger. It has been open on LaGuardia place for awhile, but somehow I thought the angle was more of a gimmick than substance, so I passed it by, always lingering for a moment or two and scanning the menu, but then going on my way.

Recently I decided to give it a try and went in on a Friday night. I was surprised by the lively friendly atmosphere and the the apparent enthusiasm of the customers for the fare. It is mostly burgers, beer, and milkshakes, but these categories defy conventional description. Not only is everything organic, but Bareburger has redefined these categories in a comprehensive context. I had the Jalapeno Express burger for which Barebuger recommended Elk. I thought I knew about burgers, but this beat everything I've had in the past. The Elk has a great texture and the taste was beyond beef or bison, a deep rich meaty taste and mellow, which made it perfect for the jalapeno touch. I ordered an organic raspberry milkshake that was the thickest and richest I gave ever tasted. Once again, Bareburger has redefined the genre. The burger arrived at the table impaled on an elegant metal shaft, almost suggesting that it had been hunted down in the wild and speared. The condiments and spices are all organic as are the sweeteners for the organic coffee. Maybe we should not be so impressed by organic, which is returning to the natural state of our habitat. But in a world that is laden with additives and over processing, Bareburger has successfully provided the staples of simplicity with a sense of elegant naturalness.

I went there thinking I would try it out as a novelty, but this is a serious venture and a place to come back to again and again. The variety of burgers and selection of meat will astound you. It is enough to make a vegetarian reconsider a chosen lifestyle. Next time I'll try the organic beer and the coffee, just to see if the same excellence prevails. The only puzzling aspect to the evening were the large monitors tuned to the Flintstones. Maybe the message was a return to primitive times before civilization managed to isolate us from nature. But it didn't work for me. This restaurant is not a place for the eyes, anyway. It is something of an art form for taste, a gallery of organic inventiveness.

Choga: A Cozy Haven

2011-02-12T16:41:00.021-05:00

Choga is a cozy friendly haven at the end of the Bleecker Street business district in the West Village. It is a place where the atmosphere is warm and friendly and the food and drink is served with excellent attention to detail. In addition to authentic Korean food, there is a fine sushi bar where the combinations are fresh and inventive. BimBimBap in their new hotpots come out sizzling, and when several are ordered the dishes are popping around the tables like a stereo rhythm section. When the owner is there, her Seafood Pajun is unrivaled in this hemisphere. I would go there just for that. The restaurant reflects the warmth and graciousness of an owner who has transformed Choga into a memorable experience. Go there more than once, and you begin to feel like you are at the kind of establishment where "everybody knows your name."

I go there to catch up on things and relax. With my iPhone I can bother all my friends or check out FB, while I often use the notepad to write a poem or two, or just sit long hours and listen to the music tapes put together by singer/composer C. J. from Korea who performed at The Bitter End while he waited tables at Choga. He has a great ear for music, and if you sit there long enough, you are bound to hear some of your favorites. I like the Soju, O.B., and the side dishes. Every entree is tempting and all ranges of spicy and non-spicy treats can make every visit distinctive. I often bring along some book of poems to enjoy at a quiet table in the corner. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, a friend will pop in and we have a go at it... almost instant partying... Truth be known, I get lots of work done while there, generating lyrics, ideas for music, researching... all of it in the end is research...

Choga is especially great when it is snowing, and you can sit in the quiet warmth and look at the snow through the window.

One of my most recent visits was populated by visitors from Korea where one of them sang a version of Arirang on the spot that almost made me feel like I was in Korea. This was in counterpoint to the music playing up at the front of Choga... yet at the end, the owner and staff applauded the impromptu charming performance. Choga changes with the seasons, there are seasonal dishes, and in summer it serves as a refuge from the heat with cool air, cold noodle treats, and icy drinks. For now, it is winter and usually we are greeted with hot tea to warm our hands on the cups.

CHOGA
Winter evening settling
Outside Choga
Speaks of snow
Dotting the dusk
As I sit with my Nabe Udon,
Reluctantly approaching
My inevitable departure
As a dreaded return
To some awesome emptiness
That has plagued me for days.
Sounds of music hover
Near the front window,
A vacant drone
As evening dissolves
Into night.
I cannot delay
Any longer...
Still unsure of a destination,
I descend the steps
To Bleecker
And look up
Into the swirling snow
Of night.

The Architecture of Snow

2011-01-30T23:30:00.009-05:00

The "architecture of snow" seems to be first iterated by Emerson in a poem called "The Snow-Storm." I later ran into this imagery in a set of poems by Chris Banks, The Cold Panes of Surfaces. He quotes a line from a Wallace Stevens' poem:

"... Can all men, together, avenge
One of the leaves that have fallen in autumn?
But the wise man avenges by building his city in snow.''
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

For Chris Banks, city in snow becomes the foundation for his poem "Winter Is The Only Afterlife" as he borrows Emerson 's line in "The Snow-Storm" to begin his own elaborate metaphor.

Chris Banks : Winter is the Only Afterlife
The wise man avenges by building his city in snow.
-Wallace Stevens

The architecture of snow was quietly rebuilding January
when a young woman arrived, seeming to float down
the white sidewalks while the rest of us huddled inside
our mortgaged houses. I had been staring out my windows
watching snow fall from the invisible eaves. Passing cars
were churning up a slurry in the streets, a wet papier mâché
of burnt-out stars. She wore a red scarf and had carefully
cinched her wings beneath a cashmere navy waistcoat.
When she turned to look at me, the world was all whirlwind
and white ash, and the words, Winter is the only afterlife.
It gives back everything it takes from us, blazed for a moment
across my brain, like a lantern shining out in all directions,
which is when I knew for certain it was her, and only
for that moment, the white light of snow falling across
her shoulders, itself, a kind of blessing, as she stepped
lightly between this world and the hereafter, one minute
smiling at me and the next vanishing into an apocalypse
of snow, each flake's white galaxy, her grace her own.

Anyone who has spent any time with me knows that snow is almost an obsession with me, which is why this poem bears so much meaning for me. This is a complex poem, full of a richness that explores the universal metaphor as winter as the end of life, and snow as the apocalypse that is an exquisite and grand demise of the beauty we have known and celebrated throughout life, dissolving into the flakes of snow swirling like some distant galaxy of oblivion.

Nabeyaki Udon at Zen on 31 St. Mark's Place

2011-01-29T23:03:00.017-05:00

What many of my friends don't realize is that I am something of a connoisseur of Nabeyaki Udon. There is one other area in which my culinary connoisseurship shines and that is the Peach Melba. For years I would sample and keep notes on Peach Melbas around the world. I noted the cultural variances in the presentation and savored every object of my research of this dessert art-form. Actually I became very well-known for this research in an informal way and was consulted by many friends. I notice that this delicacy is really rare these days, and I have wondered if my dwindling interest in Peach Melbas contributed to the demise of its popularity.

About 20 years ago I was introduced to Nabeyaki Udon by a Korean friend. Although the dish has Japanese origins, I was told that the addition of a raw egg into the mix was a Korean variation which apparently became popular. In the area that I lived in at that time, I could find Nabeyaki Udon in a number of Asian restaurants, and I began to compare the texture, the ingredients, the care of preparation, the taste, the longevity (the amount of time the brew can last on the table and continue to accrue deliciousness and spicy presence), and the serving utensil, essential in maintaining a good temperature and allowing the mixture to continue to mature in taste and texture after it is served. A really good Nabeyaki Udon is consumed as though you are performing a musical work. There is an introduction, thematic ideas, and adding of nuances (dynamics) through the ground red pepper, which melds with the dish to create incredible variations of taste as you perform the act of consuming the various items. A good serving bowl extends the life of this dish so that you as the performer of this consumptive act can have an extended coda. This is an especially appropriate dish for the winter... really great in a major storm as you watch the blizzard rage outside and bask in the aroma of your Nabeyaki Udon.

But as the years progressed, I noticed fewer restaurants carrying this dish. Worse still, I would find instead Nabe Udon (often without the egg!) as I find at Choga, or a misplaced zeal for all sorts of Ramen, which although I like, I find do not deserved to be mentioned in the same sentence with a masterpiece like Nabeyaki Udon.

On some Saturdays I am given to exploring and was wandering around the East Village researching aspects as I prepare my new MoviOp, A Song for Second Avenue. I was checking all the little restaurants on St. Marks Place that are nested beneath the stairs of almost every building. This time I was reading their menus and trying to decide which one I might try. The menus were all pretty much the same. I was moving from Third Avenue toward Second Avenue on the north side of the street. Then, a little past midway, I came upon Zen Restaurant, and the first thing that caught my eye was Nabeyaki Udon.

The Nabeyaki Udon more than lived up to my expectations. It was a masterful concoction that was in the best of settings. The atmosphere inside was friendly, convivial, and outside, a light snow was punctuating the afternoon. Before me was the main attraction in a beautiful bowl that was also functional, designed to keep the broth nice and hot for quite some time. I began with a light sprinkling of the ground red pepper which is not spicy but adds several layers of taste as the broth marinates. Let it marinate and savor the moment.

Some day, I know there is a poem that will come of this rendezvous with Nabeyaki Udon. In the meantime, if food be the music of love, eat on!

Favela Cubana

2011-01-16T13:40:00.002-05:00

Out the window
Last week's snow
Sleeps a fitful winter nap
As leafless trees watch and wait.
Inside, infectious Brazilian rhythms
Punctuate Latin brass and vocals
From another world.
In spite of this,
There is a quietness in my mind
Listening for another song.
Words sound and then fall silent,
Waiting for the enchantment
Of discovery...
Life is too beautiful
To ever let a moment
Go unnoticed...
And yet, we do.
Slivers of Time
Slip into forgotten corridors
In the relentless push of the present...
Even when we pause
In the envelop of Now,
The past eludes us.
But this moment resonates
Because of all that was
And all that might have been.

Glenn Gould and My Own Retreat

2011-01-10T22:52:00.005-05:00

In a recent recording session at NYU Dolan Studio, one of the artists brought up a description of Glenn Gould "playing" the recorded sound at the mixing console with the same detail that he brought to his performance at the keyboard. This was the first time I had thought about Glenn Gould for quite some time. By chance, I had picked up a book of poems, Everything Else in the World, by Stephen Dunn. To my surprise, I came upon a poem about Gould, "The Unrecorded Conversation" in this wonderful volume of poems. Surprising, because it came on the heels of our discussion about Gould and made me realize that elements of Gould's temperament resonated with my own experience. At the beginning of the poem, as an epitaph of sorts, Gould is quoted: "Isolation is the indispensable component of human happiness." Having made it this far in life as a loner, I find it something of a revelation to discover that my loneliness is the source of my satisfaction.

Of course I do not possess the genius of Gould, but I do understand the self imposed quarantine that may be necessary for contemplation and sustained fulfillment. Stephen Dunn creates a golden glimpse of Glenn Gould who disappeared into his private world of art and thrived in that secret, sequestered habitat:

Maybe genius is its own nourishment,
I wouldn't know.
Gould didn't need much more than Bach
whom he devoured
and so beautifully gave back
we forgave him his withdrawal from us.

...Gould retreated to his studio
at thirty-one, keeping his distance
from microphones and their germs.
He needed to control sound, edit out
imperfection. His were the only hands
that touched the keys, turned the dials.
(Stephen Dunn, "The Unrecorded Conversation" from Everything Else in the World)

The studio inside my head seems connected to some interior world that illuminates my muse. Retreating to my studio has been a refuge in time of doubt and when I have needed inspiration and spiritual sustenance. Somehow things have changed from the journey begun this past year that has taken me to this new place. There was no reason to believe things would continue on the same miraculous trajectory that launched this new adventure. Sometimes retreat represents a falling back. But a retreat is also a place of solitude for working through a dilemma. Somewhere in the isolation of this personal pause, is the spark of renewal.

An Astonishing Poet: Stephen Dunn

2011-01-09T22:07:00.001-05:00

In a bookstore of forgotten books, I came across a book of poems, Everything Else in the World by Stephen Dunn, a poet that I didn't recognize but who has won a Pulitzer prize. I feel that in general we don't read enough poems. Poets have a way of noticing the world that enables us to calibrate our awareness of reality. Sometimes when I feel things spinning out of control I like to enter the world of some poet, preferably someone I have never read. I picked up Dunn's book with about five other volumes of poems.

I finally submersed myself in his poems this weekend and was astonished to discover that this poet was someone who seemed in tune with my own work. The very first poem was something I have thought and written about, but done with such elegance that I was energized and inspired. The first poem struck home:

A SMALL PART

The summer I discovered my heart
is at best an instrument of approximation
And the mind is asked to ratify
every blood rush sent its way

was the same summer I stared
at the slate gray sea well beyond dusk,
learning how exquisitely
I could feel sorry for myself.

It was personal---the receding tide,
the absent, arbitrary wind.
I had a small part in the great comedy,
and hardly knew it. No excuse,

but I was so young I believed
Ayn Rand had a handle on truth---
secular, heroically severe. Be a man
of unwavering principle, I told others,

and what happens to the poor
is entirely their fault. No wonder
that girl left me in August, a stillness
in the air. I was one of those lunatics

of a single idea, or maybe even worse---
I kissed wrong, or wasn't brave enough
to admit I was confused
Many summers later I learned to love

the shadows illumination creates.
But experience always occurs too late
to undo what's been done. The hint
of moon above an unperturbable sea,

and that young man, that poor me,
staring ahead---everything is as it was.
And of course has been changed.
I got over it. I've never been the same.

The only difference is that I never got over it.

Midnight Snowing

2010-12-27T23:07:00.023-05:00

When I walked to the studio, the blizzard of December 26th was in full fury. It was afternoon and already accumulations promised something of epic proportions. I have been working in the studio into the night. At around 9 p.m. I walked to the Space Market for some take out. No one was about. There were no footprints, no tire tracks. There was only the wind and the street lights filtered through gusts of snow. Trudging through the snow in the night storm for only a block was a struggle. Waverly Place had become a wilderness. Returning to the studio was also an adventure. The door to the building was blocked with snow even though I had been gone less than thirty minutes. I cleared the snow and opened the door.

Through the window in my studio, I saw the swirling snow, thick and turbulent, buffeting the street lamps, relentlessly screening the light in surging, shifting patterns. The intensity seemed to be escalating, ominous and fierce. Bursts of wind rattled the windows. It was as though the storm were demanding my full attention. I improvised a few answers from the keyboard as the blizzard blustered and bellowed in reply.

My earlier impression of the snow as I came to the studio in early afternoon was of the quiet stillness all around me, sounds muted by an eloquent mantle of silence. Midnight moved me to the next day, and now the night and the storm seemed to wait in ambush for me to venture outside. The snow had packed around the door. In addition, the doors had frozen. I pushed hard and broke the seal. Then I gradually cleared the snow by pushing the door like a shovel to clear a path.

Stepping outside I entered a tumultuous tempest that stung my face with icy blasts of snow. The wind was so strong that snowflakes felt like pellets. I tried to look ahead and could see only a few feet. There were no tracks in the snow. It was 12-14 inches deep. I moved forward and felt my boots sink into the snow. I couldn't even distinguish the steps to the ramp. so I clutched the railing and eased myself down to the snow-covered sidewalk. It was difficult to see where the sidewalk ended and the street began. I started toward home with some difficulty. Walking required more strength and energy than I had anticipated because of the depth of the snowdrifts and the strident wind and ice-like snow pellets stinging me in the face. Suddenly this setting that was so familiar became an alien terrain, and I felt lost and disoriented. I seriously began to wonder if I could actually make it to the apartment only a few blocks away.

Washington Place seemed to be like a canyon in a blizzard and the visibility was at best 20-25 feet. I walked in the middle of the street as I made my way toward Washington Place. Overhead, I could hear the wind ripping at the NYU Steinhardt flag. I heard thunder punctuating the sound of wind through the trees and corridors between buildings.

"So this is what it would be like if I were miles from civilization and trapped in such a storm with no shelter. There would be no way out." My apprehension grew as I made extremely slow progress toward Bleecker Street. No one was outside. There were no cars on the streets. In a city of millions I felt suddenly alone as though I were a stranger on an uninhabited planet, or maybe come upon a vanished civilization that had built these buildings and mysteriously disappeared.

The sounds of the storm became mesmerizing, and I labored with each step... the bitter cold was beginning to penetrate my coat and my face was freezing. My eyebrows became icy. Now it was becoming increasingly impossible to see. My glasses had iced over. They were useless. As I removed them, the blowing snow attacked my eyes. I stumbled and fell, but the snow cushioned my fall. I realized how foolish it was to think I could easily walk through such a powerful and hostile storm. Now my beard was frozen, and I was utterly exhausted. I managed to pull myself erect and continued on.

As I finally arrived at Bleecker Street, I thought how the elements had distorted my sense of time and space. A few blocks became an adventure in the twilight zone. My midnight encounter with the snowstorm reminded me of the awesome power of nature that challenges our artificial sanctuaries and fortresses of civilization. All of our achievements can be confronted and extinguished in the blink of an eye. The universe can be exceedingly cold and hostile.

Song of Winter Solstice

2010-12-24T17:36:00.012-05:00

Having passed through the immense darkness of December, winter solstice sings to me of such hopeful anticipation. The metaphor of the triumph of light over darkness is a melody that deepens with each phrase, harmonies of some distant realm flow in cascading counterpoint.

It begins so simply. I leave my office. The day has been a bright, pristine winter day. I have sought the presence of friends on the Internet, but everyone is away, engaged in the last minute hysteria of Christmas Eve in the midst of so much unfinished business that needs attention and the last minute shopping forays to stores rushing to close in early afternoon. Night has descended unannounced, and I walk along Washington Place toward the park. Church bells chime from the north and others echo somewhere to the south. From a distance, I hear carolers singing "Fast away the old year passes..." and the air seems filled with singing. The singing originates from the brightly lit Christmas Tree framed by the Washington Square Arch. Their singing echoes against the surrounding buildings, and the texture blends with the city sounds, the music of New York settling into the night before Christmas. Everything seems so magical in the moment. I wonder if I really exist, or if I am just some character walking in Washington Square in an O. Henry short Christmas story. Maybe I dwell in this moment as part of the Gift of the Magi. That would be just like O. Henry: to have me discover at the end that I am really just a character in one of his stories. I turn the corner and head toward Bobst Library as the music resonates and resounds around me and within my mind.

It is the song of solstice. Music becomes the source of light and I see the music in some fantastic array of media celebrating the consciousness of awareness that we are the witness of life and the universe. It is media unlike anything I have ever known... vibrations articulating reality oscillating and forever pulsating with the stuff of life. Music is light shining and Light is the radiance of all sound, of all music. We are the pulsing awareness of our defining source. We are the substance and light of the universe. We are the light that translates the darkness, the sound that interprets the silence. That is the song of solstice. We are the Song of Winter Solstice.

Darkness in December

2010-12-04T16:33:00.006-05:00

It is a source of amazement to me how much difference a year can make in how we relate to the world about us, our friends, and those we hold in close and intimate regard. As I sit at the computer and watch the darkness invade the city at 4:30 p.m., I feel like some lonely wanderer at Stonehenge waiting for winter solstice. This darkness is a source for melancholy and in some instances, despair. What a difference a year makes.

At this same point last year, winter solstice was a cause for hope and inspiration. I was bolstered by a new energy which countered my usual dismal December demeanor. That new energy came from connecting with friends who created an open space for sharing and collaborating that was new to me. Solstice was discovery... the anticipation of light... a rebirth and renaissance.

This solstice awakening took me to new places of awareness and energized my thinking and creative ideas. It was more than a revival, it was the birth of a new sensibility, an intense consciousness that filled the silence with ineffable beauty infused with radiance. These inspirations were concretized into new work. There was a sense of invincibility about this aura that embraced me so completely. Nothing was impossible. Every manifestation was effortless. I felt that everyone around me was imbued with imagination, energy, and a zest for life. My own world was enriched by the interpenetration of overlapping spheres of energy and vision. Every moment led to new expression, new destinations, new accomplishments.

But that was then. Now in these bleak December days approaching the longest night, I find myself visited by the demons of despair. Something tells me that this is a necessary plunge into "the jaws of darkness," the acherontic abyss of inevitable emptiness. It is not the silence. Silence is beautiful. This dark emptiness is sinister and hideous. This darkness is the oppressive anguish of sorrow and despair. The sorrow stems from the unspeakable regret that all of us must suffer through the limits of our humanity although we glimpse the hem of something astonishing and full of wonder just beyond our grasp. The despair is beyond all sighing. Its heaviness is paralyzing, debilitating.

But in the midst of this destructive descent, I sense outstretched arms and and life-lines flung from those who share the journey... who whisper that despite all appearances, you are not alone. Of course I realize this is the fiction of hope. Objectivity tells me to lie down and die. It isn't that those who included me last year have gone on to other things and left me alone. It is that I have somehow blindly abandoned the interior paths of discovery that others helped illuminate.

But there is this moment of intense night which seemingly has extinguished the light.... there is this infinite moment of darkness when I realize that the darkness is only a shadow. Light envelops the darkness, defines itself through the eloquence of its presence. In the precise moment of winter solstice, I listen to the night giving birth to some new possibility. The dawn that awaits is unique and unlike any other. That is the lesson of the cycles of infinity. All repetition is fiction. Only new moments exist, arcing inexorably through conscious awareness. We are not the repetition of the past. We are not the repetitions of ourselves.

A Meeting At Noon

2010-09-04T15:55:00.015-04:00

"Thanks for meeting me like this." His words came haltingly as though he was searching for an opening to reveal some secret.

"You know I would always come. I rearranged things the moment I received your message."

"I had hoped you would meet me, but I half expected that you would reply you already had an appointment."

He took a sip of his café con leche. He had always loved this restaurant, which seemed to combine the worlds he loved, the Mediterranean, the Brazilian, the Cuban. On the wall was a huge picture of a 4 door version of the Chevy coupe he had driven in college. Same model and exact color. Somehow the coffee always reminded him of travels in Italy and Portugal. Those were idyllic times for him when his closest friends were still alive, and the future loomed fresh and exhilarating. Now time had taken its toll, and the last few years had led him toward the Hemingway solution which he calculated would be a year from now, on this last day of the cycle.

He had just learned about this nine-year life cycle from his dear friend who had agreed to meet with him on this final day.

"You are in the eighth year of a nine-year cycle," she explained. This declaration suddenly made perfect sense to him, and why he had chosen September 4, 2011 as his final day. But in the past year, he had dismissed this calculation after meeting new friends who broke through the barriers that had blocked his creative work. He entered a personal renaissance based on this deepening awareness.

He looked out at the trees of September. Today they were splendid in their radiant green presence. The air was fresh. It was the September of his dreams, of his latest venture, of his idyllic narrative that somehow was the summation of all that he held precious.

He looked across at his friend, a friend that had seen him through more than a decade of experience and hardships. Such friendships distill the present and are to be savored like a rare and fragrant liqueur. This insight had escaped him for months in a period of doubt and self-denial.

"Today seemed like it would be so bleak that at the last moment I thought of you as someone who might come to my rescue... someone to share the day that I usually experience alone with such dread." The words came slowly. He was searching for a pathway, a direction that might divert his despair. "I am really grateful that you would come."

"We are similar," she said. "We share much in common." She smiled. "But I am hurt that you would not consider your younger friends in your equation. That isn't fair. I want you around for at least the next cycle and beyond."

"On one level, I know you are right," he admitted, "but most of my closest confidants that were my contemporaries have vanished from my life. On that level, I feel quite alone and disconnected."

Yet, even as he spoke, he knew there were contradictions. He had simply shifted so much of his faith into new projects that when the prospect of their unraveling became apparent he was thrown into despair. He had not prepared himself that he might be betrayed by his own blindness.

She spoke of her own struggles. She had lost so much and had been challenged for her own survival, but she had persevered, and from her anguish, new experiences had led her to refreshed places that now shaped a better juncture. Although she knew her own journey could not serve as a prescription for his, she hoped that somehow he would see through the illusions that held him captive.

The wind swept gently through the trees overhead. The sunlight through the branches shimmered like an incandescent projection of patterns through the leaves, leaving shadows on the sidewalk that looked like swirling distant galaxies. This was September. He was entering his favorite time of the year, but now he faced it with a fear that seemed to grow in the silence and accruing doubt.

It was September. The days were lingering in the fullness of summer, bountiful and beautiful in their splendor. This was a time to harvest all that had been sewn in spring and summer. This was a time when the promise of all he had worked for was pregnant with possibilities... it was a time to open the dream for others to experience and to invite their collaborations. Yet, even as he understood this, fear gripped him that he might not be equal to the challenge.

"Remember these days..." he thought, half singing the words to himself, "They're passing so fast. Just look for the ways to make these days last. Remember these days."

He wanted to capture this moment with his friend sitting across from him on this final day of his year. He wanted to hold it forever as part of the recurring dream that haunted him when a stranger meeting him for the first time tried to explain relationships in the Land of Forever, where a rendezvous at noon was more than marriage.

Endings and Forever

2010-08-31T20:21:00.008-04:00

When you live in Forever, endings are different.

I have always dwelled in the Land of Forever, and I am not sure how I got here. I realize this is a place where space and time exist as a single dimension and the sole sensory apparatus is awareness. Many times I have written about this place without realizing it.

Many times I have been tempted to write a book about the Land of Forever, but I have seen others attempt it, and I know how difficult a task this can be. Judy Blume did it. Not my cup of tea. Jude Deveraux not only wrote a book, but a whole Forever series, perhaps replicating the subject as never ending. Many writers have taken it on. Mostly women. Several men. My favorite is Pete Hamill who takes us through history with a singular figure who lives forever. But my version is about the Land of Forever, which exists as a state of consciousness. Most of the time I am present without even realizing that I am occupying a different reality than the person next to me or the friends around me. Occasionally I will come upon some who also dwell in Forever, but are not aware they are in a special place.

Endings are different in Forever because they are simply landmarks along the way. Forever stretches out endlessly in all directions. Not only can you go back and leap ahead, you can take side trips and diversions that open up new possibilities of discovery.

So as I post on this last day of August, I am deeply aware of the Endings that seem to be crashing down on me, collapsing around me like shards of icebergs that have wandered into the warm oceans and disintegrate. Today is a summing up. A goodbye. A farewell to all that. Tomorrow I may take up paths that seem to be from the past, but they will be new. They will be the beginnings of something else and not a pattern from the past. Even friends will not be their old selves, but new beings, new sensibilities that appear to be vested in old trappings, but are in fact newly generated as though they had shed every cell and replaced their molecules with a new identity.

I realize that although this year has ended, it is fully a new beginning. My actual new beginning starts September 5, my cycle of renewal. I am on the verge of new discoveries and new journeys. I reflect over the past year that took me through terrain I have not seen before, and now I know that the new friends and colleagues enriched my life way beyond my deepest and wildest dreams. And I wanted this to go on forever... forever... and forever...

But forever is cyclical. Renewal is an essential element. Dying is also essential. Ideas wither even though nourished, and friends exit as freely as they entered. They are on to their fresh starts and new beginnings as they wave goodbye. I try to grab their hands, to detain them, but they vanish so quickly.

In this cusp of endings and beginnings I discover an unexpected ending. The surprise rips through me like a sharp gust of wind opening a wound of emptiness... an unanticipated absence now lost. This was something that I hoped would never end, a part of the consciousness of Forever. But now I realize how fragile such connections are...more gossamer than steel... more in flux than grounded... transient and in the moment – until the moment vanishes.

But I wish my friends well. I know in the Land of Forever, they always populate my life, no matter what appearances may declare. Maybe I'll catch them next time round.

So goodbye to all that was so vital and compelling through this past year. Whatever continues does so as the natural projection of ongoingness. Whatever ends, makes way for emergent realities. I am lucky to dwell in this Land of Forever. It does make relationships interesting, and I realize that I search for wholeness that is the promise of Forever. Wholeness is an Infinite state of existence very difficult to sustain as a mortal in a transient world. I was in a time of renaissance, and such periods are often bursts of new ideas that sometimes are extinguished prematurely. In such surges, we harbor the illusion of wholeness and invincibility. For a moment, we touch immortality.

I am always baffled when something beautiful comes to an end. I believe that such beauty should continue forever. And it does. This eloquent contradiction is an equation that is more powerful than E=MC². This is a profound sad/happy moment in my meandering journey. I shut my eyes and listen to everything around me in the Land of Forever, and I know you are waiting there as you always have been. Waiting for me to open my eyes and listen to the new music.

August and the Death of Summer

2010-08-29T15:18:00.007-04:00

My last post was about the end of August and destitute destinies.

It was actually an attempt for the finale of A Song for Second Avenue, which I rejected. Even so, there is something of Suna and something of my muse embedded in this failed lyric. I have struggled through this linguistic meandering so much and so often, it is easy to get lost in parallel paths along the way, stumbling into some blackhole of forgetfulness where I can't remember why I am there.

None of this matters very much anyway, except to say that today there was a breakthrough. I did finish the tragic ending and now have started upon the alternate paths. It is just a draft, I know. It is just a draft---it will change, I know. But it is there. The words mask the ideas, and the foundations of awareness seek out words adequate to the vision. That is always the task... a language adequate to the moment. Thought structures transcend language, but are intimately associated with the languaging of emerging reality.

I think of my friends now struggling to know English more thoroughly, and I say to them, I am with you on that struggle. You are forging new paths through consciousness. Even though you think you follow the trails of others who have gone before, you are unique, alone with your reality. Say something to me. Anything. ...and I will learn.

Here as I struggle to chart my own paths, I walk by a table of books for sale on West Fourth Street... and there is The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison: Wilderness. I discover he is a fellow traveller. He also lost his way, but he had the perception of mind to say "Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything, it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through any one that suits you." I find Morrison opens many doors for me, and I fall through them like Alice in Wonderland. Words and metaphors spill across my mind in a myriad of kaleidoscopic images.

Jim Morrison was waiting for me to pick up loose ends. Here I am... Here he is, saying the same thing I was muttering in my last post in his own eloquent elegy:

The Endless quest a vigil
of watchtowers and fortresses
against the sea and time.
Have they won? Perhaps.
They still stand and in
their silent room still wander
the souls of the dead.
who keep their watch on the living.
Soon enough we shall join them.
Soon enough we shall walk
the walls of time. We shall
miss nothing
except each other.

Destinies in the End of August

2010-08-28T21:54:00.003-04:00

Destinies in the end of August…
Our lives entwined, embracing our mutual fate,
Inevitable disasters skim the horizon
With broken dreams and lost lives
We pay our own price for dreams,
In wordless tribute to a future
Diverted from destiny
By our blind journeys.
We cling to shadows
To light, to disguised destruction
That rambles through our lives
In shattering thunderclaps
Across our vacant horizons.
We have ourselves to blame
For we have not touched,
Anything more than an illusion…
Only shadows and some distant hope
The failed imagination that seeks
To be some emerging miracle
But finds no ground beneath our feet.
We walk on shimmering clouds
Enveloped by the beauty of a world
Withheld from us
We cling to love,
To touch each other…
But as we extend our grasp,
As we reach out to embrace,
Our world collapses...
And in the swirling debris
Of our anguish and despair,
We laugh and recognize
That at least we lived,
At least we were…
It was never more than this:
To relish life
Like the mayfly…
To celebrate,
And then to disappear
Without consequence
Or regret.

Out of Sync

2010-08-17T17:37:00.010-04:00

Those of you that attempt to follow this Blog know that some times I am very prolific and other times the words lie fallow in limbo as I devote my time to video, FaceBook, and other projects. Maybe the rest of August will be productive. Much of it depends on the state of my MoviOp, A Song for Second Avenue, as I currently struggle with the text of the final scenes.

I know that I am out of sync with the world around me, with my friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, and more importantly with those several close allies who brought new definition and inspiration to my world. But there is nothing I can do about it, because this anomaly is a microcosm of the forces of the universe which control Time. It is all about Time.

In the mornings when I wake up (if luckily I have found a way to go to sleep), I find myself in a nether land of fantasy where I am imagining I have a performance later that night or perhaps tomorrow, and I have so much to do to prepare for the performance. It usually takes me several hours to descend from the stratosphere of that fantasy to the real world and the routines needed to survive the current day. Soon I realize that the performance I think I have is the accumulation of the energies of all performances past and future, and I am caught in a web of simultaneity where time is compressed.

Yesterday, after improvising at the keyboard for several hours, I walked down University Place. It was a wonderful August afternoon with rain clouds gathering in tall stacks above me. The city had slowed to a pace of expectation of a gathering storm. The rumble of thunder shuddered across the sky as though someone was rearranging gigantic furniture overhead. I was on the street, but also strangely absent. The silence, punctuated with rumbling, grumbling sounds of thunder had a mesmerizing effect, as though I was someplace else and merely looking at the scene through a looking glass.

The air smelled of summer rain, a fresh, humid smell that reminded me of my first days in New York. However, in those days I was more in sync with the city and my friends. I was always in the moment. But now I was out of the moment, an observer...until I started to feel the warm drops of rain. They were big, soft, splashy drops. coming slowly, almost randomly, urging me to scramble out of the path of the storm before it hit full force. But I was in the same frame of mind as when I wake up in the morning in a fantasy of performances awaiting me, moving at a snail's pace while my mind searches for the clarity of reality.

Reality hit me with the fury of a drenching downpour. I seemed trapped within this summer storm almost by design and desire. It was a way to connect with the world for a moment, even though I was disconnected from the immediacy of my friends. I could taste the rain, feel it running down my face... strangely connected and disconnected at the same time.

For some reason, my father's image came to me and I heard him describing his experience years ago of being out of sync with his world. He described it as a condition of growing older. "We are Time Travellers," he said to me. "As you get older, more and more of your friends who are travelling with you, slip away into their own rendezvous with Time, and your circle of close friends gets smaller. Soon you are surrounded by Time Travellers who seem parallel to you but are in a different dimension. Their needs and interests are with their fellow travellers. Although they can see you, they can't relate to you. You are an interesting constellation, an older Time Traveller without much in common with them...someone about to slip away to a private and perhaps terrifying destiny... like a comet burning itself out crossing the night sky. They will tolerate your presence, but they want nothing to do with you. You exist as a reminder that they too are on that same collision course with destiny. You are alone."

I can understand that I am on a different path, a different time, a different velocity. I can understand that this puts me out of sync with everyone that I cherish and love. I can understand why they can hardly tolerate me and need to be with their own kind. I can understand why I am alone. But I also understand it is an inevitable consequence of Time Travelling and the Big Bang.

IMPACT 2010: Rhythm Of Chaos Explores New Terrain

2010-08-11T17:11:00.049-04:00

Collaborateurs of IMPACT 2010 produced a theatre of new genre which might be referred to as multimedia. Unfortunately the commercial world of computing has distorted that term, which has come to mean a computer system with sound and video. Originally, the term referred to simultaneous and competing media in a theatrical or gallery setting in which the elements of media competed for attention, and the viewer/listener assembled these into a private assemblage that varied from viewer to viewer. This was in contrast to Intermedia, in which the media were carefully orchestrated by the creators for a predetermined effect and mixed media, which was inherited from visual art culture and rested somewhere between the two other genre, including competing and coordinated media.

IMPACT Director John Gilbert has been experimenting with these genre since the 1960s, including his "multimedia" opera Rotation, which tested these ideas in various combinations. But now concepts of collaboration, new digital technology, networking, social platforms, and intermedia, create greater textural and conceptual possibilities. To enable these collaborateurs to realize their conceptions, IMPACT 2010 assembled an excellent staff to help the IMPACTORS shape their dreams into reality. Incidentally, collaborateurs is a word coined by JoEllen Dolan. It is a very appropriate term since it describes people working together who are very focused and extraordinary artists. More than just collaborators, collaborateurs.

What has changed dramatically in recent years, is not only the technology, but the 21st Century notion of collaboration, which is still undergoing transformation and means much more than accepting compromise among competing ideas of collaborateurs. IMPACT 2010 puts everyone at a new entry point in using technology to appropriate and develop artistic expression through collaborative media.

While the genre may still be difficult to define, it was easy to experience on Thursday, August 5th at Loewe Theatre in New York City in a collaborative media production, Rhythm of Chaos. Participants of IMPACT 2010 created new media work in less than two weeks, and what emerged was perhaps a new medium in which in the disparate elements of media have melded into a new format. This is consistent with McLuhan's observation of the emergence of a new medium which absorbs the practices and content of previous media before synthesizing a new format with its own idiosyncratic features.

While the work was performed live, it was also streamed live on the Internet. What is provided here are thumbnail descriptions and critiques of the collaborative work which integrated scenes created by interdisciplinary teams into a sequence that generated contextual meaning as it unfolded moment to moment. The reviews listed below show the personnel as a historical record of the collaborative teams.

RELAY-TION-I'M was a masterful blending of Korean traditional culture, journey, connection, transformation, and individuality in the context of the whole. This work progressed seamlessly through three sections, with a strong stamp of professional stage awareness.

A ram Kim: Choreography

Min-Kyung Shin: Costumes, designs

Abigail Loutoo: Music & audio composition

Soon Taek Hong: Music & audio composition
Garam Kim: Video

Musicians: Garam Kim: Live jangu Soon Taek Hong: Live taegum

Live Dancers: A ram Kim, Min-Kyung Shin, Garam Kim, Soon Taek Hong, Abigail Louto

WALKER

This piece explored the nature of empathy through different media and technologies. Showing only the back of the walker created a distance between the audience and the subject. Placing the audience at the point of view of the subject was an attempt create empathy. The world trade center footage added a new level of political awareness. The music created a window into the mind of the subject, revealing feelings of melancholy, despair and finally hope as she walks by the new construction site of the World Trade Center Museum. Outside the theater, was a message board for exploring empathy as a concept with the audience and members of the community.

Bo-Yeon Kim: Co-director, lead actor

Soo-yeon Choo : Co-director, sound recording, dancer

Chang In Baek: Filming and cinematography, editing and mixing video

Laura Dickens: Composer, mixer

Ji Hoon Oh: Photography, ending credits

BOLLYWOOD CAMEO
A surprise appearance by Lianne Sheplar planted in the audience continued the practice of extending the theatrical space into the audience and the aisles. Performing with panache and flair, Ms. Sheplar connected with audience in a playful reference to Bollywood music and dance epics.

ETERNAL RECURRENCE AND THE TONES OF CHAOS

The scene traced the development of a person throughout different stages of life where color and light symbolize the person's relationships. An underlying scheme controlled movement and color with a shift from simplicity to complexity, staring with slow movement and flowing towards a more chaotic movement and dance. The work explored the repetitive and cyclical nature of human life and society, the life cycle as a microcosm of human evolution, and chaos, chance, and randomness.

Frank Spigner: Music, audio, props

Young Jae Chon: Video, props

Eun Byowl Song: Stage performance, props

Hyo Jung Suh: Stage performance, props

Bo Eun Kim: Stage performance, props

Guest Performers:

Bo Yeon Kim, Heeyoung Lee, Yong Woong Won, Jee Yun Hong, So Hee Jeon

CHA.OR.MONY

Set between the bustling streets of NYC and a dream world where the rules of daily life our turned upside down, the main character goes from dreaming about her future in her present day life to an upside down dream world where she struggles to make sense of the unusual characters that she meets. The work moves from confusion and chaos into harmony between the characters when the main character resolves herself to being part of this strange new world and all of the characters celebrate together.

The group used several elements to show the struggle between chaos and order. The metaphor of a grocery bag and fruit shows the struggle between the dreams of the future (the fruit) and the desire to contain them or "order" them (the grocery bag). The use of projections, electronic and recorded music, as well as live video effects, enhances the viewers experience and understanding of this original work.

Grace Choi: Lead actress, vocal recording, music design

Seunghwan Hwang: Lead actor, film director, film editor

Yoonseon Choi: Choreographer, music editor, dancer 1

Jaehyun Kang: Costume design, set design, dancer 2

Lianne Sheplar: Director/ C flute, alto flute, music design, dancer 3

CHOICE

This scene explored "what if we can choose our relationships…?” Three projections reveal the past, the present, and the future. These become the entanglements that trap us. This scene produced some of the most stunning images, revealing a character struggling with inner chaos in a search for order.

Charlotte Ahlstrom : Shooting video, making sound, editing video, dancer
Hyo Eun Jang : Shooting video, making sound, editing video, dancer
Hyun Joo Kim : Shooting video, editing video, making materials, dancer
Hyun Ji Lim : Shooting video, editing video, making materials, dance
Jae Hwang Lee : Shooting video, making sound, editing video, main character

GOD AND GIRL

The scene began with everyday life as a repetition from God’s perspective, then added relationships among people to change the direction of the narrative. It also shifted to the perspective of a girl. The effects move realistic background scenes to abstract shapes that react in real time to the sounds generated on the stage, the drum, the basketball, the sounds of a newspaper, painting, and feet stomps. We see a girl painting, and suddenly a girl, who is video taping in the park, focuses the camera at the painting and the audience sees the work as it is completed.
Yong Woong Won: Basketball player
Li Shiyao: Tourist
Hee Young Lee: Drummer, God’s voice
Jung in Hur: Painter
Hanaro Kim: Girl , girl’s voice

PROGRESSION INTO THE FUTURE

The artists sought take the audience on a journey from present to future. Along the way, the performers show some of the obstacles that we still face that pose a threat to ourprogression. The performance illustrates that overcoming such challenges will unlock an era of endless possibilities.

Connor Hubeny: music

Jingya Liu: Live music, choreography

Eun Young Jeo: Costumes, choreography

Hye Won Han: Visuals

Sohee Jeon: Visuals

COLORS OF CHAOS
This explores a painter (chaos) from the past whose lover is a singer (order). To brainstorm his future with her, he draws a colorful picture of the singer’s wedding dress which is sewn by a seamstress on stage. Thus commences the chaos and chase…which unfolds as a delightful parable that might be from a Rossini opera or a Saturday Night Live skit.

Heakyung Woo: Singer, bride, audio editor

Yee Seul Ok: Dancer

Jiwon Park: Dancer

Robert Chen: Painter, video editor, groom

Sunghyun Kim: Fashion designer, minister

These works are kernels of ideas that have been nurtured through interaction, discussion, and use of technology to articulate and illustrate concepts.The composer Tan Dun observed this work and experiments going on at NYU in integrating and extending media and technology as narrative. He described the work as being an extension of opera, the fundamental narrative form that was first to integrate media. Film is simply an extension of opera, and now this new medium absorbs those practices and creates new ones.

Their focus is on collaborative technology, the tenet that technology extends the reach of humanity. The new technologies of the Internet, the social networks, and the professional alliances have increased the range and speed of communication. Yet the IMPACT workshop demonstrates that much more is needed to achieve understanding. Communication is just the beginning of developing mutual understanding and appreciation. IMPACTORS have discovered that technology can extend the range of human and artistic expression, but deep understanding across cultures and languages continues to challenge us.

IMPACT 2010 Rhythm of Chaos Collaborative Achievement

2010-08-10T13:08:00.006-04:00

Glancing through the program of IMPACT 2010's Rhythm of Chaos uncovers many layers and threads of connections among participants of the NYU Steinhardt International Workshop, July 19-August 6. The performance on August 5th in Loewe Theatre was a resounding success. In less than three weeks the participants developed a consensus for a theme and collaborated in teams to produce a multimedia work that can be best described as a new genre for theatre.

In addition to the stellar planning and performances of the IMPACTORS (IMPACT is an acronym for Interactive Multimedia Performing Arts Collaborative Technology), credit must be given to an outstanding professional of gifted technician artists and counsellors who helped steer this complex constellation to its successful launching.

John Gilbert, Producer, Director of IMPACT
Youngmi Ha, Director of Music & Registrar
Chianan Yen, Director of Operations & Graphics/Imaging
Deborah Damast, Director of Dance (on Leave of Absence)
Tom Beyer, Technical Director
Julie Song, Administrative Director
Kevin Pease, Theatre Director
Heather Heiner, Dance & Movement Director
Keith Sklar, Visual Arts Director
Cris Dopher, Lighting Designer
Sooyeon Hong, Stage Manager
Sunmin Kim, Production Management, Counsellor
JoEllen Dolan, Assistant Technical Director
Kenji Calderón-Miyamoto, A.V. Technician
Kevin DeYoe, A.V. Technician
Jessica Goldberg, Camera 2, Counsellor
Jee Yun Hong, Camera 3, Counsellor
Jessica Lin Yeung, Camera 1

The performance capped three weeks of intensive immersion in technology, arts specializations, combined arts, and collaborative process.

IMPACT 2010 Rhythm Of Chaos

2010-07-31T16:58:00.011-04:00

Chaos may not exist except as a concept. Thus the Rhythm of Chaos may suggest that all seemingly chaotic essences may really just be complex and irregular systems and may possibly define the structure of the universe. Maybe we are just encountering a delectable fractal concoction with high levels of coherence. So it is no surprise that IMPACTORS have come up with The Rhythm of Chaos as the title of their experiments in media. Rather than a contradiction, it represents a synthesis of polarities rich with meaning.

IMPACTORS from NYU IMPACT 2010 (Interactive Multimedia Performing Arts Collaborative Technology) have been exploring Chaos and Order, among other things, in creating new work for a production that is the culmination of their investigations and collaborations. Their work has been intense. There are 42 IMPACTORS and 17 staff intent upon using technology in the service of human expression in a final performance in Loewe Theatre on August 5 at 7:30 p.m.

They have gone on location shooting to South Street Seaport and the World Trade Area including the World Financial Center with its famous Wintergarden, Tear Drop Park and taken the Staten Island Ferry to video materials for their multimedia works.

This year IMPACTORS (a term invented by IMPACT's Administrative Coordinator Julie Song) have been organized into groups named for the solar system, the planets and other constellations. These teams emphasize interactivity and collaboration as they acquire new skills and understandings that relate technology to text, the performing arts, and the visual arts culture.

In addition, NYU IMPACT 2010 has become vividly present on FaceBook, transforming a social Internet platform into a professional forum where the business of the group is conducted, and works in progress are displayed and shared.

KUPALA 2010 (Summer Solstice)

2010-06-25T10:32:00.036-04:00

Kupala is a Ukrainian celebration of summer solstice, which also couples with a midsummer's night dream, and has its origins in the original pagan festival (Kupalo was the god of Love and Harvest). Christianity appropriated it and combined it with the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. Somehow Summer Solstice is also appropriated as a significant part of the celebration as the longest day... the ultimate triumph of light over darkness awaiting the return of increasingly dark days as the earth swings into the next arc of the orbit when night regains its ascendancy.

At the Ukrainian Sports Center on Second Avenue in the East Village, Virlana Tkacz, Founding Director of the Yara Arts Group, created an evening of Kupala 2010, complete with entertainment, rituals, love potions, and a surprise guest. There were also two installation pieces: Infinity by Marybeth Ward, and Kupala, North Collins, NY by Andrea Wenglowskyj. It was an evening full of fun, and for me, a revelation of Ukrainian lore, which I have been investigating in preparation of creating new work.

All the women fashioned garlands that they wore for the celebration, which originally once meant the availability of the young girls for marriage. Everyone wrote a fortune that was fastened to a tree, and all were given candles.

The program began with a film Dora Was Dysfunctional by Andrea Odeznyska which was a beautiful, achingly funny account of the romantic life of a Ukrainian woman in L.A.
Cruel Love Songs were featured by Odarka Polanskyj-Stockert singing as she accompanied herself on an electric harp, supported by Redentor Jimenez on guitar. The delivery was soft and undulating, alluring and charming. "On the Night of St. John's Eve" was an evocative poem by Olena Jennings, enthusiastically received by the revelers of midsummer's night.

One of the highlights of the evening were the poems read by Bob Holman with the brilliant Bandura performer Julian Kytasty. Featured was a new poem about the Solstice, "Midsummer Night~My Heart is a Real Thing", performed by Bob Holman in association with Julian's intimate and mesmeric music. There was a casual presence in the execution that was attractive and sensitive to the moment.

A surprise celebrity was violinist Valeriy Zhmud who performed with the "technical support" of his iPod "ensemble," selections that were even more electrifying than his electrified fiddle. His work was dazzling and fearless, the music exploding from the strings with bravura and passion.

The Songs and Rituals were performed by a group, Girls, Girls, Girls, made up of Laryssa Czebiniak, Lycyna Kuncio, Olena Martynyuk, and Meredith Wright. Their singing created a sense of festivity during the candle lighting/floating ceremony and the distribution of Olesia Lew's love potion.

Closing out the program was The Debutant Hour, a girl's trio that was inventive, humorous, and lively. At the end they sang Happy Birthday to to Virlana, who is the spirit that drives and defines these wonderful events. As the audience dispersed, we each picked our fortune off of the tree. Mine was that "something interesting would happen to you under a bridge." I'm still waiting, but it clearly was more evocative than most fortune cookie messages.

As I reflect on the spirit of Kupala and my experience of cultural nuances that influence my work, I understand that the Ukrainian culture permeates the East Village, and the cultural energies of other groups intersect with the Ukrainian in forging an emerging identity that continually shifts and adjusts to the needs and vagrancies of time, place, and peoples. The Ukraine serves as the gateway to Russia from the West and the entrance to Europe from the East, assimilating the great traditions of the world into its own unique vision and art. Wandering around the Ukrainian Museum in the East Village, I began to see the Ukraine as a metaphor for humanity's struggle for freedom. I am told that the word Kozak (Cossack) came from an Arabic word that meant "free man".

The Ukrainian culture in the context of the East Village assimilates and distributes its energies into emerging identities that embrace the great traditions and cultures of the world. That may be the source of potency that makes the East Village so vibrant. It is East and West and South and North, pinpointed with an intensity that makes everyone a vital constituent in an an emerging cultural personality.

Sudden Fiction: The Ferry & Walt Whitman

2010-06-15T20:53:00.008-04:00

He stood at the rear of the Staten Island Ferry, looking through the rain at the buildings of Manhattan. Hadn't Walt Whitman ridden the Ferry to Staten Island a hundred years earlier? What had Whitman seen? Somehow his words seemed to permeate the air around him --- each drop of rain measured itself to the irregular rhythms of his verse:

What is then between us?
What is the count of scores or hundreds of years between us?
What ever it is, it avails not --- distance avails not, and place avails not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan Island and bathed in the waters around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me...
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

At last, he thought, I have found you. You ride these waters with me, as you always have. I was not silent before --- therefore I couldn't hear your songs in the air. When I looked at Manhattan, I strained to see myself, so I looked right through you. But you are here, Walt Whitman, your laughter and your tears comfort me. I feel you in the rain --- I hear you in the night.

The ferry swung around Governor's Island. The Statue of Liberty could be seen through the rain, and the rain had provided him privacy on the deck. He roamed from side to side as if he was afraid he would miss something important that he should see. But there was little to see. The night and the rain were like huge curtains draped around him. The Statue of Liberty could be discerned as through a haze and looked more painted than real. He wondered how it could seem so beautiful from the front. When he had seen it from the New Jersey Turnpike, it looked as if you could wade out to it from the New Jersey Shore. He remembered also that you looked at it over the roofs of dirty old buildings and several junk yards. He thought this must demonstrate how all things beautiful have their ugly side, but he felt this reasoning was more a word game than the truth. Soon the Ferry was past the Statue and was suddenly suspended in time it seemed --- gliding on air --- for some unexplained reason the engines had been turned off and the ferry slid silently and smoothly through the darkness. To the side of the Ferry a barge floated with smoking garbage loaded on its surface. The rain had evidently extinguished the flames.

The sound of a deep horn made him cast his glance on the other side of the Ferry. A large tanker moved by--- like a huge ghost ship --- ablaze with lights, the loading booms looked like ancient abandoned masts. The engines of the Ferry began to throb again abruptly, and the vibrations shook the frame of the ferry with a constant caress---as a mother gently shakes the cradle to coax her infant to sleep. He realized the engines must have been cut to permit the tanker to pass by the Ferry.

As the Ferry cut an arc in the water in preparation to land at Staten Island, he looked into the sky. He couldn't be sure whether there were tears in his eyes or whether it was just the rain, but he felt an ineffable sadness, for he knew he would miss this. He looked at everything for the last time, and he was aware that there was too much to be seen at a single glance. He was sorry he had failed to look at everything with eyes that understood---until now. This final moment only impressed upon him how much he had missed, and how much more he would miss after he was gone.

He stepped off the Ferry wondering if Walt Whitman had stopped, waiting for him somewhere up ahead.

The Bill of Rock

2010-06-12T14:08:00.014-04:00

Having known Bill Rayner for many years, I had never heard him perform in his true setting of a rock band conceived in New Paltz in the 80s and still going strong. I had known him as a doctoral student who created inventive concoctions on the Fairlight, and composed contemporary music of all styles and genre. I knew of his background in Rock, but I didn't know it. At that time for me, he was the Bill of Composition and Contemporary Music. I knew he played a mean guitar, but I never really heard him play.

Recently he performed a gig at Wicked Willy's, and I had the good fortune to be there for a non-stop two-hour feast of music from the heart and soul of Last Generation with Billy Rayner (guitar, vocals), Dave Ostram (bass), and Mark Flynn (drums).

Billy has an immediacy and energy that infuses the space with electricity. His music is outstanding, much more insightful than the crowd at Wicked Willy's expects, but there were a number who realized that Last Generation is something special. Of course there are the others who don't care, as long as the music is loud and constant. His vocals are often lyrical and smooth or punching and driving. He slips in and out of voices in chimerical fashion, and his guitar provides raucous timbres or smooth and mellow vibes, more kinds of vibratos and right hand technique than one might hear in other bands, and it all is connected with the past while carving out a niche in the here and now.

His bassist, Dave Ostrom, is, as Rayner referred to him, awesome. He bass lines are pure liquid, original, with such shape and range that I was constantly amazed at his inventiveness. He creates a driving energy that Billy and the drummer, Mark Flynn, assimilate and fuse with their own work so that the ensemble is tight and yet incredibly open and versatile. Every moment is incandescent, vibrant, and even amidst the clamor of a come-and-go style bar like Willy's, thoughtful and perceptive. Standing in the middle of the band, his work took on a fusional role, constantly responding and commenting, and adding to and transforming the mix.

Mark Flynn is another musician that I knew of but had never heard his professional work. His contribution was integral, obviously attuned to the mood and ambiance of each work. He was often a catalyst to get things started, or to establish the song. His performance captured and propelled every moment. He also did backup vocals. Some believe that the driving force of a rock band is the drummer, and Flynn's perceptive empathic sense of what is going on and his anticipation of texture and expression might reinforce that perception. His work was very musical, at times, even lyrical.

Last Generation has gone through many iterations and generations. Billy has evolved over time and his work has no doubt deepened. His inspiration comes from his life and his connection with the past, his friends and family. It is work that I wished I had known earlier. It is of the past and present, and searching for a vision for the future. If you check out Last Generation, you will get a taste of the group, but only the spontaneity of the live moment can really give you a sense of the dynamism and charisma of the man that I have come to know now as the Bill of Rock.

Imagine a Saturday Musicale on the Lower East Side: The Artistry of Soyoung Min

2010-05-22T20:14:00.012-04:00

Imagine a bright mid spring Saturday in New York on the Lower East Side. The sun is bright, but inviting, friendly and the air is fresh. Along East Broadway people are enjoying the day, walking, smiling, and waving to each other. Imagine coming upon a building reminiscent of Greek revival and entering into a friendly lobby, sitting with others who are waiting to go up to a private apartment where a concert of keyboard music awaits you in the splendor of a quiet afternoon with shafts of sunlight peaking through the shaded windows. Imagine a gracious host who is the husband of the artist, whose name is Jim, comes to the lobby to greet you and serve as your escort.

You are lifted up to this apartment for the afternoon musicale with large elevators on each side of the lobby, and you enter a room that has been prepared for this event, a spacious high ceiling living room with seats aligned along the north wall and to the side along the west wall that looks out over East Broadway. In the alcove created, lay the instruments that will soon speak to the occasion, a seven-and-a-half-foot harpsichord, green with gold trim, and a seven-foot concert Steinway grand with the lid fully extended. Both seemed poised for musicing.

You remove your shoes, and find your place to listen. As you settle into your seat, imagine that the artist Soyoung Min emerges from the bedroom, which almost seems as though it was planned to function as the offstage area. She is greeted with applause as she walks from the hallway into the livingroom and takes her place at the harpsichord.

She pauses. Then she touches the dual keyboard, and the strains of Frecobaldi's Toccata Settima seem to float from the instrument, tentative at first, almost as though the piece were being created on the spot in an improvised manner. The sound has an intimate though pervasive quality, extremely focused and resonant. Soyoung Min hovers on the brink of discovery and recognition, threading the exquisite linear textures with care and affection. One could imagine an inner vocalizing threading the musical line of the plucked notes as a metaphysical legato transcending the limitations of the instrument. This continues in the eloquent Tombeau fair a Paris sur la mort de Monsieur Blancheroche by Johann Jakob Froberger written in memory of his friend who died in his arms. This sensitive, polyphonic lament infuses a profound sensibility in Min's performance, spontaneous and immediate. Min concludes the harpsichord set with Rameau's Gavotte avec 6 Doubles, a fanciful romp over the keyboards that is no longer contrapuntal in the strict sense of the style, but musical lines flowing with harmonic function in imaginative permutations. There is an air of seriousness in Min's demeanor, but underneath there is a spirit of play, mischievous and spirited.

Min departs briefly while the space is transformed from an intimate drawing room to a concert stage. Even so, during this transformation, in which the lid of the harpsichord is lowered, the room resonates with the residual material of three remarkable harpsichord works brought to life for a moment on this Saturday afternoon.

Now the concert grand takes center stage. Soyoung Min is greeted with warm applause as she enters and takes her place at the piano. She begins with Chopin Impromptus, Op. 29 in A-flat, Op. 36 in F-sharp, and Op.51 in G-flat, all major keys. The works take us through an arc of development for Chopin, all have an air of improvised impetuosity, lyrical fantasies with shifting moods and endless melodic imagination that lingers in the air, overlapping with a wondrous presence. Min plays all three in a seamless connection revealing a magical affinity of the works.

The Impromptus serve as the gateway to Chopin's epic Sonata No. 2 in B-Flat Minor, Op.35, an almost iconic work that forms the centerpiece of this afternoon's performance. Soyoung has a commanding presence in this work, a conviction that articulates each texture and shift in mood with resolute purpose and abandon, entering regions of repose and risking everything in a passionate plunge into the maelstrom of textures and emotions. This is a work that requires extraordinary strength and control while rushing to the precipice and holding back just in time to avoid calamity. At the same time the piece calls for a lyrical intrusion that alternates and lifts us to a new awareness. Soyoung understands this perfectly, and she crafts every note with such care and expressive power that we are swept along with her. This is an extraordinary performance, melding with the remoteness of this spring afternoon in which we are transported to a different time and place. The funeral march of the third movement is hypnotic, but also couched in a grandeur that we no longer understand or comprehend today. The sheer strength of touch and tone in the final iteration shakes us to the core.

Throughout the performance, Soyoung Min is captivated by the sound of the music. Her expression is fixed as though not to betray her emotions or give in to them, which is a luxury that we as listeners can afford. She is transported by the flow of a seamless moment to moment. Chopin's music is an emotional terrain that is challenging and poignant. Throughout his work is the ebb and flow of sexual energy that connects with the moment, and Soyoung builds on this forcefulness with vigorous intensity. One final word about the structure of the concert, it is organically conceived, moving the audience through various levels, beginning almost casually and building to the climax of the Chopin sonata, occurring almost precisely at the Golden Mean. The Sonata's climactic movement unfolds in the same ratio.

Soyoung bring us down gently with three Chopin Mazurkas that are playfully brilliant and the essence of Chopin's compositional achievemments. She concludes with Elliott Carter's, Caténaires, a pointilistic toccata-like piece that requires stamina from the performer and listener alike.

For an encore, Soyoung shares a new found love in Schubert which she celebrates with child-like wonder. Schubert's G-Flat Impromptu is liquidly eloquent, with moments of rapture connected by such lyrical lines that require exquisite shading and understanding. Soyoung Min ultimately enchants us with her persuasive love for this work, and as she remarked she could play this piece endlessly over and over, and we could also listen without end, for there is no repetition but continuous discovery.

Imagine sitting in this magical temporary concert hall on this Saturday afternoon that is dipping into evening. Imagine that the sounds still linger in the room, reluctant to leave. Imagine that for a moment you have been transformed by a deep musical experience that touches the essence of who and what we are as a species. Imagine that such moments are rare and are to be celebrated and treasured.

The Real Massacre of Valentine's Day

2010-02-10T09:12:00.007-05:00

Long before I was born, Al Capone of the Chicago South Side Italian Gang slaughtered seven members of Bugs Moran's North Side Irish Gang on February 14, 1929, which became known as The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. This was truly a brutal act. Even though it does not involve murder, the personal toll of Valentine's Day has left its mark on me.

Every year since I was about six years old, I have had a knot of fear that starts to develop about a week before February 14th because I have come to associate it with rejection, rejection of gigantic proportions over years and years. Yes, I know this is just my imagination, but the knot in the pit of my stomach seems real enough, and on February 14th I usually feel like staying in bed with the covers up over my head.

It all started in preschool. On the night before Valentine's Day, we had to punch out pre-cut Valentines from a Valentine booklet of cards for our classmates. Even then we were targeting the ones we especially idolized. Everyone else was doing the same. On the morning of Valentine's day we would exchange our Valentines, but it was clear from our choices who we really wanted to be our Valentine. I never connected with any of my first loves. In fact, I would get messages that were the equivalent of "get lost" ...

The worst part of this was that this Valentine ritual was so ingrained as part of the school culture that there was no escape. Every year I dreaded making those Valentines, creating messages with hidden meanings, and putting names on envelopes. Of course as we got older, it became more sophisticated with chocolates, flowers, and fancy gifts, and the stakes were even higher. The distress and defeat was even greater. As we approached junior high school, I tried being sick on that day, but that was even worse as I became a pariah and was generally ostracized. I guess these defeats could be traced to bad timing and poor choices, but in general, Valentine's day came to be anticipated as supreme, unequivocal disappointment.

Even though now, it shouldn't matter, I still get that feeling and a general malaise sets in as I realize Valentine's day is approaching. I envy all those happy lovers and wish them well. Wish I could be them, but I have other triumphs and destinations, so I guess this once a year trauma is something I can endure. It is something like an old war wound that acts up whenever the weather is about to turn bad.

This year, I have an out that can lessen the pain. The Asian New Year begins on February 14th this year. I can tell myself it isn't Valentine's Day, it is the Year of the Tiger.

A Spiritual Awakening

2010-02-07T15:13:00.006-05:00

Some of you that know me may have been aware that I have been in the midst of an identity and professional crisis in which I could not find my way through the maze of doubt and frustration.

Imagine that you have fallen asleep and in your sleep you succumb to a nightmare that is very real. You are struggling in the water, slipping down, gasping for air and flailing your arms. There is no rescue in sight and you writhe in futile contortions striving to survive, but with each passing moment you are losing the battle.

Your life flashes by in front of you, the lingering disappointments, the brief successes, the loves, all that you have tried to create remapping your journey one last time as you sink toward oblivion. The friends that made up your world seem to surround you, but you cannot reach them. They seem almost indifferent. All seems lost and irrelevant as you grapple with fistfuls of water slipping through your fingers just as you are dwindling and lingering with one final attempt to break free.

Then, suddenly and quite unexpectedly you feel someone touching you, reaching inside of you, rousing you. You awake to find that you were caught in a nightmare, sleeping on the pier and not in the water. The reality is that you were never in danger despite the appearances and the terrifying feelings you were undergoing in the midst of your drowning.

I awoke to a spiritual awareness that is deeper and sharper than ever before. I can never forget that I felt my soul touched by a deeply etched reality through someone with vision and clarity. It is Soul that sings, and I find myself singing.

In the midst of this Spiritual awareness, I exist in a new context of this journey. It is Spirit that sustains and inspires. Spirit is the substance that underlies everything. Spirit sustains a revived vision and purpose, inspiring me to recognize and add to the beauty that I am discovering from moment to moment.

The Emptiness of Anguish

2010-02-06T01:46:00.022-05:00

There is nothing I can do about this inner pain that plagues me except to recognize that it at least reminds me that I am still alive. Not that being alive is necessarily so great, but then I have never known "not being alive."

I have a friend who defines each moment as "This is my life." This seems to persuade my friend that things are unfolding as they inevitably should, and is beyond control. I agree that any notion that we have control over the moments and events in our lives is pure illusion.

So I have tried using "This is my life, my destiny," but it doesn't work for me. There is such power in love and desire that we can be shredded in our encounters with disappointment. Love and friendship unrequited and unreturned still makes the world go round. It is the stuff that inspires great art (or so we are led to believe).

Today's generations have other ways of dealing with anguish, and may be less disabled by disappointment. I don't know. But somehow they seem more casual, less intense, and more able to cope when obstacles block all possible routes. Beethoven found a way to cope with his disappointment, to be resigned to admiring his distant beloved from afar. Or maybe he didn't. Maybe the pain was always there.

I think that somehow I must withdraw, but there seems to be no way to think beyond that. As I withdraw, the pain becomes more intense, but if I remain in the midst of it all, I almost collapse from the force of my emotion.

I try to find some mechanism to cope. I try to appreciate that which I admire. One thing about me that I understand: I have the capacity to deeply appreciate. I savor and enjoy all that I encounter. Time, moments, people, and events invade the core of my Being. I notice these things with a depth of awareness that can transform them and myself as I translate this response through inquiry and dialogic process.

I also understand that a negative force can undermine the positive vision that I have of those around me with the beguiling innuendo that they have become distracted and ineffective, or that I have burdened them by placing too much hope and confidence in their potential. I recognize these temptations as negative energy that seeks to destroy the good, the beautiful, and the true. Ultimately, it is self destruction.

But there is something that gnaws at my core... a fear of being alone. Being alone, "All One," was once my standard. Now I face some sense of emptiness and wish someone would or could answer me without reservation.

So this is a solitary act. I write this for myself. No one else really reads this.

C J at The Bitter End

2010-02-05T15:34:00.012-05:00

On the last day of January, an historic event took place at The Bitter End: Korean songs were premiered for a New York Crowd. CJ Jeon, who has been in this country for about three months, premiered four of his songs in the Sunday night session, two in Korean and two in English. The two songs sung in Korean were "La La" and "Lie on My Bed". The two songs in English were "Street Man" and "In My Side."

CJ has a comfortable style, intimate and thoughtful, accompanying himself on the guitar. His voice is private, personal, with a wide range of nuances. Clearly the text is the controlling element, and he is faithful to each moment of the narrative or mood. The effect is that of spontaneity and immediacy. The Bitter End is not conducive to this quiet kind of musical reflection, but CJ was poised and in control. His vocal style connects with the text, and he shapes the phrase with slight shifts in timbre, not as a conscious gesture but in response to the text and the moment.

The fourth song "In My Side" reveals an extraordinary talent, a song that unfolds in a quiet envelop of contemplation, a simple melody, but definitely the substance of today, almost reminiscent at moments of ballads by Radio Head. I believe Koreans are instinctually poets, as their language possesses a beautiful ambiguity that connects with the world in strikingly original ways. CJ's lyrics are beautifully concrete and full of amiguity. He draws upon the images of nature, but they expand as they exist inside of his awareness, of his dreams. The image "breathe, through my tongue" cuts through the moment in anguish before relinquishing to the calm.

Here are the final verses of the lyrics, couched in a stark, but elegant melody delivered in a lyrical flow, with an underlying concern that touches our hearts.

I thought it`s up in the air, in the end
But I saw a light, light where it is
And I see the sun
I see the sky
I see the wind
In my world

I thought I throw everything in my side
But I didn`t get rid of my dream
It takes my way and
It takes my dreams
It takes my love
Breathe, through my tongue...
Breathe, through my tongue...
Words of calm.

(Copyright 2010 CJ Jeon All Rights Reserved)

Fiesta 2.0: More Adventures of the Trio

2010-01-30T23:00:00.004-05:00

It was a bitter cold January evening when the trio came together to celebrate Fiesta 2.0 on the return of one of our members to this country. The wind was strong and the moon was full.

Our original plan was to go to the Palisadium Restaurant DaeWon as part of an ongoing playful project of making a movie, and the great food. I had been to Daewon several years ago, a magnificent Korean restaurant overlooking the Hudson. Spectacular! We had talked about this adventure for several weeks. When we called for reservations, we learned that it had closed about a year ago! Not to be dissuaded, we thought we would go to Wonju II restaurant in Edgewater, in a ferry sitting on the Hudson River with a glamorous view of New York City. A review had described this Korean Restaurant as a good experience and the tables might sway a little, not from too much Soju, but from the ferryboat swaying gently with the river currents. This seemed the perfect answer to our dashed hopes of Daewon, even more romantic and a perfect place for our Fiesta. We call it Fiesta 2.0 because we had our first Fiesta more than a month ago when a different member returned from being out of the continental United States. After we had agreed upon this new destination, one in our trio learned from a Korean Cab driver that Wonju II had been out of business for a couple of years. This was beginning to seem like a conspiracy. Two prime Korean restaurants with outstanding food, locations and views were no longer in business!

Since our trio consists of aficionados who relish good Korean food, we are always on the lookout for Korean places that are excellent and unusual. Our criterion for the Fiesta is that we should try some place new. We felt there had to be something worthy of a Fiesta in New Jersey, so we decided to try Dong Bang Grill. What a great find! Located not far from the George Washington Bridge, this restaurant provides an elegant setting with etched glass panels and several dining rooms, along with a beautiful sushi bar. At first it was hard to appreciate the elegance we had stumbled upon, because there was no parking anywhere near the restaurant, and being from Texas, I have trouble with the concept of valet parking. Finally my friends persuaded me that this was the only alternative, but we were still faced with fierce winter gusts that cut to the bone as we left the car and headed for the entrance.

Every table is well appointed and arranged to create an open friendly atmosphere. There are windows that look to the East, including the bridge and upper NYC. After gaining entrance, we went up the stairs and were immediately ushered to a beautiful table near the wall with etched glass panels.

We were ready for a special feast, and the ambiance of the space welcomed us. With the barbecue grill in front of us, we were soon warming up to the prospects of the evening. My companions are much more knowledgeable than I about the nature of the menu, and soon they were conspiring to orchestrate the evening with an array of foods calculated to create an unforgettable sequence.

The first barbecue we had which was not marinated was SAENG GALBI: No frills just all natural 100% Black Angus beef short ribs, followed by DongBang GALBI : Beef short ribs in DB's own authentic marinade. Our soup was SAENGTAE JIGAE, a fresh pollack fish casserole with vegetables. The side dishes were like mini-feasts, plentiful and little taste excursions in their own right.

Perhaps the crowning moment for me was the discovery of OB, the premiere Korean beer. In general I have not been a beer drinker as my father prejudiced me against wanting to taste it by saying to me when I was very young that beer tasted awful, and as far as he was concerned "they could have left it in the horse."

OB had such a compelling taste that I could have stayed all night and drunk myself under the table, but fortunately I had friends who were more sensible. We drank a toast to Fiesta 2.0, to the new year and to the realization of our great and future dreams.

Looking across our neighboring tables we saw CHA DOL BAEGI, thin sliced sirloin steak with no marinade. Since I have never tried it, my friends decided we should conclude our meal with this third and final main course, which was a good decision since good things usually come in threes. We were not disappointed, but I discovered that we had to eat the steak as soon as it left the fire so it would not dry out.

We wanted to go somewhere for dessert and thought there would have to be some great places in Fort Lee, but our waitress knew of none and suggested we drive along main street. We did, and I can tell you that there is nothing grimmer than Main Street in Fort Lee after 10 p.m.

Instead, we went to a wonderful dessert place in Palisades Park, Fruit Gelatoria on Broad Avenue. It appears to be one of the few places in New Jersey that remains open until midnight. One of the attractive features of this Gelateria is that they make their own gelato and yogurt. The selection was extensive and delicious. I tried the mango gelato and my friends had yogurt. The yogurt was the best I have tasted, worth a drive to Palisades Park anytime. Even Fiestas have to come to a close, and although we teased each other about going to the city, I think we were willing to call it a Fiesta.

Outside, the winter evening had crept toward midnight, and the wind was still blowing, but a little less insistent. Inside, we were closing the Gelatoria, as we were the only remaining customers, and they had started to stack the chairs and sweep the floors.

Walking out into the night, I was struck by the silence of the brittle winter air; our celebration seemed punctuated by the full moon so luminous above us.

All in the Voice

2010-01-29T00:36:00.000-05:00

Once long ago, when I was set on becoming a composer and fancied myself as a cross between Gershwin and Brahms, I became hopelessly lost over a failed romance, as is expected of overly romantic adolescents. It was the classic rejection. I was smitten by Amanda, but she was less than enthusiastic about me since she already had a hunk of a guy who was on the football team. Amanda was a stunning redhead, who could play the piano inside out and had legs that were the stuff that make movie stars.

I was so distraught, I wandered the city for days. I didn't eat. I ended up late one night on the roof of a parking garage, looking at the city lights, winking as though in reply to the twinkling stars of an exceptionally bright Texas night. Inexplicably, or perhaps predictably, I collapsed. I awoke in a hospital and for some odd reason the doctors thought I had appendicitis and had removed my appendix. My parents had been summoned and they drove 120 miles to see what their son had been up to. The Chair of my department came to see me and showed genuine concern and understanding. I was in a state of bewilderment at this turn of events from unrequited love.

This culminated the day before Thanksgiving. I could not travel home. The doctors released me to the university infirmary. Infirmaries at that time had notoriously low level security so I left the infirmary and found my way to the practice rooms to see if this adversity conjured any masterpieces for me. It had not, but there were snippets of ideas and I played somewhat feebly because the wrapping around my body securing the stitches was so tight.

A woman that I recognized as an alto from the choir came into my practice room.

"What are you doing here? It's Thanksgiving..." Dorothy seemed puzzled, but sympathetic.

"I just had my appendix out, and I can't travel home."

She insisted that I spend Thanksgiving with her family. She was married and had a small daughter. I tried to protest, but she was insistent.

So I went along and was well taken care of and quickly came to adore her daughter, who it turned out was struggling with remarkable courage and cheerfulness although disabled with cerebral palsy.

Days later Dorothy was asked to sing a solo in the choir. When I heard her sing, I was blown away. I had never heard a voice such as this, so resonant and rich that it seemed to emerge from and fill the room. That voice was the inspiration for many songs including one about her daughter, "Always Be My Sweet Little Girl."

I never heard a voice like that again for years until recently I heard someone singing a foreign folksong and the resonance filled the space with a radiance of sheer sound that overwhelmed my senses, much the way a fine liqueur permeates the tongue with intense taste. I was actually stunned to hear such a voice again, as I thought I never would.

The true source of identity is through the voice. The voice begins from the breath in the center of body and is released to the air in a moment of definition. Drawn inward, released outward to the world. Our word "personality" comes from the Latin "per sonare" meaning to speak through. The reason the Greeks wore masks in their dramas, is that they believed the true essence of the character came through the voice, hence the characters in the play were known as dramatis personae.

Somehow in hearing this voice I felt touched by the presencing of identity embodied in the sonority of singing so profound that its essence seems etched immutably in the inward chambers of my permanent awareness.

Naomi Tarantal and the Art of Felting

2010-01-28T12:33:00.005-05:00

Felting is the art of transforming garments and materials into works of art. It is an ancient art and appears to be enjoying a revival.

Naomi Tarantal is a visual artist who has worked with many media, and she now finds herself drawn to felting. She recently exhibited her work as part of a Collective at New York University, and her work occupied two windows of NYU Skirball's Windows Gallery located on La Guardia Place. This is a wonderful forum for public art, available 24 hours a day during the exhibit under changing conditions of daylight and night time. Inevitably viewers will also see their reflected images in the window and passing traffic, adding additional layers to the experience.

As the artist points out, she likes the setting with the overlapping sounds and images from the environment because it resonates with the art of felting which utilizes layers as an essential element.

This video interview took place on a crisp January day near the end of the exhibit just after a light snowfall.

Sleepless in Serenity

2010-01-27T02:43:00.004-05:00

Here I am in the middle of exhaustion, trying to figure what holds me from sleep... What is this nightly battle that has emerged as a more and more perplexing mystery? It has nothing to do with worry. I am beyond worry. It has nothing to do with ideas racing through my mind refusing to abdicate to quiet serenity. I can be serene, yet sleepless.

In some way I have forgotten how to go to sleep. There is something about sleep that is similar to losing consciousness, but not the same. Actually we are slipping into a different realm of consciousness when we sleep. Sleeping has something to do with dreams, but it is far more eloquent than the sleep center monitoring that counts the REMs (Rapid Eye Movement) to somehow measure the quality of sleep.

So I lie in bed, trying to blank my mind, debating right side, left side, or back, and remembering that I never used to have that debate, so that is different. The radio drones at low volume like a sleep machine. No help.

I have this rich vocabulary of dreams remembered, that once served as an entry point to sleep: a huge house on an estate that I had access to, many rooms that were remote and secret floors that were mysterious spaces where I could make miracles. Another dream was a magnificent block in some suburban place that had urban structures and a mysterious Gothic church sitting on the back corner of the block that seemed dark and daemonic in the midst of urban/suburban glamor. Another dream was a mysterious old building in New York City that was a five story walkup, and I was always drawn to the fourth floor. And of course, I have the classic dreams, the top floor of a building that no one knows about or the second basement that only I had access to.

These dream locations were once portals when I knew how to sleep. Now they are locales, maybe sources for a film script that could launch a wild and imaginative narrative.

The way one proceeds through day after day of sleepless nights is an intriguing experience. Somehow I manage to ignore that I didn't sleep, and my engagement with projects pulls me through the hole of haziness to a clear and lucid state where a new energy is generated through the power of the imagination and new ideas.

I write this entry as an act of sleeplessness... it is a testament to an obsession that ripples through my reality and defines an encounter with the serenities of the night.

Ira Antelis A Natural Winner With Vonnegut Musical: Between Time and Timbuktu

2010-01-14T16:50:00.018-05:00

For me, Ira Antelis, was something like Roy Hobbs, the wunderkind of baseball in Bernard Malamud's The Natural, who suddenly disappeared, only to reappear to finally follow his dreams late in life. That metaphor only applies to the way the Antelis was in my life. I saw him as a student, who I also asked to do some teaching because he was so talented. At that time he was writing incredibly successful jingles and was poised for a career in Hollywood as the next big film composer (at least in my mind and fantasy). Then he disappeared from my experience.

Mysteriously, about a year ago, he surfaced in my life through FaceBook. He has been, of course, alive and well, very successful with music production and composing in Chicago. Ira visited New York on business, and we got together for brunch to catch up. He said somewhat casually that he was writing a new musical based on materials by Kurt Vonnegut.

This new work, Between Time and Timbuktu, was showcased at a reading on Thursday, January 14, to a packed audience at The New 42nd Street Studios. This truncated 90 minute version of the musical had an outstanding cast and was enthusiastically received. Timbuktu deserves its chance for a place in the sun, and maybe it will get it.

Based on materials drawn from several Vonnegut sources, Between Time and Timbuktu was originally a television play in 1972 that served as a satire on human freedom and the power of the imagination. As a musical, the materials are folded into a narrative that is sensitive and aptly paced by a skillful and varied score. The musical direction by Jason DeBord was outstanding, beautifully nuanced in a studio setting where such details are difficult to achieve.

Antelis's music serves to elevate the text, adopting a more traditional Broadway style that is a little bit Sondheim, a little bit Rodgers and Hart, and a lot Ira Antelis. The reading was presented with very little dialogue. The music moved the action, and certainly that should continue to be the direction for Timbuktu's narrative design.

Jeremy Dobrish managed to incorporate the materials from the larger domain of the full script and score to fashion a 90 minute, non-stop version that at times seemed a little disjointed. This almost always occurs when a work is truncated, and the problem is compounded when many disparate sources are drawn upon and sculpted to fit together.

Dobrish's direction created a cohesion that some how mitigated the disjointed structure, achieved by a sense of an ensemble performance by the cast, all of which were highly talented, full of energy, and focused for this reading. Gregg Edelman's "everyman" performance as the non-descript hero who wins a jingle contest that launches him into an outer space rendezvous with a distant constellation, eloquently blends the elements of victim and hero and elicits our sympathy and concern. Anita Gillette's comic profile as his mother is effective and at times outlandish...just as intended. Matt Cavanaugh threads his way through the work as the contest announcer who often establishes continuity, at times a little too high-keyed for the space we were in, but adds a deft touch of panache and style. The character of Bokonon may be a bit of a cliche from the 70s, but Cassady Leonard is somehow able to transcend this with a certain sense of wonder and fun. Highlight of the reading is Robert Cuccioli as Dr. Paul Proteus, on trial because of his belief in the human spirit and the destiny of man. His performance was riveting and elevated the moment beyond that of a reading.

Andrew Barrett's lyrics are remarkable. He catches the spirit and rhythm of Vonnegut almost better than Vonnegut. The lyrics manage to transform the TV adaptation into a an entirely new work and unifies the material. What emerges is structure and content that would make Vonnegut proud.

Ira Antellis is clearly engaged in a labor of love. In some ways the music is too good, too overwhelming, too many hits, too many highs, but this may just be the aftermath of a 90 minute extrapolation of the material. There is also a bit of a formulaic feeling to the some of the work, the comic relief song, the ballad, and the final piece, the title song, is a wonderful conception, designed to be the singable hit, but it comes too late, and I wonder if this kind of ballad still works on Broadway. But this show is in the tradition of Broadway at its best, so it's worth a try. I suspect the context may change as the show develops. There is no doubt that Antelis has a gift for melody and for music as narrative. He is as good and better than most that have had tremendous success on Broadway.

Most musicals go through radical transformations from first readings to Broadway. Here's hoping this material evolves as it should into such a hit that I can say I blogged about it before it was so well-known, and that I knew Ira Antelis when...

FIESTA on Eighth Street

2010-01-10T22:42:00.014-05:00

There is this trio of friends that somehow seemed to materialize out of nowhere. As such they are often involved in things together, or follow parallel paths that define a singularity of purpose. These things sometimes evolve out of human experience, and there is no real logical explanation. But it is a rare and exquisite experience that you should cherish whenever and however it happens.

As it turned out during the holidays, one of the trio went out of the country, so upon return, we decided to honor the homecoming by indulging ourselves with our own fiesta, which suggests partying --- with lots of great food. Fiesta can be any festive occasion, and of course it is closely related to a feast. A feast is more than just food, it is defined as a "rich and abundant meal." And a Fiesta also implies a celebration, perhaps including dancing and singing, or musicing... and in this case our creative response was in a metaphysical context of a feast so sumptuous that we were somewhat overwhelmed.

The other of our trio suggested a new restaurant known simply as 8st Kitchen on eighth Street in Manhattan. We knew from Internet descriptions that it would be unusual, but we could not have designed on our own a more appropriate venue for our special fiesta. It was as though our friend had some intuition about how elegantly this Asian Bistro would create a special ambiance for our celebration.

8st Kitchen's cuisine is Korean, but served in small courses, French style, so that the emphasis is on tasting and savoring the moment. We began with a cocktail, Pear Soju, mostly because I am a fanatic about Soju in the same way that Toad was obsessed with motor cars in The Wind in the Willows. My friends indulged me and my madness.

We ordered a sparkling water, TAU, which is an ancient Welsh word that means "to be silent" --- quietly exhilarating in its taste, obedient and supportive as a companion to the meal. TAU is meant to be tasted, savored, slowly.

Our host and waiter was Jung-min Kim who transformed our experience into an event that might have been worthy of a Disney theme park. Every dish was presented with painstaking detail and arduous enthusiasm by our host.

Our first dish was Wan Ja Jon, bite-sized patties of beef so delicate and delicious that they seemed to melt in your mouth. The food was so tantalizing we had to deliberately slow our pace. The others of the trio put together a sequence of dishes, so the tasting experience emerged like a musical score.

The second dish was Chung Po Mook Moo Chim, a green-lentil jelly with vegetables and wasabi. It served as a delicate transition from the opening to the third course, Ba Ssak Bul Go Ki Gui, sliced Kobe rib-eye, with a flavorful sauce. This was a powerful middle section, masterfully orchestrated, deep lavish taste with lush texture.

The fourth dish and movement of this culinary suite was O Jing O Bok Keum, stir fried squid with noodles, serving to connect us to the Finale, Bo Ssam, pork belly with
pickled cabbage, daikon salad and oyster (photo by Joe DStefano), a masterpiece of collected tastes that topped off a truly memorable feast.

Our host provided a complimentary Soju drink made of richi, that served as a cadenza to the coda: another gift from the Kitchen, Dae Goo Jon, lightly pan-fried cod fillets brought to us as a surprise. This was a substantial coda worthy of our meal, introducing new tastes, but reminding us of themes from earlier courses.

Our Fiesta was not yet done. We proceeded to a small intimate concert space nearby where a composer was premiering a string duo, a trio with violin, cello, and clarinet, and an electronic sound score. This provided a sonic feast of sounds, giving some chance to refresh the senses, to realign ourselves from our sense of taste and touch, to a heightened sense of sound.

We capped the the evening at bar and restaurant, Murphy and Gonzales, which was both upbeat and low-keyed---whatever you wanted to make it. We ordered drinks (of course) and Mexican appetizers in keeping with our fiesta as a convivial fanfare to welcome the return of our friend.

Sudden Fiction: I Am Come to Create Order

2010-01-03T19:54:00.016-05:00

She came into his presence almost magically, as though she had suddenly appeared from nowhere. Her eyes were gleaming, and she smiled to confirm her presence.  

Surprised, he acted as though he had witnessed a miracle. Her arrival was a mystery. For hours he had wished to see her. He had fantasies of how she would materialize, but these dissolved in the premonition that she would not come.  

She was curiously silent, but her smile leapt across at him, invaded him. She removed her coat and scarf. He turned from the computer.

“I’m surprised to see you.”

“I told you I would come.” 

Outside, a winter storm was blustery and scolded the windows with cold, furious gusts. But inside, the moment seemed to glow with expectation.

 Their conversation was an exploration, an unfolding discovery. He knew that her speaking created clarity. He had been trapped in the intellectual baggage that often cluttered his work. He found her smile engaging, and the sound of her voice was like music. He recalled Fellini's 8 1/2 where the woman in white looked at the intellectual debris that engulfed the director and murmured, "I am come to create order."  

He had an intuition that he had known her before in another time and place... but the karma was the same as now. 

She thought she recognized him, but could not be sure. He was older than she remembered. He spoke through silence, and seemed to be waiting to be acknowledged as though he expected her to linger there a while. But she was embarked on a journey. She was living her life, her destiny.

He remembered how they met. He saw her from a distance, but knew instantly who she was and where she was going. He longed to follow her, but was trapped by coordinates set long ago. Their paths were briefly crossing. He wanted to stop Time. He wished that somehow he could know her forever.

How could two people from two unique worlds, so clearly different, share the same space, even for a moment?

He turned back to the computer.

Startled by a blizzardly burst against the window, he looked for the beautiful muse who had created such order from all the clutter.

No one was there.

A dream, a wishful thought, vanishing in the winds of winter.

From Both Sides Now

2010-01-01T23:59:00.024-05:00

This is a time for reflection as we begin a new year and a new decade.

I remember a time ago when I felt invincible. I had energy and a spiritual sense that sustained me through everything. Much of this had been attained through incredible experiences including the mentoring by my Father, and an inspiring spiritual presence who touched inside me and transformed my health and my life. Also a meditative inquiry has served to inspire my actions and my being.

As my father aged, his philosophical perspective deepened, but he shared with me the angst that all of us feel since although we are born of communion, we die alone. The genius of our psyche is that somewhere in the depth of us we believe we shall never die. He described his growing angst as though he were walking in the sun and there was no shadow for everything was in front of him, bright and buoyant. But as he grew older the sun had passed overhead and now he saw his shadow growing longer and longer, merging into the unknown darkness that loomed ahead. My last time with my father as he lay dying, he hugged me from where he was lying in bed with such immense power and whispered "Goodbye, John... we have had such a beautiful adventure together." There was a pause... "It's time for me to go." I knew he didn't want to leave us, but he also believed it was not the end of his journey.

So now I have passed from the bright sun to the other side. I feel the lengthening shadow, and I am still in the throes of denial about my mortality. Even though death is seemingly alone, we are sustained by the community that defines us. In the past several years I had rationally planned for my own demise--- I felt the inevitability of the process and even created a time-line that dictated that I start to wrap things up. I was, as the Gershwin song puts it, "Just Biding My Time." No more songs from me. No need. I fully understood the "Hemingway Solution," an existential statement that underscored that we do have power to make a decision about our mortal destiny. Yet, I don't think this is the path for me.

While living out my abbreviated time-line, I focused on working with my younger constituents, of taking joy in their journeys, hoping that I might challenge them to discover their dreams and help them come true...an exciting time for me. I guess I couldn't know that this new community sustaining me would grow... there would be those whose energy and triumphs would inspire me, and I would find myself engaged in a renaissance of creativity, not quite so willing to surrender my mortality to a time-line of two to three years. A few became so close as to perhaps unknowingly reach deep inside of me and awaken the skills and creative energy that had always sustained me until recently. Having resigned myself to the loss of huge chunks of my work and abilities, recent encounters have awakened this inner world that I left abandoned. I found I still have things to say.

I still have songs to sing ---

In spite of silences

So long imposed by emptiness;

Sweet melodies

Still echo and twist

Through corridors long boarded up

And left abandoned.

I still have songs to sing ---

In spite of noises

So intense and interrupting;

Brave harmonies

Still assemble and bound

Beyond the walls so awkwardly erected

And left decaying.

I still have songs to sing ---

Although the world is deafened

And songs must linger in fading tones

Like declining half-life radiation

Dwindling to the aural dimensions

Deciphered only by the inward ear.

So I struggle within myself, for I know that inevitably I must pay the piper for this lovely twilight dance, my winter solstice sarabande. I am nourished by the Spring and Summer creatures so abundant and so full of vision and inspiration, who still dare to dream. The difference from my earlier days is that I was a loner then, but now I feel the need to share a dialogue where utterly new ideas and sensibilities can be born. This collaborative process and possibility has emerged in such a way that I am refreshed by the prospect of dialectic exchange.

I had something of a scare tonight on this first day of a new era, and I was abruptly reminded of my mortality. For a moment I wondered if I would see my friends again, and now the attack has passed. But I realize how sad I will be if I must leave these dear companions before I complete this cycle of renewal. But the joy and the amazement is in this moment and in the doing, in the immediacy of spirit, and the rapport with those close to me who value the journey as much or more than I. Yet, we are now in the midst of winter, and those that know me know how enchanted I am by snow...

Black Holes and The Hole in My Head

2009-12-31T20:13:00.016-05:00

So the year is passing.

I can see it spinning and disappearing down a Black Hole which might be exactly how time renews itself, or how the years slip into parallel universes. Maybe it is just Alice and White Rabbit disappearing down the rabbit hole, life pursuing impossible adventures.

It wasn't long ago that it was suggested that Black Holes eventually evaporate into nothingness, which turned the world of physics upside down. There he sat in his wheel chair among his colleagues with that perpetual half-smile and said the math confirms it, prove me wrong. Hawking later declared that both views of physics were correct because of parallel universes. Tell me the emperor wears no clothes.

Of course, physicists had been content with a zero sum game. Ever since Einstein overturned Newton (or did he?), we knew that energy was converted into mass and mass into energy. But the universe could be dissipating into...well...nothing. Where's the fun in that?

Yet, although I'm no physicist, I think someone may eventually proclaim that the universe is multiplying... and it will be true, somewhere ...at least in a parallel universe. (Actually I am a closet physicist. When I was 9, I won a prize for a paper submitted to an international astronomy contest and I have been hooked ever since.) It seems plausible that mass and energy (all the same thing, just as space and time are the same phenomenon) are continuously and incessantly becoming and cycled through parallel universes which are also endlessly cloned. It is rather like wave forms generated from nothingness into somethingness.

I have a hole in my head. I got careless and ended up with the destruction of some grey matter. Physicians said it was minor. I accepted that for a very long time. That was well over a decade ago. I recently saw a picture of this hole in my head. It looked exactly like a Black Hole sitting there a little off center of the galaxy that is my brain. For doctors it is just a matter of brain cells, but I am not convinced.

The problem with the destruction of brain cells is that you can't be sure what you lost, because you just don't know. Now the doctors are great about rehab, but there all those subtle things that have disappeared: memories, names, faces, songs, lyrics, very fine muscle memory, and on and on. Not even the doctors really know how vast and subtle this loss really is... (they seem OK if you can touch your nose with both hands with your eyes closed), and I am thinking maybe that part of me has slipped down a Black Hole into a parallel universe somewhere.

Recently I met someone who had an effect of energizing me about facing my perceived loss. It is a little like the Big Bang all over again inside my head. So I started to try to find my way back to myself. What is really strange is when I encounter some artifact or document that obviously emanated from me, I don't recognize it except to know that somehow it is collected under my ownership.

Occasionally there are some breakthroughs where I recognize a filament on the edge of my past and begin to follow it, or rather it starts to pull me irresistibly to a new place. I feel like I am being pulled into that hole in my head and slipping through it into a parallel universe, familiar, but also very strange...and there they are...there are those lost moments, memories, and musics dancing along with me... Nothing may have been lost after all.

Don't get excited. No neurologist would ever give credence to what I am describing, but I would say don't knock a Black Hole until you've gone down one. Now I know why the White Rabbit was in such a hurry!

Looking in the Windows

2009-12-29T01:35:00.012-05:00

Something has inspired me to return to a part of myself that I had shut out after a stroke more than ten years ago, feeling that I had closed the book on that part of my life. In meeting some friends and starting to share something of that remote time, I tentatively have tried to rebuild some vacant parts of myself.

It was rather like looking into windows of the past, except that most were covered and obscure. I wasn't sure what was there. It was a weird experience. I pulled out some scores and tried to read through them... it was very painful to look at music I once knew by heart, and now had to learn from scratch all over again... and not too well at that. My fingers had no memory. However, slowly I started to play a few songs, very haltingly with lots of errors. Frustrating! Then I lapsed into improvising, something that was once spontaneous, but now was halting and insecure.

The improvising started to flow and I felt something kindled and ignited. As I left my space and went out into the city, I found myself improvising a rhythm in my head...some lyrics...Walking by the windows of restaurants and coffee houses, I looked into the windows hoping to see someone I recognised. I have been thinking about composing a new theatre piece, and suddenly looking in the windows became an extended metaphor and a text emerged:

Looking in the window…
Looking for you there
Looking at the people
You're not anywhere.

Looking in the window
Looking for your face
Looking at the strangers
You're not any place…

Looking through the window
Trying hard to see...
Looking at the people
Looking back at me.

Through the glass, I see them
Laughing as they talk…
Wish that I could be them
Instead I have to walk
Searching in the windows
Looking for your smile...
All those endless windows
Detain me for a while...

Maybe you are somewhere
Waiting for my eyes
Sitting with the strangers
In your best disguise.

Looking in the window
Hoping I will find
You inside with people,
Smiling in your mind,
As though we shared a secret...
Knowing I must see
You, inside with people...
That's how it has to be,
Me, outside the window
No where else to go...
What at last I've found
You might never know...

Defeated by the window,
Touching through the pane,
Meeting you as always
In a far domain...
Parted by the window,
By the fate of Time's debris,
The magic of your presence
Somehow has set me free.

Views from the Bridges: Pioneer Internet Artists

2009-12-23T13:46:00.051-05:00

A collaborative Internet Production produced in a classroom studio as an Internet experiment proved to be a highly creative project undertaken by Steinhardt graduate students in performing arts at NYU. The event was produced "world-wide" to a limited audience on December 15, 2009, and is a testament to the increasing effectiveness of self-contained user-friendly codecs for interactive creative work. Huddled around the equipment and launching their ideas into cyberspace, these creators seemed more like pioneers forging a path into the future of global collaborations. In the past, such activity required extensive technical support by an institution and an army of Internet2 ITS specialists. Instead, these artists were empowered to establish their own avenues of creative exchange via the Internet.

The artists began by discussing themes that might enable them to work independently while developing their ideas around a common thread of creative work. Their study had involved collaborative work throughout the semester with emphasis on technology and multimedia production, including the technical skills that enabled them to transform almost any space into a multimedia broadcast studio.

The artists consisted of Scott Berenson, Jane Blackstone, Sunmin Kim, JoEllen Livick, Laura Montanaro, Andrew Struck-Marcell, and Julie Song, with Dr. Chianan Yen serving as a technical consultant. Their chief technical Guru was composer and audio/video engineer Professor Tom Beyer. In attendance as an Internet audience was Synthia Payne, an educator, composer, and performer. Other collaborators participated via the Internet using iChat or Skype to join the scenes in the studios. These artists were Mariangeles Fernandez Rajoy, a producer and conceptual/visual artist from Buenes Aires; Ernesto Localle, architect and animator from Buenos Aires; N'seeka MacPherson choreographer and dancer, from Connecticut College in New London; and Ocarina performer SunYoung Mun and Technical Coordinator, SungHoe Ku from South Korea; Musicians Alex Nossa, electric bass, and Michael Scheideman, electric guitar connecting from Harlem; The School of Rock in Charlotte, NC and a graphic artist from Brooklyn.

The group developed a theme around the concept of bridges. There are physical bridges that connect people and land masses, but the Internet itself becomes a bridge that dissolves boundaries and connects people. This metaphor seemed to stimulate a number of ideas. The collaborateurs (this term was coined by JoEllen Livick and seems to serve as a descriptor very well) devised a working title of Views from the Bridges. Some discussion emerged about Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge, and whether it might have any relevance to this Internet experiment. As it turns out, some of Miller's content was appropriated for Montanaro's work. With Scott Berenson serving as producer, each callaborateur then set about developing a multimedia scene with a target date to mount this creative work (without prior rehearsal) on the Internet December 15th.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect was to develop a schematic of how the Internet Broadcast would be set up, what equipment would be needed, what configuration would be used, and how collaborateurs would function during the set up, for the production as a whole, and for their specific scenes. Ultimately, these kinds of decisions set the criteria for the range of possibilities and improvisational alternatives during the production.

An effort was made to reduce the amount of stress by designing this event as a work in progress and to accept whatever challenges or impediments might arise, but to work through any problems as part of the creative process. Given the time frame, there was no time to rehearse with the distant collaborateurs, although a few quick connections were made as tests.

Six Scenes were developed with transitions between each scene improvised on the Tabla by Andrew Struck-Marcell. The scenes were:

Blocking the Box (Scott Berenson)
A View Beneath the Bridge (Laura Montanaro)
What's Up With Talking? (Jane Blackstone)
EtherSketch (JoEllen Livick)
Bridge of the Moments (Sunmin Kim)
Dreaming of Going to Korea (Julie Song)

During the performance, Jane Blackstone took on the role of moderator and M.C. Other collaborateurs worked at cameras, mixers, computers, or helping to manage scenes, as well as perform in scenes. All the artists were serving as videographers, musicians, composers, technologists, cable and adapter specialists, critics, and whatever. They managed to transform the room into a serviceable studio, despite the limited space.

Although the production has the trappings of a live-television studio production, the impact of the Internet participants transformed the space, making an interactive medium dramatically different than the more traditional media of theatres or concert halls. All of the connections with iChat and Skype worked remarkably well, and what was even more impressive, the connections were established within the time frame as needed without exception.

Julie Song improvised an additional connection by using her Air laptop to independently connect with her friends in Korea so they could view the production through her computer camera lens. The production computers were connected by Ethernet, but her laptop successfully connected with Korea with a wireless connection. This suggests a possibility for multiple simultaneous connections using many laptops with one-to-one connections that could be merged as a cohesive, unfolding, and spontaneous event.

An important component, although more silent than we would have wished (we lost the iChat connection at the end were not able to have a final group discussion) was "Synthia" Cynthia Payne aka Synthany, Artist and Educator, adept at audio and video production, editing, coordination, networked music improvisation, recording and event installation. She agreed to be our audience of one (although the other Skype/iChat connections added additional ambience). In discussing this idea with Synthia, we observed that when we have conducted these kind of on-line experiments before, the presence of even one person on the Internet expanded our sense of space and established a sense of a new and different medium. She understood this right away and remarked that the cyber connection seems to create extended space and time, altering our fundamental experience. Synthia appeared in our production as audience, sometimes on the main screem, the side screen, and most often as a perpetual resident on the ceiling.

The theme of bridges was quite successful. "Bridges" as a way of connecting, of crossing borders, of providing access, proved to serve as a prolific source of ideas and images. Also impressive was how these young artists produced everything from scratch in six weeks, including filming, editing, composing, and arranging for counterparts at distant locations and designing and setting up a multimedia environment that successfully worked as an Internet Broadcast Studio. There were lots of glitches, of course, but not really as many as might be expected. It was an experiment that tested the range of artistic expression in the context of engaging technology to enhance the expressive capacity of human activity.

A Collective Experience: Aytia/Matia: Sleep Cycles

2009-11-21T12:06:00.037-05:00

At 155 Water Street on Friday night, at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, in the heart of DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass), Aytia/Matia and PAVE presented Sleep Cycles, described as a work of the Collective Unconscious. If anything, it was a wake up call to the 21st Century that an emerging generation is shaping a new consciousness of artistic expression. In many ways the names of the works are not important. This new artist collective, made up visual artists, painters, performers, composers, videographers, audio technicians, light designers, created a space transforming Time into an ongoing, engaging, and commanding experience awash with mixed media and innovative ideas.

Imagine walking into a space of people immersed in visual arts and sound collages that do not compete for attention but contribute to the energy and immediacy of the moment. In the midst of the greetings and anticipation, a young man asleep on a bed appears engaged even though unconscious, and we wonder if perhaps we may be merely the contents of his dreaming. From the beginning, the event is performed as a multi-sensory experience; there are h'orderves in abundance and an open bar, and surrounding us are extraordinary paintings silently embracing us while sound collages fill the room with a subtle presence. We are not waiting for the performance to begin... it has begun and we are enveloped. A reverence for the union of artists and audience permeates our encounter as a palpable presence.

The sleeper awakens and moves from the space, we follow at the urging of an unembodied voice that invites us into a new space. The space is a little primitive, as though hastily contrived... three screens are around us ,and we face a performance space populated on the right and left by what seems to be a spectacular speaker system. Behind us are an array of tech tables fortified with special equipment for sound enhancement, video projection, and lighting. To the left is an enormous space masked by a fabric wall... through the fabric we can see lights that seem like distant stars ... a curtain dividing the space, adding to the mystery of the evening.

Gradually the performance emerges, a video projection of an abstract landscape submerged somewhere in our sleep cycles, ...the soundscape a swirling collage of sounds radiating energy and moments of repose... solo musicians and small ensembles populate the space with musical iterations that suggest that music is undergoing a radical transformation and we are in the midst of a revolution...

There are virtuoso performers such as trombonist William Lang playing Dillon Kondor's Sleep Spindles derived from a melody in the second movement of Webern's Symphony, and deconstructed through fragments that are as gestural as they are sonic. Conrad Winslow's Getting There was a powerful display of interaction, energetic and playful, compelling, performed by a trio composed of Gregory Chudzik, bass, Matt Donello, percussion, and Joshua Modney, violin. Bean Lear's Sea of Monsters, a work adapted from his folk musical Lillian, depicting Lear's on-going romance with the sea, portrays a panorama of underwater creatures in a mischievous and provocative work hauntingly performed by the ai ensemble comprised of Isabel Castellvi, cello, Matt Donello, percussion, Joshua Modney, violin, Alejandro Acierto, clarinet, and Vicky Chow, piano.

There is a break, a clearing... not the usual intermission but an extension of the experience... food and drink in abundance, and The Harry Belafonte Band that conjures and appropriates the past as a part of now...

We are invited back to the space and wear sleeping masks as part of a sensory deprivation experiment, where we listen to the music as it unfolds... the illusion is that it plays inside our heads while each of us create our own images and "lighting" in the enormous caverns of personal consciousness. I am caught up in the sounds of an orchestra that seems invented for the moment. The sounds are vividly present... and I realize as I listen that this is not a recording... the energy in the space is vivid... and as I remove the mask I see that the curtain to our left has been removed, and we are connected to a live orchestral performance that is positively incandescent under the baton of Conrad Winslow. The orchestra is performing Pyramid Scheme, four movements by Grayson Sanders that flow through three axis (X=4 aspects of natural sound, Y=arc of energy for each movement, Z=timbre):

I. Space/Wood
II. Fluid Motion/Water
III. Patterns/Air
IV. Clusters/Metal.

Here is a brief excerpt...which of course cannot do justice to the whole... but it is included here to underscore the ephemeral presence of the experience... even the shakiness of the image suggests an ambience of a fleeting moment, the orchestra is filtered through the audience but has an immediacy that evokes the power and energy of these intense musicians in concert... a sounding presence... spontaneous, amplified by human energy as well as the enhancement of technology.

There are touches of Webern, Schoenberg, minimalism, Stravinsky, Pop, Rock, film scores...but the work is not eclectic. Rather Grayson Sanders fuses these elements and others into a personal voice that is compelling and authentic. The orchestra performs with passion and conviction. I have the sense that the incredible, combustible energy permeating the space must have been similar to the early part of the 20th century when a young George Gershwin burst upon the New York Scene infusing the practices of Tin Pan Alley, Jazz, folk, symphonic and European music into a new distinct post-modern style that would revolutionize every cryptic corner of the musical establishment.

A word must be said about the musicians who were outstanding. The concertmaster, Amanda Lo, is to be commended for assembling a first rate ensemble with absolutely no redundancy. In addition, the producers of this evening should be acknowledged for the originality of their approach and what they managed to achieve. In the space of a day they converted a raw space into an artistic, mixed media collage that played out as a holistic experience for everyone. One suspects that this emerges from the shared vision of the collective's founders, composers Ben Lear and Grayson Sanders. Their achievement is almost epic and demonstrates the persuasiveness of their artistic vision.

This was an extraordinary evening, an inspired confluence of thinkers, dreamers, musicians, technicians, and artists providing a path for future work. We applaud the deep conviction of the artists to merge the performance and audience as a unified entity coalescing as the essence of the artistic experience.

Across the Ether

2009-11-05T09:16:00.028-05:00

When the new work of Varèse spilled across the conventional musical scene of the early twentieth century, he found himself stumbling among the ruins of the 19th Century. He was a pioneer, inventing genres, exploring new sounds, and is acknowledged as the "Father of Electronic Music." His music established a new ethos, so that including Varèse's Ionisation as the finale of Across the Ether provides a metaphor of this work reaching across Time to make a sounding presence for a new and growing artistic awareness, a new manifesto.

Across the Ether was an Internet2 multimedia performance on November 1 among distant sites including New York University, University of California Santa Cruz, Stony Brook University, and Bergen Community College. The NYU portion of the performance was in Loewe Theatre at 35 West Fourth Street, but the presence of California, New Jersey, and Long Island permeated the space, transforming it into a new artistic medium that would have made McLuhan proud.

The performance, based on interaction, spontaneity, and improvisation, unfolded with the air of a happening of the 70s, but through connections that dissolved the borders separating the collaborators as they merged in mutual and simultaneous spaces at each location, parallel universes of artistic activity. The NYU space projected to three screens that merged live and processed images and mixed images and sound from the distant sites as part of the artistic presence of the event. Ionisation provided the finale as performed by the NYU Percussion Ensemble under the inspired conducting of its director, Jonathan Haas. To hear this work performed live is a sonic treat, and this masterwork sounded as fresh and innovative as it did more than half a century ago. After the curtain call, performers combined in an improvisation of music and movement that celebrated the idea of pioneers in a journey through a new medium. Even now Across the Ether serves as a permanent web archive of the event, where collaborators continue to post the various media and interactions that comprise the event.

To be sure there were technical difficulties. Connections were lost and regained, much like travelers on a journey to remote regions separated from their origins by vast distances. In this production space stretched across the continental United States and the performers learned firsthand that indeed, Space IS Time. The imaginations of musicians, actors, filmmakers, dancers, and creative technical collaborators formed a medium of exchange that produced extraordinary moments of chemistry, a fragile chimeric collage reaching across the ether in a project of discovery.

The Beauty of Control

2009-10-19T12:22:00.020-04:00

Two National Treasures of Korea, Byung Ki Hwang and Myung Sook Kim, combined creative forces and visions in a performance at the Asia Society on Saturday that was an extraordinary expression of beauty and control. Both come from deep traditions of Korean artistry that are deeply embedded in cultural practices centuries old. Byung Ki Hwang's composition for the Gayageum is based on sanjo, a Korean practice that is never scored, while Myung Sook Kim's choreography and dance is grounded in Korean traditional dance which she infuses with contemporary overtones. Consequently each artist, firmly rooted in their traditions, create a work, Taintless Spring, that seems uniquely 21st century.

Central to the music and the dance is the extreme control present that allows the work to gradually emerge as a masterwork for these artists. Supported by Hyun Sook Park at the Gayageum (Byung Ki Hwang controlled the whole with the jang gu) and additional dancers Kyung Eun Park, Jin Il Bae, Jung Lee, Jung Rae Kim, and Ji Hye Chung, Taintless Spring explores the subtle depths of the four seasons, beginning with Spring which unfolds as slowly as ice melting on an early spring day, the shade of bamboo in the stillness of a summer day, the autumnal change that brings a sense of joy, and the winds of winter subdued by the descending snow.

The work seems predicated on the control of the dancers which mirror the finesse and control of the Gayageum with its exacting structure and subtle "after-tone" ornaments that which seem even more exquisitely varied than the human voice. Movement reflects stasis, where movement slowly sculpts space as though each moment is sublimely rich with meaning and meant to be savored.

Festival of the Autumn Moon

2009-10-05T12:38:00.013-04:00

Chuseok is a celebration of the full moon in Korea and other Asian countries (in China it is Zhongqiujie (traditional Chinese: 中秋節) calculated by the lunar calendar and is sometimes called the mid-autumn festival. It is a time for giving thanks and being with family, not unlike the Thanksgiving that is celebrated in the U.S.

On October 3, it was such a pleasure to return to Donghwa, a Korean Cultural Center in New Jersey, to celebrate this wonderful holiday, where I was introduced to the idea in the first place. The occasion was intimate and meaningful as the participants sat on the floor making rice cakes (songpyeon (송편), a crescent-shaped rice cake which is steamed upon pine needles. In this case, the pine needles were harvested by Young Cho earlier that day as he was hiking somewhere in New York, and the pine-scented aroma was especially fragrant. The moon festival celebrants created many moon-shaped rice cakes which were gathered up and steamed. The celebration concluded with a tea ceremony hosted by Mr. Cho while the center's director, Dr. Youngmi Ha explained the tea ceremony and its significance. The ceremony consisted of three pourings of the green tea. The ritual of pourings is always with odd numbers (not two or four), and the richness of the tea continues past the original pouring. The celebration is in the energy and spirit of the tea which in its most vital state, is the essence of Zen. The celebration which began in the late afternoon concluded as the sun was setting and the full moon was in ascendancy.

I drove with friends through the hills of New Jersey, leaving Englewood and weaving through the night terrain to Broad Avenue which took us to Palisades Park and the site of many Korean businesses and restaurants. One of our companions had recently moved to this charming little town. We parked and as we left the automobile we looked up into the night sky and saw the full moon that was the object of our festival celebration. A thin trail of clouds momentarily masked the moon. The picture here is of the Palisades Park moon in its full mystery and glory. We celebrated the moon and searched along Broad Avenue for a place to continue our feast of this beautiful full moon and the beginning of Autumn in the East.

We found Park Jang Kum, a restaurant for feasting and drinking right in the heart of Palisades Park. The menu seemed fashioned for celebrating Autumn, and we ordered more food than is legal for such a small group. Consequently the evening stretched into night with taste delight after taste delight. I was fortunate to be in the presence of such enchanting appreciators of the autumnal moon. As we were leaving, we wondered about the name of the restaurant and to our surprise Park Jang Kum came out and introduced herself... certainly we bonded that autumn evening of the full moon as a family away from families.

Something "Gut"

2009-08-30T15:49:00.011-04:00

For me August is the end of a period... the end of the year, the end of a cycle... a time to reflect on the past and the future. September begins the new cycle.

It was in an August that I happened to be in Korea and learned about the Shaman, a cornerstone to Korean culture, even in these contemporary times. As I was about to leave Korea, I came upon a magnificent photograph, so striking that it seemed more like a painting than a photograph. The photograph was of a group of Shamans who were on the ocean between the Korean peninsula and Jeju Island, celebrating a end of the year ritual (a gut) of towing a small boat out to sea filled with debris and painful relics of the past year. Once out to sea, the boat full of the painful and destructive past is cut loose and sunk to the bottom, a symbol of clearing past transgressions to start fresh, with a clean slate.

The gut (pronounced goot) is a shamanistic rite. Through singing, dancing, and chanting, the Shaman intercedes with the forces of life to negotiate the present and the future. Shamans are most often women, wear a variety of very colorful costumes, and often speak in trance. During a gut a shaman changes costumes many times, fitting the attire to the needs of the occasions. Of special interest are the musicians who serve to interact with the Shaman. Using Korean traditional instruments, Shamans and musicians interact setting the mood and the tone for each gut. There are twenty four guts that have specific structure in ritualistic practice. At a service only three or four gut are performed at a particular time.

Three elements structure the gut: spirits, believers, and the shaman mediating between the two. The Shaman served as the core of the community, and the practice predates the arrival of Buddhism in Korea. Shamans assimilated Buddhism into their philosophy and practice. Consequently the Shaman remains an important facet of Korean Culture, although less than it was in ancient days of the dynasties.

So there is something of this end of year gut that resonates with me as September draws near. There is something cleansing about exorcising past demons through the hope of a new tomorrow. So even now, I am looking at the transgressions of this past year, the grudges and procrastinations, the neglect, jealousies, misunderstandings, and ill-fated motives. These I pile onto this barren and broken barge and use my music as a perfomative act of relegating these ruins to the irretrievable reaches of a dissolving cosmos.

An Incandescent Synchronicity

2009-08-09T15:44:00.006-04:00

Sometimes the past lingers in the background waiting for a moment to emerge that erupts through the crust of routine in a sudden vortex of clarity. Our existence as sentient Beings connected through mutual awareness often is buried in mundane tedium that encourages us to forget who we really are.

So it was on a Wednesday in July as I went for routine exams at the Medical Center that the past serendipitously slapped me, reminding me that there is something that connects us to those that have touched us deeply as we go through life. No matter how remote we may become from each other, there is some binding medium that keeps us linked.

I had met with one person in particular working on a research and writing project where I was serving as a mentor because the project was of real interest to me. This person would come into the city several times a year, and we would meet as the idea of the research and writing gradually emerged. Suffice it say that this project was an original application of rhetoric to performance practice and interpretation. What was emerging was an exciting creation of a new research domain that provided new tools for investigating music performance. The researcher in question was a consummate pianist whose experience over the years had provided a context for understanding issues of performance and interpretation that transcended more conventional approaches.

These meetings went on for several years, including times when this person would stay with relatives in the city and I was invited to take part in holiday celebrations with the family on several occasions. This person's professional life was extremely rich and demanding, but there were difficulties serving as the primary caretaker for the performer's mother that exacted its toll on many facets of private and public life. There were many interruptions in the performer's life, and the ongoing work was lost in a maelstrom of personal difficulties.

Consequently, the visits for the purpose of pursuing this original and promising research project ceased, and we lost touch. Life continued, and as I came across other people who were involved in their own projects of creation and research, I would remember our many visits and discussions that were linked by many mutual resources and regretted that nothing came of those discussions, of that unfinished business. I never did quite understand why our collegial connection was lost.

Yet on that particular Wednesday, having completed my medical exams, I passed through the lobby of the Center. I usually exit the complex quickly, but for some reason I decided to sit in a waiting area on the main floor. Such moments are always special for me, as I am confirmed people watcher, and the lobby of a medical complex provides an array of interesting subjects. Curiously, I thought of my pianist/researcher friend for no reason at all...wondering what could be going on at that time.

Gradually, I became aware of a man and a woman sitting across from me in the lobby. They looked familiar, but I dismissed this at first because they were some distance across from me and my eyesight currently is not exactly eagle-eyed. Of course one of them was on a cell phone. The voice seemed familiar, but also was filtered from a distance. Then I heard the name of my pianist friend. Just coincidence?

I arose from my chair and walked toward them... "please excuse me," I said, and I asked them if they were related to my friend. Indeed they were, as they were the family members I had met a number of years ago at the holiday gatherings. As it turned out, my friend was on the other end of the line, and we again made contact after so many years.

All of us were astonished at the incandescence of the moment, as though Time and Space had suddenly been torn, and we stepped into a clearing to meet again.

Through the Rain

2009-07-03T11:47:00.012-04:00

Rain was falling in torrents on the summer pavement outside the restaurant. Because the restaurant was slightly below street level, the man at the table gazed at water rapids that had quickly formed exactly at his eye-level. So far it was a curious summer. Curious, because somehow summer was missing, and in its place came this mysterious month of monsoons that was June. Now July seemed to be punctuating the June onslaught with extremely heavy rainstorms so thick and powerful that the rain and wind shattered umbrellas like fragile toothpicks.

As he watched the storm, he felt oddly comfortable with the violence outside the window at eye-level. It was as though he was in the midst of the storm but protected in some sort of time-shift that left him immune to the elements. It was as though he was traveling through time, and observing transformations of space through the mutation of time, somehow embedded in the intimacy of Time while remaining aloof.

He realized that part of this surreal scene was in the afternoon that encapsulated the past in a strange calling forth of time remembered through meeting a friend and colleague that he had not seen for about 25 years. Yet lately he had chance encounters with him on the street, by the library, or at a restaurant, in a tapestry of crossing paths that finally had led to this meeting in a restaurant across from the park. North Square had gone through many incarnations, yet it continued to dwell cozily ensconced in a New York scene that could have easily been in another century, for there was nothing to suggest that we had turned the corner into a new century that was already tempestuous and teetering on the verge of being out of control.

Their conversation wove together the past and the present, each coming from realities and perceptions that existed like parallel universes suddenly colliding in a moment of mutual recognition. Now the rain came like a veil to conceal and seal the moment into an altered awareness that might continue to grow. As violently as the torrential downpour transformed the streets into rivers, it now dwindled into a quiet moment of punctuating this summer afternoon as a past remembered and a promise of discovery.

Fathers' Day

2009-06-21T14:24:00.011-04:00

After many, many sleepless nights that began as a siege against my psyche some months ago, I finally slept on the eve of Summer Solstice and coincidentally, Father's Day. I have remembered my father more than a few times lately as I recognize that the demons I struggle with in these recent days are the same forces he battled in his final years. I find myself often nodding in moments of insights, recognition, and understanding.

So it is no surprise that I dreamed of my father last night. What was surprising was that my son also played a major role in this somnolent production.

My father, my son, and I were living together in some strange yet familiar building in a community that is my frequent destination whenever I dream. It is a place both urban and rural, with a row of buildings on a tree-lined street. Behind our building on the corner of the street directly in back of us is an old magnificent church with a steeple that defines the sky and the horizon.

My son was in his teens and struggling to understand himself in the context of the world, a world he never made but now demanded his allegiance and compliance. I saw this same bewilderment in his face the moment he was born, as though he had been plucked from another universe and thrust into this new existence without warning or explanation.

I found myself in a large shopping mall, and came across my son roaming through the mall and ending in a game room where he was playing various games with his friends. I asked him about the car and he threw me the keys. Somehow I knew where the car was and I noticed there was damage to the cars next to us. Then it became evident that our car was totaled and suddenly I was with my Dad and the car in front of our building. My Dad was laughing and I was distressed.

"I don't know if it is worth rebuilding," I said as we assessed the damage.

"Of course we"ll rebuild it," my Dad replied, "it's a great car."

This was the essence of my Dad's philosophy. Everything was always within our control and despair was pointless. Quietly he shaped the circumstances of our lives so we always were creating our future from the circumstances of the present.

My son came home and saw the car, and we were already were reclaiming the parts and sorting them for renewal. He attempted to say something about the damage, but my Dad held up his hand and said that it would take my son many years to surpass the wrecks he had with more cars than he could remember. "The odds are always against you, " he observed, "but in the end, you can beat 'em." He continued to my son, "When you surpass my record, then you can be sorry... but not too much or too long..."

The only time the three of us were actually together were a few summers in Arkansas when my son was around nine years old. It was an idyllic time where we drove around the mountains finding swimming holes, caves, and caverns. At night we cooked out and my son regaled us with descriptions of the universe, fueled only by his imagination and the magnificent summer sky that served as a canopy, a movable tent that was somehow an assurance that all was right with the world despite the relentless onslaught of reality that seemed always lurking in background with sinister intentions.

This dream resonates even now, as though celebrating the joys of fathers and sons connected through real and remembered fantasies of the heart.

Dr. Peter Lefkow: A Practice of Caring

2008-10-21T11:37:00.020-04:00

When I met Peter Alan Lefkow some 28 years ago, I knew then that he was not only a doctor, he was my friend. He had a special gift of connecting with his patients on a deeply personal level. Somehow what he had to give was so genuine and powerful that it broke through to your deepest level of acceptance and awareness. We were both associated with the same university, and even though we traveled in different professional circles, his deep respect for me as a colleague inspired and invited me to a higher level of excellence. I had been referred to him by the mother of my son, who was always very diligent about researching such things. She insisted that he should become my doctor because even at that time in the earlier part of his career he was known as "the Doctors' Doctor."

As busy and rushed as he was, he always gave the best of what defined him as special and committed. For the most part, my basic treatment was for high blood pressure, until I had been with him for almost 17 years. I was not a very good patient. I practiced denial, and was slow to make appointments. Then after years of denial, while driving my son from a hockey game, I suffered a severe stroke. Somehow we managed to drive directly to the medical center and I was rushed into the emergency room. The attendants contacted Dr. Lefkow, and managed to stop the stroke. It seemed almost in a flash that Dr. Lefkow arrived. He was angry with me because of my neglect. He admonished me. "You are so lucky. What happened to you is usually fatal." Then he said, "You are going to see me a lot. From now on, you and I are going to be the best of buddies." He remained true to this promise. and I have enjoyed my life and my career partly because of his steadfast insistance, presence, and support. I always remembered this moment when I reflected on his initials while sitting in the examination room surrounded by his degrees on the wall. PAL formed the perfect acronym for what he was to all of us.

He helped my son through rough times of depression and personal struggles. Dr. Lefkow always remained a source that has been a comfort and a joy.

Above all, Peter Lefkow was a gentleman. He cared deeply about us and about all of his patients. But we were distinct individuals in the context of a large and highly successful practice. A few years ago at a routine checkup, the cardiogram indicated that I had developed atrial fibrillation. He came into the room and embraced me. "I am so sorry that this has developed, but you are going to be all right. Not to worry."

This past summer when I met with him during a major checkup, I sat across from him after I came out of the examination room into his office. His manner was calm and confident. He was upbeat and talked about the future management of my condition. He set certain goals and landmarks for the Fall. I was scheduled for a stress test in August, but it was later cancelled. "We'll re-schedule in September," his nurse assured me.

Now, Dr. Lefkow has suddenly passed out of our lives. Sudden for those of us who did not realize that he was gravely ill with cancer. That Dr. Lefkow, despite his own ongoing struggle, remained such a remarkable physician to his patients speaks to the inner strength and commitment of this remarkable man.

I went to his office to see his nurse Nuria to pick up my charts. Nuria was the extension of Peter Lefkow. Together they formed a perfect caring practice, and she was always the connection that kept us going. The phone rang while I was there and I overheard Nuria saying, "You know how strong he was. He remained in control of himself." She went on to say that on Sunday evening when it became clear that nothing else could be done, he acknowledged this and quietly went to sleep and was gone.

Yet, even now I feel his presence and his quiet assurance. So many lives were enriched by his being in the world. We are all deeply saddened by our loss, the emptiness of his absence in our lives.

In the Land of Carlisle

2008-10-14T21:10:00.003-04:00

Katie Workum Dance Theatre premiered Carlisle at Dance New Amsterdam (DNA) in New York City, October 10. Katie Workum describes this fantastical place:

Carlisle is a place where women warp and swarm, goats trot on ancient mountain switchbacks, ghosts shimmer quietly and wolves tear away at fences. Limbs and ideas intermingle with our animal instincts, our sadness and our gladness. The inhabitants live in a both abstract and familiar world of impulses, camaraderie and antlers that make up all our everyday lives.
(Program Note by Katie Workum)

The arena is DNA where the raw space seems stripped down to the equipment of theatre, lights in abundance, a mirrored wall to the side, which for some performances must serve as "offstage". But nothing in Carlisle seems offstage, even when its inhabitants roam in and out of doors on the left that might be caves or homes or openings to another world. Structural columns define the space like limbless trees on a landscape that ultimately rests in the imagination.

A quartet of dancers, Samantha Allen, Ivy Baldwin, Kennis Hawkins and Hannah Heller, are creatures of Carlisle. Their movement is personal, primal, and poetic. Each seems distinctly defined but in flux, changing on a continuum that morphs from women to creatures and back again. Perhaps more importantly these women have voices and their language is choreographed as carefully as their bodies. Moreover, these voices sing spontaneously, almost as though the music emanates from the land of Carlisle like an atmospheric vapor or at times raucous and raw. Carlisle is strangely a land absent of men. Women form the full reality, and there are conflicts and issues among the four that emerge through gesture and utterances.

Then suddenly, on the side, a silent procession of Korean women glide across the floor at the right, their shimmering forms echoed in the mirror. They are curiously detached, in another world, beautiful, mysterious, transient, disappearing as quietly as they emerged. They form a serene ensemble (danced by Ahreum Chung, Jae Im Chung, Jee Yeon Jang, Ah Rong Kim, Eunkung Kim, Ji Yeun Lee, and Soo Hyun Park).

But in Carlisle, the panorama and struggles continue, oblivious to the gliding phantoms that linger on the outskirts of reality. The dichotomy is rich with possibilities, but the work cannot fully engage in the potential of choreographic ideas, musical awareness, and narrative ambiguity. There just isn't time.

At the end there is a fusion of the forces as though somehow the musical penetration has created an equilibrium where everything is resolved. There are brilliant uses of silence as a presence, electronics by Jenny Seastone Stern, and the rich tapestry of Katie Workum's imagination. We are coaxed into believing that the bizarre is routine, and that after all, in a Pirandellian twist, this is just a show.

Enough to Bloggle the Mind

2008-10-07T20:16:00.006-04:00

I am in the throes of the many-blogger mania, a condition that emerges when you try to be many different selves on a mission to engage language and image in pursuit of insight and the creation of something from nothing. I am exploring the Internet and Identity, Arts Collaboration, Musicing and the Web, and Internet2, to name just a few. I guess I feel I am here on borrowed time, and I need to do more than I have in the past to prove my existence. I Blog. Therefore I exist.

It would be fine if it were just Blogging, but now Blogs are multimedia, so I find myself playing with images. Playing is the operative word. Processing the images with filters and effects just to see how such alterations alter our experience. What is happening? Are we turning into media?

This video of a simple pizza party of International Students, who gathered for a workshop to create a multimedia production, has been hyped by media effects. It is an editing of moments in time, an altering of reality, creating a different way of remembering and appropriating the past. The music is by Gwan Ying Wu, once an international student, who rose to fame as a concert pianist, recording star, and television personality. In many ways this view of the past becomes the past remembered because of the countless iterations that advance the past as part of the present.