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.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
Song of Winter Solstice
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.
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Darkness in December
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.
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.
Saturday, September 04, 2010
A Meeting At Noon
"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.
"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.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Endings and Forever
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.
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.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
August and the Death of Summer
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:
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.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Destinies in the End of August
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Out of Sync
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
IMPACT 2010: Rhythm Of Chaos Explores New Terrain
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
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.
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,
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.
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