Yakitori Taisho & St. Marks Place

Walking in NYC's Greenwich Village from west to east on 8th street, you pass into the east village as you cross Broadway. You enter a kind of no-man's land called Astor Place with Cooper Union, street vendors and musicians and a curious cube near the subway. As you continue east you enter the twilight zone, a stretch of 8th street so bizaare that it is given a different name: St. Marks Place (named for St. Marks-in-the-Bowery, two blocks north).

The moment you enter St. Marks Place you sense a different vibe. It has been that way for decades, even though the vibes have changed as times have changed. There is enormous energy that infuses you, a heightened awareness as though you somehow were on some substance that once and always flows freely everywhere. But you don't have to be high to experience high. You are sped along a vivid sensitivity just by the surge of people who have keen perception and a zest for living in the moment.

Yakitori Taisho is not exactly a restaurant...it is more like a happening that is spilling over into available crevices and spaces along St. Marks Place. Inside, the chefs are spirited and appear to be having the time of their life. Yakitori seems to be like tempura exploded inside out with every conceivable way of preparing a vast array of vegetables, meat, and creatures from the sea on skewars, in pancakes, and free form assemblages that exist like new edible art forms.

But while the food is the excuse for going to this establishment...the real attraction is the people. People start to arrive early, waiting outside for an available table, sometimes for hours, despite the expansion of Taisho into several spaces. And why not? You could be in the middle of a scene from a new novel...a new F. Scott Fitzgerald or a John Updike capturing a new time and a new culture, or a new movie from Tarantino, who might have already invented such a place in a script written and forgotten long ago. Overnight these blocks have quickly adopted a brash Japanese style, and the absorption of the west by the east is now re-introduced like a cultural isotope slowly dwindling in half-life stages as it morphs into yet something else new and different. The catalyst is the people, the individuals whose energies and dispositions clash in a fusion of hiphop, rock, jazz, heavy metal, and folk genres.

Wildly cataclysmic...

An American in Topeka

As I moved into middle school, my interests seemed to shift more toward journalism. I had abandoned my musical development and composition, stopping my improvisation activities for about three years. I had always had a romance with the fifth estate, starting a neighborhood paper when I was about nine, and then a newspaper for my scout troop, and then a homeroom newspaper in junior high school known as the 205 Home Rumor. This newspaper created such a scandal that the school was disrupted by students at homeroom period massing around room 205 trying to get the latest copy. This reached crisis proportions in that the homeroom paper was in greater demand than the official newpaper of the school.

The faculty sponsor threatened to resign unless I agreed to stop publishing the Home Rumor and serve as editor of school paper. This added to my background as a journalist, which I continued to develop through high school. It was quite an education. We would collect and write the news, type and edit the copy, and deliver the edition to a town about twenty minutes away where a printer specialized in school papers.

There was to be a journalism convention in Topeka Kansas, and my faculty sponsor made arrangements for us to attend over the Thanksgiving weekend, leaving Friday by train and returning Monday. At the last minute, a family emergency made it impossible for the faculty spnsor to attend, and so I struck out for Topeka alone.

The train ride was magical. The rhythm of the wheels against the tracks was intoxicating, and as a fifteen year old journalist, I was living a Gershwin fantasy in real life. Fascinating rhythm!

The conference was terrific, and I was dazzled by the lights of the "big city." On Sunday I went to a film that had opened that weekend called An American in Paris, and suddenly my life was changed. I drifted out of the movie house in a haze, dazzled by the flim and the lights of Topeka. Returning to the hotel, I strolled to the elevator, and once in, I impulsively pushed the button for the Penthouse.

The elevator door opened on a darkened deserted ballroom. Across the floor was an opened grand piano silhouetted against the lights of the city. I hadn't touched a piano for more than three years, but I took my place at the keyboard and began to play. I improvised throughout the night, recreating the music of the film and then delving into new ideas and new regions of sounds I had never known before. I played for hours, fueled by Gershwin, the film, Gene Kelly, Oscar Levant, the city lights and my fantasies.

Although I continued to pursue journalism, music resumed as the major driving force in my life, and I felt as though I had discovered my true identity...at last in touch with a part of me that had been in denial... an American in Topeka launched on a new trajectory...

Chasing Reflections in the Window

He sat at a counter in a coffee shop. He was in a hurry, and focused on trying to cool the liquid in the cup so he could drink it. He sipped slowly at the surface of the coffee and as he did he noticed an image in the shimmer of the coffee reflected from the plate glass window next to his seat. He turned to look at the reflection in the window...

She was ravishingly beautiful with long, black, flowing hair framing a pale, expressive face, finely shaped eyebrows arching over dark blue eyes...a wistful look, almost on the verge of a smile. He could take in this detail without embarrassment because these facets were captured by the image reflected in the window...

As long as he focused on the reflection he could see her every expression in rich detail, and he marvelled that the mind could separate the layers of visual stimulation so successfully. If he relaxed his focus, her image fused with the surroundings outside the window, people walking by, cars parked a long the curb, and traffic pulsing along the street. It was like two totally different dimensions, two worlds alien to each other existing side by side.

Actually three worlds. He turned to steal a direct glance at her beauty. He could catch the edge of her profile. He could see her better in the reflection. She had ordered coffee and was waiting for it to cool as she added some milk. She started to turn toward him.

He quickly averted his gaze and focused on sipping his coffee. The coffee shop was crowded, and though you could hear the buzz of conversations, it seemed strangely quiet. He glanced at her reflection and marvelled at her presence. She had a regal essence that seemed sharply etched in the glass. He savored the charisma of her aura in the window.

Too soon, she arose to go, and when he finally turned to see her for a final glimpse, she was gone.

He paid his bill and ran out of the shop. The street was crowded and busy. He looked up and down the street, and suddenly found her flowing black hair and black coat in a large mirror outside a barbershop. He ran toward her reflection, but she had vanished.

He walked through the streets seeking some echo of her, hopeful and inspired. He felt certain she might appear if he kept searching,

the identities of jack, jerome and oscar

even before there was the possibity of assuming different identities on the internet, i recognized the freedom released if we might be more than one person...

what makes identity? are we what we do?

once i met a very insightful woman who was entering her fifth decade. somehow in her twenties she had made up her mind to change her profession every ten years. at the time, i was mystified by her courage and determination. it also seemed a remarkable way to think of one's self... not anchored by some decision early in life, but free to pursue new treasures through new pathways. at the time i met her, she was launching a new career as a film director, having been a teacher in the previous decade, and a writer before that. i think career choices touch on issues of identity, but i have always thought that identity was something more than what we do.

the woman was engaged in a linear transformation every decade, a new journey following an earlier engagement. and somehow i sensed that she did not regard these adventures as new identities but rather a deepening of the spirit through a wide range of exploration and achievement.

i am somehow refreshed by the thought that our lives can be more flexible and spontaneous by allowing ourselves to be more than what we may choose for a career... to understand that we can carry on many pursuits without surrendering the integrity of our humanity or betraying some notion of a value system that comfortably tucks us away in the pigeon holes we dig for ourselves.

not too long ago, i knew someone who was not only himself as jack, but also existed as jerome and oscar. the individuals in this trio had distinctive personalities, unique handwriting, and differing perspectives on life. they each loved the same girl and competed for her affection through letters and poems. she was very flattered by the attention, and wondered why she never had the chance to meet these suitors who seemed to know so much about her and celebrated her virtues through daily letters and notes left for her in curious places. far from being schizoidal, this was a playful vignette that unfolded as daily adventures and intrigue.

that was at a time when the world was more naive and innocent. now we live in a world full of menace and peril... many individuals are in the business of stealing identities... and fraud lurks as a lingering possibility in almost every encounter...

yet each of us may have multiple layers of existence stretching back to the beginning of the cosmos, many identities reflecting the infinity of being... expressed in the moment of becoming whoever we are or really may be in the next instant...

Gregory Haimovsky's Dream

Anyone who has heard Gregory Haimovsky in piano performamce knows that he is a brilliant colorist who extracts an infinite array of dynamic nuances and tone colors. He is a poet at the piano, an exactimg artist and original interpreter intent on exploring new regions of expression. His performances inspire wonder, delight, and a passionate commitment to the poetry of musical expression.

He has not had an easy life. Once a respected music critic in Moscow and on the verge of being awarded a doctorate in music, as well as enjoying an outstanding career as a performing artist, Haimovsky was inexplicably and suddenly a victim of political exile in Siberia. His career was interrupted for 16 years, and yet in spite of this travesty, he has managed to transcend this adversity emerging with a new career as a performer and mentor of young artists. During his exile, he continued to nurture the artistic sensibility that flourished in an inner world of vision and determination.

Haimovsky has now translated this artistry to literature with the publication of his book of prose poetry White Buffalo, the title inspired by Irving Stone's The Passionate Journey. The white buffalo appeared between two warring tribes and was accidentally killed by the arrows meant for the warriors. Stunned by the miracle of his appearance, both tribes lay down their arms and shared in a ceremony of sacrifice that united the tribes as one. At daylight, his white skin disappeared in the mist of morning: the white buffalo existed only as a DREAM.

Haimovsky sent this book to me some time ago, but I set it aside, sensing that there would be an appropriate time to enter this special world. There is an "Afterward" by Marissa Silverman, once mentored by Haimovsky, who charts a course through the Dream and the fantasies that fuel the energy of White Buffalo. She brings the perspective of a participant who is inextricably involved and thus able to share personal insights into the fantasies while maintaining a degree of scholarly distance.

It is a distinctive volume, slim, but intense and richly packed with the essence that underlies beauty and greatness in art: the Dream. Dream is the driving force that inspires the tales and fables that are written as musical structures, words forming the tones, the harmonies, the rhythms and structures that inhabit the pages. Music is always sounding on every page, and the creators and appreciators are celebrated as an ongoing presence and manifestation of the Dream force.

Haimovsky takes us through a journey powered by the Dream and achieves a different kind of work of endless invention and variation. He continues to be a master of nuance.

Songs, either screaming at night seeing love or fighting for their lives, whether breaking into bloom or drooping down in the season's flowers and grasses; whether leaves springing up on the branches of trees to later pave the soil: all this, apart from our will, intrude into us, affects us, and reverberates inside us sending back reflections. Our bond with every living thing in this world is totally mysterious. It waits intently for us, every moment spotting us, following each emergence and exodus.

We encounter a new performance of the Dream populated by greatness from the past and creatures of a rich fantasia where the anatomy of genius and excellence is explored with genuine affection, imagination, and inspiration.

Dear John: "Goodbye to All That"

A couple of years ago in Bucharest, I heard an extraordinary premiere of an orchestral work that included prepared piano, and voice. The work was performed by the symphony orchestra of the Bucharest University of music, a stellar conservatory with outstanding performers.

The work was entitled Dear John by New York composer Tom Beyer, and it was a poignant letter of love and farewell to the composer John Cage whose musical experiments stretched our perceptions of music for at least four decades. His pieces for prepared piano were among the classics of 20th century repertoire and opened our ears to extract the extraordinary from those practices in music that had become more or less routine. John Cage challenged our assmptions about music and provided a strong alternative voice to the twelve tone serialists that dominated academia.

I remember the first time I heard John Cage was at a concert in the late 1950s in Texas where he performed with David Tudor, pianist and composer, playing music involving indeterminancy and aleatory. The audience was made up of somewhat conservative students and faculty who had piled into the auditorium to see this cuiosity who had already become something of a legend.

As the music began to unfold, the audience was clearly not sympathetic, a number left in noisy disgust, and the trumpet instructor ran back to the music studios and returned with his trumpet to play Irving Berlin's Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better, in the midst of Cage's masterwork. The theory/composition instructor was more open, and after the concert she went on stage to look at the scores, remarking that "either this is very profound, or we've all been had."

Such was the impact of Cage, who was more deeply appreciated and revered in Europe than in his own country. However, his later association with Merce Cunningham brought a new aura of respectability and credibility to Cage, and eventually he had become an institution around the world.

The piece premiered in Bucharest, Dear John, incorporated two important features used by Cage in the past: prepared piano, and vocalise sung into the piano soundboard and strings which would create resonance on selected notes according to specific depressed keys on the keyboard or while holding down the sustain pedal. The composer of the piece, Tom Beyer, prepared the piano and performed at the keyboard, while Christine Ghezzo, the ethnic singer, perfomed improvised vocals into the piano.

Dear John was a haunting work that had the air of an elegy, having for me a similar expressive effect as Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings. The prepared piano, couched in the string sonorities, had an almost archaic quality, sounds breaking apart and falling into the past in shattered fragments. The voice followed a melancholy path, a beautiful utterance, lyrical, sustained, and faintly echoed in the strings and soundboard of the piano. There was a deep yearning and sense of remembrance that gave special meaning to the moment. It seemed to say to John Cage "John, we loved you deeply. We thank you for opening us up to new sensibilities and possibilities. But now that time is past. It's time to say 'goodbye to all that.'" The double meaning of Dear John became apparent as the work sounded in time, coming to a joyful, regretful and reluctant, quiet closing.

An Aborted Adventure Fulfilled

Slipping back into that ubiquitous past, I see this booming oil town in the 1930s with cars and horses, and wild eyed buckeroos who came to this tiny burgh in north Texas looking for a stake to a fortune. The town was snuggled in among the breaks of the caprock that characterized this panhandle area. This caprock is a vast elevated landscape that once may have been part of the rocky mountains until a glacier of a distant ice age sliced off the mountains and left a vast flat area of plains stretching north to the Canadian border and ending just south of Amarillo, Texas.

Somehow I was born in that town where the sky was filled with smoke from freshly drilled burning wells not yet flamed out, with black geysers popping off many times during the day. We were at the beginning of our romance with oil, an affair that now has become somewhat jaded and perverse. But then oil was king. Oil was liquid gold, and people rushed to it for the promise that anyone with the right divination might become a millionaire overnight. Striking oil was a kind of cataclysmic orgasm, hot, turgid, and explosive, an event to be celebrated... bubbly, overflowing, black champagne.

My first years were full and eventful, and I still remember vividly lying on my father's lap and looking up into his blue eyes. I also began to crawl and walk somewhat precociously, and thus was a constant problem fo my parents, particularly for my mother and my sister. My sister was almost ten years older than I, and I had invaded her space. Months passed and soon I was upright and ready for adventure.

My space existed as a backyard of a building where we rented an apartment. By the side of the building was a gate, and beyond the gate lay the world which seemed to call to me as seductively as any of the sirens in Homer's Odyssey. On one hot summer day, as I played alone in the yard, I discovered the gate was open, and in an instant I was off to see the world.

The story my father tells is that he learned of my adventure from the state highway troopers. My sister and mother never have spoken of this episode as far as I know, although they have heard my father's version many times.

According to him, the troopers, after some considerable trouble and inquiry, finally determined that I belonged to my father who worked at the local electric power and light company.

On that summer afternoon near the end of the workday, two troopers brought me into my Dad's office.

"You better keep an eye on your son..." they warned.

"Where on earth did you find him?" my father asked increduously. He hadn't known until that moment that I had been missing. My mother and sister had been scouring the neighborhood looking for me and hadn't yet reported it to the police.

"He was walking east along the highway outside of town in his barefeet."

"Yeah," said the other trooper, "and we asked him where he was headed..."

"...and...?" my father looked at me and the troopers.

"Well, he said he was going to New York City! Like I said, you better keep this tyke on a tight leash..."

So it is on record that at the age of three I was determined to get to New York. Now in those days of no television, no access to movies, and little interest in radio (for me), how did I ever get the notion of New York City in my head? My Dad insisted that no one in the family ever mentioned New York, but it was clear at that time that I knew that was where I wanted to be. That energy and vision persisted throughout my youth in Texas, and when I finally made it to New York, I felt like I had returned to a familiar place, a home I had always inhabited in my heart and mind.

Sound in Space: François Bayle

Recently in the Frederick Loewe Theatre in NYC Greenwich Village, the eminent composer and pioneer of electroacoustic music, François Bayle, brought his sounds all the way from Paris and from the distant and recent past to open our ears to the full spatial dimension of the soundscape. All too often we experience music in a concert hall from a full frontal exposure, the music coming at us from a stage with a kind of left/center/right orientation. Now with the iPods we are strangely inside the music in multidimensional space, and with DVDs and movie theatres using surround sound, music in space has become a standard that may eventually alter the concert hall and music CDs.

We owe our greater awareness of musical space to the pioneers like Bayle who became almost obsessed with the possibilities of music, of sound moving through space as a component of music as important as the more conventional features such as harmony, texture, rhythm and melody. The spatial component was always essential for composers of music concrète founded by Pierre Schaefer, a mentor of Bayle. Music concrète has blossomed into acousmatic, electroacoustic, and the more popular, ambient, genres. All use environemntal and sampled sounds as the substance for sculpting the soundscore.

In the late 60s, Bayle experiented with sound in space and came up with many configurations over the years, including an 80 speaker orchestra of loudspeakers he named "The Acousmonium." The speakers were of varying sizes and were placed across the stage at different heights and distances. Bayle offers "It puts you inside the sound. It's like the interior of a sound universe."

His concert at Loewe Theatre was a celebration of Sound in Space. Using nine speakers, he enveloped the audience of that intimate space in a canopy of sound that was sensitively shaped through space. Although one might surmicse that the best place to hear the music is in the center of the audience, I moved to several different seats and each location proved to serve up a different relationship to the sound, but equally satisfying.

The range of expression was astonishing. For me it was a new romanticism for a new age in which technology serves to enhance human emotions, feelings and perspectives such as surprise, anticipation, humor, curiosity, pandemonium, serenity, and calmness---to name a few. One could also argue that these are merely sounds organized for our amusement or entertainment, but there was a sensitivity and intelligence behind every gesture of sound, every spatial journey, that suggested a deeper purpose.

Even the selection of works presented seemed very carefully planned as though to shape an evening of pleasurable and challenging immersion into the purity of sound in space.

Recreating Nijinsky

A few months ago, I saw a work in progress, where Tina Curran was recreating the work of Nijinsky's L'apres midi d' un faune based on Mallarmé's poem which inspired Debussy's tone poem. Pavlovich Diaghilev helped launch this new "collaboration" when he produced Nijinsky's remarkable first ballet inspired by the Mallarmé and Debussy works.

In the printed program, Curran is described as a "stager" which somehow falls short of her actual contribution to the evening. The staging of great dance repertoire is now possible through the miracle of Labanotation, a system of recording movement down to the smallest detail. A stager acts as a choreographer, an emissary of the original creator/choreographer, who carefully and faithfully shapes the movement in the muscles, limbs, and minds of the dancers. Rehearsals are a discovery process in which the work of the past gradually comes into view, and the stager must constantly check the actual movement of each dancer against the template of virtual movement that exists in the dance "score."

Some have likened this to the role of a music conductor who rehearses a Beethoven symphony by guiding the musicians through a realization of the score that brings the symbols on the page into being, a sound in time that presences the world of the composer. But the conductor has the latitude of personal interpretation, and such license enables us to gain new insights into the nature of the work through the endless variations of perceptions that breathe new life into works of the past. But the stager is not permitted a personal interpretation, but rather serves as a medium to translate the original movements of the choreographer into the emerging moment and gauge the accuracy and faithfulness of the results while attempting to recreate the spirit of the past as a context to understand the movements.

This is an exacting task, and despite all efforts to remain faithful to the original conception, it is virtually impossible to decipher intentionality behind the movement. In addition, there is a variable that makes each staging absolutely unique even though the movement may be identical between different stagings. This came through in the performances of the work as staged by Ms. Curran February 24-26, and produced by the Princeton University Dance Department in the Berlind Theatre at the McCarter Center. Two different casts were used for the leads over the four performances. Even though the movement was faithfully reproduced by each individual, the identity of the dancer left an indelible imprint on the work, making the performances quite different. Despite the attempt to somehow erase a personal interpretation of a work, the very presence of the individual dancers underlies every movement.

I regard this as a strength, and as dance accrues a history of performance practice of recreating masterworks of the past, perhaps a deeper insight will emerge and the role of the "stager" will be recognized as one who is creating a new moment in time, revisiting the work with fresh insight in the context of remaining faithful to the score.

Lorin Hollander and a Magical Moment in Time

Once, long ago, an international symposium was held that brought musicians, therapists, educators, composers, and psychologists together for the first time to explore music therapy and its emerging mission in the world. The spiritual force behind this symposium was Barbara Hesser, a pioneer in music therapy, who has deep insights into the chemistry of bringing people together who somehow share her quest for creating meaning through profound interaction in improvising music together or through meditation, or through sharing thoughts through inspired discussions and exchanges.

She has over the years created summer retreats in Phoenicia at a place on Panther Mountain where musicians, practitioners, and people pursuing a body of work came together for renewal and inspiration. My first experience with this group was when we came together in a sanctuary in the mountains and without a word, after a period of silent communion, began to improvise over the course of several hours, vocally, instrumentally, moving from instrument to instrument. As we got to know each other musically, our awareness deepened, setting the stage for some profound exchanges during the rest of the week.

At the conference were a number of luminaries, and one in particular was Lorin Hollander, a brilliant concert pianist and former child prodigy who at one point in his career redirected his energies to search deep within himself. Now Lorin Hollander's musicality and spirituality are inextricably linked, and his music connects with the world. Hollander's interests and commitments take him continually to new regions of experience which he shares at many levels through many venues.

At this particular symposium, the full group split into working groups to explore the state of music therapy and to make recommendations that would affect the profession and the public. The culmination of the Symposium was to be a press conference and Lorin Hollander agreed to a brief performance as part of the activities of the day. It was a day of excitement and high energy, with the promise of excellent and challenging outcomes from the interdisciplinary deliberations that had taken place over the week.

After the announcements and discussion, Lorin Hollander took his place at the piano and explained that he wanted to play the first movement of the Schubert Posthumous Sonata in B-Flat. As he took command of the piano and adjusted his seat, he tested the pedal. There was a squeak that came from the pedal, a slow, almost rhythmical sound as he pressed the sustain pedal. He tried the pedal a few times and the sound persisted. Instead of being annoyed, he looked at the audience and remarked "Oh, well...we'll just pretend we are on a cruise..."

After a silence, he began playing the first movement. He was fully engrossed in the music and I was struck by the sense of quiet celebration punctuated by mysterious, ominous interruptions in the lower register from time to time. His performance emerged as a journey, a personal reflection that took us with him through an extraordinary perception and realization of the work. He had somehow managed to transcend the piano's limitations and find the voice and spirit of Schubert as an ally. Schubert's genius flowed through the room, an inexhaustible imagination of musical ideas imbued with feeling and emotion.

As the first movement came to an end, Hollander paused and then began the second movement, even though he had intended to limit his performance to the single movement. Even now I can hear that silent pause and the opening figures of the second movement. As fine and inspired as the first movement was, Hollander's performance entered a new realm, a spiritual sensibility pervaded the room, an ineffable eloquence unlike anything I have ever experienced, sad and joyful, full of regret and hope, resigned and invincible. The journey had become a spiritual quest, a presencing of the human spirit that encompassed the room and united everyone in the moment. The first movement's ominous interruptions in the bass had been transformed into an underlying and reassuring presence. When the closing passages echoed and encapsulated the beauty and expressive power of the entire work, a fading musical farewell reverberated into silence so slowly that the sound seemed to linger and echo in the room even though it was absolutely silent.

No one moved. There was no applause. Everyone, including Lorin Hollander, was captured in that moment, that magical moment in time, when silent awe was the only appropriate response to an experience that transcended time and left us suspended in the ecstasy of a fulfilled inspiration. That was long ago, but that performance still resonates in the silence of my memory as vividly now as it did at that symposium in that remote and distant past.

My Clean Well-lighted Place

All my life I have searched for the clean, well-lighted place that Hemingway describes. For years, I wandered from coffee houses to bars, to hangouts where I could write my poetry. I was on a quest to find that special place that resonated with creative energy and order.

It was such a simple idea, yet one that drove me in search of the perfect place that would serve to coax me beyond myself into some magical realm of understanding and creativity. For Hemingway's old man, this place was a refuge from the relentless invasion of nothingness (Nada).

"We are of two different kinds," the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. "It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the cafe."
"Hombre, there are bodegas open all night long."
"You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant cafe. It is well lighted. The light is very good and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves."
"Good night," said the younger waiter.
"Good night," the other said. Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with himself. It is the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and light. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order.

I searched for this place long before I read the Hemingway's "A Clean Well-lighted Place," his 1933 masterpiece written with such eloquence and economy. For me, the beast of Nada loomed large and menacingly. My feverish outpourings of poetry and music (it was all poetry) were an attempt to ward off the Nada that clutches at the very crux of our being.

Now, at this very hour I struggle to attain this clean. well-lighted place, but I am overwhelmed by the Nada. My place is cluttered with the unresolved fears and silences that could not be deciphered. There are piles of pages and trash, stuff that has no reality except in the nothingness of my illusions. For Hemingway's old man, Nada was the only reality, the only true destiny for each of us.

Yet, I hear the whisper of a different sensibility. There is an echo from the distant mountains that pierces my soul and illuminates a new terrain. Ultimately there is only one place I will find this clean, well-lighted place: in the union of reality and being deep within the recesses of myself. Yet the pathway is covered and clandestine. If only I could find my way through the dark maze of corridors to the shining presence of that space.

The Appreciator

I have enjoyed deep encounters with the many worlds of many artists, and it is my appreciation of these discoveries that has created the world that I now inhabit.

Although I have a deep commitment to my own artistic expression, to the disclosure of new works drawn from the empty silence of nothingness, my soul and spirit is renewed and restored through the journeys of fellow travelers, of others who share a passion and commitment to birthing new works.

There is greatness to be recognized and acknowledged even in the most modest moments of artistic expression. Experiencing this newness provides an avenue to perceiving and enjoying the unique. Uniqueness rises above all other values of existence, a kind of artistic DNA that invites me to the soliloquy of a personal vision, to the celebration of life that replicates itself in endless variation, without identical repetition. Technically, we have achieved the possibility of exact copies, of precise clones. But such multiplications of an original make matchless masterpieces even greater treasures.

But now what constitutes originality flows from how a work exists, and its beingness now moves toward existence as idea more than as object. It is now too easy to replicate originals, and in the digital world there is virtually no physical distinction between originals and copies other than the stamp of Time itself.

But as I enter the presence of the journeys of fellow travelers and the rubrics of their imagination, I suspend the judgment of Time and submit to the authentic moment, seeking to penetrate the reality of a genuine utterance. Such adventures have taken me through distant reckonings and nearby narratives, to expressions that often lead me to undiscovered continents and remote realms of imagination and innovation. Such recognition contains a whispered word of encouragement, of the anticipation of a deeper and more provocative journey.

There is no music when played only to emptiness---that does not lodge within the ears and soul of someone listening. I stand in awe as a fervent and ardent Appreciator, a stance that completes the circle of expression and avoids the castrophe of artistic expression drowning in a Blackhole of works unknowable, unobserved, unheard, and unrequited.

A Constant Awareness

Listening to some inner source, worlds come forward that were once forgotten. Other worlds come from a world of not yet known---rising from the mists of consciousness, defying the analysis of brain scans and cognitive research. Defying the claims of those who suggest their inquiries into the "feeling of what happens," explain the mysteries of a very private state of being, my own awareness weaves a curious path through whatever realities may border on and intersect with an objective world that may or may not exist.

Even if we may discover some chemistry that inexplicably produces awareness in the form of consciousness, there is a distinction to be made between consciousness and awareness. Yet, for the most part cognitive "scientists" seem to avoid awareness as a condition of being that may be different from consciousness. Instead we have many "levels" of consciousness, some articulated and others implied. At first we are drawn to these arguments that somehow link the chemistry of the brain to our awareness of being. But the more we read, the more we become aware that we are in the presence of modern day shamans whose talismans and amulets are convoluted semantic incantations that are not actually in touch with "reality"--- but rather argue existence from the perspective of objective reality, an objectivism that has no room for spiritual perception or experience.

Though much has been made of the claims of Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens, there are critics who suggest that his current theory may be at a dead end and perhaps should be abandoned. For myself, I have always regarded the title of his work more provocative than his actual attempt to explain consciousness in terms of individuals whose brains have been impaired. I am sympathetic to Damasio's analysis within the limits of his practice. We may have inched forward to some understanding of the brain, but current boundaries of scientific inquiry seem oblivious to domains hidden in the mysteries of the mind.

At the root of my existence is my awareness of being, which may yield a deeper explanation of my experience than core consciousness and extended consciousness, even though it is somewhat at odds with the rhetoric of current day studies of cognition.

Door at the Bottom of The Basement Stairs

When I was still quite young, we moved from a tiny oil boom town to a rented brick house in a nearby city. It was an old house in an aging neighborhood near the edge of town. What lingers in my mind to this day is the mystery of that old brick house. It is so vivid that it seems more like a memory than a dream. It seems as though this really happened and was not just the imagination of an impressionable boy. The street was an old tree-lined street of a once wealthy community which had been abandoned to the likes of us as we immigrated to this place from the busted dreams of an oil boom town. Essentially, we were riff-raff. Our street ran east and west. To the east, the downtown area was about five or six miles away, maybe further. To the west, the street curled toward the north and ran down hill, encompassing a vast vacant lot and coming to an end where it intersected with a street that ran north and south. On the corner was a secluded mansion hidden by trees, the last affluent occupant holed up as though making a last stand to retain the past that once was so splendid. The north/south street was the edge of the city. Beyond that street were ravines and rolling hills, unusual terrain for the flat plains of the caprock. Our brick house was very old with a detached garage toward the backyard. Our neighbors to the west lived in an old stucco house with a detached double garage. Our house had a basement, which was somewhat of an unusual feature. The stairs descended into blackness, and there were constant sounds coming from that darkness as though the house were alive. As you descended down the stairs you would enter the basement at the bottom of the stairs, but there was a mysterious, locked door on the right. My Dad warned me that I was to never open that door---no matter what. Of course this command seemed something of a challenge. I was often left alone in the house as my parents worked and my sister was much older than I and was usually out with her friends or at some afterschool function. I would sneak to the bottom of the stairs and try to open the door. It would not budge, no matter what I tried, and I was afraid to force it. I could hear mysterious voices behind the door, but when I put my ear to the door, the voices disappeared into an eerie silence. As I indicated earlier what happened later I recall like a memory although it seems impossible. One night when I was alone, with a fierce thunderstorm pouring torrents into the street, turning it into a raging stream, I crept down the stairs, perhaps to avoid the lightning and loud thunderclaps that punctuated the night sky. As I approached the door at the bottom of the stairs I reached out and touched the doorknob and turned it---the door swung open almost magically. I went inside to discover another place, a world full of light and splendor. The sun shone on a bright landscape of rolling hills, elegant and stately Chinese Elms that towered toward the sky, and lush green meadows. Clouds billowed overhead like mansions in the sky. In the distance I could hear laughter and animated conversations. I followed the sounds and soon came upon a clearing where women were laughing and playing croquet. There were also women sitting on blankets, drinking tea. Each was distinctively dressed, and their hair was impeccable. I was struck by their elegance and beauty. There were no men. I watched them for a while as they seemed to be having such fun, and then they noticed me. "Oh look, it's that little boy who has been spying on us!" "Isn't he cute? Come here, young man." I hesitated. "Don't be afraid. We won't hurt you." "Come here." The lady speaking was very compelling, but also very comforting. She seemed to be older than the others and was framed in an aura that seemed to radiate outward, disappearing into space. "We have no children here," she said. "Won't you be our little boy?" I approached her and she swept me up in a tender embrace. "I can't stay!" "But it's perfect here! Don't you see? We have no men here. We need you. Everyone adores you!" The other ladies crowded around me, murmuring agreement and assurances, reaching out to me, almost pleading. "Here, have some tea!" "What is this place?" I asked. "It doesn't matter. It's no place really." The older lady smiled, and poued the tea and motioned for me to sit. We sat on a blanket, drinking our tea. "What do you do here?" I tasted the tea. It was warm and sweet, and the smell was even more delicious than the taste. "Oh we do a great many things." she volunteered. We play our games and have great fun---and we watch." "You watch...?" "We watch, and we often visit parallel worlds in order to make things right..." "I don't understand..." "Of course you don't, but that's all right." She smiled. "We exist at the timeless intersection of many worlds and overlapping dimensions. We are the Watchers, the Knowers, and the Doers." I nodded as though I understood, and strangely, part of me did understand. "You broke into this space. I don't know how you did it, but you are here now, and I don't believe we can let you go back." "But I have to go..." "You've changed everything!" she seemed mildly upset. "Please..." the tea was making me very drowsy. "I've been gone too long." "You haven't beem gone for more than an instant. Time doesn't exist here. We exist in the zero plane of time's waveform. As long as you stay here, you will never grow older, because there is no time... you will always be our little boy!" The ladies began giggling and laughing, and I was growing more and more apprehensive. They went back to playing croquet and to conversations I didn't understand... their voices growing more and more distant. They seemed to think I was asleep, and in the confusion of the moment I slipped away, and ran as hard as I could, retracing my steps. I panicked. I couldn't find the door! I started yelling, "Dad! Dad!" Suddenly Dad's hand seemed to come from nowhere, grabing me and pulling me up. "What are you doing here in the basement in the dark? Hiding from the storm?" he scowled with a puzzled smile. "But Dad...the door..." I looked and the door was shut, impenetrable as ever. "Never mind. Better get to bed!" As I went up the stairs, I glanced back and saw him check the knob. The door was firmly shut and locked. Upstairs the storm was beginning to subside. Faint flickers of distant lightning could be seen and thunder rolled across the sky in dwindling rumblings. There are many memories of that world of watchers and knowers. These recollections have just started to return to my memory after being banished for all these years. I know there are those of you that will insist these were only dreams. But they are so vivid and seem to come not from the place where dreams reside but from the many and varied corridors of a remembered past.

Blizzard '06: Greenwich Village NYC Snowbound

Bleecker Street Snowbound


Six more weeks of winter had to happen, and here in New York City, Greenwich Village, our first snow of the extended winter is the Blizzard of '06, February 12th. Even as this is being posted, the snow is being driven by the wind so that it is falling "horizontally" swept by the wind toward the east. The snow is piling up at the rate of three inches per hour.

It is Sunday and the morning is quiet, virtually no traffic, and even the snow removal teams have not swung into action. All is quiet and peaceful. Snow is transforming our routine, every day scenes into vignettes of exquisite beauty. The bare winter trees become asymmetrical patterns, glistening and majestic. Walking through the snow, I notice that every sound is muffled by this new absorbent surface, almost as though we were suddenly plunged into an anechoic chamber. I create a footpath in the snow where no one has yet walked.

Across the street almost disappearing in the snow, some trees I seldom notice have taken on the look of Christmas trees, elegantly adorned with mantels of snow... I had never noticed how serenely magnificent these trees are in the midst of Manhattan's Greenwich Village. They decorate Bleecker Street with an eloquent presence, and I wonder if they have ignored me as much as I have failed to notice them. Now the snow bonds us in a mutual embrace of winter, almost oblivious to the raging blizzard surrounding us, enveloping us with wind and blowing drifts. Snow is beginning to drift to alarming heights, and I almost forget that I am in the safe sanctuary of the Village and imagine myself trapped in the wilderness.

Even Mayor LaGuardia has been attacked by this beastly blizzard, the snow swallowing his head and upper torso past his shoulders. His clapping hands, always still, now are rendered ingloriously mute in handcuffs of snow. His vigorous pace has been captured by a snowdrift, and I wonder as I watch the falling snow if he will be engulfed altogether.

We have been waiting for winter and it has arrived with an aura of splendor and majesty. The Village has become a fantasy, a fable of a wintry Sunday afternoon. Looking over by NYU's Bobst Library three SUVs become a polar bear family: Papa Bear, Moma Bear, and Baby Bear. It is almost the opposite of looking at billowing clouds on a summer afternoon where one can find castles and kingdoms in the sky. Now a wintry blast carves new visions of fantastic and whimsical illusions, of snow-covered flights of imagination.