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.

Crossing the Interior Frontier

As I come upon blogs, I discover that some have entered into a profound process of self discovery. This becomes evident if you trace the evolution of their writing, at first very self-conscious, then growing into a reflective awareness, and finally entering a stage that is intensely challenging because consciousness has come upon a new interior domain, strange and foreign, crossing a frontier beyond discovery of identity, a terrain where the blog is creating identity, defining existence as experience in perpetual and dynamic disclosure.

Crossing this interior frontier is exciting and terrifying. Exciting, because we feel a renewed energy and see the world through new eyes, and hear the world with fresh ears. Terrifying because each new step maps uncharted territory. Moving through this new landscape of ourselves, we are a light entering the darkness, illuminating a new sense of ourselves and the world. Creating ourselves becomes a journey of extinguishing the darkness, of knowing with conviction that existence is not a static perfection, but a dynamic and chaotic presencing that now echoes back upon ourselves, the world, and those around us. We discover we are not as concerned with who we were and who we are but rather are vigorously engaged in the process of Becoming.

Becoming involves the deepening awareness of how we are connected in the world and with each other. Paradoxically, crossing the interior frontier actually does not remove us from the world. Instead, we find the deep connections to others and the boundaries of inner and outer worlds dissolve. Maybe there is something in this digital process that serves as a catalyst to this discovery and awareness of being. Maybe the act of creating ourselves from the nothingness of now and expressing it in published form so that it now exists apart from us so that we can experience it as a substantive presence, accelerates the pace of our journey, of our Becoming.

Where Are The Songs?

I am a composer who has enjoyed the adventure of discovering new sounds and new structures. This has been true for most of my life, but as I grew older I moved away from the more traditional forms of so-called classical music and pursued what some might think of as experimental sounds, but continued to be based in an emotional, expressive context. Sound in time has been an exploration of feeling, texture and sonority.

From the early days of my music making, my endless improvisations at the piano, I realize that those were my musical "blogs" ---although the concept of blogs was still decades away. These musical outpourings were personal statements that helped shape and define me in an ongoing encounter. At times they would take the forms of "shows"---crystallized with book, lyrics, and music, a more public part of my "musicing."

But there was also a secret part of me that wrote songs. These were very private and I have not really shared them to any great extent. These are songs that are music from the heart, a celebration of love and feeling. The existence of these songs has been tenuous, mostly in my mind, some notated, a number of them lost, and still others forgotten.

I have been attempting to resurrect them into some tangible form, but there are a number of problems from a technical perspective. Some are stuck in a computer without the appropriate software to leap from binary code to be deciphered as music and text. Some are stuck in my head, fragments that need to be reborn and reassembled.

Many of these were my most personal and passionate musical expressions, but now they seem elusive, abandoned through neglect. Now I wonder. Where are the songs?

Living With Passion

Berlioz composed Symphony Fantastique as a young man deliriously in love. His loves never went smoothly, and the symphony reflected his fixation on his beloved (idee fixe) that is transformed so that she even becomes a witch in the Witches Sabbath movement who watches him lose his head at the guillotine, much to the acclaim of the crowd.

Later, in his eighties, he returns to the scene where he first fell in love with the love of his life and is so overcome with the passions of his youth that he flings his arms around the tree under which he first met her, and weeps uncontrollably. In his 80s Berlioz lived and felt intensely.

Nineteenth century artists possessed the gift of profound and passionate commitment. Passion was a way of knowing the world that penetrated facades and resonated in the depth of one's being. That may be why music was so revered by philosophers and artists of the nineteenth century: passion was somehow more genuine than intellectual discourse. Truth was revealed through passion, while the intellect would often practice deception. Contrary to popular misconceptions, passion is not blind. Passion is visionary, with a gaze that penetrates the polite and disengaged, disingenuous individuals often serve to block inspiration and action.

This intensity was an attempt to bridge the divide that was created by philosophy and science in the latter part of the eighteenth and beginnings of the nineteenth centuries. Scientific values and method demanded the deliberate divorce of feeling and reason, a state that Geoffrey Clive describes as the demonic in his book The Romantic Enlightenment.

Later, this became the a value of the twentieth century Western world and served as the foundation of all education. Thus we have been schooled to be "objective" because feelings are too subjective and personal to enter into decisions and plans for action. Yet, before this division of the human spirit, individuals were governed by a balance of mind and emotion that might have served our society well and prevented the hideous destruction of our fellow human beings during the wars of the twentieth century.

There is some evidence that passion is returning to inform our values. Our passionate engagement with the world brings us a new energy and a deep appreciation for our unique identity that shapes our sensibility and discloses truth as the ever evolving embrace of time and being and place.

Groundhog Day

Today has taken on more significance for me than it should. February 2nd has become more than just a predictor of the future of winter, it has become a day of reflection and celebration, making a cameo appearance in the midst of the Chinese New Year. I realize that the film Groundhog Day has contributed to the weight of this day since that film depicts a cynical weatherman doomed to repeat this day over and over until he finally gets it right.

Groundhog Day was perhaps Bill Murray's finest film. It is a film that endures, despite many showings. Today, it seemed to emerge as a celebration that has hardly been foremost in the American Psyche of the past, as Showtime appeared to be showing it continuously throughout the day.

But for me, the added significance has been my memory of the first book I ever read: Pete, the Prairie Dog, a creature that looked surprisingly like Punxsutawney Phil. Today at around 7:30 a.m., Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his burrow and saw his shadow: six more weeks of winter! Pete, the Prairie Dog, was not a predictor of seasons, but he lived by the seasons on the prairies of the Midwest and encountered numerous threats to his survival. He had an indomitable spirit made you feel good about yourself somehow. If Pete coud do it, so could you.

Six more weeks of winter? In most of the Northeast, we have been waiting for winter to show up. Maybe the real winter is just around the corner. Even so, it has been nice to burrow in and look back on who I have become since I first encountered Pete the Prairie Dog, wondering if there will ever come a time when I finally get it right.

Baseball and Dancing: The Parades Pass Me By!

Years and years ago there was a marvelous lady in a Texas town who was a fixture and institution. She ran a dance studio that produced a yearly extravaganza seen by several thousand people. Her productions were in place of the traditional dance recitals that most dance studios do to show the development of students. But Dixie Dice was different. She was an institution, a cultural icon that transformed that Texas Town into Broadway Central at least once a year.

Every summer she would go to New York and see virtually every Broadway show, returning full of ideas for shows, borrowing a little from this and a little from that. She would write the scripts, cast the parts, and manage to involve every dance student in chorus lines, chorus scenes, and/or roles that moved the plot along.

I knew nothing of Dixie Dice when I began playing softball at the tender age of six. I went from position to position, playing third, and then finally settling in as a catcher because I had a strong and accurate arm and could throw runners out at second.

When I was about seven, a new kid joined the team. His name was Jimmy Hobbs, and Jimmy could pitch a softball so hard, it knocked me over when I first tried to catch him. Jim was strong, and I was impressed. I asked him about it.

"Dixie Dice," he said.

"What's that?" I blurted out, not sure I had heard him correctly.

"I take dance lessons with Dixie Dice."

"DANCE??!!??" I was flabbergasted. This is about the only time I have ever used that word, but it seemed to me at that moment Jimmy was possibly insane.

"Yeah, come along with me. I go every Saturday."

So I went with him to the Dixie Dice Dance Studio, and she loaned me some tap shoes. First we warmed up with exercises to make us more flexible and stronger. Then we started with flap-step routines up and down the studio, gradually increasing the tempo and adding music. Then we learned shuffle steps. I caught on fast. Dixie was impressed.

Now you should know that Dixie Dice was famous not only for her Broadway-style shows, but the local legend was that she had discovered Cyd Charisse who happened to be from our town. The legend was that Dixie Dice had taught her in ballet classes and recognized that she had star talent. All of the biographies seem to start when Cyd is about 12 or 14 and don't mention Dixie, but the legend goes so far as to claim that Dixie was responsible for getting her a start in Hollywood. It may or may not be true, but the point was that everyone in town subscribed to the local legend.

If you have never seen Cyd Charisse then you should be aware that she has been described as the most beautiful dancer ever filmed in Hollywood, and she had legs that were legends unto themselves...

My skills as a dancer over the next few years were increasing literally by leaps and bounds. Dixie's model for me was Donald O'Conner, and it was one of those "anything you can do, I can do better" fantasies that fueled my efforts, along with encouragement from Dixie Dice. If you have seen any of Donald O'Conner's tap routines, then you have an idea of what I was doing at around age ten. Of course, I am sure my fantasies must be mixing with memories to the point that I can't be too responsible, but Dixie seemed to see it and began to plot my career as a child star in Hollywood. Of course, this was the fantasy of just about every mother with a child the age of Shirley Temple. Except that Dixie wasn't my mother...or my father.

Dixie had contacts in Hollywood, and they were willing to see me. So Dixie drives to my house and meets with my parents and tells them that she is 100% certain that I could become a sensational child star. She already had some auditions line up in Hollywood.

My Dad paused and then smiled. He said, "Dixie, we love you, but there isn't a chance in hell that my son is going to Hollywood."

That was that. A promising career nipped in the bud, or should I say toe? My mother was strangely silent. I had a feeling that if it had been up to her, I might have gone.

But as for baseball, I did get a lot stronger. I became a hardball pitcher with a winning record, throwing a devasting fastball and a slider that I could aim at behind the player's back and it would break across the plate for a strike. Even threw a few no-hitters. I played softball and baseball for about nine years, but that career slipped through my fingers, so to speak.

Thinking back, it was another era, another lifetime, but I am all the richer for the fantasies that framed my younger days in a past long ago and a place that no longer exists.

Year 4073: The Year of the Dog

Happy New Year!

The human species has been measuring time long before we had sophisticated ways of marking time. Observatories like Stonehenge were erected for precise measurements of the sun's coming and going, and solstice (sun stands still) represented moments of change, significant and portentious. To be precise, the Chinese New Year is the second new moon after the winter solstice.

The Chinese have been keeping records of these measurements longer than anyone. Since the days of their first reckonings, they have charted 4072 years and now we enter 4073, the Year of the Dog. This year is a year of transition as we have been in a cycle of metal (Metal, Water, Wood, Fire and Earth), and 2006 is the turning point from Metal cycle to Water cycle. 2006 is the last year of the metal cycle. Next year is the year of the Pig and begins the water cycle.

There are fifteen days of celebration for 4073. Each day or group of days have special cultural and personal significance.

Thus culture emerges and stakes its survival on how it notes the passing of time and the coincidence of recurring cycles. The fabric of the cosmos stretches time through the endless rotations of swirling galaxies and solar systems, ("wheels within wheels" as Ezekiel claimed in his famous revelation) the universe spinning in an infinite sarabande stretching and revolving in majestic, cataclysmic gyrations beyond our comprehension, evading all atempts to measure the immeasurable reality of being.

Renewal. Time to rethink things before the next revolution. Time to get it right this time.

A Decade Later: A Remarkable Choe Sang Cheul

I remember him as an intense young Asian who was a dancer and choreographer. I remember him as a young man engaged in research, already an artist on a journey, the first man in Korea to earn a Ph.D. in dance, blazing a trail just as the subject of his research Sung-Hee Choi pioneered Korean modern dance, in spite of the Japanese Occupation. In 1946 she defected to North Korea with her husband who was a writer and lived in exile after her husband lost power in that regime. The division of Korea into two forces polarized by political ideologies is perhaps the greatest unresolved political and cultural tragedy and travesty of modern times. All of this brought to my awareness through my work with Sang Chuel as I served to mentor him through this research and writing.

I remember the momentous occasion of his oral defense in 1996 and his return to Korea and then to Arizona... losing touch, but keeping track of him through others. His presence as a memory began fading like worn pages of a classic book or the vanishing image of a photograph as the emulsion surrenders to time and ultimately dissipates into nothingness.

Then after all these years Sang Chuel calls and says he will be in New York on Friday.

Fast flash forward ten years to 2006 as I sit across from a distinctive and elegant individual whose demeanor embodies his remarkable journey as an artist. Impressive. He has fought through difficulties and persevered. He has collaborated with major artists, film directors, musicians, and composers to create major contemporary multimedia works such as Red Swan and Black Angel. Despite his artistic success, it isn't hasn't been an easy entry into Korean Academia. In some ways, his artistic vision and success, along with his Ph.D. in dance, have made him seem something of a threat to others on the faculty and administration. He has had greater success teaching in the United States, but his heart and his mission is with dance in Korea which has a rich tradition and enormous promise for the future. He is determined to have a voice in that future.

What makes my experience of his return so extraordinary is the many layers of development that accompany him, that cling to him like an artistic aura. We did not talk that much about his work, but it was resonating in every word and gesture. I could see that he had transformed his proclivities as a researcher into an inner inquiry, an inner searching out of values and ideas that would inform his creative work. There is a burning energy that uncovers the ideas as poetic revelations translated into movement, gesture, music, and image.

He is in New York to discuss showing his work at White Wave, a showcase for contemporary dance, located in DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass) at the John Ryan Theatre, which has been responsible for introducing more than 2000 dance companies from all over the world to New York City. It creates a new challenge for him since the works that would be practical to bring may need to be much smaller in scale, compared to the monumental multimedia works he has choreographed and produced in Korea. Whatever materializes as the dance works for White Wave will be distinctive. They will bear the imprint of a mature artist entering a new and important phase of his work. They will be remarkable.