LOSING SOMETHING

Our journey through the universe includes an ongoing struggle with loss, which is the translation of the Newton's second law of thermodynamics describing the process of the disintegration of the universe, "the measure of ongoing loss of heat which is irreversible." In short, the universe is running out of energy as losing heat perpetually as reality disintegrates. Our aging might be regarded as a form of entropy. Entropy is a measure of Time, and Time is running out. 

But Life itself stands as the reversal of entropy, and evolution the measure of progress toward achieving spiritual well-being. This dimension exists outside the realm of the physicists who can see only the eventual death of the universe burning out in silent disintegration. 

Losing something is a natural part of the process of aging. Most of us have experienced loss where we have been able to retrieve the lost item, but this is more about something being misplaced, rather than lost. True loss can be traumatic such as the passing of friends and love ones. True loss is irretrievable, and sometimes such losses can be so severe as to permanently scar our sensibility and sense of well-being.

I began writing when I was about eight years old. When I was nine I submitted an essay on astronomy to an International Newspaper sponsoring an essay contest. My parents were surprised, because they never knew I had entered the contest. 

By the time I was eighteen, I had become obsessed with Walt Whitman and took on the mantle of wandering around my hometown and stopping at bars and coffee houses to write poems. I wrote in blank tablets and small blank books. I had filled so many blank pads that I carried them around in a brown paper bag, to have them as references. I always carried them with me. 

When I went to New York City to study at Columbia University, I took the bag of poems with me. Now I had New York City as a catalyst for continuing my quest as a poet. I found a wonderful large green blank book that became the main canvas for my poetic wanderings. 

It happened on a summer afternoon on the subway in New York City. I always traveled with my bag of poems.There was no reason to do that, except from time to time, I liked to read from these books as I wandered around New York City. I exited from the subway at 116th street. It wasn't until I emerged onto the street on this bright day in early August, that I realized I had left the bag of poems on the subway seat beside me.

Losing those poems left a permanent scar. I lost part of who I had become, at least the evidence and mapping that had shaped my observations and awareness. I lost a connection with Time that I could never recover. For a while, I thought I could reconstruct the poems, but there was just too many, and they were born in the heat of the moment. Their existence extended the moment.

Losing my poems on the subway was traumatic and disfiguring, almost like losing a a hand or an arm. Those poems had been born in the heat of the moment, and in those lines, Time lingered in the words, asserting the moments of awareness of Now as permanent markers, retrievable and reassuring.

For a while, I wandered aimlessly as though I might come upon the lost works through some serendipitous gesture of magical calculation. "Keep looking forever"--- and you may find them in some twist of a moment on the dark side of the moon where chaos lapses into order.

But once I became reconciled that those poems were irretrievable, I thought there should be some way to acknowledge the loss, and like the fabled Phoenix, rise above the devastating experience by creating a new set of poems, Lost Works.  

These new poems would not be a requiem, but rather an affirmation, an echoing presence seeking the essence of those works that rattled off to oblivion in the New York subway. I knew I could not recreate the lost poems, but I could enter the creative space that served to discover the original poems. For me, poetry was and is, a way of Noticing. The value of the lost works were their testament to the moment and the act of uncovering beauty from the routine gaze of monotony to an intense awareness of the joy of life.

Even though the lost poems were gone forever, they remain a permanent part of my Being in Time, and they give place and revere my indiscretion, my negligence, and celebrate works created only because of the loss. I needed to acknowledge my destructive gesture, because in once sense it was a deliberate moment meant to break with the past.

It also came at a time when I had to reconcile the challenge of T. S. Eliot aimed at undermining Whitman as the dominant spirit of American Poetry. Into the tempest of uncertainty, T. S. Eliot journeyed to England to assume the authority and arbiter of poeticism in the English language. Eliot was a brilliant poet, and his passage to England eliminated him as the true arbiter of American poetry, but established him as the poet laureate of an era that eventually won him the Nobel Prize. I had to reconcile my creative process and work in an atmosphere dominated by Eliot. I think every poet revisits the spirit and essence of their own creative process and work. Poet's like Walt Whitman challenged the dominance of the English Giants, demanded a new cadence for expression. 

I think at the time, I regarded T. S. Eliot as the prophet for the renaissance of English Poetry. But I was a poet of the Texas plains and the New York terrain, alone with my blank books, creating my own sensibility of how the poet noticed an emerging world and recorded his encounters with Time. I did not see a waste land as in the eyes of Eliot's 1922 poetic critique of London in aftermath of World War I. I saw a world on an optimistic brink of technology to inspire human creativity. Technology was creating the link between science and the arts.

My new poems replacing the lost works are a celebration of the creative spirit and it's connection to the process of our perpetual becoming. It reminds me that I have always approached my work as "the best is yet to come."  Lost Works inspired me to share my work, at first anonymously as a website, Poet's Passage, which became my first publication, emphasizing the "noticed" rather than the "noticer." Thus the poems were launched into cyberspace as something to be discovered that in some sense was "permanently lost" in its anonymity, without benefit of fanfare or social media. Even the structure of the website was designed to enable to reader to discover where the poet's passage might lead.

Time smooths the rough edges of all that is lost. Even Poet's Passage will dissolve into cyberspace as that Domain eventually expires and we discover another realm not dependent on computer code. In some ways, all of our creations have their moment as flares lighting our conscious awareness. It is that awareness that fuels reality as a figment of human consciousness.

 

 

 

LOST WORKS

You wonder how these things begin. 

Maybe it goes back to the eighth grade when Mr. Johnson asked us to prepare a project that would reveal our career choice. I remember that I didn't go to school for two days while I worked on this project. By this time I had published The Weekly Laff,  the 205 Home Rumor, an ill-fated Boy Scouter, and the Nixon Whirlwind, the official publication of Nixon Junior High School. I would go on to be the editor of The Sandstorm, the official newspaper for Amarillo High School as well as work on the yearbook La Airosa.  In college, I switched to music, composing musicals and arranging for a vocal quartet. I had left the world of letters for a romantic stint with music and higher education.

Now, almost 70 years later, I return to the world of letters and publishing with a vengeance. I'm not sure why this has become so passionate. Maybe it's because I find myself returning to a road not taken with a measure of regret for what might have been. Is it too late? Evolution is always at the point of Now, a natural transforming energy that prepares us for an ever new, ever becoming, moment of Being.

We are each working on the technology of ourselves, which takes us through metamorphic moments where destiny is defined as a perpetually transformative horizon that pulls us to the edge of Being without tumbling into a turbulent Black Hole swallowing reality. The technology of ourselves is our Choga, our DoJo where we strive to connect with the destiny of who we are becoming.  Nothing changes this process---not even death.

There once was a prescient prophetess who was asked what would happen if she were suddenly shot to death while eating her apple pie. She replied that she would just go on eating her pie, and finishing it. Death only reveals the Truth of Being. It pulls back the curtains of deception so you can discover the permanent evolution of being yourself.

It is harder for me to pinpoint the exact year that I became a Whitman disciple. It is easier to remember when I became an O. Henry fan. My father collected books by buying them from estate sales liquidating the assets of deceased citizens. Consequently, he acquired a large amount of books. Among them was a best seller of 1906 entitled The Four Million, acquired from an estate of a Judge in 1944 when I was nine years old. Dad gave me that copy of short stories, and launched my fantasy of becoming an author. 

As an aside, I suffer from Limerance, a disorder of a compulsion which was not officially recognized until 1979 when Psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined the term after interviews with more than 500 people on the subject of love. Limerance is a condition of profound romantic obsession and persistent fantasy longing for another person, which can last a lifetime. My obsession was so severe that I invented identities, George and Jerome, and sent cards to the distant beloved from both identities. Of course, George Gershwin and Jerome Kern were my heroes at the time. I also identified with Beethoven and "his distant beloved," celebrated in his song cycle An Die Ferne Geliebte.

I discovered Walt Whitman in my junior year of high school. I had already been writing poetry and lyrics to songs. But Whitman brought the heady power of language as a tool of observation and discovery. I filled many pads and blank notebooks with poems. In my senior year I purchased a large blank green covered book that became my constant companion. 

Every where I traveled my blank books were with me. I deliberately sought coffee houses, restaurants, and hangouts to write. Of course my distant personna played a role in how I observed and wrote. Feelings and experience became avenues for text, and I experimented and invented powered by inspirations of the moment. 

After almost a decade of writing, I took my poems, now residing in many pads, tablets and notebooks, with me to New York. One careless summer day, I left this bag of poems in the subway, the seventh avenue IRT. I never got them back. Fortunately, the Green Book was not in the bag, but about 15 different sized pads filled with my poems were lost forever. 

I knew I could only move forward as I continued my adventures in writing. I once spent an entire day walking from 125th Street to the South Ferry stopping in various coffee houses, taverns, and bars to write in several blank books. Most of the time I was on Broadway. At that time, I passed several haunts that had attracted Whitman, and I imagined him walking beside me as I hit the area once known as Printer's Square near City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge. Of course, the bridge was yet to be, and Whitman often crossed from Brooklyn to Manhattan on the Brooklyn Ferry.

Losing works that had been a record of my travel through time was a severe blow. I was depressed for months as I realized so much I had created was lost forever. Yet, I think my work became stronger, more insightful and original as I continued journaling encounters of my "being there" in the moment.

 

KENNETH ATKINS: A POET FOR STARDUST

Kenneth Atkins recently (2022) published his epic review of his personal life journey as GOD IS MY CO-PILOT, a title borrowed from a 1945 film starring Dennis Morgan based on the 1943 autobiography by Robert Lee Scott, Jr. 

Scott's narrative unfolds as a vivid account of the Flying Tigers and the US Army Air Force in China and Burma during WWII. I remember the film well as I saw it when I was ten years old at the Paramount in Amarillo, Texas. The film affirmed that the fall of Japan signaled the end of World War II.

Atkins' narrative is a chronological account of his life anchored on three pillars: The Spiritual Realm, Family Love and Support, and a History of Academic and Scientific research, development, and implementation.The book sometimes becomes a somewhat dense read amid so many acronyms (more correctly, initialisms) such as NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics),  OAST  (Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology), SSEC (Solar System Exploration Committee), etc.

I met Kenny in high school. I was music and he was sports. He was a pitcher for Amarillo High School, but it was music that brought us together. We were in high school choir, and in a quartet. But somehow, a musical I was writing, Gotta Sing! was approved as an official school production even before it was finished.  I remember developing the music and rehearsing in an elegant basement with a grand piano belonging to a cast member on an idyllic tree-lined street. The show was still in development and although I usually did lyrics for my songs, I was feeling pressure of producing new songs quickly. As I was working on a song, Kenny Atkins suggested some lyrics and they fit perfectly. In our minds Gilbert and Atkins became the new song team in town, and we had a brief delusion of being Broadway bound. 

At the time, I recognized Ken's gift as a poet... He had a sense of substance and craft, and a poetic awareness that emerges in his extended autobiography filled with technical and scientific data. It is a rare combination: poet and engineer, maybe a bit like Chaucer (Canterbury Tales) who was a poet and engineer, supervising construction of buildings and the repair of the banks of the Thames river. He also wrote a treatise on astronomy. Chaucer was the first to publish in Middle English, a departure from England's  official languages of Latin and French. Kenny, like Chaucer, has that rare sensibility of knowing the cosmos as a poet and engineer.

But there was the secret Ken that I never knew. I never guessed his love of flight and his secret flying lessons near Palo Duro Canyon. 

Palo Duro Airport near Canyon, Texas was 19 miles from Amarillo on a two-lane highway that unfortunately killed many of our classmates in accidents who had overdosed on the freedom a driver's license brings to a teenager. It was a deadly drive, and I drove it several times a month because we printed the high school newspaper at a press in Canyon City. There is an alternate drive that goes more directly to the canyon, but it is very slow. Little did I know that Kenny was making the same trek to take flying lessons at Palo Duro Airport, which he picked so that no one would know he was learning to fly.

Palo Duro Canyon is a beautiful surprising landscape carved out of the Texas Plains, created during the last glacial retreat 20,000 years ago. It is a beautiful experience to visit the canyon as you see the flatlands dissolve into the panoramic vista of a canyon laced with vivid colors, 120 miles long, up to 20 miles wide, and 820 feet deep, with a few areas that are more than 1000 feet deep. No doubt seeing it from the air must have been a mystical experience for Ken in his first adventures skyward.

I am disappointed that I never knew of Kenny's first real love: flying. I might have pursued flying lessons to know the freedom and exhilaration of flight.

But as he headed for St. Louis for engineering and flight, I headed for Texas Tech for an inspiring arts encounter with my mentor Dr. Gene Hemmle. 

I was disappointed that we lost touch after high school. We led very different lives. His was disciplined and progressively grew in skills and reputation in the aviation field, leading to his engineering prowess in space flight research. Ultimately he achieved his pursuit of space research and the successful mission of Stardust, the rocket that literally returned to earth the dust from exploding stars --- Reality erupting into Being.

For Ken, Stardust was a mission into the heart of creation, a mission of discovery revealing the underlying motive of such an amazing quest is "Eternal Love." 

I have slightly short-changed his description of a growing family that formed the bedrock underlying his achievements. Without the enduring filaments of family growth, love, and support, there would be no meaning, no knowledge. Ultimately, all knowledge is personal.

Even though there are uses of the word stardust as early as 1400, "stardust" served as a timely poetic quest for existence in Hoagy Carmichael's lyrics for the song "Stardust:"

And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we're apart

Love is now the stardust of yesterday
The music of the years gone by

Ken, the engineer/poet in search of meaning, was at the helm of humanity's search for reality and meaning, an attempt to reconnect with origins of ourselves and the universe. Stardust is one of our ultimate quests in search of meaning. The frequencies of stars are our new music of years gone by...

For Ken, his record of Stardust reveals the Universe as Love, an infinite truth inviting us to consider a deeper awareness of who we are and where we are going.

THROUGH THE WORMHOLE TO THE WORLD OF NANCY LAMOTT

About a year ago my music streaming service featured a singer I had never heard of: Nancy LaMott. She was singing, "I Have Dreamed," one of my favorite Richard Rodgers' songs. It is from The King and I, a Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. LaMott's treatment was so original, it was as though I was hearing the song for the first time. 

Later, I learned that LaMott's pianist and arranger was Christopher Marlowe, and as I listened to song after song it was clear that Marlowe not only understood the nuances of LaMott's voice, he was in love with the incredible expressive range she could attain vocally and emotionally. Consequently, it doesn't matter if there is an orchestra, one or a few instruments, or just Marlowe and LaMott, something emerges that is singular, original, and inspiring. This team found a path unlike any other duo, but make no mistake, Nancy LaMott's charismatic presence shines through as the brightest star in a constellation, harmonizing with the universe, but sadly it was to be like a shooting star with its brilliant streak across the universe, and then vanishes. She died at the height of a career that was soaring.

The miracle is that there were luminaries who recognized this rare phenomenon, and made sure her work was recorded. The producer/composer David Friedman set up a record label for LaMott. He wrote many of his songs just for LaMott. Jonathan Schwartz, the radio personality, featured her on many of his shows. Friedman wrote some of his best songs for LaMott including Your Love, Listen to My Heart, and I'll Be Here with You. She came to the attention of Peter Matz, who featured her in a concert in  Los Angeles, and later, orchestrated her fifth album Listen To My Heart. Fortunately the vision of these composers/arrangers scheduled her in recording studios enough to produce three more albums posthumously.

She became a close friend of the actor Peter Zapp. He was always at her side, and stayed with her through her battle with cancer. They married an hour before her death in 1995, such a tragic loss to the world and to music.

All of this is background to my adventure with Nancy LaMott. At first, it was as though her art invaded my consciousness, but later it was as if I had fallen through some wormhole and became vividly present in every syllable Nancy LaMott sings. But I also observe that I am just as moved by the pianist Christopher Marlowe and his highly original settings that bring out the best in LaMott. 

Technology opens dimensions that we enter even though we don't immediately perceive the difference from the three dimensional world we occupy. Some refer to it as a fourth dimension, as Time, but Time itself has many dimensions. Our attempts to characterize Time as linear is both naive and comical. We perceive that technology is transforming our world, but the rate of change is so astonishing that we need other tools besides logic, artificial intelligence and wishes. 

We know that somewhere in the answer is our ability to be fully in the moment. Awareness is a dimension that transcends all others. We don't fully understand the mind that mercurially transcends boundaries to enter new dimensions available only through conscious awareness. ALL KNOWLEDGE IS PERSONAL. We don't comprehend how this connects one to the many, or connects us to each other. My own sense is that Entanglement is a universal Thread connecting everything to everything, constituting Infinity...experienced personally as conscious awareness. 

This is an elaborate way of saying that through the artistry of her voice, and the concinnity of Christopher Marlow's interaction with LaMott's exceptional talent and her unlimited expressive range, connect infinite, yet singular moments as sound in time... Infinity expressed in singular beauty, thrilling and touching us with an awareness of who we are and where we are traveling emotionally in our moment of being there with LaMott and Marlowe.

Words cannot replace music. 

The first song I heard from LaMott on my music server (by chance) was I Have Dreamed, one of my favorites of Rodgers and Hammerstein. It begins with a simple arpeggiated piano accompaniment, elegantly subdued as though we were hearing this in the dusk of evening, her voice is soft, contemplative as she intones "I would love being loved by you." As the verse begins with "Alone and awake..." we feel her isolation dissolve in her growing awareness of her connection to her absent love. Her dreams awaken her awareness of the reality of her true love, sharing their place in a welcoming universe. In "How you look in the glow of evening," her dream transforms into the presence of their love. LaMott achieves this through control of the color and strength of her voice...achieving a subtle but effective climax as she returns to and concludes with the original, softly nuanced  "I would love being loved by you."

This was followed by LaMott and Marlowe's collaboration of It Might As Well Be Spring. LaMott's simple straightforward articulation of this classic seems to come to a close as though a brief interlude in a set of songs.

But no--- Marlowe provides a most provocative bridge that seemed to say isn't there a bit of Gershwin sleeping inside this Rodgers and Hammerstein classic? Instead of closing, the piano gradually explores Rhapsody in Blue fragments. Quite possibly hasn't Gershwin replaced Marlowe at the keyboard? As Lamott returns, this transformation seems to triumph in slight references to Gershwinesque idioms, trills, arpeggios, minor thirds all underscoring the innate restlessness of someone under the spell of Spring Fever, even though "it isn't really spring." Give Christopher Marlowe an academy award for this gem. No orchestra... just Marlowe and LaMott making a miracle.

OK. "If they asked me, I could write a book" about the genius duo of LaMott and Marlowe. I am tempted to describe their collaboration that combines two Sondheim songs, Good Thing Going/Not A Day Goes By, but just find this and listen to this genius duo assisted by the eloquence of a cello. You will discover new things in this song that might not have existed even for Sondheim. 

The beauty of music performers is that they keep unveiling new meanings to songs we know and love as they pursue these classics in a new time and place. This trio, revealing nuances and depths of Sondheim, add to the luster of memory and anticipation of new, personal discoveries.

I admit I get lost in the cabaret brilliance of Nancy LaMott and her collaborators. 

But I also suffer a bit of anguish and regret. Nancy LaMott was reaching the zenith of her career and a leading performer in the cabaret scene of New York City, just minutes away from where I was living and working at New York University.

I never knew what I was missing and what I missed, until now.

 

 

WARKENTINE'S REMARKABLE ANAÎS NIN FANTASY IS STUNNING SUCCESS

On March 13, Ellen Warkentine presented a fantasy drawn from the copious writings of Anaîs Nin in her production of NIN DESCENDING A STAIRCASE presented at the charming, diminutive bar called SINGLISH on 13th Street in New York City. In another lifetime, the location of Singlish served as the site for Anaîs Nin's printing press, and headquarters for her literary activity and iconoclastic lifestyle.  Warkentine selected the writings and organized them into a dramatic structure performed by three actors, and one of the most original bands to ever perform Off-Broadway.

Although this production enhances the thesis work for Warkentine's Masters Degree at NYU's Gallatin School, this is a thoroughly professional production mounted at a level far beyond most Off-Broadway offerings.  Warkentine is a composer, singer, poet, and writer. Each of her creative roles is professional and artistically insightful, as she crafts a masterpiece of her own from another artist's ouevre that resonates with her own sensibility.

The audience is brought into the work at the beginning by walking up the stairs of the tiny bar to begin the performance and descending the stairs to punctuate the ending. Every element of the production is coordinated to shape the character of Nin as revealed through her writings.

Warkentine shapes a distinctive profile of Nin drawn from Nin's own extensive writings. Nin's writing career spans many years and she may be the most prolific female author who ever lived. Indeed her extensive works appear more copious than most male authors. She was constantly writing diaries, essays, novels, and exchanging letters with many authors and artists, including Henry Miller.

NIN DESCENDING A STAIRCASE is presented in seven scenes performed without interruption.
      1. Sabina (A Spy in the House of Love)
      2. Lina (Little Birds)
      3. Djuna (Four Chambered Heart)
      4. Lillian (Ladders to Fire)
      5. Lilith (Winter of Artifice)
      6. Djuna 2
      7. Stella (Stella)

The scene names seem more like a cryptic code instead of a dramatic structure, but actors and musicians reveal the substance of the narrative that discloses Anaîs Nin, unpacking the events and relations in her life to achieve an apotheosis of self awareness and insight. Nin's life of protest, writing, and iconoclasm culminates in her own understanding of her contradictions as Stella, resolving her enigma in a celebration of understanding and forgiveness.

Elizabeth Stahlmann as a facet of Nin as Sabina, opens the first scene in a monologue that sets the tone of rapidly changing, volatile emotions. She is a liar to herself and the world ("wash your lying eyes and face"). Stahlmann is a major talent. Clearly this is an Off-Broadway performance worthy of an Obie or Tony Award. Her expressive range provides a stunning control of her voice, her facial charisma, and imaginative gestures. Her technique as an actress is what makes us believe by the end of this production that she has achieved a spiritual awakening by examining her life and works. By the end of the performance, Nin as Stella has achieved celebrity, but even more, she is spiritually aware, "melting everyone" and artistically fulfilled.

Equally accomplished, Anna Crivelli (two faces of Djuna) as the Lina facade of Nin "is a liar who can't bear her real face in the mirror." Her interaction with Stahlman is flawless and convincing as a foil of introspection in the gathering awareness of Nin whose passion for life has evolved into an artform. Djuna struggles with conflicting desires in a search for "peace in simplicity." The deft direction of Jesse Rasmussen (who is also a co-creator) is clear as the interaction of Crivelli and Stahlmann becomes so entwined through gesture and fluid movement that they metaphorically and visually become one.

With a performance filled with women, Leland Fowler, an accomplished actor with a rich background from Shakespeare to modern classics in Off-Broadway and Theater Festival venues is much more than a "token male" among a bevy of exceedingly accomplished females. As Jay, the Lie Detector, he shines the light of truth on Nin's fantasies. He is a powerful and demanding presence, but adds an air of the calm inquisitor in search of truth.

A word about the band of musicians, instrumentalists who also provide a song as explication of Nin's emerging realization of her existence as an artist. The instrumental/vocal ensemble, Ellen Warkentine, piano et al, Eve Elliot piano, accordian, et al, Hanna Rose Dexter, Bass, and Daisy Castro, Violin, all perform songs that contribute to the narrative structure in a much more integrated way than a traditional Greek Chorus. Each song seems an introspective journey through the inner terrain of Anaîs Nin.

Billed as "A Site Specific Cabaret," this Off-Broadway production by Ellen Warkentine in collaboration with Jesse Rasmussen, this reflection on Anaîs Nin's creative journey transcends traditional staged drama, almost like the Happenings that occurred in New York City in the 1950s. This was the milieu of Nin as an artistic genius and historian of a creative epoch of American artists hailing a new era of making Art.

                                                                                 ...Jon Vance

NEW YORK STORIES: MULBERRY STREET

The plane had circled JFK for three or four times. Passengers aboard the flight were quiet, almost somber, resigned to the indignity of a delay after traveling from Korea halfway across the planet in less than 12 hours riding a tailwind as they crossed over Canada.

Jerome was traveling light, but he was in no rush. For a while he stared out the plane's window, trying to recognize Long Island landmarks. He really had nothing to rush home to, if this really was home.  He wasn't prepared to be back in New York. But in just a short while he would be at Washington Square, trying to make sense of the past ten months.

Jerome was struck by his awareness of feeling so solitary. When they finally landed, he gathered his bag, passing through customs quickly and without incident... unless you counted the slight tug at his heart as he passed through the exit where he had embraced Cassandra for the first time when she arrived like a angel come to save him from himself.

There did not seem to be many people at the taxi dock. His suitcase was quickly stowed and suddenly he was hearing the driver ask if he preferred a route into the city. Jerome replied "Your choice," and they were off on the beltway to Manhattan.

It was raining. Jerome had always liked New York in the rain. Before he moved to New York, he would write short stories about the lights glittering in the rain on New York streets. Once in Manhattan, he realized his stories had failed to capture the magical quality of the lights glistening on the streets... with the rain, the city was quieter and more intimate. He thought about the first time he had walked down Fifth Avenue with Cassandra shortly after she had arrived in August. It began to rain, and she saw a street vendor and bought an umbrella. "It's so romantic," she whispered, "walking with you on Fifth Avenue in the rain..." She smiled as she pulled him under the umbrella, and he felt her bonding with him.

Jerome was so lost in thought that he scarcely noticed as the taxi crossed the Manhattan Bridge and turned onto Canal Street. His heart began to beat faster as he recognized many places in Chinatown where Cassandra and he had shopped and an array of restaurants they had explored together. "What is this?" he thought, feeling a surge of anxiety as the taxi slowed and made right turn turn up Mulberry Street.

"No! Not this way!" he thought to himself. This was certainly not the expected route to Washington Square. His heart almost skipped a beat as he suddenly found himself on Mulberry street where Cassandra and he had lived from the first day she arrived. "Why did the cab take this route? I wasn't prepared for this..." He felt agitation, a pang of anxiety as they passed the Airbnb where they had begun their life together and then crossed Grand Street where they had walked hand-in-hand so many times. The first time she took his hand, she held it as though she would never let go.

Jerome wondered why he was so distressed. The days spent on Mulberry Street were the happiest of his life. He remembered before Cassandra arrived, walking on a summer day in late August along Houston and turning right at the Puck Building to wander south on Mulberry. He snapped photos and shot short videos as he walked along the street. 

Gradually he could feel the pull of Little Italy as he neared Grand Street, Indeed, the decorations were up and there was a festive atmosphere for the upcoming celebrations for  the Feast of San Gennaro in September. It seemed as though the festival was already beginning, but Jerome remembered how crowded Little Italy would be at the height of the celebration. There were performances, processions, contests, music concerts, and dancing in the streets...but the food was the real miracle of the Feast of San Gennaro, a festival held every September in Italy to honor Saint Januarius, the patron saint of Naples and Little Italy. 

Finally, Jerome sat at an outside table of a small restaurant On Mulberry near Grand Street. The sun was blazing overhead, but he could detect the smell of September in the air. He could sense Cassandra's arrival with the coming of Autumn, the ripening orange trees on Mulberry street, and the miracle of a renaissance about to change his life.

ZEN, ARCHERY, ECKER & DERNINI

I started to take a journey... the same journey I took maybe thirty years ago. I knew that I was attracted to ZEN because in some small way, it seemed similar to Phenomenology, which I had been introduced to by my colleague who seemed almost like a Zen Master to me. David Ecker taught in the art department at NYU Steinhardt. He was an arts craftsman and art philosopher. I had completed my doctorate at Columbia University, and never once had any class introduced or discussed phenomenology. In some ways David Ecker was my Zen Master who led me through endless inquiries that opened my world.

We had many adventures together, and they alone would be worthy of discussion and documentation, even now. 

I happened to try the Audible book for Zen in the Art of Archery.  Forget it! It's better to let your imagination conjure up the sound of the master's voice. The reader on Audible distorts his voice to attempt to sound like a Zen Master, but it just doesn't work for me.

But I am sympathetic to Herrigel's quest. He made many assumptions about what the experience of learning Zen through what the Japanese consider a deep and profound art grounded in the way of Zen...much more than a philosophy. There is a spiritual connection that is difficult for those of us who have been biased by Western philosophy and assumptions. 

David Ecker is no longer with us. But his presence lingers. He pursued the creation of knowledge through experiments such as Navigating Global Cultures. It so happened that a marvelous artist and inquirer, Sandro Dernini, came to study with David Ecker in the Art Department at NYU . I was fortunate enough to tag along and help in the launching of marvelous experiments in art as a way of knowing and inquiring---of ART as the disruptor.

So my journey here was originally planned as a shared adventure, but it fell by the way because Time had other plans. I pause now in the debris of a botched beginning that turned into a new opportunity of discovery. I see many of my past mentors in their separate journeys, but somehow beckoning me to be out and about. Life is perpetual discovery, uncovering each moment as immortal. 

WHO IS PHADREAS?

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Days...Months...Years have passed and yet, Phadreas has remained in the background. Phadreas has eluded me for years despite my attempts to find him and bring clarity to my wanderings. I’m not sure why he has emerged at this moment as an enigma that must be confronted. Yet, there he is, with his gleaming eyes and mysterious smile that bewilders and confronts me. It is not because he is amused, but rather that he understands what I seek, even though he won’t reveal anything to me directly. 

Phadreas is the shadow of my thinking, and my thinking is the essence of my Being, my sense of All and the essence of Allness, which we often call Eternity. Eternity is the contradiction of Time ending. Time and Being, as Heidegger so eloquently observed, are the essence of existence, the fundamental pulse that dismisses the void and utter disintegration.

Phaedrus often lurks around the entrance to my DOJO. As written in Wikipedia, a DoJo is a place for immersive and experiential learning. In Japanese, it literally means PLACE OF THE WAY. A few years ago I tripped out on Neil Diamond's THE WAY, where the musical structure continually shifts its grounding, it is a musical journey seeking closure but ends in an echoing rift of ongoingness. (Wyzard Ways: BEING ON TIME)

My journey deepens as I retrace the steps of a student of Zen In The Art of Archery. How important our process of Being is linked to Breathing... even to inspire is to take in... inspiration comes from our effortless breathing...appropiating the outside and bringing it into the center of ourselves, and holding it as it nourishes all life processes, then exhaling to return a transformed energy to our environment. Breathing and Being are central to our existence. The student working with the Zen Mastery is from a different culture. Coming from Germany to Japan, he brought a certain Western resistance to the Japanese ethos of Zen. His journey is about reconciling his cultural clash with a different and equally valid reality. It is not unlike F.S.C. Northrop's The Meeting of East and West, that reveals how the war with Japan was inevitable as a clash of cultural values, and how this meeting of two opposing cultures transformed our ideas about Art and Existence.

Later Robert M. Pirsig would build upon this cultural dichotomy with his epic Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Years ago, I took this journey with Pirsig, and now, decades later, I renew this quest for a deeper understanding of my own journey. But I do not journey alone. This time the quest is with an artist searching a different artistic itinerary, and yet as we work within mutual boundaries of awareness, we may discover new destinations, new clearings in the dense forests of doubt.

It seems that life itself is the journey, and from the beginnings of our utterings on Earth, since antiquity, Homer's The Odyssey defined our quest to return home, for we awaken in a wilderness and know not whom we are. 

In the end, isn't our quest about Identity?

A NEW ODYSSEY...

How long have I been away? It's difficult to calculate. My last entry was not a return. That was an experiment with a digital magazine. 

 

I have been lost in some corridor without dimension, trying to find my way back to the conscious awareness that has always connected me to myself. These last few months...few days...I have somehow stumbled back...Phaedrus is alive, but perhaps it is still too tenuous, too embryonic, to know what is really going on. 

 

Phaedrus is still shrouded by the shadows...I pause in the deep shadows of the ether that obscures identity and launches a search... a wandering away from the bright avenues of deceit and destruction, looking for some opening through which I might return, from where I might escape into the fullness of myself...into the awareness of Being...where clarity reigns. But I know there is no such moment as clarity. Clarity requires Time to become timeless, where process stagnates into shrill stillness... we slip into the silence and its illusion as a tapestry of sound. 

 

I have been wandering. I've wandered since my earliest days in Texas...and the globe has been a gracious host. I heard Whitman calling me to join him in his wanderings, and I began to journey with him by my side and in my veins, beckoning me to find a clearing where we might rest and exchange notes. I should have perished long ago, but something lingers...not from the Past,  but from the Future... for wandering is an endless excursion into what might be and what might have been. And these wanderings have led to some phenonmenal experiments in Research as Lived Experience...in Heideggerian jousting with BEING AND TIME and the languaging of the world...in Hegel's even more dazzling Phenomenology of Spirit, as a quest for knowing and meaning which in some ways seems almost like a Western Civilization attempt to read between the lines of the Tao Te Ching.

 

I follow the footsteps of Whitman's wandering in search of his lingering presence...in search of our lingering presence, for we are all wanderers seeking the truth of ourselves. We are all embarked upon The Way... ultimately this is our journey as the infinite manifestation of Being.

 

I remember as I entered my 70s, I was surprised to still be around, somehow stuck in the ever enduring Now. My wanderings were over a vast internal terrain where I thought I was meant to discover or meet someone or some revelation about my true identity. Moving through life, I was constantly meeting and celebrating new arrivals in my conscious awareness that expanded my experience and created new horizons to pursue. I was surprised to find myself still seeking the next realm of revelation as decades passed.

 

SEGUE
 Begun six decades past...
 I always thought it might not last.
 But this is not the final word
 Many conversations still not heard...
 Somehow I’m still seeking text
 To reveal what might happen next.
 For me, text is not about the past...
 it’s more about making the present last.
 Noticing the moment with a pen
 Adds permanence and creates a “when”.
 
 But these words are more than just a start...
 The texting here is from the heart.
 This volume, was begun so long ago,
 When I was young—-so much I didn’t know.
 Now I know no matter what my age,
 Infinity expects another page.

 

So these postings, these wanderings, begin another phase of this adventure, but more importantly to notice the NOW of BEING and the process of BECOMING. These themes have emerged from my encounters with the dynamics of awareness. It seems that everything emerging is Forever unfolding the Nowness of Now. We've launched the James Webb Space Telescope a million miles into space to peer backward into Time... to some so-called beginning which is as much conjecture as it is a reality. It is challenging to be trapped in the permanence of Now seeking paths to the past and future...

 

DAFU LAI AND THE LEGACY OF THE OCARINA SOCIETY

Professor Dafu Lai (NYU Steinhardt Alumni, Class of 2006, MA in Music Ed.) sends us some notes from Beijing on how he joins his students on-line to continue his teachings on creating beautiful music playing the ocarina.

Dafu Lai was the first student in our department in NYU Steinhardt from Mainland China. I believe it was in 2004 when we first met and spoke how music technology could be a powerful factor for music education in China. He spoke of his university, Xiamin University, that had the most beautiful campus in the world. I thought to myself, maybe we all think our Alma Mater has the best of everything. But several years later, his teacher, Dean Xianbo Zhou, invited me to teach a summer class, and I discovered that it was indeed, the most beautiful campus I had ever scene. I immediately wanted to become a film director and have Xiamen University serve as my set.

Although technology has continued to be an important asset for Professor Lai, perhaps his greatest contribution to our field  of music education was to revive the ocarina as a legitimate, serious musical instrument, which also provides a entry to learning music as a life-long process. With great imagination and perseverance, Professor Dafu Lai continues to promote this ancient Chinese Instrument,  restoring its legacy of 5000 years as an instrument of epic proportions throughout its long history. Returning to China in 2006, after his graduation from Music and Performing Arts Professions at New York University, he founded the Ocarina Society of China, which now has more than 5000 members.Professor Lai began teaching at Petroleum University, bringing music to thousands of students using this simple and revered instrument.

Ocarina Society of China

The Society has promoted concerts and alliances through international music education initiatives such as ISME and KODALY.  Some students have gone into the business of making Ocarinas, and many imaginative designs and sizes have emerged. Serving as the President of the Ocarina Society has been a rigorous and demanding responsibility, but Professor Lai notes that the activities of the society contributed to rise of popularity of the Ocarina and produced many virtuoso performers who perform throughout the world. Professor Lai founded an Ocarina Museum that is the home of many valuable Ocarinas centuries and milennia old. My visit to the museum was a highlight of my visit to Beijing as I learned that the instrument comes in many sizes and shapes as I toured the museum's stunning display.

 In the face of the COV-19 Virus lockdown, Professor Lai has maintained contact with his students through the Internet.

Professor Dafu Lai teaching on-line in his studio at Petroleum University, Beijing

Dafu Lai is a professor of music of China University of Petroleum in Beijing. He also teaches Orff Method and ocarina flute at the other universities: China Conservatory of Music, China University of Politic Science & Law. Due to the outbreaking of COVID-19 and most students and teachers were required to stay at home, Professor Lai has been teaching online courses since February 2020. In order to make the students seeing and hearing his instruction clearly, Dafu invested significant funds to equip many facilities such as new desktop computer with two monitors, video camera, microphone, fill lights, etc. Better equipment better insures an online teaching effect.

According to Lai: Online teaching platform is also very important either for teacher or students. Due to the unpredictable epidemic situation, almost 20 million students had to learn online courses at the same time at the first few week days of the Spring semester. Dafu had to use four different online platforms such as Tencent Class, Rain Classroom, WeChat for Business, Douyin, Chaoxing and Zoom for his live broadcast class in order to avoid the congestion. Professor Lai observes:

Fortunately, most students feel that they got much more from my online teaching than in the classroom on campus. First, the students could see the teacher’s demonstration clearly and closely with the video camera, especially for ocarina playing. Second, the students can go over the teacher’s instruction with the video playback function. Third, the students can practice their ocarina playing without disturbing the rest classmates after the teacher’s demonstration. Last, I could give specific comments for the student’s homework with the “Drop of video” function in QQ platform. I can view my students’ homework on the cellphone anytime.

The virus may block the students’ way to the school, but it could never block the teacher’s instruction and the connection to the students. We wish the outbreaking of COVID-19 could under control and to be eliminated eventually all over the world as soon as possible. We are all looking forward to seeing each other again on campus. 

Dr. SANDRO DERNINI: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING PLEXUS

My adventure with Sandro began decades ago, when I encountered him as the doctoral student of my colleague Dr. David Ecker. Sandro came to NYU already in possession of a PhD in Biology, but he was engaged in the art of life, and all forces conspired in the 70s-90s as to make NYU the place where new interactive artists gathered to enshrine proactive art as the shaping energy of artists around the world. Sandro Dernini articulated a destiny that seemed to have its own efficacy. This personal covenant matched perfectly with David Ecker's commitment to phenomenology and qualitative research. It was David Ecker, who in the 1990s launched Navigating Global Cultures. It was in that context and energy of Sandro Dernini founding Plexus that a series of events unfolded which brought Sandro and myself back together in recent times. I created a video I DO NOT KNOW and submitted art to participate in Plexus celebration at the MACRO Museum of Modern Art on December 12, 2018.

Sandro writes of our initial collaborations and the necessity of charting a new course in the wake of COV-19 Pandemic:Within the collaboration on  Navigating Global Cultures between New York University and University of Cagliari,  in 1995, for the 100th Anniversary of the Guglielmo Marconi's discovery of the Radio, Plexus International was launched.
THE OPEN CALL FOR THE WELL BEING IN THE XXI CENTURY (21 September 1995, Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy)

WE ARE A SINGLE, INTERDEPENDENT, WORLD-WIDE SPECIE.

WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT, WE ARE INTIMATELY BOUND UP WITH EACH OTHER AROUND EARTH.EAST AND WEST, NORTH AND SOUTH, OUR FATE IS LINKED TOGETHER.THUS A GLOBAL VIEW OF HUMAN HEALTH IS MORE ESSENTIAL NOW THEN EVEN BEFORE.”(Introductory statement by the Chairman of the 37th Assembly of the World Health Organization, on the Role of Universities for the Health for All, Geneva, 15 May 1984)

HEALTH is defined by the WHO (World Health Organization of the United Nations) as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

In the light of the current Covid-19 crisis, more then even, there is a need for a change of route, from the disease to the well-being by not only thinking to manage this pandemic or the next ones  with vaccines but with a more complete state of well-being, as stated in the WHO definition of health.  Therefore, a more multidimensional cultural navigation  is needed for changing the current dominant paradigm of health as presence or absence of diseases or infirmity.  Let's collaborate all together for a new Well-Being World, to be launched  on Human Rights Day 2020, 10 December, with a global artists.

Extract From David Ecker's paper “Cultural Navigations”presented at the International Forum “The Well Being in the XXIst Century, held in Carloforte, Sardinia, Italy, in 1992.

The idea of a kind of “cultural navigation” arose out of this initial discussion, the notion that what was required of us was to re-think the significance of Columbus’s landing in the light of a new global awareness of interdependence.  Further meetings generated a veritable “fleet” of proposals.  One of these proposals, made by Dr. Sandro Dernini of Plexus International, is now reaching fruition, a Reconciliation Forum to address the question of what will constitute well-being in the 21st Century for all the inhabitants of the globe.   For many of us, the initial idea of cultural navigation led quickly to the question of cultural identity.  

The nutritional, social, ethical and economic aspects of well-being will undoubtedly receive critical attention in the proceedings of the Forum.  But surely the artistic and aesthetic dimensions of life as we live it must figure in any formulation of a comprehensive vision of well-being. 

The arts make visible our cultural identity and provide a direct measure of the vitality of the culture in which a particular art object or event is embedded.  It follows that the arts have a special role to play in relation to the well-being of the members of each of the cultures of the world.

For one organization represented here, ISALTA, it is not enough to document the arts in their cultural settings, but to take steps to enhance the arts and thus the quality of the lives people live.  The name of this intentional group states its purpose:  The International Society for the Advancement of Living Traditions in Art.  Historically,  artistic decline accompanies the loss of cultural identity.  The felt need to preserve the meaning of a tradition in modern life is directly proportional to the loss of spiritual and material well-being of the artists and artisans sustaining their own cultures. Western solutions to the world’s misery, suffering, and destruction have tended in the 20th Century to be technological and humanistic, whereas earlier they tended to be religious or political solutions.  In the name of science, human nature, or God, the assumption underlying these solutions is that they transcend culture and have universal efficacy.  In contrast, we believe that the very meaning of “doing good for others” is culture-bound, as is the word “art”.

Cultural crises, whether caused by natural or man-made, whether caused by forces from outside or within a particular culture, are ideally to be resolved on the terms set by the affected culture.  What this ideal suggests is that there should be no “privileged discourse” in multicultural exchanges.  Communication on both “inside” and “outside” understandings of issues affecting well-being in the 21st Century must be encouraged from all cultural perspectives.  

PLEXUS, as founded by Sandro has sustained many incarnations through world-wide initiatives. Perhaps one of the most recent undertakings was the world wide celebration of Human Rights Day, December 12, 2018.  With Plexus, Sandro with many colleagues, and especially David Ecker, established many living traditions and challenged past cultural inequities and crimes against humanity.

 MACRO is the equivalent of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, but maybe slightly higher rating for being more on the leading edge of arts movements and trends. It is an impressive structure that invites large scale installations, and PLEXUS represented a large scale installation of multiple artists as well as a connection with other sides via the Internet and projected as part of the happenings at MACRO. Human Right's Day as celebrated by PLEXUS was a collage of sight, sound, touch, and technology that unfolded in the spirit of a happening as those in attendance were treated to an abundance of simultaneous activities throughout the museum. Maestro Riccardo Santoboni with his magical trombone, often provided musical commentary as well as leading spontaneous parades through the space. Bodies entrapped in mummy-like encasings wandered through the space until they spontaneously erupted in breaking free of the shackles through dancing and celebrations as they moved from confinement to freedom.

Participating Artists in PLEXUS Human Rights Day at MACRO.

This celebration at MACRO was an extraordinary happening, not unlike those of earlier days when spontaneous eruptions of collaborating artists created unique events throughout New York City in unexpected places such as abandoned buildings, warehouses, theaters, and the Projects. This group photo is on the outside steps of MACRO around 9 p.m. as HUMAN RIGHTS DAY wound down to a close, having begun as a celebration 12 hours earlier, but even a day before December 12, as they installed their works throughout the museum. An almost infinite continuum or trail of artworks submitted to be archived by PLEXUS could be seen throughout the space, followed as a path through the other installations. To document, I made a video of my tracing the path through the museum, but as I walked came upon showings or happenings that were taking place by the many collaborating artists. In many ways, this visitors that came to witness the event became a part of the installation, so that in fact, everyone became a work of art as they shared this extraordinary moment in time. In this sense, everyone was a collaborator, an instigator and reveler in this spontaneous interaction of shimmering facets of activity.

This is why I felt compelled to not let this celebration go unnoticed. It seems more than coincidence that as I left IMPACT and started to chart a new course for my post NYU career, that independently I came up with ARC (ARTS RENAISSANCE COLLABORATIVE), as a new path to pursue and research all I learned in collaboration with faculty, staff, participants, and students during my time at New York University. How stunning a revelation to see the flag raised by PLEXUS as the ARK of WELL-BEING. How well this Ark serves the dedication to the ideas launched in the 90s for NAVIGATING GLOBAL CULTURES. My own sense of ARC, also saw the metaphor of a vessell, but in addition the sense that ARC represents connection, a span to the future and well-being, but also as energy, that spark that ignites a revolution of BEING and MEANING. In these troubling times, Sandro Dernini's quest to maintain PLEXUS as Arts Advocacy for Human Rights and Well-Being has kept the organization at the forefront of relevant metaphysical and spiritual inquiry.

DR. TED COONS' 90th YEAR FESTSCHRIFT

On March 7, 2020, Dr. Edgar Coons of New York University was honored at Ted Coons Festschrift was presented at the NYU King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center in honor of his 90th year. A Festchrift is a volume or archive compiled in a celebration as a tribute to a scholar, writer, artist or accomplished figure, producing materials consisting of articles, essays, presentations related to the honoree's work and career. 

As a pioneer in neuro research, Dr. Coons career has produced leading researchers and scholars who have uncovered new terrain with regard to the brain and its functions. He himself has produced many breakthrough studies, and his students have gone on to distinguish themseles as leaders in this field.

This celebration was on the eve of the Pandemic crisis. Even at this meeting, participants were touching elbows rather than shaking hands. The participants are too numerous to identify here, so I will contextualize it with how my relationship with this remarkable man led to me presenting at this celebration.

I was invited by Ted to be a Co-Sponsor for The First International Conference on MIND, BODY AND THE PERFORMING ARTS in 1985 as I was serving as Director and Chair of NYU Steinhardt's Music and Performing Arts. (At that time, the school was still known as the School of Education, then, School of Education, Health, Nursing, and Arts Performance (SEHNAP), and finally, Steinhardt.)
I had begun my career at NYU with first contact in 1968, and Ted had begun his career in the School of Arts and Sciences a few years earlier than that. The conference was the first of its kind and it made news, attracting a number of outstanding artists, educators, doctors, and researchers. It was a series of coincidences that led to my meeting Dr. Coons, and I was fortunate that these events led to establishing a life-long friendship that was often shared at NOHO STAR, a restaurant that was near NYU, populated by artists, writers, students, musicians, and celebrities. It no longer exists, and we shifted our times to LAYFETTE, a restaurant a block from the NOHO STAR.

Coincidences shape the future.It was on the basis of that Mind Body conference that I was invited to share the findings as part of Ted's 90th Year Festschift.  If it had not been for the conference, I likely would have never met Ted. I met Ted through a doctoral student who had come to our department to pursue a PhD in Music Performance. The PhD in Music Performance was one of the first programs I created when I joined NYU. I was brought to NYU by. Dr. Jerrold Ross who had been the president of the New York College of Music. While at Columbia University studying for my doctorate, I became the composition student of David Simon, who also happened to be the registar of the New York College of Music. David had been impressed by our conversations about higher education. He recommended me to Dr. Ross.  The PhD in Music Performance was the first of its kind, and it attracted extraordinary musicians who were also interested in the research.  One such student was John Kella, the principal violist for the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. His registration in Ted's research class led to discussions that resulted in creating the conference and brought me into partnership with Ted Coons.

As we rode in a taxi up Sixth Avenue for a fundraising event for the festival, we discovered our mtual past.

TED: I don't know much about you. Where are you from?
JVG: You wouldn't know it. It's just a town in Texas.
TED: I might know. Where?
JVG: Amarillo...
TED: I know Amarillo. Did you know the Amarillo Conservatory of Music?
JVG: Yes.
TED: Did you study at the conservatory?
JVG: Yes.
TED: Well, I also studied at the conservatory. Did you study with Gladys Glenn?
JVG: Why, yes I did.
TED: I also studied with Gladys Glenn. Small world isn't it?

Because Ted is nine years my senior, I was in a different world from his. He was studying at the Conservatory in his teens, when I was just entering grade school, so our worlds never met. Yet, we shared a common background.

Ted's Festchrift was a true celebration, revealing the many layers of talents and achievements that have accrued over the illustrious years of his career.  It's impossible to report the full scope of presentations that were unveiled that day. The first presentation by Dr. Richard Young set the tone, as he reviewed Ted's remarkable career that launched the research careers of his many students, including Dr. Young himself. His point was that Ted's contributions are so vast and different, that anyone from the outside might view his work the way six blind men, in the familar proverbial story, tried to describe an elephant by just touching. After an entertaining and enlightening presentation, Dr. Young and his wife, Alice Zhu, presented Dr. Coons with an award that recognized him as a mentor, but as Ms. Zhu described, the word MENTOR does not do justice to a Chinese concept of the Teacher/Mentor/Spiritual Guide that the award represents. Even our cherished words of MAESTRO and MENSCH do not convey the cultural and spiritual import of the word.

This was a wonderful presentation and the conferring of the award set an appropriate tone for the ongoing celebration, as colleagues and former students and protegees paraded to the podium to honor Ted's extraordinary career as educator, adminstrator,  artist, writer, composer, and philosopher. Perhaps the only thing missing was Ted's recent stint as a Film Producer for his former student, Nathan Cutucci, the writer and director for IMPOSSIBLE MONSTERS, a film that while having mixed reviews, "marks an impressive debut effort"... "with quite a few engaging twists and turns."

Dr. George Smith, founder of IDSVA (Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts) recently served as the first recipient of Professorship in New Philosophy, created through a generous to donation to IDSVA by Dr. Ted Coons to fund the position. Dr. Smith's book The Artist-Philosopher and New Philosophy maintains that Western Metaphysics has come "an end" as posited by Heidegger. What will emerge is the artist-philosopher who "poeticizes" new philosophy spanning arts in all forms and penetrating culture in all its locations. Dr. Smith recounted his experiences with Ted, and his energy, spontaneity and artistic sensibility. He has with him, Ted's English translation of a Rilke poem which he made for the purpose of setting the poem to music. He invites Ted to share his translation, and we were afforded a sensitive and spontaneous moment through his reading.

Former Protege and student, Dr. David Rosenboom, composer, researcher and the Richard Seaver Distinguished Chair in Music at CalArts and Dean of the Department presented his connection with Ted during the early days of The Electric Circus. I had met David as a young, pioneerng artist through a course I developed at NYU called EXPANDED MUSIC, and we visited the artist at his studio and tried to emulate some of his methods and techniques. David Rosenboom's presentation celebrated his relationship with Dr. Coons and also shared works that had been performed in a retrospective of David's prolific 50 years as a composer of new music and creator of countless new techniques in artistic collaboration and new ways of creating music, including ingenious use of bio-feedback in several contexts.

Among the presenters was Dr. Kathleen Riley, who received her PhD in Piano Performance in our department at NYU, while I was Director and Chair.  Kathleen was doing pioneering research using the Yamaha Disklavier technology to diagnose differences in interpretation of works, but ultimately to detect physical problems faced by pianists over the span of long careers.  Ted played an important role in the formative years of this research, providing her with space for her Yamaha Disklavier as well as advice and support for research projects. From this experience she developed an expertise in identifying what in many instances would be career-ending physical disorders, and providing remedies that saved and extended professional careers. She continues to build on these data through her INTENTION-The Power of the Heart.

 A moment of reflection as we conclude with Dr. Ted Coon's reading of his translation of Rilke's Poem Sonnet #9.

                                            Dr. Ted Coons Reads His Translation of Rilke Poem