REMEMBERING DINU AND THE JOURNEY

Creating a collage based on a Korean poem for a concert in Rome during this summer of 2018 awakened memories of the many connections that brought artists in this July concert together, especially those circumstances that brought my colleague Maestro Dinu Ghezzo to NYU and into so many of our lives.

Dinu was a special inspiration to so many because of his creative madness that overcame obstacles and made us all reach beyond ourselves.  I cannot remember Dinu without remembering David Ecker and Sandro Dernini...and many, many more whose commitment to each other as artists resulted in creating new work over several decades. 

For me, this recent concert in Italy was the final gesture of my tenure at NYU... marking 50 years of work at NYU that closes when I retire In September.  My first official act when I joined NYU was the creation of the graduate programs in composition and performance (MA & PHD) that I directed for ten years before I was able to appoint Dinu Ghezzo to take my place as Director of Composition. But Dinu had come to NYU as a conductor, and he was our joint selection between Washington Square Music Department and our department to direct the NYU orchestra. But is true that one cannot serve two masters, and Dinu was under considerable stress trying to manage his responsibilities between two departments. It was never clear to me why we had to follow that course since Music Education had been incorporated into the New York College Music, creating a conservatory in the School of Education known as Department of Music and Music Education. Before the first year of his appointment was finished, Dinu became a full-time faculty member in our new department. 

Another important moment was connecting with David Ecker in the Art Department, a phenomenologist, who helped us bridge the arts in a series of summer symposia, providing a phenomenological foundation that

In the Spring in early 2000s, Sandro Dernini (center) launched his new book inviting
 colleagues and Plexus with a special intro by Dr. David Ecker, (3rd from left in back)

grounded the arts at NYU in performance and research. This activity took place in the formative moments of our new department, putting more emphasis on collaboration. When Dinu Ghezzo joined the faculty, he easily accommodated these dynamics of interaction, and Sandro Dernini from Italy completing his second doctorate in visual arts (his first PhD was Biology), was an activist who complemented Dinu's "madness," and David Ecker who was Sandro's dissertation chair, colluded with Sandro.  The many adventures that emerged from the conflagration of these interests are too numerous to mention here. Our summer program in Gubbio could only have been created by Dinu Ghezzo with his ability to create something from nothing. The Gubbio program was brought to us by Dinu when I became Chair. It had no funding, and I had no reserve resources, but was sympathetic since we had started so many programs in an environment that provided few resources to support new initiatives. And so Gubbio was created, and what a marvelous madness every summer!  I had the honor of teaching theory for several sessions, and I came to love siestas of Gubbio and the exuberant night life, and walking through the mountains and the winding streets of Gubbio defining a mountainside.

Dinu was like a brother. When he came to NYU he provided the support and inspiration that enabled me to return to an active creative life. Traveling with him throughout Europe with our media concerts opened my world immensely. 

Dinu shepherding us through Italy, pictured with Lisa Naugle and John Crawford.

During this time, my connections with Asia developed, and the great poem I DO NOT KNOW became a source of inspiration. Written by the Buddhist Monk, Yong-Woon Han, imprisoned by the Japanese during World War Two, the poem served as a source for the great Korean Dancer and Choreographer, Kim Myung Sook,  in a major premiere performance in 2006 (https://wyzardways.blogspot.com/2006/05/i-dont-know-genius-of-kim-myung-sook.html ). 

Over time, I studied this poem in various translations, and driving around Jeju Island off the coast of Korea, I could still feel the presence of the Japanese occupation... the caves where Japanese suicide soldiers were forced to live as they waited assignment for their submarine suicide missions. Also, I came across countless silos where Japanese fighter planes were hidden from view from U.S. planes.  These echoes of the Japanese occupation, made me realize the intensity of Han's poem as his work expressed the depth of connection between a people and its land.  I also gained appreciation of the richness of the sound and ambiguity of the Korean language. 

For many years, I wanted to create a work based on this poem, and the opportunity to participate in this July 7th concert opened an opportunity to renew connections, including access to so many artists that Dinu connected as collaborators, inspired me to find a way to reconnect with many artists.  I appreciate the enormous success of this effort. This performance in Italy caps an era for me. 

Sandro Dernini has continued his creative activism in Italy, and maybe there is something yet to be done, especially to remember our departed colleagues, David Ecker, and Dinu Ghezzo. One of the highlights was one of our most strategic initiatives when we combined forces to recognize the 500th year of Columbus discovery of America as a time of reconciliation for Europe's exploitation of the Americas. Sandro managed to enlist the support and facility of NYU for a project that launched a sail vessel from Italy to Spain and many islands in the Atlantic Ocean, stopping at many islands and destinations for contributions of artists to contribute original works to a Black Box on the ship. The vessel was met in the harbor of NYC by PLEXUS and participants from NYU. The took the Black Box of artworks and paraded around Washington Square. Then they took the Black Box to the 12th floor of the newly constructed Bobst Library. The Snow Room had been decorated like a tropical island, and the artworks were taken from the BlackBox and put on display. In the celebration that ensued, Dinu Ghezzo composed piece for solo violin which was performed using a telephone to connect to Italy. In Italy, the performance was recorded and transformed by computer into an artwork which was faxed to the Bobst Library, perhaps the first such exchange in the history of the planet.

Such was the power and energy of that time, and I thank those who continue to create and honor these past connections by concerts that still cross oceans and nations in pursuit of artistic creation.

Thanks to everyone, my collaborators, and especially to Lisa's dancers and choreographer Tessa Rehbein, who danced this version of the I DO NOT KNOW  premiere. I truly celebrate the work of my collaborators, Laura Montanaro with her Italian translation and performance, Michelle Jiyue Cao's Chinese translation and performance, Dr. Sunmin Kim's Korean and English performances, John Russell Gilbert's performance of an English translation, Ms. Cao's flute improvs, and the Pipa improvs of Cantata Fan Chen.

It is the performative gesture of this premiere that inspires me to possibly develop the work further. I can see continuing to extend the work through additional languages and performers, to eventual live performances and improvisations. Dinu would have liked to see that. The Maestro after a visit to Korea came back with incredible masks that became part of a summer of fantastic voyages linking the ancient world of the Fall of Troy to Korea.

Dinu was NYU's Marco Polo. He opened the NYU university community to Italy as part of our Spring tours, connecting us intensely with Italian artists and the Italian landscape through numerous tours. I believe the gesture of this concert in Rome on July 7 celebrated the incredible imagination and inspiration that was Dinu Ghezzo as we continue to say to him Thanks, Maestro!

ITHACA AND JEJU: AN ODYSSEY

That Homer would create the definitive metaphor for the quest for identity should be no surprise. If evolution is the truth about who we are, it is inevitable that the question would arise about personal origin and identity. It may also be true that the moment of birth is so dramatic that this articulation of infinite identity awakens the quest for finding our way back home. In many ways, I have felt that my life has been a journey home, and each year has taken me further, without really knowing the ultimate destination. My personal Odyssey continually discovers new terrain that serves as a mystery that I need to unravel. This evolution seems to function in a similar way that Hegel's Thesis and Antithesis serves to shape history as process through the synthesis of opposing forces.

You may recall the poet Constantine Cavafy's wonderful poem, Ithaca, in which he persuades us that it is not the destination that is of importance, but rather the journey itself:

When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction...

Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don't in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way...

It always struck me as curious that the poem is entitled ITHACA, but in his text Cavafy always uses Ithaka, perhaps idealizing our mutual destiny that may be conditional to being human, while remaining totally personal and unique. But for the poet, the destination is more a process than a location. If you ever find your Ithaka, you may discover that the joy was in the journey and not the destination.

Odysseus is the adventure story of a man who has been stranded after the fall of Troy, trying to return home. Ulysses is the Latinized version of the name. From the viewpoint of literature, the most astonishing experiment with the form of the novel was James Joyce's ULYSSES, an extraordinary literary achievement. I would venture to say that more people have owned more unread copies of Ulysses than any other novel from any period. I must admit it took me considerable time to thoroughly understand. It is difficult to process such originality that is profoundly dense, but also stands as the most imaginative conception of any literary achievement. No other novel reflected the dilemma of the twentieth century with such imagination and intelligence. There is something magical about this epic volume, so much so that when a new edition is released, I have to own it as though it had just been released.

I think the lure of Ithaca as a Greek Island in the Ionian Sea has been in my mind for as long as I can remember. As a poet in Texas wandering around different neighborhoods, towns and cities, I tended to think of those meandering excursions with blank-paged volumes to capture text as a part of my Odyssey. Part of my unremembered past came bounding out of nowhere from a comment of a friend who reminded me that several years ago, I had composed a musical version of The Odyssey, fifteen scenes with musical numbers that attempted to remain faithful to Homer's text, although it tried to add a contemporary tone. It was a workshop that received a staged reading at the end of the semester. There were many powerful moments, but I found myself daydreaming and fantasizing a different work that would combine the island of Ithaca with the lost continent of Atlantis.

So as the allure of Jeju Island loomed large on the horizon of my future, Jeju began to delineate aspects of my odyssey that was still in process of becoming. Even the writing of this text is part of the becomingness that links to themes of the past years, a quest that somehow is involved with the understanding of identity.

So I went to Jeju, which happened to be the destination of a fantasy story I had been sketching.  The story was about an older man on a quest to find the answer to a mystery that finally leads him to Jeju. And now, through an incredible sequence of events, I found myself on Jeju Island, at the juncture of my own odyssey.

Jeju was a feast for the senses, a spiritual haven that nurtured spiritual awareness and fed my imagination. The island was born of volcanic activity beginning two-and-half-million years ago culminating in the eruption of a giant volcano a hundred-thousand-years ago. The volcano is now known as Mount Halla (Hallasan), the tallest mountain of South Korea. The island has flourished and is abundant with life, surrounded by the ocean to the North (the Strait of Korea and the Yellow Sea), with the Pacific Ocean to the South. Because the oceans have different temperatures, the abundance of different species in the two oceans provide an array of fish that is quite rare.

As I explored Jeju Island, I discovered through a friend a small restaurant on the southwest coast known as Zen Hideaway. There I would sit for hours writing and experiencing the presence of the ocean and distant islands that appeared to be calling me.

It was a late Spring afternoon when I began to sketch the islands along the coast in my view. Brother Island was a famous landmark representing the legend of a brother who tried to run away from Jeju, confronted by his younger brother off shore of Jeju, they were immortalized by the island gods as Brother Island, (I called it Two Brothers Island).

A little further into the ocean lay the dim outline of  my island Ithaca, as I sketched in my journal. Ithaca was just a fantasy, connecting to the cradle of western civilization...and as I slipped into remote origins, I thought of Atlantis... the ultimate illusion of civilization lost, a continent so remote that it is dismissed by Plato as merely a fable.

It seemed more than coincidence that my Odyssey, begun on the dusty plains of Texas in my younger days had led me to New York City, then to Europe, and now to the remote island of Jeju. As I walked the terrain of Jeju, it seemed famliar and receptive. I felt the power of SanbangSan. and the sense of well-being associated with Jeju, with a welcoming spiritual presence... maybe a homecoming... but I knew I'd been this way before.

In the middle of May, before this posting , I wrote the following poem:

Not this far. . .
I never knew I would survive
Beyond a barrier
Self conceived and self imposed
So long ago
That empty pages found a way
To mock my delusion,
Imitating the nothingness
Of anticipated emptiness.
Now these words . . .

I never knew I could revive
An unknown continent
Remembered, yet emerging
So far away
That silent chambers now resound
To shape a new perception,
Celebrating the resonance . . .
Restoring such abundant songs!

This poem came from what seems to be emerging as a series of Not-This-Far themes. It's no secret that I am continually surprised to find I'm still here. As I entered my fourth decade, I thought maybe I had overstayed my tenure. Now as I enter the eighth decade, I understand there are different expectations.

I draw attention to this recent poem because of the metaphor of an "unknown continent" that was apparently lingering on the fringes of consciousness even before I could identify and articulate the meaning of this new emerging intuition.

The purpose of my Blogs is that of uncovering, discovering, and disclosing the process of actualizing experience as a real and emerging entity. It is an underlying theme of how Time processed creates Quality as we record the singularity of what we notice.

As I follow this quest, I sense something emerging that somehow is connected to well-being, which is part of my remote past. Returning home to New York from Jeju, I came across a manuscript that was water damaged from a flood, my draft of a work that links ancient and modern worlds and the meeting of East and West. This document emerged from my experience with workshops in meditation and improvisation on Panther Mountain in Phonecia, a retreat near Woodstock in the Catskills in the 1980s. What came from this was one of my first works based on improvisation and well-being that eventually led to recent experiences with students at NYU in EXPANDED MUSIC sessions in Provincetown Playhouse.

MUTE AND INGLORIOUS

When I was editing newspapers, I needed to write an editorial about the freedom of the press and the freedom of speech. I had a generous amount of space in which to write and print my column, but suddenly I couldn't think of anything to say or write.

I just sat at the keyboard, mute and inglorious while the world went passing by.

As the days go by, I see an open road before me, and looking back, I see the marvelous terrain I have traversed. Life is a challenging quest, and I still remember unexpected turns that sometimes were terrifying, but I held my ground. Mostly I have traveled parallel paths with friends and companions, but I have navigated alone over great sweeps of unfamiliar territory.

in many ways I have almost been around the world. I hope that will literally come to pass. I have a sense that everything has been leading me to this next leg of the journey.

When I was 19, I apprehended that each of us has a personal odyssey, a quest to return to the source of Being...Home... 

In a green blank page book which was my constant companion, I wrote this sonnet:

Before me stands my soul. Behind me limps
The shadow of myself, which claims my mind
And lives in fear that I'll pursue the glimpse
Of permanence once seen when I was blind
To all but thought. Eternity demands
The infinite eye of mind to see much more
Than moments. I shall touch my soul with hands
Of art, and leave my shadow to explore
The vain imagination of its own
Identity in darkness. I must go
Upon a road where I must go alone...
Pursuing the path only my soul can know.
Shadows mocking me on silent feet
Become the only obstacles I meet.

Now, more than 60 years have passed, and still the journey calls me, perpetual sirens on the shore beguiling me, perhaps distracting me. "What took you so long?" they seem to say. I must admit that maybe I was sidetracked. Maybe there was meant to be a different destiny.

In the film THE NATURAL, Robert Redford plays a baseball player so phenomenal that he was immediately given a big contract. He could pitch--- he could hit like no other player on the scene. En route by train to join a team in the majors, he meets up with some strangers who conspire to trick and betray him because they have bet big money for the team he's joining to lose the pennant. He's 19 and feels he can do anything. He is traveling on the train with what is regarded as the best hitter in baseball. A reporter who has a stake in the young man failing makes a bet that he (Redford) can't throw the ball by the famous hitter. Redford claims he can strike him out. They stop the train.  In a dramatic scene, Redford strikes out the famed hitter. All bedlam breaks out and a woman traveling with the newspaper man invites the young athlete to her room. When he enters her room there is confusion in the darkened room and the young man (Redford) is shot.  The scene dissolves to 20 years later. Now the young athlete is in his 40s. It is obvious he never made it to the big leagues. Now he plays minor league ball on a losing team, but a scout sees him hit and gives him a break.  After much ridicule and rejection, Redford surprises everyone by becoming one of the best hitters and pitchers on the scene. The story underscores that although sidetracked on his journey to fulfill his destiny, he finally makes it happen... it was his destiny.

Somehow I feel at this juncture that maybe I have returned to resume a journey for which I lost directions some 60 years ago.

But this isn't Hollywood.

I know what is required. I am still uncovering the trail that has gone cold.

I see endless possibilities waiting. I know that there is something that needs to be created, and that life has been preparing me for whatever is destined to unfold. Sometimes we are too free... with more possibilities than we could ever imagine... and even though I followed the long route to arrive at this place, this is not a time for me to be mute and inglorious in the face of such infinite possibilities. 

BUMP IN THE ROAD

Once again, I am alone.

In my aloneness, I was coming to terms with a new direction from what had been a radical commitment to pursue quietness in the beauty of a subtropical isle. It was to be a time for reflection, for consolidating and celebrating past work that could eventually extend to new initiatives... essentially a time to slow down and enjoy life.

But abruptly, almost overnight, inextricably, unexpectedly, things changed. Some might call it a "bump" in the road, but this was much more pivotal.

What made me return to the streets of NYC was much more than a bump. It was seismic. I had been convinced by someone very special that I should spend my remaining years in quiet reflection and writing rather than maintaining the frenetic pace that had defined my year-round academic and artistic practices. Although summer was usually a time for slowing down in Academia, it was my busiest time. Every year was an evolution of ongoing praxial experimentation and deepening awareness of collaborative process.

But there I was, in a new commitment, in a new world. I was inspired by companionship in a setting where well-being was the essence of Jeju Island, a setting where the arts flourished, and the air and food were abundantly alive, and the Jeju skies were an elegant panorama of dazzling change.

But then one evening at dinner I was trying to make a silly joke by rolling some seaweed into a cigar. I was met by a remark that told me the dream was over.

For a while I continued my quest alone...relishing every moment of an island of such spiritual resonance that even personal disaster is transformed into insight and inspiration.

Eventually, I returned to New York City, and continued my spiritual quest by trying to determine how dreams begun in Jeju could someday be a setting for healing and collaboration of artists from the around the world in sharing and creating new work.

Returning to New York was more painful that I expected. When I walked in the front door I was overcome with tears, speechless. The intensity of the past ten months collapsed on me, and the spiritual scaffolding came crashing down.

So I slowly began to reclaim my identity, focusing on changing my apartment functionally, redoing the kitchen, learning to cook and establishing a regimen more like the way of life I had learned while in Jeju.

My vision for a retreat in Jeju was renewed through setting up new activities and interactions with students, colleagues, and new people entering my life. For about five weeks, the progressive realization of a new vision had given me a sense of renewal and a deeper focus and resolve.

All was going well in my recovery, until suddenly, from out of nowhere, I hit a bump in the road.

In the course of any quest, we inevitably encounter that unexpected bump in the road. But "unexpected" might be merely rhetoric, a convention born of story telling. The unexpected aspect might refer to the timing. Instinctively, you know it's coming, but you never know when. The bump itself is deliberately ambiguous. In today's world of Googling, you might be amazed to see how much nonsense is generated concerning a "bump in the road." Add me to the nonsense.

 One aspect of my return to New York was walking. Even though at 81, I've had some issues with locomotion, one aspect of change I experienced in my life after academia was the joy of walking. Walking and enjoying the night with a partner was a new experience, and a delight.

In my youth, I was a serious walker. Walking and writing were synonymous.  I walked in Amarillo, and wrote poems. I walked the city during my college days at Texas Tech, and I walked New York City, at times following the paths of Walt Whitman when he had the print shop in Brooklyn and crossed to Manhattan on the ferry, walking the famed printers row that no longer exists in lower Manhattan.

On a clear day as I walked east on Houston Street, I came upon Mulberry Street. I turned right and headed south.  As I came to Grand Street, to that sliver of Little Italy that still exists in the midst of Chinatown, I hit a bump in the road.

Memories of an improbable scenario, a fairy tale of two old souls lost to each other for centuries, only to discover each other in separate hemispheres, returned to me like a "haunting refrain...lingering like a haunting refrain." (Yes, I'm a romantic.)

 Suddenly I was hearing what I have always thought are among the most imaginative lyrics I've known:

You go to my head with a smile
That makes my temperature rise
Like a summer with a thousand Julys
You intoxicate my soul with your eyes

 It had been the end of summer and a new season of my life.

Returning to the street where it all began reminded me that the season was over, and I was filled with regret.  It was disarming.  Somehow the past derailed the journey... and I was looking into the wilderness, trying to get my bearing.

Still I say to myself
Get ahold of yourself
Can't you see that it never can be

Songwriters Haven Gillespie and Fred Coots expressed for me the magic of that summer of 2017. It was a summer that intoxicated me like a thousand Julys and brought a miracle to NYC.

And suddenly I was stumbling over a bump in the road right there on Mulberry Street.