Monday, February 21, 2011

Sound Thinking

Dust of Snow
Robert Frost

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

There was no crow, but Frost’s poem popped into my head as I was trying to see some beauty and whimsy in this latest blanket of the white stuff.

The year is bringing many whirlwinds. Witnessing the sirocco of protest going through the Middle East is mind blowing. Of course for me it’s from the safety of Twitter.

The Avant and the Uber

On a direct cultural level, back-to-back concerts have recently blown my mind: one from the second annual Avant Music Festival, the other the Bach B Minor Mass. BOING!

The Avant Music Festival is curated by composer Randy Gibson and soprano Megan Schubert, down at the Wild Project. I got into it from a very special, longtime friend, Reiko Füting, who is a composer and performer. His music was featured along with the music of Nils Vigeland, one of his mentors.

AMF2011 Preview Video from Avant Media on Vimeo.


The evening was built around duets. It was an engaging programming device. Each piece was in duet with a piano, which connected the evening and was further connected by the same pianist playing each piece, Yegor Shevtson. The pieces were in duet with each other as the program alternated between the 2 composers.

It opened with Reiko’s Three American Folk Songs (2007) and closed with Vigland’s setting of Three Shaker Songs (2009). The other pieces featured individual violin, viola, cello, flute, and the great Carol McGonnell on clarinet.

The pieces were both rich and minimal, with a lightness of depth. That’s what I love about contemporary modern music: the oxymoron juxtapositions.

And then there’s the Bach B Minor Mass. The piece people say has inspired nonChristians to convert (probably apocryphal, but you know what they mean: it’s that inspiring). The piece some people believe is the closest thing we have on earth to knowing the mind of God. The great Latin Catholic mass from the great Lutheran composer.

I agree with Oestreich in the NY Times that the St. Thomas Boys & Men choir seemed a bit off for the Friday night performance, and the soloists weren’t the best. But the piece itself is so stupendous, and the performance so spirited that there was transcendence on the cold, February night.

Meanwhile, Back at the ranch . . .

Progress on the bath remodel is slow, but you can’t hurry an artiste. Carol Reed's The Agony and the Ecstasy is echoing in my apartment:

Rex Harrison’s Pope Julius II/M.A.Peel: “When will you make an end?”

Charlton Heston’s Michelangelo/Contractor: “When I am finished!”
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Monday, February 7, 2011

Ms. Blandings Builds Her Dream Bath

One fine day last October I gave my bathtub a long hard look, after a long hard scrub, and came to the conclusion that no amount of industrial nor organic cleaner was going to help brighten the classic, basic, old New York bathtub. It was put in when the building was a gut rehab in 1984. Its slip resistant pattern has not weathered well at all nor has the grout.

The stars then aligned in a way that I could partake of that time-honored rite-of-passage of redoing a bathroom. Blessed to be able to make such a home improvement, it's not something for the faint of heart. I’m channeling Cary Grant’s Jim Blandings from the delightful 1948 Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House on a daily basis to find the humour in the process, but more about that later.

I thought I would get off easy, because I’m ONLY replacing the bathtub and tile around it, plus a new vanity/sink and new, wider door. I’m not touching the other side of the room, or the floor.

My Amalfi Coast
Even though I believed that I narrowed the potential pain of the renovation by limiting the scope, even the basics will wreak havoc: e.g. ripping out tiles and a bathtub; having no place to shower for 16 working days; needing to find and deal with a contractor, etc. And so I decided I would only do this if the results were going to be really special. Otherwise, I’d live with the tarnished slip resistant spots and save the money and aggravation.

And then I saw a simple but beautiful Solistone tile and had a vision: I would capture the sensibility of the bathroom in my hotel on the Amalfi coast several years ago. It was all shades of luscious blue tile and had a window overlooking the even bluer water. I saw that I could evoke that sensibility by putting the Solistone on all three sides of the tub alcove and the ceiling.

I never felt more like a character from Edith Wharton, all those early Americans who went to Europe and saw something that they had to have, or replicate.

Numbers Rule the Universe. - Pythagoras

Never a truer notion than in the measuring of a small bathroom where there is literally no room for error. My brain strains to remember high-school geometry to determine the area of my tub alcove (height x length x depth?).

And the tub itself. I wanted a claw foot, acrylic, because the room is much too small for the weight of cast iron (in my next life I can put that in the farm house I’ll have).

Anyway, I was looking for a small tub, and I found one at Vintage Tube & Bath that is just 54”. I ordered the whole tub package, which includes lots of the unsexy things you need with a tub, and shower package.

Then, for convoluted reasons, I thought the tube would be too small, and decided a 57” would be better. When you're going through all this expense and trouble, you have to keep you eye on the end game. That's what lasts--all the aggravation will dissipate.

And so I started to arrange the great tub switch.

Here’s Where Cary Comes In
I’m channeling Cary Grant, hoping that the wrong 100 pounds of acrylic sitting in my apartment’s basement will feel like a funny, zany 1940s movie. (Maybe I need a sidekick like Betty Hutton to help.) His Jim Blandings is that perfect mixture of optimism and exasperation.

Surprisingly, dry, witty repartee in an English accent with the tub company isn’t really helping the process of telling them that I made this mistake. And trying to get the right size delivered . . . and get the wrong one picked up.

Then, after successfully arranging to purchase a new tub, and have the 54” one picked up, I realized that I can’t actually fit a 57” tub. A freestanding tub needs some space away from the wall to, well, stand free. I make decisions at work ALL DAY for fairly complex, creative projects: I have never been so rattled between 54" and 57" in my life.

So I had to call the good people at Vintage and say, please cancel the new order, I’m keeping the old. And here’s where the third martini of the evening comes in, now channeling Constance Bennett’s Marion Kerby from Topper. I'm seriously thinking of sending the sales people at Vintage a fruit basket.

The Room for Ablutions
Alongside the practical nature of life is the ritual, from the formal religious to the completely organic. Morning and evening ablutions--the ritual cleansing of the body after the haze of sleep and the harshness of city life—-for me is the later. In this jungle that we call New York City, connecting with water and soap is essential to well being. And beauty in this room of cleansing is the best therapy I know, might even be the cheapest.

Demolition started today. Blogging will be a light until some of my space emerges from utter chaos.

*******

Many people love Mr. Blandings for the classic scene of Myrna Loy picking very specific colors. But I like this excerpt that shows off some great Cary lines: "This house has been standing since the second year of the Continental Congress. You take one look at it and the shingles start for fall off."

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Tuesday, February 1, 2011

February: Tradition Soup

February is a month unique for its multiple holidays that virtually cascade into each other.

February 2 is Candlemas, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin and the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, considered the end of Epiphany by C of E. (In ancient times, a woman who gave birth to a man child was considered unclean for 7 days, and was to remain for 33 days “in the blood of her purification.” After 40 days, Mary redeemed her first born from the temple, and was purified by the prayer of Simeon. Which lead to the great chorale tradition centuries later of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, which I have enjoyed singing immensely.)

The name Candlemas arose from the tradition of the priest blessing candles (which must be of beeswax) at the mass to use the rest of the year.

It’s also Groundhog Day. Wiki tells us:

“An early American reference to Groundhog Day can be found in a diary entry dated February 5, 1841, of Berks County, Pennsylvania storekeeper James Morris:

Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans, the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate.

So the New World Germans are responsible for Punxsutawney Phil and Staten Island Chuck, which begat the great Harold Ramis flick with Billy Murrary and Andie MacDowell. One of the landmark films of the 1990s, a look at the “what if” we had world enough and time to redo days until we got talents and love right. The friend I saw it with questioned if the Bill Murrary character had really changed. A unique interpretation.

Pagans had their own deal with Imbolc, an early Celtic feast demarking the midway between winter solstice and spring equinox, which was Christianized into the feast of St. Brigid. Neopagans and Wiccans continue the celebrations in their own ways today.

February 2 this year is also Chinese New Year’s Eve for the Year of the Rabbit that begins on February 3. The Rabbit year is traditionally seen as a year to catch your breath after the more volatile TIger year.

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and Johnny Depp are all Rabbits. Now try saying there isn’t something behind this!

The stamp this year was designed by Kam Mark, who grew up in Chinatown. It features kumquats, which are given as gifts and eaten for good luck.

And this is all only in the first 72 hours, long before we get the heavy hitters of Valentine’s Day and President’s Day. Not sure how much these holidays mean any more as we tiptoe deeper into the 21st century. Someday maybe they’ll be the grandchild of a Wiki entry that says, “In a blog in 2011, M.A.Peel looked at some of quaint 20th century communal ideas that made their way into the very beginnings of the 21st century, in what was then The United States of America.”
              

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

It's "gang aft agley" Day!


Back home again, after an extraordinary time in Sydney. The "other side of the world" thing could not have been more cogently realized than in the extremes of weather.

In Sydney, I got a severe sunburn on hands, neck, and throat, from taking a 5-hour bike tour. It was overcast, and actually rained a bit, but the sun is so strong there, and the ozone level so thin, that my poor skin incinerated. The burn was so bad that I was happy not to go outside during the entire week of the Tallis Scholars workshop.

On the day I left Sydney it was 86 degrees. When I touched down at JFK 23 hours later, it was 19 degrees. The endless flying and jet lag settling in led to a strange state where I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone episode "The Midnight Sun," where the world seems to be burning up, but it's only a dream from someone freezing to death. (Up theme music please)



It will take me a while to catch up on things. But I'm glad I didn't miss the chance to say, Happy Birthday, Rabbie Burns! The great Scot was honored with a Google logo, just for Google UK. It references his poem, "My luv is like a red, red rose, that's newly sprung in June." I wrote a tribute to his birthday a few years ago, replete with an Al Hirschfeld anecdote and an insistence at getting one of his most famous lines right.
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Sunday, January 9, 2011

My Songlines

“Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who had wandered over the continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path-- birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterhold--and so singing the world into existence." Bruce Chatwin, Songlines

A knowledgeable person is able to navigate across the land by repeating the words of the song. Wiki

The songline that has led to my upcoming time in the land of the Dreaming tracks of the Dreamtime begins with the daughter of the great British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, Barbara Geach. Some day I will tell Barbara’s own, extraordinary story, but that is not this day.

This day I sing into existence

Spem in alium nunquam habui praeter in te Deus Israel
qui irasceris
et propitius eris
et omnia peccata hominum in tribulatione dimittis

Because of Barbara Geach I became interested in Renaissance polyphony and The Tallis Scholars. Because of a colleague I attended a concert of the Tallis Scholars at Lincoln Center in November. Because it was part of the first annual While Light Festival, there was a free reception where I saw Peter Phillips, with whom I have already attended two polyphony workshops. And in that conversation he nudged me into going to the Tallis Scholars workshop in Sydney, Australia, where he will conduct Spem in Alium, the famous 40-part motet from Thomas Tallis.

Global Strange Happenings

Australia is a mystical place, as all who travel there will say. It is now experiencing floods of Biblical proportions. Rockhampton, near Brisbane in Queensland, is suffering:

Residents of Rockhampton are braced for complete isolation as waters, which have flooded an area bigger than France and Germany, have closed the town's airport and railway and is now lapping at the last remaining road link.

The floods have now unleashed a plague of snakes including highly venomous taipans, brown snakes and red-bellied blacks. Residents say the snakes are climbing trees and hiding in houses as they search for dry refuge. Emergency officials warn the snakes are in their mating season and are very agressive.

Rumours of crocodile sightings are also sweeping the town.

Thousands of poisonous cane toads have also been spotted while authorities say Rockhampton will be hit be sandflies and disease-carrying mosquitoes breeding in standing water.

Natural disasters and mass animal deaths have been reported everywhere (a roundup from the EUTimes):

Brazil: Mysterious killing of fish in coastal regions; Canada:10,000s Birds found dead in Manitoba, Dead Birds and Fish reported in St. Clair River, Ontario; Chile: Thousands of Birds fall from the sky; China: Eagles and Birds are falling from the sky; Italy: Thousands of Doves are Dying; New Zealand: Hundreds of snapper dead on beaches, Penguins, petrels and other seabirds, mass deaths; Philippines: Residents gather, eat dead fish floating in barangay Ibo; South Korea: Dead Teal Ducks With Bird Flu Strain; South Africa: Mystery of dead birds on Cape roads; United Kingdom: Dead fish discovered in canal marina near Abergavenny, 40,000 ‘devil’ crabs found dead on the beach; Vietnam: Tons of farm fish found dead

USA: Arkansas: Nearly 3000 Dead Birds Fall From sky, Now 100,000 Fish Dead; Florida: Thousands Of Fish Dead In Spruce Creek; Illinois: Dead Birds Reported by Residents in Southern Illinois; Kentucky: Dead birds; Louisiana: Dead Birds Fall From Sky AGAIN, 300 Miles From Arkansas Incident Days Earlier; Maryland: 2 Million fish die in Chesapeake Bay; Michigan: Hundreds of Dead Fish In Lincoln Park

So much death and disaster in the global Dream Tracks. Reminds me of the film The Last Wave. And that’s from the great Australian film director, Peter Weir. Hmm.

Weir’s The Last Wave has haunted my mind since I saw it many years ago, the rationalist lawyer drawn into the mysticism of a modern-day apocalypse first seen as extreme, freak weather that only the Aborigines see the significance of. Weir also directed Picnic at Hanging Rock, that oddity of fiction about 3 school girls and a teacher who go missing from a boarding school picnic that was so compelling that some fans enthused that it had to be true. It was just a made-up story.

Leaving a Sad Nation for Down Under

I leave New York in between monster snowstorms, and the country reeling from the shootings in Arizona. I believe that the killing has more to do with mental illness than politics, but the details do speak to the very heart of us as a nation, from the idea of a local meet-and-greet with your Congressperson, to the issue of the lack of gun control, and that it’s legal to carry concealed weapons in Arizona, to learning that little nine-year-old Christine Green was born on 9/11/2001 and was there because of her interest in school politics.

Such a strange, jumbled intersection of personal and collective threads in the early part of our new year.

A blogging break starts now. I’ll be gone a couple of weeks, but will be tweeting between the traveling and the singing. Follow me, you know where.



(Photos, top to bottom: David Gulpilil, from opening sequence of The Last Wave; Richard Chamberlin at the end of The Last Wave; Gabriel Zimmerman, murdered in Arizona; Live shot of the Pacific Ocean via web cam on the Hollister storefront on Fifth Avenue, NYC)
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Saturday, January 1, 2011

Running in the New Year!




It was a lovely night for a run, and so said all 5,600 of us. The Emerald Nuts Midnight Run in Central Park is one of New York's lesser-known gatherings. We may look like those crazy people in Time Square at the start, but at the stroke of midnight we are underway to fly as fast or as slow as our legs will go.

The night feels very special in the park, as the NY Road Runners takes over the highways and biways. The race starts on the 72 street transverse, goes up the east side to 102 st transverse, then down the west side back to 72 street. The views are dramatic for much of the run; I felt entirely indebted, again, to Olmstead and Vaux and their brilliant vision for the park. What they didn't image is the scope of the illuminated skyscraper skyline that would rise above their trees, symbols of the energy and imagination that is the best of New York.

With fireworks overhead, the ragtag assembly of costumed runners, casual runners, real runners, enjoys the experience together, cheered on by spectators who take a break from parties nearby to cheer and wave on the throng.

There is no better way to shake off the cares of the old year than to sweat them out of you and enjoy the visceral sensation of letting go.

Happy New Year Everyone!

              

Friday, December 31, 2010

The Last Bus Ride of 2010

I had to run down to the Apple store this morning (my MacBook Pro is getting wonky), and on the way back I took the M104 up Broadway.

It’s was a sunny morning here in Gotham, and the bus was a lovely way to go, much better than the dank darkness of the underground. Thinking about this being the last day of the first decade of the new millennium led my thoughts to drift philosophical as the bus slowly made it’s way and a part of the stream of humanity got on and got off.

I’ve run into the idea of “being on the bus” as a metaphor for life in various places. A priest once likened coming to terms with death as simply that you reach your stop, and you get off the bus of life. This was echoed in a Fraiser episode, of all things. In the episode “The Dog That Rocks the Cradle,” Fraiser and Niles want Martin to plan his funeral. He says no, “You don’t pull the chord on the bus until you’re ready to get off.” Hmm. Did the writers hear that same sermon?

The tv series House also used the bus as the transition from here to hereafter. It was in “Wilson’s Heart,” when Amber pieces together how she came to be terminal in the hospital, she says, “I shouldn’t have gotten on the bus.” This is literal, because the bus was in an accident, but it had the overtone of a more philosophical idea of what you can and can’t control in your life as you travel along.

There was something else on the bus that triggered the end-of-year reverie: a woman was eating Good and Plenty. I haven’t even seen a box of G&P in years. And my mind searched for the old commercial song (which must have been played to the early seventies): Charlies says, Love my Good and Plenty; Charlie says, Really rings the bell.”

From childhood Saturday mornings to being on a bus on the great street, Broadway.

I really don’t know where my bus is headed, or where or when that last stop will be. But the journey is never dull, and you can’t ask for more than that.


              
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