In Memory of My Father on His Birthday

Café Mouffe: In Memory of Slava

Sleepless in Cambridge. Woke at 4 a.m. to BBC and sad news that Mstislav Rostropovich had died in Moscow this morning at age 80. So the Mouffe will depart from its usual jazz format to pay tribute with this YouTube clip of Rostropovich performing the Bourreé from Bach´s Suite for Solo Cello in C Major. Violistarevirtuoso, who posted the clip, wrote, “WE´LL MISS YOU. THANKS FOR THE MAGIC YOU LEAVE BEHIND.” Amen.

I remember hearing Rostropovich in 1974 when he performed the Dvorak cello concerto with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra. This was shortly after his political exile from the USSR, and shortly before he became conductor of the National Symphony in Washington. I had free press passes, and I took my father to the concert. It became one of my first experiences with realizing through someone else’s eyes what I could not see. My dad did a deft job of narration. He was impressed by the cellist’s hands (“they’re huge”), the way Slava enveloped his instrument (he was huge, too), and the way he jutted his jaw and jerked his head, emphatically urging the orchestra to pick up the tempo. After the performance we tried to go backstage on the press pass, but the line outside Rostropovich’s dressing room was too long. That night remains one of my most cherished memories with my father.

I am not ready to let him go. Here is a clip of Slava performing the Prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G major (BWV 1007). The YouTube sound can’t begin to approach the acoustics of his 1995 recordings of the complete cello suites, but this looks like it came from the DVD of the same performance. The opportunity to see him at the cello in that spare, resonant cathedral is extraordinary.

Congratulations, Ornette!

Ornette Coleman won the Pulitzer Prize for Music yesterday for his 2006 live album, Sound Grammar. This award typically goes to a living American composer of “classical” music which few people have ever heard. Now it goes to a living legend whom few outside avante-garde jazz circles have heard or would give a chance. Remember that photo of Ornette with Jimmy Carter in 1977? I never thought he’d be invited to the White House. Hey, I never thought I’d be invited to the White House. At age 78, Ornette now is getting the national acclaim he deserves. Here’s a NYT feature story from September 2006, when Sound Grammar was released.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1923-2007): So It Goes

Photo Source: NYT 041207

Kurt Vonnegut said the only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.

Another Cool Cat Turns 50

What a week for cake and candles! Longfellow turned 200. Elizabeth Taylor turned 75 – whatever happened to National Velvet, anyway? And today the Cat in the Hat turns 50. If you’re a child of a certain age (and who isn’t?), you will hear one of the Cat’s catchy rhymes, then long-forgotten neural pathways will be firing all day long. The same warning goes for the Cat’s animated musical birthday card. I was thrilled to find it, then I couldn’t turn it off.

As you’d expect for any 50-something cultural icon these days, the Cat in the Hat has his own Wikipedia page. But who knew the book has a scholarly edition, The Annotated Cat? According to the publisher’s blurb, “The Cat in the Hat and its sequel operate on many levels. The books teach reading, but they also teach about poetry, politics, ethics, comics, history… even conartistry.”

NPR celebrated this morning in its comprehensive audio-historical way. The NPR web page is loaded with additional content and links to other sources. Here’s the skinny:

John Hersey of Hiroshima fame had a hand in the book’s inspiration. He prompted publisher William Spalding to bring out an engaging children’s book that would solve the urgent question of the day, “Why can’t Johnny read?” That was the 1950s version of a pedagogical crisis as old as Socrates. The publisher asked Dr. Seuss to produce a reading primer with a 200-word vocabulary that was entertaining enough to replace Dick and Jane. Dr. Seuss chaffed at the word restrictions. The book took a year and a half to write, and in the end it deployed a 236-word vocabulary. It made Dr. Seuss a rock star among children’s authors, but it was too “subversive” to gain acceptance as a school primer. Like the Cat himself, Dr. Seuss knew how to break the rules and get away with it.

Spinoza’s Anger Management Class

MEDIA NOTES: Spinoza: Mind of the Modern, Open Source 021407

I tried to read Spinoza in my youth and didn’t get very far. So I was dubious about a radio talk show devoted to the 17^th-century philosopher. And it was Open Source’s Valentine edition. That’s 2deepgeek for sure. But to quote Spinoza the humanist: “Let all men think what they want and say what they think.”

One of the show’s guests was neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, who is widely known for his work on the biology of emotion. He considers Spinoza to be a “proto-biologist”. Damasio explained something in Spinoza’s thought that is so profound it should be obvious. Spinoza said something like this: “An affect cannot be restrained or neutralized except by a contrary affect that is stronger than the affect to be restrained.” Damasio paraphrases it thus: “If you want to overpower an emotion that’s driving you in the wrong direction, that is a passion, in fact, the only way you can do that is not by saying no, but by saying no through another emotion that is more powerful than the previous one.”

Where Are You, Walter Lowenfels?

Major Jacksonan’s line about a community of readers/believers (what poets want) reminded me of a line from Walter Lowenfels’ little book, The Revolution Is To Be Human. I quote this line often enough to make it a credo:

One reader is a miracle. Two readers are a movement.

So I went looking for an Internet image of Walter Lowenfels just now and found very little about him. There is a Wikipedia page with almost nothing on it. The first Google search result points to Washington University Libraries, which provides a decent short biography along with documentation on their collection of Lowenfels papers related to the protest anthology Where is Vietnam? Bloggers make it into the top 10 Google searchs with Walter Lowenfels posts by A Burning Patience and Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company, a Henry Miller blog.

Search for Jabberwhorl Cronstadt, the fictional name Henry Miller gave to his portrait of Lowenfels in Black Spring, and the top 10 reveals a scary number of myspace pages. Maybe a punk band adopted the name. Whatever you do, don’t click on one of these links unless you’re prepared to hear some awful onomatopoeic music inspired by Jabberwhorl Cronstadt! Could there be a punk band called Edgar Varese?

Homage to Henry – Welcome to 2deepgeek

When I began the work of writing on a daily basis more than 35 years ago, I penned an inscription in my journal from one of my tutelary spirits, Henry Thoreau. The quote from Walden revealed something about Henry’s approach to the work of writing, along with a wry sense of the scale of its rewards:

For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their own reward.

Henry began his journal in 1837 with a bow to his own mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson:

'What are you doing now?' he asked. 'Do you keep a journal?' So I make my first entry today.

I count Emerson among my tutelary spirits, too. So it seems fitting as I launch this new venture to begin again by remembering the words of these writers who have influenced me so deeply. I will have more to say about both of them. I have enjoyed asynchronous, place-shifted conversations with them for decades, and I know they will join me in the conversations conducted with this blog. Dear Reader, I hope you will join me, too.

For a digital text of Walden on the web, check out the Project Gutenberg edition:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext95/waldn10.txt