Tee Vee

Feeling the Music

I'd like to take a moment away from my cynical and honest side to detour. Something more pleasant and quite beautiful is in order.

I've been a flute player for nearly 12 years now and have enjoyed nearly every minute of it. I am not a music major and have no interest in making music into a profession. I do it as a profound respite into a magical world where bodies sway and emotions flow freely. I am quite fortunate to have won the spot as principal flute here in the Butler Symphony Orchestra and I have taken a lot of recent enjoyment in working more on my playing. I have been reflecting on my brief past in music and it is a pleasing thing.

I have always been a good flute player and I was quite serious in high school, although I ultimately decided not to major. My flute slipped for a few years as I focused on anthropology and other aspects of my life. But I have been working harder of late and have brought myself up to a familiar level. Ultimately, though, I think my success has little or nothing to do with practice time, inherent skill, perfection or even devotion. Instead I owe it all to feeling the music.

Our conductor makes many detours from the music during rehearsal time, but a common theme he speaks to is feeling in music. He asks us to move with emotional parts and inject an energy into our playing. The reality is that we can only physically control the speed and amount of air going into our instruments. Regardless, we can alter the sound and overall feeling of a piece of music by feeling the music. Without changing tempo or volume we can add great energy to a passage. Without slowing or stretching, or even adding vibrato we can make a theme tear at the heartstrings of the audience. This ability is what separates good and great musicians.

I decided not to go into flute performance because I knew that that future would entail a great deal of regimenting of and professionalizing music, breaking down music into often times frivolous categories. I thought this would kill music for me. And, to be honest, a lot of musical terminology is lost on me. Nonetheless I can be successful because I connect with symphonies passages and sounds. This is the beauty of music, it is something that comes from within, something that also embeds itself deep in your mind making certain passages unforgettable. It is something that can change feeling with mere thought and mind-driven expression. It is something that creates goose-bumps on my skin at truly wondrous moments.

We are playing Schumann's 1st Symphony in B Flat and the final movement is a exciting allegretto that wraps this symphony up in that magical way that can only be achieved by these grandiose pieces of music. We often rehearse this movement last and I am often stuck with parts of it in my head for the rest of the day. I have not been able to articulate what I wanted to as well as I normally do, but this perhaps does it best. The tempo for that last movement is roughly equivalent to the tempo of my walking stride. For this reason, walking away from rehearsal I often feel the music in each step, my body rising and falling and my mind swirling with chords and attacks and beautiful themes. Its enough to bring a grin to my face for no obvious reason. I am truly feeling the music, it is something that pleases me, something that works its way into my being, something that never leaves me.

Global Warming and Grains of Sand

As may be emerging as a trend in these few blog entries here, I have rather different and critical views on life and the situation of the world today. Seeing as I just tonight attended a lecture on Climate Change and Religious Perspectives, I've decided to devote some time to my ideas on climate change.

In the early days of global warming I argued that it was a natural trend, that our planet moves in and out of climatic stages and trends. This argument is not to deny that global warming happens, but mostly that it should come as no surprise. I have been convinced, of late, that indeed human actions have had a great effect on natural trends and have increased them in an "unnatural" way. I criticize the term unnatural because if humans are not a natural organic being of this planet and earthly ecosystem than I do not know what is. Therefore, even the largest cities could be considered natural landscapes. Perhaps its a stretch and most won't agree, but nevertheless I see similar amounts of beauty in the setting sunlight reflecting off a glass facade of a building as I see in the same sun reflecting off a body of water.

While I accept humans role in global warming I still consider it a natural process. My problem with environmentalists is that they inevitably represent humans as the kings of the earth and the ultimate bringers of change. It seems that many should find conflict in the simple act of living, seeing the destructive and rapist role that humans play towards the world that has been protrayed. I think that the current global warming and climate change dialog greatly overestimates and egocentrically places a great influence and power that we simply do not have. Humans have existed on this planet, currently exist on this planet and will remain in existence on this planet for a minuscule amount of time. We need only consider the life of earth, some 4.5 billion years, in order to humble our futile presence. Our entire 400,000 year existence is but a blink of the eye in the history of our planet, that's own history is but a blink of the eye in the history of the galaxy and so on and so on down the road until we come to times that no human can logically or illogically conceive. That said, environmentalists seem to be under the impression that the world we see today was a once static place; that Pandas and White Tigers and Andean Condors have always and would have always beautified the planet were it not for humans. However, the world that we know and see today is also but a single grain of sand on the great beach of time.

Is it not egocentric and somewhat ridiculous to attempt to save Polar Bears and Iranian Cheetahs from the natural evolution or extinction that has and will always occur? I think it is. Despite how much I love seeing the far reaches of our environment populated by exotic and beautiful animal and plant life, I keep in mind the lack of permanence that my eye represents. Global warming is not a good thing, it is making change happen occur much faster (faster than we as a species have heretofore been able to cope with it), but it is silly to expect to turn off evolution and change and save the whales. Whatever our impact on the globe, it will come to an end one day, either because we mar it beyond recognition and move on to other planets, or because we too will simply become extinct.

This planet still has 4 billion good years left before that damned star our there decides to go supernova. Our impact on the globe will be permanent, but instead of viewing it as negative, indeed as a rape and plundering of the natural world, it is but one of many impacts that have changed the earth. One need only consider the great extinction events that have to date eliminated 99% of the life on the planet; including the most-well known event, the extinction of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago that changed the face of life on the planet.

Life will go on on this great blue planet until the sun explodes or the core stops spinning ("The Core" anyone?). Life in the future will be different, and perhaps humans will be part of a great extinction event that will change life drastically. This is not a bad thing, indeed it is as natural and as bad as an antelope being hunted, killed and devoured by a pride of Lion. Current discussion on climate change is selfish, short sided and homo-centric (?). Instead of thinking we have great control or great influence over the natural (however accelerated) processes, we should consider how to adapt the human condition to coping with such changes as raised sea levels and drought.

"...Living in a State Beyond Absurdity"

The following is a portion of a writing impulse I had in the very beginning of this semester (August 07):

Here’s where my mind fits in. I’m human. Everyone is human. Perhaps of all the universals, and theories, and ideas there is one truth; everyone is human. I must clarify, of course, this word, “everyone,” refers to people, on this planet of earth. Those living all over the surface. Those bipedal hairless, fragile, big-brained, mammals that can recognize the shapes in this writing as meaningful words or could understand these words were they spoken to them. If one could read this sentence, or if one has the cognitive capability of understanding the meaning that I wish to convey, that we are all humans, through whatever means necessary, then that individual is a “person.” I realize there are some that have not the cognitive capability to understand this, but they need not be excluded, for we can define humanity down to a genetic level. Perhaps its basic, perhaps it goes without saying, perhaps it is one of the largest oversights that human kind has made in the last several centuries, but nonetheless, the phrase, “We are all humans,” if mutually intelligible, is the one certain worldly truth. It is only by giving this simple sentence a moment of thought and consideration and then by acting on this sentence as a manifesto and call for action that this world will every become right.

In short, we are all humans, but the majority of humans don’t understand that. Religion, capitalism, war, technology; it’s all really meaningless. We’re all humans.

I’m full of contradictions. Here I sit, at a computer, in a high-priced university apartment, having just proclaimed recently, that while I love to study people I don’t really care about people, yet I assert that the future of humanity lies in realizing that we’re all humans and that nothing else beyond that really matters. I think, though, I am willing to make the changes necessary to realize this future. Perhaps I realize an inevitability and therefore feel little need to actively make changes in my lifestyle as of yet. There will come a time, though, I believe, where all these changes will be forced upon all humans by necessity. Many will suffer. Many are already suffering. I will suffer. It will be hard and probably violent. But the harsh truth is that the only form of living that will work will be borne out of the phrase that we are all humans.

Compared to the few, my most basic living conditions and experiences have been absurdly primitive. Compared to the many, my most basic living experiences have been absurdly luxurious and shameful. I am not afraid to realize that. But here I sit living in a state beyond absurdity.

I’ve given a lot of thought to the fact that we are all humans. I realize it. I see that we need to change as people. No amount of aid or love or money will make anything any better. The capitalist system will fail. The United States will fall from its position as a world power. Marx’s inevitable, unforced, and uninitiated revolution (or perhaps realization) will occur. Equality will be reached in its most primal sense. Only in understanding that everyone is a human can equality fully be realized. Legislation in human rights and universal rights will become senseless and foolish. Why dictate an inherent right, why attempt to give it meaning, a simple self-realization will suffice. Why pray to a God, why attempt to delude one’s self into believing that there is something beyond the fact that we are all human. Why convince one’s self and other individuals that the world works one way or another. Why attempt to make one’s self better than any other?