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After reading a healthy chunk of The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson, I realized it should be added to the few sparkling events that make up my own constellation of insight into the African-American experience, a constellation I freely admit has only been seen somewhat like a little boy and his first gaze through […]
After reading a healthy chunk of The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson, I realized it should be added to the few sparkling events that make up my own constellation of insight into the African-American experience, a constellation I freely admit has only been seen somewhat like a little boy and his first gaze through a telescope. The other three events are: summer employment as a teenager working along-side African American men and women in motels, assembly lines, and warehouses; reading Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man; and witnessing Kara Walker’s art exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York sometime in 2007-2008 (and buying and studying the book capturing the exhibit, Kara Walker: My complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love).
I could write a dissertation connecting these four experiences, not suitable for a blog. Isabel Wilkerson’s book subtitle says it all, “The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.” We’ve all been exposed to the American immigrant experience in its many ethnic flavors, the American migrant experience, the calamitous exodus of the Native Americans from their lands, but this migration/exodus of Southern blacks to the Northern Cities has been less explored. It involved six million people and changed the south and north in ways that become obvious after you read! While I could never do this book justice in this space, I will say it is beautifully written narrative non-fiction. Ellison’s book made me understand not only the oppression of the African American by white communities north and south but black on black oppression and violence as well. I’m not sure how I’d describe Kara Walker’s art, other than to say you will come face to face and become intimate with the brutality of the southern slave culture, the co-dependence of masters and slaves, the underbelly of the relationships between owners and their slaves, and the particular violence and trauma against women – all this delivered in ways you never expect, such as through the perspective of pornography.
I only mention my summer employment because it was the only period in my life I’ve ever had any direct and sustained interaction with African Americans (this was in Chattanooga, Tennessee, not the deep South but bordering on it), working side by side with other men loading boxcars, drilling screws into Modern Maid Stoves, working machines in a metal fabrication plant, and pulling dirty linens from motel room cleaning carts all pushed by black women. Yet I can’t say I learned anything really meaningful from those experiences because the interaction was expressly to get labor done, and after it was done, no interaction. That in itself, however, says a great deal, I suppose.
So any insights were vicariously absorbed. I suppose I could add seeing the 1997 movie, Amistad, by Stephen Spielberg, but that was not about the African American experience per se (in their “freed” state) as it was the depravity of mankind and its institutions in buying, selling, and transporting human property.
Well, one day I would love to write an essay on this subject. But Kara Walker, Ralph Ellison (I know, he’s gotten lots of attention but still), and Isabel Wilkerson deserve far more attention and respect from far more people in this country, beyond the borders of art exhibits, literary fiction, and scholarly research.
Tagged with: Amistad • Invisible Man • Isabel Wilkerson • Kara Walker • Ralph Ellison • Stephen Spielberg • The Warmth of Other Suns
I thought A.M Homes’ Music for Torching (late 1990s, I think) was one of the funniest contemporary novels I had ever read. For me, it was like watching a backyard barbecue from an upper-story home down the street turn into a blaze engulfing the entire neighborhood – and laughing all the way through it, even while […]
I thought A.M Homes’ Music for Torching (late 1990s, I think) was one of the funniest contemporary novels I had ever read. For me, it was like watching a backyard barbecue from an upper-story home down the street turn into a blaze engulfing the entire neighborhood – and laughing all the way through it, even while it scorched my own suburban sensibilities. I mean, it was literary scorched earth. I recommended it to several friends, all of whom were more interested in throwing it on a figurative book-burning pile. I’ve been waiting for Homes to surpass that achievement so I could once again annoy my novel-obsessed friends.
I’ll now be recommending May We Be Forgiven to the same friends and family, and others as well. The main character is a Nixon scholar. Need I say more? Okay, I will. This book reads like literary stand-up comedy, which makes sense now that I’ve learned Homes took courses in stand-up comedy. Many novels continually surprise the reader with what I call the unexpected inflection points. Reader expects character A to turn left. She turns right. Then for several chapters, character A is on a journey to the right. Homes does this several times on a page. On each page. Or so it seems. Imagine being in a demolition derby (for those of you that did not grow up in places like the Tennessee-Georgia border, this is a unique auto “race” during which drivers ram the crap out of each other, the winner is driving the last car that still runs) blindfolded. You just don’t know what’s going to hit you next, or where you’ll end up. Homes’ makes sure you never leave the confines of the pit.
All the while, though, the story has momentum and is clearly moving towards a vanishing point. This is the genius of the work. This poor Nixon scholar pretty much deserves what’s coming to him, based on how the story begins (he beds his crazy brother’s wife, his crazy brother discovers, and his crazy brother kills his wife, after he kills a few others in a car wreck), but redemption, 450 pages later, is a thing of beauty, as he becomes head of a family, caretaker for all the kids who suffer because of his behavior and his brother’s. Along the way, Homes sucks up more bits and pieces of American culture, life in these United States, today than a twister taking its revenge on the New York metropolitan area.
Is there a novelist Homes echoes? To me, perhaps Tom Wolfe, with Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full. The back flap mentions John Irving, The World According to Garp. I would bet that Homes would still be the last car running in the derby, though. The others could never match her quick acceleration page for page, ability to deflect, and keep such crazy occurrences, most surprisingly of all, within a boundary of sanity for the course of the story.
I can’t wait to hear what the friends and family have to say this time around.
I’ve heard Chamber Project St. Louis a half a dozen times now in various venues around St. Louis, most recently at the Schlafly Tap Room downtown. What is remarkable and admirable about these four young ladies is that they are also managing their own […]
I’ve heard Chamber Project St. Louis a half a dozen times now in various venues around St. Louis, most recently at the Schlafly Tap Room downtown. What is remarkable and admirable about these four young ladies is that they are also managing their own business affairs – marketing, sales, website, rentals, venue arrangements, piano rental, and much more I am sure. It is difficult enough to eke out a living in classical music and the arts, but to do it all on your own is quite a challenge. Most musicians launch off an existing platform, an institution; these ladies are creating one.
But even that’s not all: They are bringing chamber music to new venues. How many times have you heard a violin, viola, flute, and harp in a bar? By doing so, they are undoubtedly attracting new patrons, young patrons, patrons that don’t need to drape their mink coats or Burberry overcoats over the back of their chairs. Imagine being able to sway and move, or even tap your foot to the music you are listening to! If you don’t like sitting for an hour, you can stand in the back. I heard them in the Spring at the Tavern of Fine Arts in the Central West End, over a glass of wine (or two) and a cheese and bread plate (and other choices). Chamber music is awakening, morphing into entertainment with options for how you experience it (not that I don’t love going to traditional concert halls, too)
The program last week at the Tap Room featured a harp, and music that spanned two and a half centuries. The Song of the Lark for flute and harp was the first piece, by Charles Rochester Young, a contemporary composer. It was followed by a Mozart (late 1700s) Duo for violin and viola, a harp solo by G Donizetti (early 1800s), and finished with Petit Suite by the French composer A Jolivet (mid-1900s). Just getting to see and hear a harp up close was treat enough! During the first piece, the harpist did something to her instrument to make it sound like a snare drum. To me, this was a stunning effect. She played it in spots like a guitar. Or at least it sounded like one to me. The piece itself reminded me of Debussy’s Prelude to Afternoon of a Faun. One thing about a Flute and a Harp: Both can run up and down the musical scales lightning fast and fast runs were certainly featured in this work. I’ve also never seen a harp string break, but one did (it hung there like a child being punished in the corner), and the players recovered marvelously.
The Mozart piece, I have to say, was typical in the sense that the viola was slaved to the violin. I’ve been a struggling viola player at various times in my life and have an ever so tiny chip on my shoulder. And not that I could ever have played hard, solo parts if they were ever written for me. But still. Anyway, the piece came across as lovely and, again, just so enriching to hear Mozart in a bar with huge tanks of beer and ale one floor below. He probably would have liked that. Finally, by the third movement, it seemed that the viola had parts equal to the violin, as they seemed to do a question an answer type of dance between them, exploring something deep.
During the Donizetti, we really got to see the harp up close and personal. The movement of the arms off of and onto the strings, and the shoulders as an extension of the instrument, is a thing of splendor.
The final piece, the Jolivet, also led my mind to Faure, Debussy, and Ravel and the impressionistic music of France and Europe in the late 1800s. This piece flowed off the stage deliberately and with great sensuality, and in the third movement I think I detected fragments of Middle Eastern musical themes, and different rhythms. In the last movement, the flute player switched to a piccolo and the piece ended playfully, as if there was dancing on board a ship, wherein the harp sounded to me much like a piano.
I guess I have a sentimental reason for hoping Chamber Project St. Louis achieves lavish success. When I was a teenager, playing the viola in the Chattanooga (Tennessee) Youth Orchestra, I formed a chamber group with some friends and we played a few “gigs” around town. We even got paid when we played at the Jewish Community Center, to this day the only time I have ever made a dollar with that instrument (five dollars to be exact!). Our group was a little lopsided. We had three or four violins, one viola, and I recollect that we had a cellist, and maybe even another instrument or two. We booked our own gigs too. I suppose our parents helped. But I think about how much fun we had giving it a go.
These ladies of course are trying to make a living adding new dimensions to the chamber music experience in St. Louis. Plan to enjoy their next gig and support them when you can!
Tagged with: chamber music • Chamber Project St. Louis • Charles Rochester Young • Schlafly Tap Room • St. Louis • Tavern of Fine Arts
On November 2, St. Louis’ Arianna String Quartet performed Passport: Latin America in their “house” (The Touhill Performing Arts Center at University of Missouri-St. Louis), a program consisting of works from three contemporary Latin American composers and including a flute player. In addition to reveling in the new compositions Arianna continues to bring to our […]
On November 2, St. Louis’ Arianna String Quartet performed Passport: Latin America in their “house” (The Touhill Performing Arts Center at University of Missouri-St. Louis), a program consisting of works from three contemporary Latin American composers and including a flute player. In addition to reveling in the new compositions Arianna continues to bring to our metro area, I was struck by their courage in having a program of all new music, music from a part of the world we don’t tend to associate with “classical” music.
You know, whenever you go to hear a major orchestra or chamber group, if they include a contemporary work (usually a big if), the organizers invariably sandwich it between two known and popular works, or at least recognized composers. I’ve always speculated the reason they do this is because if it’s scheduled first, many people will show up late, and if it’s scheduled last, many patrons will leave early. It’s like you have to put the bitter pill inside a scoop of ice cream to get patrons to swallow it!
The first piece, Quartet No. 1 by Osvaldo Costa de Lacerda (Brazilian) was playful, almost like a pop tune, but somber as well, and seemed balanced among the different instruments. I have to confess, I didn’t “feel” any Latin rhythms, but maybe that’s just me. I didn’t take any notes on the second piece.
The third piece, Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout (2001), by Gabriela Lena Frank (Peruvian, Chinese, Lithuanian, Jewish, and born in Berkeley, California), well-exemplified for me what the flutist, Alberto Almarza (Chilean), called a “layering of cultural realities…a reflection of the society” during the lecture preceding the program. This piece began with tribal-like percussion, guitar-like strumming rhythms, then glissando from the violin and high energy-tremelos. The second movement featured pizzicato (plucking the strings) and strange bowing I’ve never seen before, almost as if the music was not really mean for these instruments. I detected Latin dance and rhythms for sure in this piece, and even some tunes I’d more associate with Hollywood westerns. By the end it was rip-the-strings-off pizzicato! In the third movement, the players had to endure playing harmonics measure after measure – I say “endure” because harmonics are really hard to play right (at least they were for me, when I played viola). A blend of western United States and Mexican Mariachi band type sound began the last movement, which ended with bouncing bow strokes that reminded me of a horses’ clappity-clap on the high prairie.
To me, the point of hearing contemporary music for the first time isn’t necessarily to like or not like the music but instead to experience a different context, a new way of putting notes together that borrows from convention but also reaches for something new, to challenge our ears and our brains. Almarza said during the lecture that composers don’t invent anything, they open windows to a library of sounds from around the world. I would courteously contest that statement in general, but certainly see how it applies here.
The Arianna String Quartet continues to bring variety, sophistication, energy, and contemporary innovation to the St. Louis chamber music scene. They deserve our support!
Most of the contemporary composers I’ve listened to are already known and significant entities in their field. Their works get air time on radio, or their selections are part of orchestral performances I’ve attended.
This weekend, I heard a lecture by composer Adam Schoenberg (sponsored by the Washington University Department of Music) and, […]
Most of the contemporary composers I’ve listened to are already known and significant entities in their field. Their works get air time on radio, or their selections are part of orchestral performances I’ve attended.
This weekend, I heard a lecture by composer Adam Schoenberg (sponsored by the Washington University Department of Music) and, the next day, a performance of his work, “Finding Rothko,” performed by the Washington University Orchestra. He’s young (late twenties, early thirties, I’d guess), the composer in residence for the Kansas City Symphony, has the kind of academic credentials one would expect (Oberlin, Julliard) of a “leading composer of his generation,” has been described as “stunning, bold, open, and optimistic” (whatever all that means) by the critics, and considers himself a “21st century composer.”
What he means by that last phrase is that his music is differentiated by the full use of computers and technology. His process, for example, is to start with “sketches” written by hand, after being drafted up on the piano, then he transfers those sketches to a computer program called Finale. It was truly fascinating to hear during his lecture an orchestral piece in electronic form (the MIDI version) and then a recording of an orchestra performing it. Just the little snippets he showed about what you can do in the software was mind-blowing to a neophyte. He talks of orchestration in terms of palate, color, and texture.
When Barack Obama was elected, Schoenberg was so overwhelmed he felt like he had to “return” the gift he felt he (and presumably the rest of America and the world) had been given. In words from his website, Schoenberg felt what is was like to be an American. So he wrote an “American” symphony. Regardless of your politics, surely anyone would consider that a pretty damn cool thing to do.
He acknowledged the courage it would take to label a symphony “American.” Maybe that’s where the adjective “bold” comes from in his reviews. He also noted, for general interest, that he considers Aaron Copeland’s Third Symphony the “quintessential” American symphony. Schoenberg was also commissioned to compose a 21st century Pictures at an Exhibition (the Mussorgsky piano piece later orchestrated to great notoriety by Ravel), although why anyone would subject a composer to that challenge, or at least one described in that way, I’m not sure (maybe that’s where the adjective “open” comes from).
Another part of the “process” of bringing orchestral music to life is that a composer gets very little time with an actual orchestra. You are lucky if you get more than two or three run-throughs before the actual performance. While this makes sense, on reflection (orchestra time = money), it was humbling for me to think about. For example, much contemporary orchestral music is rhythmically complex. Just getting the rhythms down, to say nothing about the notes, interpretation, nuance, etc, seems like it’d take days if not weeks. Schoenberg lamented the fact that orchestra players spend their careers in effect practicing the old war horses (Beethoven, Brahms, Stravinsky, Mahler, etc), while contemporary works don’t get the equivalent of a New York minute.
The performance of “Finding Rothko” was moving, in the sense that the composer was right there, I understood from the lecture that the players probably had little time to get intimate with the piece and they were students to boot. Plus, it was parents’ weekend at the university so a sizable crowd was present. Critics have labeled Schoenberg’s work “mysterious” and that certainly fit.
My own take is that the piece (in four movements but I never detected any pauses between them) graduated from stirrings, swirling, swelling, and finally swarming. The beginning was very atmospheric, much like listening in a forest active with birds and wildlife. Then more energy was injected, and musical fragments began swirling around each other. They seemed to find each other in a latter section that I found to be of more traditional harmony and melody. Then came the finale with big brass, even bigger bass drum, somewhat atonal, and the swarming ensued. It backed off to let the tune through and then finished with a pleasant sweep of lush, melodious strings much like Barber’s Adagio for Strings except hopeful instead of hopeless (maybe that’s where the adjective “optimistic” comes from?). All of it was not only rhythmically complex, but exhilarating.
While I enjoyed every moment of this experience, this analytic glimpse into the process of composition and the mind of the composer followed by reward of a performance, I wasn’t sure “Finding Rothko” ultimately managed to tie those rich musical fragments together into a narrative arc. However, that may never have been the composer’s intention so take comment as an observation, not a critique. Plus, as Schoenberg stated, the work is based on four paintings by Rothko to which he had a “visceral reaction” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. However, my observation did make me curious whether another facet of 21st century composition might be fragmentation, disjointedness, or attention deficit disorder captured in music, a product of a hyper-connected, always on, multi-tasking society. When everything is supposed to be connected, maybe less really is?
In testing that hypothesis informally, I hope to discover more work from composers like Adam Schoenberg. If contemporary composers are of interest to you, you might want to read an earlier blog post of mine on Barbara Harbach.
It was annoying enough to be diverted while flying, land at an unintended airport, wait out a storm, and then arrive home three hours late the evening of September 7. But I was also missing the season’s first performance of the University of Missouri-St. Louis’ (UMSL) Arianna String Quartet. It was especially disappointing because, as […]
It was annoying enough to be diverted while flying, land at an unintended airport, wait out a storm, and then arrive home three hours late the evening of September 7. But I was also missing the season’s first performance of the University of Missouri-St. Louis’ (UMSL) Arianna String Quartet. It was especially disappointing because, as someone who plays a viola, I was really looking forward to the world premier of a quintet written specifically for Arianna violist, Joanna Mendoza.
Now here is where I was redeemed by social media. At the Arianna Facebook page, someone posted a comment about the performance and I casually responded that I had been waylaid and was so sorry I missed out. How welcome it was, then, that Joanna herself messaged me (it’s not out of the blue – I took lessons for a few months from Joanna several years ago, so she does know who I am) and offered me a CD of the performance. How could I refuse?
As lovely as the first pieces were, Haydn String Quartet, Opus 33 No. 2 (“The Joke”) and the Shostakovitch String Quartet No. 3, it’s Kenji Bunch’s “String Circle” I want to tell the world about. The composer, a violist, joined the quartet.
The concert was labeled “celebrations” and indeed, this piece fulfilled that word to a t (and a l and a b and all the other letters). I would describe it as a amalgam of Americana themes and styles including jazz and rockabilly (walking bass lines), southern mountain music (hillbilly), American West (Marlboro man), Americanized Irish jig, Aaron Copeland, Broadway musical, what I heard as television sitcom themes (e.g., Mary Tyler Moore, Andy Griffith), and even rock n roll. Like alchemists, the players spun a golden tapestry out of what might at first appear disparate fragments.
I heard train whistles, fiddles, dulcimers, mandolins, crows cawing, and the whispers of a sad broken old man comically crossing the Western Plains on his mule, as if he was in an episode of the Road Runner cartoon. The third movement was somber, elegiac, like residents were waiting for the last light to go out in their dying Midwestern town, and then the walking bass line in the cello took us into the grave. As percussive as the fourth movement begins, then growing playful, perhaps a horse trotting up to a saloon, it has a big finish. And the final movement is rhythmically complex (more like the Shostakovitch).
It’s gratifying when something I write agrees with something in the liner notes I haven’t yet read. At the beginning of the fourth movement, heavy on the pizzicato, I wrote down “gathered meeting.” I’m not sure what I meant except that this phrase, among other things I’m sure, refers to how, at a Quaker Meeting (what they call their Sunday service), the comments people make as they contemplate life in silence are related by a common theme. Bunch’s composition wove together so many familiar sounds from contemporary America, some as embedded in our consciousness as iconic images from film (think Hitchcock or Gone with the Wind), but a common experience unites them all. In the advance program notes, Ms. Mendoza describes String Circle as “the sounds of old friends coming together. And who are old friends but people with whom we have many common experiences?
As thankful as I was for the CDs, the one common theme running through my head as I listened was that this was no substitute for the live performance. Especially with chamber music, you are one not only with the music but the emotions, the expressions, and the movements of each of the players.
The Arianna Quartet is a treasure. And now, I believe they have released a new CD of the Janacek quartets. Check their website . And catch their next performance.
I’m taking a graduate level sociology course, Graduate Research Methods. I am learning all the different ways to “design” a research program in the social sciences. What strikes me is the degree to which much social science research strives to look and feel like “real” science (i.e., the physical sciences) by making it quantitative, usually […]
I’m taking a graduate level sociology course, Graduate Research Methods. I am learning all the different ways to “design” a research program in the social sciences. What strikes me is the degree to which much social science research strives to look and feel like “real” science (i.e., the physical sciences) by making it quantitative, usually through the use of statistics. While it is true that interest is growing in “qualitative” social science (ethnographic studies, oral histories) research methods, the quants still rule the roost, for the most part, says my professor. It is impressive how hard social scientists work to make their research quantitatively relevant.
For my purposes here, I call this getting from words to numbers. For example, social scientists use surveys, interviews, and often large sample populations to solicit their raw data. Then they analyze the narrative responses with numbers.
Most of my career has been working in the reverse, numbers to words – that is, explaining hard-core engineering and technology in narrative form – magazine articles, face to face presentations, books, and the like. Most engineers and scientists (and lawyers, I heard from the head of the writing program at my daughter’s Alma Mater) lack good communication skills. Fortunately for my career (and paying my kids’ tuition bills), I am educated as a chemical engineer but I love to write and ended up combining the two into a satisfying career in the energy industry.
I’ve been somewhat obsessed by mathematical and computer models these days – models used in financial engineering, global climate change, environmental assessments, economic development, and many other endeavors. I hope my next book (proposal currently with an agent seeking a publisher) will be on this subject. While models are essential, called in an article published recently in SIAM News (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) the third pillar of science, they also can be abused easily. More critically, most people, educated or not, have little understanding of how these models work or how they impact our decisions, opinions, and those of our political and cultural leaders.
We are talking about MODELS in my class as well. This week, I had an epiphany. Whether you are designing a survey to ferret out some aspect of social behavior, handicapping the presidential election, forecasting what stocks and equities will do, or assessing future impact of climate change, everyone working with a model has a similar root problem: the quality of the data, the accuracy of the measurements, the utility of the raw material that is fed to the “model.”
In a survey, how you phrase a question has everything to do with the nature of the response, as well as a host of other signals, like body language, attitude and cooperation of your subject, and many others. In more quantitative models, the accuracy of your data (temperature measurements, e.g.) and the validity of your assumptions have everything to do with the quality of your output.
garbage in is always going to result in garbage out, qualitative or quantitative. For the most part, models are developed to explain the past and then make some forecast, prediction, or statement about the future (social behavior, consumer prices, inventory, weather patterns, economic growth, etc).
When we are forming an opinion about world events (our internal “models” of the world), conducting a survey for social science research, or trying to forecast what the economy will do in the next months and years, all of us should pay more attention to the quality of the raw data regardless of whether we are converting words into numbers or numbers into words. It’s hard enough to forecast under the best of circumstances. But it’s damn near impossible if the data you’ve collected about the past is suspect.
I am reading Standards: Recipes for Reality, by Lawrence Busch (http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12691). I purchased the book because of the review I read in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204012004577073253871935524.html). Serving an infrastructure business, the electric power industry (http://www.pearlstreetinc.com/) , I deal with standards all the time, but usually not overtly. I’ve only read a […]
I am reading Standards: Recipes for Reality, by Lawrence Busch (http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12691). I purchased the book because of the review I read in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204012004577073253871935524.html). Serving an infrastructure business, the electric power industry (http://www.pearlstreetinc.com/) , I deal with standards all the time, but usually not overtly. I’ve only read a small portion of this book so far, but I am impressed with the expansive view the author takes about what constitutes a “standard.” Busch is a professor of sociology at Michigan State University. I am (slowly) working towards a doctorate in Sociology and have been fascinated with the field since I took an intro level course in college. This is a book of philosophy, organizational dynamics, technology, innovation (and how standards inhibit it), and many other things, but it boiled down to, for me, a study in masking the complexity of human endeavor, and the use of standards as a proxy for trust.
Audits, certifications, licenses, playbooks, scripts, recipes, musical notation, compositions, protocols, weights and measurements, tests, titles and occupation, rank, validation, verification, rules, laws, guidelines, norms, tolerances, precision, awards, prizes, authentication – all of these are part of standards and standardization. Standards engender prestige, garner trust, and facilitate mechanization. Any garden hose I might buy in a store will have the same connection to the sprinkler I just used to water the lawn. I can write and post these words because of a standard protocol for transmitting information digitally over the Internet.
I probably felt more comfortable purchasing this book because the author is “a Distinguished Professor in the Center for the Study of Standards in Society in the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University…” Distinguished Professor is capitalized because a professor at a prestigious university holds a higher standard in society than the title of garbage collector. The book is published by MIT Press, which undoubtedly holds a higher “standard” for books on this type of subject that one out of a local community college. Forming an academic “Center” undoubtedly leads to recognition as the “standard” for information and analysis about standards.
I have worked with clients and innovators most of my career who want to revolutionize the electric power industry with technology. But new technology means risk. Infrastructure businesses take as little risk as possible. Not because they are business run by bad people but because their customers only care about one thing – in the case of electricity, that the power stays on for the lowest amount of money possible (and more recently, with an acceptable level of environmental impact). I hate to break it to my clients but my industry mostly wishes for three big dog suppliers of equipment or technology who will respond to a specification (itself a standard of sorts) such that three credible bids can be received and evaluated. It’s a business that craves standards and shuns innovation. Being highly regulated doesn’t foster innovation either.
I have a degree in chemical engineering. I have been walking around, and analyzing, complex engineered systems my entire career. That hasn’t stopped me from being in awe the next time I am at a power plant, a refinery, a recycling center, or even get in my car, buy groceries, cross a bridge, or text my daughters on my cell phone. It all works! Over and over and over again. Sure, there are blips, bumps, service interruptions (it’s 98F and the compressor on my AC just conked out after twenty six years), but this really complex stuff works just about all the damn time. Yes, I know, that just creates unrealistic expectations. The better something works, the better it has to work, or the customer isn’t happy. That’s why we have standards.
Often I think we need fewer standards. Busch points out how the formation of standards clashes with democracy, confers power and influence, and lead to domination. They extend beyond those who “established them, standards take on a life of their own that extends beyond the authorities in both time and space.” I know in my work standards are written by technical committees and it requires time and money to participate in the committee. They are usually written so the “big dogs” win.
But I also think we could use some new standards. A standard of zero outages is unrealistic, yet that is what most of us expect from electricity, water, and fuel suppliers, and Internet service providers. So wouldn’t it be helpful if we had a standard to compare to when we experience outages? Some standard for climate modeling might amp down the rhetoric around global warming. We might be less surprised at catastrophic events if we could benchmark them to a standard.
Perhaps more importantly, we should understand that many “standards” are anything but. Standards used in accounting and by financial engineers are often so ambiguous, they allow each firm to apply their own valuation models. Who can you trust when everyone has their own version of the truth? It’s especially insidious because the fact that “numbers” are involved- mathematical, computer, and statistical models and algorithms-masks the fact no real standards are in place for how money is invested and transacted by Wall Street firms. I hope Busch gets into this aspect of standards. Many standards I deal with simply add to the volumes of paperwork, but don’t lead to faster, better, or cheaper.
Finally, it’s interesting to participate in an endeavor that has a decidedly different framework of standards than the one I am used to (engineering and complex systems): fiction writing. Sure, you have to follow rules of grammar and punctuation (style sheets are another form of standard!) and construct a logical flow to your ideas through sentences and paragraphs and chapters. But, after that, what constitutes bad, mediocre, good, great, or superior fiction? If you have a Masters in Fine Arts (MFA), you may enjoy a higher standard for how your fiction will be received by agents and publishers and the academic community (which published the vast majority of short stories).
In one sense, fiction writing may seem like a profession with a weak framework of standards. But maybe not, since a huge pool of would-be novelists (we all have a story to tell, don’t we?) are stopped at the gates of publishing glory by a relatively small band of gatekeepers (agents, editors, professors, etc). Apparently, they know what the standards are but you don’t. You can try to reach readers directly through self-publishing (which ends up being 99% self-promotion), but that’s the wild west of publishing right now. Standards don’t exist.
When a community lacks transparent standards, it has to achieve trust and validation in other ways, usually by a buddy system. Sadly, a buddy system isn’t conducive to innovation either. The Fifty Shades of Gray that has become the 5-million shades of gray kind of tells that story. The community (publishers, writers, agents, bookstores) learns to trust what sells. Self-publishers rely on friends and family to “MAKE SOME NOISE” to send a work viral. That might be a standard for promotion but not necessarily for quality.
Whether your endeavor is governed by set of sophisticated but transparent standards, or a buddy system standing in for a set of weak or non-existent set of standards, it appears that the “system” will converge sooner rather than later and stifle ideas and innovation.
I invite you to learn more at the Center for the Study of Standards in Fiction.Yes, just kidding 🙂
It’s time to get beyond the 1%. Who really controls the economy? Click above
If you leave a comment and a place to send, I’ll provide you a really cool graphic that illustrate the slides rather eloquently
It’s time to get beyond the 1%. Who really controls the economy? Click above
If you leave a comment and a place to send, I’ll provide you a really cool graphic that illustrate the slides rather eloquently
Tagged with: big banks • economics • federal reserve • Financial Engineering • Occupy St Louis • Occupy Wall Street • tea party • Wall Street
Reading in The New Yorker (November 7, 2011) that the highly acclaimed pianist, Helene Grimaud, ranks Brahms Piano Concerto in D Minor one of her favorite pieces, a work I have been obsessed with since I first became acquainted with it thirty years ago, I’ve reprinted here a short story I wrote incorporating that Concerto, […]
Reading in The New Yorker (November 7, 2011) that the highly acclaimed pianist, Helene Grimaud, ranks Brahms Piano Concerto in D Minor one of her favorite pieces, a work I have been obsessed with since I first became acquainted with it thirty years ago, I’ve reprinted here a short story I wrote incorporating that Concerto, originally published in Marginalia, the literary journal of Western State College of Colorado.
Hallucination in D Minor
By Jason Makansi
Only a second or two separates the dream from what is on the other side of it, another meeting. Up here in the clouds, above the city of New York, almost everything is dreamy. You never forget about the magnificence. If there was a cloud in the sky, it would be undulating. Every gaze you steal out the window is like peering through a slit of space-time continuum.
Except when you meet the eyes of the honcho at the head of the table sipping coffee, his supervisors to his either side. You and the other direct reports line up and down the sides of the long table. Paper is passed around. The honcho clears his throat, cracks a joke, compels everyone to get started, and the discussion about some dull engineering project begins. You look past him at, well, nothing, nothing in the sky but one tone of blue, with something huge barreling through it toward you.
After a few seconds, the tremolo opening chord sounds, the violent strings descend two notes, then a short hop and back up, reaching, for what? The ominous roll of the tympani completes the phrase, and the stylist in your hand is on automatic, like a pen recorder, tracing the modulations of Brahms First Piano Concerto on a tablet of graph paper. Then it escalates. You are a member of a Philharmonic. What is coming at you in the window disappears.
How many times during these meetings have you found your left hand clamping your right hand to the table so it wouldn’t obey the subconscious signals from your brain to conduct the music that you hear, as clearly as the solid blue you see out the window? This is one of those times.
You see other musicians separating from you, physically sliding away. Instead of looking at the floor, you turn to look at the principal French horn player. She looks vaguely like a woman who had been sitting near you, who has captured the lusty ventricle of your heart. You’ve longed for her the way the ram-like curly-cues of that horn are nurtured by the cashmere fabric folding in delightful patterns around her breasts. And her lips, oh her lips. They are red, puckered from her craft. You want your lips to be where her musty breath is before it is transmogrified into the bittersweet sounds coming from that horn. How delicate a kiss must be, like the lighting of a butterfly, so she doesn’t feel pain.
Her horn sounds the clarion call after the notes from the strings extend, despairing to hang on, only to slip, descending level by level, like a body falling, hitting sections of building on the way down, back into the depths of the base.
On the other side, expressions of horror and fear float around the room, separated from their owners, but on this side, your French horn player only looks puzzled, as if she had just played a wrong measure, as if the conductor is tapping the stand, and admonishing her. In a fragment of a second after she glances at you, she acknowledges the melodic bond between you.
Instinctively, you move towards her, but then you notice that you are moving away too. The orchestra is spreading apart quickly. Your organs accelerate into your throat, the same sensation as when the elevator in this building rises very fast, whisking its occupants to the stratosphere. Your music stand falls over but the music pages defy gravity. They hang suspended in front of your eyes, like an image on film in a darkened room.
Flames vaporize the bits and pieces of everything on the other side of this dream. Your piece of graph paper, though, is floating somewhere over the city. Parts of you, and parts of others, are ahead of other parts, behind, to the side, above, and below. There are parts of the imaginary musicians floating amongst the parts of everyone sitting here a moment ago. All are just the parts of the sum now. There is no cashmere-cloaked horn player, and no you, yet you still hear.
Pages of music defy gravity, defy relativity. Just when what is left of your mind praises the resistance of the music to this calamity, the air where your hand was grasps at the music, something to hang onto, in the absence of a person, the horn player, anyone. Then the glue and string of the spine explode, the pages drift away, and the paper dissolves. Still, the notes of the concerto hang in the air, intact, each one where it is supposed to be relative to the other ones. They appear like organized dots between your eyelids and your eyeballs.
The concerto continues. The unbearably sweet but firm entrance of the piano, “I am here now,” it seems to say, coquettishly, the triads and chords ascending up, then down, back up, and ending on the same notes as the melody begins, a pause, then the melody in a long ascending rush. The shrink and swell, the outline of the horn player’s small, powerful frame flows through her instrument. But she is not there.
Finally, the notes disintegrate. Now you know what is the last sense to survive. But, as the propagation of your last brain pulses crash toward the asymptotic zero, it comes to you, the years you’ve been in love with this concerto, its tortured path from the composer’s brain to notes on the page, the microsecond you’ve embraced the empty space that was once this woman. You glide on a bed of air, the serenity of the piano’s melody, the gentle perpetual breath, a conveyance away from the rebellious tonality collapsing underneath. At the final moment, a weak human bond suspended on a melody is better than no bond at all. Maybe Brahms knew that.
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- Error gathering analytics data from Google: Error 404 (Not Found)!!1 *{margin:0;padding:0}html,code{font:15px/22px arial,sans-serif}html{background:#fff;color:#222;padding:15px}body{margin:7% auto 0;max-width:390px;min-height:180px;padding:30px 0 15px}* > body{background:url(//www.google.com/images/errors/robot.png) 100% 5px no-repeat;padding-right:205px}p{margin:11px 0 22px;overflow:hidden}ins{color:#777;text-decoration:none}a img{border:0}@media screen and (max-width:772px){body{background:none;margin-top:0;max-width:none;padding-right:0}}#logo{background:url(//www.google.com/images/branding/googlelogo/1x/googlelogo_color_150x54dp.png) no-repeat;margin-left:-5px}@media only screen and (min-resolution:192dpi){#logo{background:url(//www.google.com/images/branding/googlelogo/2x/googlelogo_color_150x54dp.png) no-repeat 0% 0%/100% 100%;-moz-border-image:url(//www.google.com/images/branding/googlelogo/2x/googlelogo_color_150x54dp.png) 0}}@media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:2){#logo{background:url(//www.google.com/images/branding/googlelogo/2x/googlelogo_color_150x54dp.png) no-repeat;-webkit-background-size:100% 100%}}#logo{display:inline-block;height:54px;width:150px} 404. That’s an error. The requested URL /analytics/v2.4/data?ids=ga:66373148&metrics=ga:pageviews&filters=ga%3ApagePath%3D%7Encategorized%2Fpage%2F4%2F.%2A&start-date=2024-10-25&end-date=2024-11-24 was not found on this server. That’s all we know.
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