Taking Risks, falling in love, flying

November 22, 2009

Taking risks in life means that you know you can fly.  But it’s scary when your feet first leave the ground because you don’t know what will happen next.  Emily Dickinson had an easy life.  She stayed in her house, she did not leave, she sometimes lowered down baskets of food to the neighbor children.  Walt Whitman took risks.  He fell in love, he got hurt, dirty, muddy, blood under his fingernails.  T.S Eliot had his wife locked up, no more risks of scenes from Vivienne.  Some people never risk love; it’s messy.  There’s clean up afterward and during.  There is a risk of hurt and children and happiness.  Running an independent press is like all this too.  Some days I feel like this guy, not at all like a swan, but there’s still wind around me, there’s still sky.

Published in:  on November 23, 2009 at 4:40 pm Leave a Comment

Morten Lauridsen receiving the Medal of Honor

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Los Angeles Master Chorale, Grant Gershon, Morten Lauridsen, Eric Whitacre, David O, Ingram Marshall

 

 

November 23, 2009

Wonderful concert last night which we attended with our friends pianist Vicky Kirsch and Michael Alexander who runs Grand Performances, two of the coolest people we know.  We just found out that Michael is taking Grand Performances to Guadalajara so after we work the book fair there next week we will get to hang out there and hear some fabulous music.  Los Lobos is playing among many others. 

 Michael and Vicky are great and don’t even stare when I get fidgety, they have grandchildren, probably small naughty ones, so they know how it goes.  But tossing around ideas around with them is like tossing a beach ball, it never touches the sand, the four of us always have about five interesting things to say.

 But back to the music.  Ingram Marshall was first with his “Sacred Altars” piece, which I liked, it was sobering and cool and poetic and if it had a color, it would have been blue, (Someone is reading this thinking Mark Swed is in no danger of losing his seat to this one) the huge cool dangerous sad place of the music felt okay.  I wanted to keep listening.  I felt the blue and it was my first time hearing Marshall’s music.  I don’t think they play him on KUSC while I am driving.

 Then Lauridsen, the Mid-Winter Songs that I wrote the last book of poetry listening to, so I felt them as familiar as my own heart beat.  I loved seeing Lisa Edwards play.  Vicky knows her as she seems to know everybody which was fun.  She knows who’s crazy and apparently some musicians and chorus members are!  Who knew?  The music of the Mid-Winter Songs is the music of love part way into it all, it’s great and full and round and takes you into the sacred place where you keep struggling with love and forgiveness because you’re in it for the long haul so everything is forgiven before it happens.  The music reminds me of paintings of Alaska in winter where the shape of everything against the sky is very clear.  When I listen to Lauridsen’s music I feel and hear the internal heart beat of the universe and it is clear that we humans need to try to do the right thing and we will be okay.  That’s what the music says to me.  About love and life. And planetary goodness.

 After intermission during which we ran into those rascals Whitney Sanders and Thomas Small who seemed to be on a mission to find the bar but found time in their busy journey to say hello to us, we had the Eric Whitacre piece. Can we pause for a minute, (since all four composers were present and all took a bow after their piece and all came on stage at the end) and say that Eric is too good looking for words?  Thank you for letting me get that out of the way.   I do appreciate it.  I have some of his music.  My opera friends told me about him.  We also saw Paradise Lost at Boston Court.   This piece, “Cloudburst,” was so beautiful that I want more of his music; he had the whole chorus creating a rain stick effect with their fingers that was exquisite, but the whole piece took you out of the California desert and into some cool wet place.  Absolutely, you must get this piece and hear it, and try to imagine you were there with us.

 We had heard the world premiere of the David O piece, “Map of Los Angeles” and it was fun to hear it again.  Between the dancing, (which white people really shouldn’t try to do) and the whooping, it’s a fun thing.  I wouldn’t want to put this music on at home, nor do I really need it on my IPOD or in the car.  I think it’s supposed to be a concert piece because when you see it performed, it’s really fun because it’s interactive and people are moving around the stage and Grant starts singing at one point, it’s like David wanted to unglue everyone from their chairs and see what happens when you get some movement and the effect is amazing, you get that sense of the constant movement in L.A., but I think that would be lost if you tried it at home, but maybe I’ll try it.  I assume you can download it to I-Tunes.  Sergio, “Checo” Alonso must be mentioned as well, he played the Mexican harp, such a beautiful instrument, hard to explain how elegant and pulsing it was in this piece, it held the map of Los Angeles in its Mexican strings.

 Grant is an amazing conductor, electrifying, generous with applause with the other performers and with the composers.  Our city is so fortunate to have him.  We wandered to Oomasa Sushi where I learned some new phrases from Michael.  On OPM, which is Other People’s Money, for most people it’s the easiest money to spend.  In the case of your kids, it’s Older People’s Money.  I liked that one.  My kids are big fans of OPM.  OPM is like Monopoly Money, there’s more at the bank. 

 Well, off for the ten miles.  Need to stretch the legs.  It’s early still, the day is waking up, and will soon have its own plans.

The talented and brilliant Grant Gershon, conductor of the Master Chorale, at Disney Hall

Published in:  on November 22, 2009 at 1:30 pm Leave a Comment
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Lit, Mary Karr, too late for therapy, living without fathers

November 22, 2009

 Sundays are amazing.  You can sleep in.  At 7, I got up and ran my ten miles and then went off to the pool for a swim, but got there late so only swam a half mile, but it still felt great especially after a long run.  Mark had great chicken chili ready when I got home.  Chili swarms with flavor.

 Lit still haunts me.  How her father and husband only meet once and then to nod and not speak.  My father and husband have never met.  But then, I’ve only been with Mark for 15 years, I suppose we haven’t had the chance.  Some day, I tell myself, I’ll do something spectacular that will impress my father and he’ll see I was worth knowing all along.  Things I wanted when I was younger:  To know my father, to be thin, to have a job.  If you’ve made it to 46 without these things, I think that’s proof, you can make it the rest of your life.  You don’t need to be thin, you don’t need a “job,” you just need stuff to do, and you clearly don’t need a father. You can be spectacular anyway.  But just because you don’t need a thing doesn’t stop you from wanting it anyway.

 I like how Mary Karr keeps going back to therapy; she has the money and insurance to support it.  I never had either.  I’ve had Kaiser for twenty years and with Kaiser you don’t get long range personal therapy.  A few times I went with my kids to group therapy.  We were the star of the show.  The leaders could sit back and watch us.  We made it look easy like drinking peach schnapps. We were stars; we were entertainment, I needed a nap afterward.  I think about therapy.  Would I get now if I could?  Isn’t it too late?  Shouldn’t I have fixed myself earlier?  Or better question, am I fine now?  I can’t tell.  My friends in therapy quote their therapists like religious people quote the Bible.  Here’s a life quote that I like, “Don’t let the bastards get you down.” 

 Tonight we’re going to Disney Hall to hear the music of the Left Coast including my favorite composer Lauridsen.  I can’t wait.  It will be like flying.

 http://lamc.org/0910-091122-concert.php

Why I would not have made it in a sorority… Sorority Girls

Published in:  on November 21, 2009 at 8:49 pm Leave a Comment
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College Life and sororities

 November 22, 2009

College, both undergraduate and graduate school was very important to me.  Most people have much more loyalty to their undergraduate campuses, this may be regardless of race.  People live and breathe college life as undergraduates, go to football games and become very involved with their universities, and later in life as donors are more likely to give to their undergraduate campus than to their graduate school.  In my case, I went to Arizona State University as an undergraduate, but I went to Claremont Graduate University for my PhD.  ASU has never kept in touch with me or remembered that I went to school there which is pretty natural since 50,000 students go to school there each year. 

 Of the 50,000 students, very few were African American when I was there, and I just checked the stats and not much has changed.  There are 33,000 white kids out of 51,000 and the rest of the student body is made up of a mix of 6000 Latinos, fewer than 2000 African Americans about 1000 Native Americans and then students from other countries. 

 ASU had its sorority houses, places I stayed far away from.  I knew a few of the sorority girls from my classes and they were not my type.  They needed to belong to a group to feel alive and not be blown over in the wind.  I just needed a stiff margarita and a job.  I was fully supporting myself and going to school, the idea of a sorority seemed really childish.  The girls wore matching outfits, they fussed with their hair, they smelled like Shalimar; they got excited about boys and wore barrettes.  They skied and got gifts from their parents in the mail, they came from white WASP families back East or in the Midwest; they had parties where there was sex, the police were called.  Sometimes there were gang rapes.  They had too much to drink and didn’t know when to stop.  They threw up on the lawn.  They wore short skirts.  They yelled out their sorority windows at the fraternity boys, and they complained that the frat boys weren’t respectful of them.  I went to a party once dragged by someone and I thought it would make a great scene for a story.  I wore excessive makeup, torn black leggings and chains, I brought my own alcohol in a flask which was a good thing because they were serving cheap vodka and purple Kool Aid most of which ended up vomited on the lawn later that night. 

 None of them had ever worked, they were there to make tiny little friendships that consisted of sharing mascara and lipstick.  I had friends too, my friends would help me get my car towed when it broke down, let me crash when I was homeless and they always were up for pooling our last dimes for pizza and tequila which is an awesome combination. I never joined a sorority, I don’t think they would have had me.  Some of the frat boys would have had me, but I left before the river ran purple.  I walked off into the night in my black and my boots, and my flask, I could hear the beat of their music, it was Van Halen and Bon Jovi they’d been playing all night, those girls.  I wonder where they are now?

 African American sororities seem much more like a sisterhood that builds to adulthood.  I like that.  I wish I could have learned something about friendships when I was in college, but what I learned was how to take care of myself.  That’s all good, but learning how community works is great too.  I suggested that my daughter stay away from sororities when she went to UCSB, and she did.  I pictured the mean, sharp, thin well dressed girls staring at my lovely smart girl in her jeans, her swank sense of humor and not getting her, rejecting her because they were small inside themselves; I couldn’t bear it.  She’s in some clubs at school, but she stayed away from sororities.  Misty has sons but she would have told a daughter something else.  We live in different worlds.  That’s the story here, that’s the story of this book, but I like Misty’s world.

Famous African American funeral–Martin Luther King

Funerals and Wills African Americans vs. Whites

November 22, 2009

 “Do I not? Them she lived with would have killed her for a hatpin, let alone a hat.” Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady

 When Misty, my writing partner in the Taneka vs. Susie Q book wanted to write about funerals, I was a little surprised.  I couldn’t quite imagine that funerals were so different between White and Black folk, but I was wrong.  Again, as in all my chapters, I’m going to be accused of stereotyping because White people are divided by class, race and region.  What happens in a White southern home is not necessarily going to be true in California and what’s true for an Irish family funeral in Boston isn’t going to be true for a family in Texas.  So, dealing with all those generalities, let’s cut to some of the odd issues about White funerals and wills.

 One odd thing has to do with wills and White people.  I’ve been around a number of White people who’ve died and left wills and often these wills cause an almost immediate war among the people left behind even when there’s very little of substance in the will.  White people can get very caught up in who gets the dressers, china, grandmother’s jewelry etc and never speak to their siblings again.  In fact, White people will sometimes start this process of creating a strain in the family while they are alive by reminding their children that they are writing their wills and will continue to bring up the wills at opportune moments, in a King Lear like atmosphere to create competition among the children for parental affection.  Of course, there’s often a Cordelia who decides to just give a normal amount of affection and sometimes as a result gets cut out of the will.

 To be fair, this is only a percentage of White people, but it’s a strange significant percentage worth discussing.  My grandfather had a will in which he left money to my aunt and something to his grandchildren, but it was all very fair and no arguments or bizarre coddling of him was necessary.  He was Scandinavian and had been a Cornel professor, not exactly a drama king. 

 My observation of this will business is that it has very little to do with class or how much is being left, it’s just a strange greedy thing that happens partly because the elderly are so invisible in our culture especially in White culture.  African Americans, Asians and Latinos often have elder family members living with them, but in White culture this isn’t nearly as common.  Maybe the writing of wills and the attention sucking that goes along with it is a way of compensating for feeling invisible.  But the result is that after the loved one passes, often the family splits up into the haves and have nots who don’t speak to each other because of the imagined wrongs created by the one who has already passed away.

 Now to the funeral itself; I’ve never heard of people waiting to save up money for the funeral.  For one thing, White people are big on cremation which only costs $700.  I just checked.  In fact, when my grandparents and uncle died, they were cremated and we had their memorial services a year later at a time convenient for the whole family to take a family vacation in Minnesota and then in Colorado and celebrate their lives.  Now that is a White people thing.  It was a wonderful time to see all the relatives and we were past the grieving stage so we could enjoy each other’s company. 

 The funerals I’ve been to did not involve anyone getting loud or making any wailing sounds.  White people don’t like to see each other cry, so crying is kept under control.  You aren’t supposed to be carrying on and making a fool of yourself.  If you have to do that, you can do that at home.  The whole funeral lasted about an hour.  Misty is talking about these several hour funerals.  I don’t see White people being able to sit still that long.  We just don’t have that much patience because we haven’t spent enough time in church so we haven’t developed the knack of it.  We would get tired and have to go home.  All the preaching would wear us out. 

 After the funeral, we go to someone’s house where some food is served, and we eat quietly.  We say good things about the deceased because it is tradition never to speak ill of the dead.  There is a rather normal amount of food, not enough to feed an army, although there will be leftovers.  People offer condolences to the loved ones of the deceased very carefully as if they were now made out of shells or fine glass.  When they are left alone, they can cry and scream and break things.  I’ve never been to a funeral where the food was worth eating or even memorable.  Misty writes about great food including chicken, cakes and ribs.  None of that is happening at White funerals.  She also talks about exchanging phone numbers with people you haven’t seen for years.  She’s going to different funerals than I’ve been to.  Nobody exchanging information at all at the White funerals I’ve been to, nobody talking or gossiping.  It’s not at all like a party.  One politely tries not to eat any of the food, sips a little wine, tries to be as polite as possible, depending on how close you are to the bereaved, you may talk with them or offer help, and then you leave. 

 In other words, like all the differences we’ve come up with between a White and Black world, most Whites are much less tribal and familial.  The more Mediterranean blood you have, (and this includes Italians and Jews or their red haired cousins the Irish) the more likely you are to be much more like African Americans in your funeral ceremonies.  Demonstrative, hugging, holding, talking, eating, drinking, all that acting like real human beings, that’s just not the kind of behavior you would find among WASPS for the most part or even your basic Midwestern Whites.  We grieve in silence.  We hold it all in.  We go to therapy.  We take our Prozac. 

 African Americans let it out, the good and the bad.  As Ralph Ellison says at the end of Invisible Man, “With Louis Armstrong, one half of me says, ‘Open the window and let the foul air out,’ while the other says, it was good green corn before the harvest.  Of course, Louis was kidding, he wouldn’t have thrown old Bad Air out, because it would have broken up the music and the dance, when it was the good music that came from the bell of old Bad Air’s horn that counted.  Old Bad Air is still there with his music and his dancing and his diversity and I’ll be up and around with mine.”  Maybe White people could learn something about music and dancing and diversity and mixing it all up.  It’s what real living is all about.

 

Nicole Kidman in Portrait of a Lady, so beautiful, too paralyzed to move

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