One of my favorite Ultimate activities is fast becoming the "Clinics" we run for new Ultimate players before League starts. It's hard to describe why it's so much fun - sure, part of it is introducing new players to the game, the inherent joy of teaching (if you're into that sort of thing), and the cashing in of all this playing and practicing and skills to really be able to show a group of initiates what it's all about. On top of that, though, is a nostalgia-driven love-fest, just remembering days on the quad and all the teaching / learning events that have taken place in your life. Everyone is hyper-vigilant about congratulating everyone on each nice throw and catch, quick to compliment a good decision even if the throw ends up being horrendous. On top of THAT, all the usual tom-foolery that happens when you get good Ultimate players together in a decidedly non-fiery competitive environment - crazy throws, heckling, etc. Just great, great times.
Jose pulled all the newbies aside on Thursday before we started scrimmaging and ran through some basics, even employing a "walk-through" point which beck and I had talked about as being a good idea to initiate newbies to structure instead of just throwing them in the mix. It worked really well; Beck pointedly commented how nice it was to have someone spelling things out in this situation as opposed to the unstructured mess that can occur when players who think they know exactly what they're doing refuse to specify what the design and structure are. After a few points of slow-paced walk through, stops and constant instruction, we gradually let the game develop a flow of its own, still stopping to instruct occasionally and incorporating a few more veteran players to give the night a sort of "evolved structure." It worked well, and I think across the board the rookies learned a lot more than they would have by just showing up cold for league games next week.
Just a FUN night. And for me, it really spilled over into softball the following evening - we were playing an 0-10 team, and the games was vastly more about having fun and letting people play and learn than who was going to win. Lots of friendly trash-talk barbs on both sides, just a happy night - and thanks to some rather incompetent batting / fielding / pitching on our part, um, I guess all around bad softball, the other team came back to win the second game in the bottom of the last inning. And as Brock pointed out, "From a utilitarian standpoint, that was probably the best thing that could've happened." True that.
Really looking forward to league and more sports clinics to come. I should probably get into coaching youth Ultimate once my knees finally shatter. Something to think about.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Spring League: The Mark of Zorro
(PRE-POST WARNING - This is a long and potentially hellaciously boring account of our team draft from the other night. Read at your peril)
Spring is upon us - or at least as much as spring can be in a place with two seasons - which means that VOTS Spring League is about to kick into gear. Genevieve and I teamed up again to extend our frisbee dynasty, this time with the added challenge that everyone knows us and will be gunning for us. Bring it!
Um, already broughten. Our draft was Wednesday night, and the order is selected by an anonymous vote amongst the captains - basically, you rate each captain in terms of Ultimate skill / captaining skill / drafting skill. Genevieve and I both ended up picking 7th (meaning "2nd best, for whatever that is worth), just ahead of Pauline-Mo and Vince, respectively. I picked seventh last league as well, so that was unsurprising, but the cat is really out of the bag w/r/t Genevieve - no 4th picking from the women for us this time. D'oh. The background annoyingness of all this is that it is a "straight draft" instead of a serpentine - meaning that we got the 7th pick of the men's and women's rounds EVERY SINGLE ROUND. The alternative would be to snake back and forth (so that with 8 teams we would get the seventh pick and second pick of alternating rounds), but the powers that be have declared that a no-go for largely unarticulated reasons. The thought seems to be that the skill of a captain can make up for having to pick behind every team for the entire draft. I don't know if I buy that, but we're stuck with it - the situation is that every single pick we make is theoretically the second worst pick of that round. Of course, that's if everyone drafts perfectly and all that stuff and you don't have to worry about drafting a balanced team and whatnot, but still, *knowing* you'll be picking late every round can put a damper on the draft.
Or more accurately, it mainly means that try as you might to scout whom you want ahead of time, you get repeatedly scooped in every round. Which is precisely what happened. That said, I can't complain about the team we drafted; we did stick to known entities and people I really enjoy playing with for the most part. So to get on to it:
We drafted women first, and there were five obvious first round picks and then a bunch of unknowns. The first five went almost strictly in order, the 6th was a person we had never heard of, and so I (did I mention G was out of town at the AAAS conference in Chicago? Well, she was, and so we had to do a quick scouting job before the draft. Not ideal, but I think it worked out) was left with a tough decision - draft an unknown named "Kelly" who rated herself as experienced, tall and athletic, or draft a known but probably properly a second round draft pick named Megan. I basically flipped a coin in my brain and went with kelly; just couldn't bring myself to spend a first round pick on megan (who's a very young ASU player) when a purportedly experienced athletic lady was on the board. Of course, PMo (with the 8th pick right behind me, and also the coach of the ASU women's team) grabbed Megan immediately and enthusiastically, so I may have made a colossal mistake. We'll see.
Grabbed an athletic, somewhat experienced player named Allyson with our second round pick, someone G had recommended for the pick. So that's groovy, and her e-mail address is ***rugbyplayer*** or something so I'm guessing we got a solid athlete there - and when you're picking relative unknowns toward the bottom of the second round, that's what you hope for. Our third round pick was a complete unknown named Salina who was the youngest / most experienced / athletic left, and YES, I practice ageism when drafting. Deal.
Our fourth round pick was automatic, none other than the Furious Fist of Ferrous herself. That's right, THE BECK is playing spring league!!! After a somewhat disappointing winter run with Phxation, the localwhirlwind of chaos women's club team, Beck is sticking with it and is going to try out the mayhaps more user-friendly spring league team coached by G and Nyet. Tres exciting! More on this later.
The women's draft, generally speaking, had a limited known talent pool, and so it was not entirely surprising that we did not grab a ton of known greats with our low pick. I think we did a good job, and may have scored a coup with that 2nd round pick, but we'll see. The men's, on the other hand, similarly had an obvious top tier of about five guys, but much, much more known talent down the way. Again, with a seventh pick, that upmost tier looked out of range, but there was always a chance that people above would pick incorrectly or what have you. So...
Not so much. Surprisingly, Bryan, Sprawl captain who noted that he would be missing the playoffs, went as the first pick. Hmmm - that team is captained by Russell and Liz, so maybe they really wanted handling, but still, odd first choice. The second pick (made by E-Bay) was your friend and mine, Royal WEfnuker Justin. Yeah, i would have gone with him first overall, but what are you gonna do. Another WEfnuker went 3rd - Pat! - and our reunion team dream was destroyed. Ah, well. Pete went 4th, Damon went 5th, and Rob went 6th, leaving me with another tough first round decision - Jason (tall, skinny athletic club player-type) seemed to be an obvious pick, so I made it, but it was then revealed that he had just let Katherine know he would be out for the playoffs. Ugh! So I withdrew my pick and went with Jack, and on further consideration, am really glad I did.
Jack is an incredible player - older, but still fast, good throws, and just plays his ass off - but he's not someone you look at and say "obvious first rounder, will be a serious deep threat and such," mainly I think because he is not tall and is 38. But the thing is - I think HE IS!!! I may just be talking myself into this, but beyond getting a great guy / great player / great dog (see below), he really is an all-around player that creates all kinds of matchup problems. So he may not be an obvious first pick overall like Justin or a prototypical long threat like Pat, but he's going to accomplish a lot for us. I am psyched, and again, he's a great guy with whom to play and with whom I mesh well - we played together at NYF and had a blast on all fronts.
After getting scooped on several of my second round options, I ended up taking a guy named Alan with the second round pick - another fast, mid type. Vince followed up by picking Nat, a guy who works at CSPO and is a friend of Genevieve's (and who I thought would fall to the 3rd round), and so as a friendly maneuver (Alan is an old teammate of Vince's), we traded our second round picks to everyone's happiness. Nat is another high ceiling pick - when he is in shape and uninjured, he is another badass all-around guy. Of course, he is currently out-of-shape and gets injured frequently. So I am Einstein's Not-God with my dice-rolling. I'm psyched if for no other reason to have another frisbee bud on campus.
In the third round, I improbably picked up Tom, an older handler with seriously sick throws (and who plays pretty crunchy defense). Another case of misevaluated talent, I think, and I couldn't believe he fell that low. Grabbed Miller in the fourth round, another guy who lasted way longer than I thought - he's another fragility risk and is reportedly battling some hamstring issues, but that aside, he is a seriously athletic guy who will come up with some deep throws / Ds if needed. E-Bay agreed that if he pans out, he would be the steal of the draft.
Got Paul in the fifth round, so at least one fnuker will be playing with us. He had told me he had a sleeper pick, so I called him after selecting him... and his sleeper ended up being a girl. That was unhelpful, seeing as we had already completed the women's draft, but it also happened to be the top woman selected. Hmmm... "Sleeper." I do not think this word means what you think it means. Anyways, getting Paul in the fifth round is just dumb; he remains unknown despite having a great fall season and finals game in front of everyone. I don't get it, but was more than happy to scoop him up where we did; another athletic dude who's getting more experienced all the time.
Grabbed Craig of all people in the 6th - WOW. Craig handles pretty decently and plays okay defense, but more importantly can throw deep forehand or backhand, a rare commodity that low in the draft to be sure. Hooray. And then I got jeremy in the seventh, a young speedster who is still learning the game, but still - WOW TWO. He is very green, to be sure, but I am repeatedly confused as to why people would select other unknown players when a known to be lightning quick guy is on the table. NUTS.
8th-10th picks were all unknowns, so I did my best but ended up getting two older guys (Greg and Richie) as well as a dude named Viral whom I know nothing about. So, after reviewing this, I liked a lot of the picks I made, and got a lot of guys on the cheap that I did not think I'd be able to grab. There's a laundry list of picks I thought I might be able to pull off - Brayden and his dad, Pat Smith, Ben, Russ, a bunch of the unknown but tall and athletic guys, etc. - that I couldn't, but going through it again, I really did get a ton out of every pick. So in the end, I think Gen and my pre-draft strategy meeting paid off, and we did the best we could with late order picks. Looking at a lot of teams in the league, no one stands out as having had a particular awesome draft with the possible exception of Dustin / Pauline, who stand out only because they drafted nothing but 6' or taller guys (Dustin is 6'9" already), so in non-windy conditions, just their height could wreak havoc.
SO a solid draft, and we're looking forward to the season. It'll be interesting having Beck on board b/c she'll be a good barometer for how good of a job we're doing teaching and keeping newer players involved - unlike some people who may not be inclined to speak up, Beck and I will be able to talk honestly about the experience from a new player's perspective. Again, another post. AND having Beck around just might keep my hotheadedness in check. We'll see... :)
Oh, and lest I forget - jack's dog is an 8 year old shepherd mix who is just the nicest, sweetest, mellowest dog I've ever met at an Ultimate game. He just sits on the sideline the entire time and chills out, no maintenance needed, just happy to get patted by people who walk by, and never ever runs on the field. Amazing. Jack's dog is named Zorro, and our team color is black, so I think we may have pulled off another excellent multi-reference team name with "The Mark of Zorro." A quick summary:
1. Jack's dog ZORRO is our mascot.
2. ZORRO is a notorious man in BLACK.
3. The "Mark" satisfies the Ultimate pun requirement
4. The Mark of ZORRO is a "Z," aka ZONE DEFENSE. Double Ultimate Pun!
Transcendent. Should be cool. In other news, my shirt design won the vote, so keep an eye out for a bunch of frisbee folkds walking around wearing this:
Spring is upon us - or at least as much as spring can be in a place with two seasons - which means that VOTS Spring League is about to kick into gear. Genevieve and I teamed up again to extend our frisbee dynasty, this time with the added challenge that everyone knows us and will be gunning for us. Bring it!
Um, already broughten. Our draft was Wednesday night, and the order is selected by an anonymous vote amongst the captains - basically, you rate each captain in terms of Ultimate skill / captaining skill / drafting skill. Genevieve and I both ended up picking 7th (meaning "2nd best, for whatever that is worth), just ahead of Pauline-Mo and Vince, respectively. I picked seventh last league as well, so that was unsurprising, but the cat is really out of the bag w/r/t Genevieve - no 4th picking from the women for us this time. D'oh. The background annoyingness of all this is that it is a "straight draft" instead of a serpentine - meaning that we got the 7th pick of the men's and women's rounds EVERY SINGLE ROUND. The alternative would be to snake back and forth (so that with 8 teams we would get the seventh pick and second pick of alternating rounds), but the powers that be have declared that a no-go for largely unarticulated reasons. The thought seems to be that the skill of a captain can make up for having to pick behind every team for the entire draft. I don't know if I buy that, but we're stuck with it - the situation is that every single pick we make is theoretically the second worst pick of that round. Of course, that's if everyone drafts perfectly and all that stuff and you don't have to worry about drafting a balanced team and whatnot, but still, *knowing* you'll be picking late every round can put a damper on the draft.
Or more accurately, it mainly means that try as you might to scout whom you want ahead of time, you get repeatedly scooped in every round. Which is precisely what happened. That said, I can't complain about the team we drafted; we did stick to known entities and people I really enjoy playing with for the most part. So to get on to it:
We drafted women first, and there were five obvious first round picks and then a bunch of unknowns. The first five went almost strictly in order, the 6th was a person we had never heard of, and so I (did I mention G was out of town at the AAAS conference in Chicago? Well, she was, and so we had to do a quick scouting job before the draft. Not ideal, but I think it worked out) was left with a tough decision - draft an unknown named "Kelly" who rated herself as experienced, tall and athletic, or draft a known but probably properly a second round draft pick named Megan. I basically flipped a coin in my brain and went with kelly; just couldn't bring myself to spend a first round pick on megan (who's a very young ASU player) when a purportedly experienced athletic lady was on the board. Of course, PMo (with the 8th pick right behind me, and also the coach of the ASU women's team) grabbed Megan immediately and enthusiastically, so I may have made a colossal mistake. We'll see.
Grabbed an athletic, somewhat experienced player named Allyson with our second round pick, someone G had recommended for the pick. So that's groovy, and her e-mail address is ***rugbyplayer*** or something so I'm guessing we got a solid athlete there - and when you're picking relative unknowns toward the bottom of the second round, that's what you hope for. Our third round pick was a complete unknown named Salina who was the youngest / most experienced / athletic left, and YES, I practice ageism when drafting. Deal.
Our fourth round pick was automatic, none other than the Furious Fist of Ferrous herself. That's right, THE BECK is playing spring league!!! After a somewhat disappointing winter run with Phxation, the local
The women's draft, generally speaking, had a limited known talent pool, and so it was not entirely surprising that we did not grab a ton of known greats with our low pick. I think we did a good job, and may have scored a coup with that 2nd round pick, but we'll see. The men's, on the other hand, similarly had an obvious top tier of about five guys, but much, much more known talent down the way. Again, with a seventh pick, that upmost tier looked out of range, but there was always a chance that people above would pick incorrectly or what have you. So...
Not so much. Surprisingly, Bryan, Sprawl captain who noted that he would be missing the playoffs, went as the first pick. Hmmm - that team is captained by Russell and Liz, so maybe they really wanted handling, but still, odd first choice. The second pick (made by E-Bay) was your friend and mine, Royal WEfnuker Justin. Yeah, i would have gone with him first overall, but what are you gonna do. Another WEfnuker went 3rd - Pat! - and our reunion team dream was destroyed. Ah, well. Pete went 4th, Damon went 5th, and Rob went 6th, leaving me with another tough first round decision - Jason (tall, skinny athletic club player-type) seemed to be an obvious pick, so I made it, but it was then revealed that he had just let Katherine know he would be out for the playoffs. Ugh! So I withdrew my pick and went with Jack, and on further consideration, am really glad I did.
Jack is an incredible player - older, but still fast, good throws, and just plays his ass off - but he's not someone you look at and say "obvious first rounder, will be a serious deep threat and such," mainly I think because he is not tall and is 38. But the thing is - I think HE IS!!! I may just be talking myself into this, but beyond getting a great guy / great player / great dog (see below), he really is an all-around player that creates all kinds of matchup problems. So he may not be an obvious first pick overall like Justin or a prototypical long threat like Pat, but he's going to accomplish a lot for us. I am psyched, and again, he's a great guy with whom to play and with whom I mesh well - we played together at NYF and had a blast on all fronts.
After getting scooped on several of my second round options, I ended up taking a guy named Alan with the second round pick - another fast, mid type. Vince followed up by picking Nat, a guy who works at CSPO and is a friend of Genevieve's (and who I thought would fall to the 3rd round), and so as a friendly maneuver (Alan is an old teammate of Vince's), we traded our second round picks to everyone's happiness. Nat is another high ceiling pick - when he is in shape and uninjured, he is another badass all-around guy. Of course, he is currently out-of-shape and gets injured frequently. So I am Einstein's Not-God with my dice-rolling. I'm psyched if for no other reason to have another frisbee bud on campus.
In the third round, I improbably picked up Tom, an older handler with seriously sick throws (and who plays pretty crunchy defense). Another case of misevaluated talent, I think, and I couldn't believe he fell that low. Grabbed Miller in the fourth round, another guy who lasted way longer than I thought - he's another fragility risk and is reportedly battling some hamstring issues, but that aside, he is a seriously athletic guy who will come up with some deep throws / Ds if needed. E-Bay agreed that if he pans out, he would be the steal of the draft.
Got Paul in the fifth round, so at least one fnuker will be playing with us. He had told me he had a sleeper pick, so I called him after selecting him... and his sleeper ended up being a girl. That was unhelpful, seeing as we had already completed the women's draft, but it also happened to be the top woman selected. Hmmm... "Sleeper." I do not think this word means what you think it means. Anyways, getting Paul in the fifth round is just dumb; he remains unknown despite having a great fall season and finals game in front of everyone. I don't get it, but was more than happy to scoop him up where we did; another athletic dude who's getting more experienced all the time.
Grabbed Craig of all people in the 6th - WOW. Craig handles pretty decently and plays okay defense, but more importantly can throw deep forehand or backhand, a rare commodity that low in the draft to be sure. Hooray. And then I got jeremy in the seventh, a young speedster who is still learning the game, but still - WOW TWO. He is very green, to be sure, but I am repeatedly confused as to why people would select other unknown players when a known to be lightning quick guy is on the table. NUTS.
8th-10th picks were all unknowns, so I did my best but ended up getting two older guys (Greg and Richie) as well as a dude named Viral whom I know nothing about. So, after reviewing this, I liked a lot of the picks I made, and got a lot of guys on the cheap that I did not think I'd be able to grab. There's a laundry list of picks I thought I might be able to pull off - Brayden and his dad, Pat Smith, Ben, Russ, a bunch of the unknown but tall and athletic guys, etc. - that I couldn't, but going through it again, I really did get a ton out of every pick. So in the end, I think Gen and my pre-draft strategy meeting paid off, and we did the best we could with late order picks. Looking at a lot of teams in the league, no one stands out as having had a particular awesome draft with the possible exception of Dustin / Pauline, who stand out only because they drafted nothing but 6' or taller guys (Dustin is 6'9" already), so in non-windy conditions, just their height could wreak havoc.
SO a solid draft, and we're looking forward to the season. It'll be interesting having Beck on board b/c she'll be a good barometer for how good of a job we're doing teaching and keeping newer players involved - unlike some people who may not be inclined to speak up, Beck and I will be able to talk honestly about the experience from a new player's perspective. Again, another post. AND having Beck around just might keep my hotheadedness in check. We'll see... :)
Oh, and lest I forget - jack's dog is an 8 year old shepherd mix who is just the nicest, sweetest, mellowest dog I've ever met at an Ultimate game. He just sits on the sideline the entire time and chills out, no maintenance needed, just happy to get patted by people who walk by, and never ever runs on the field. Amazing. Jack's dog is named Zorro, and our team color is black, so I think we may have pulled off another excellent multi-reference team name with "The Mark of Zorro." A quick summary:
1. Jack's dog ZORRO is our mascot.
2. ZORRO is a notorious man in BLACK.
3. The "Mark" satisfies the Ultimate pun requirement
4. The Mark of ZORRO is a "Z," aka ZONE DEFENSE. Double Ultimate Pun!
Transcendent. Should be cool. In other news, my shirt design won the vote, so keep an eye out for a bunch of frisbee folkds walking around wearing this:
Against the grain
You thought healthy was in? You thought excess was out? You thought independent restaurants were in trouble? Well here is a joint that is bucking the trend on all three levels, the Heart Attack Grill of Chandler, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix-Tempe.
The Heart Attack Grill is the concept of one Jon Basso. The centerpiece of the menu is an 8,000-calorie Quadruple Bypass Burger. It has four layers of cheese and 12 slices of bacon. The theme is continued throughout in numerous ways including a waitstaff dressed as sexy nurses, ala the Hooters girls. They also sell Flat-Liner Fries cooked in lard. They offer no-filter cigarettes for the adults and bubble gum cigarettes for the kids.
Can it get an more un-PC than that???
Maybe. If you eat the Quadruple Bypass Burger, you can elect to have one the waitstaff/nurses roll you out to your car in a wheelchair.
Read more here in the Nation's Restaurant News.
Kids don't do it
It may seem like oh such a funny prank, but it isn't. A seventeen year old Columbia County, Georgia student has been arrested for taking surreptitious upskirt pictures of one of his teachers and showing them to classmates. Of course, he used his cell phone. The teacher was not amused. She identified her legs and underwear in the photo and the cops are pressing charges.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Carlin on Advertising
Long time readers know how the Clarion Content feels about advertising. While researching something else entirely we ran into this funny George Carlin bit on advertising. Watch below. Kinetic type thanks to Cousin of Sparda.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Cheap paint
The Clarion Content just got a hot tip the other day on where one can find interior house paint for cheap. Apparently, if one is not dying for a particular color, one can go the hardware store or the local paint store and buy remainders and mistakes. In North Carolina at full retail price a gallon of paint can cost anywhere from $10 to $30 per, depending on the gloss of the finish. Remainders and mistakes are often available at the local paint store, according to our sources, for as little as $5 per gallon.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Akoka, Quartet for the End of Time
After Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time
The Clarion Content correspondent attended the performance of David Krakauer's Akoka, Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, and Josh Dolgin aka DJ SoCalled's remix of Messiaen called Meanwhile. The performance was held Saturday on Duke University's campus at the Page Auditorium. It was performed by clarinetist David Krakauer, cellist Matt Haimovitz, violinist Todd Reynolds, and pianist Geoffrey Burleson. They were joined by DJ SoCalled for the final piece.
The show was seventy minutes of music straight through with fascinating and evocative lighting changes that are rare for a classical music concert. Messiaen wrote his piece during the darkest days of World War II, January 1941 when the Germans occupied nearly all of Europe. It is music written in at the nadir of a great crisis. Hope for the free world was dim. Henri Akoka was an Algerian Jewish clarinetist who played with Messiaen at the premier of his piece, in a German Prisoner of War camp, Stalag 8-A. Akoka was left behind when a music loving German guard released Messiaen and the two other French musicians to the collaborationist Vichy-French government. He later escaped and went on to a career as a character actor.
As for the music it was dissonant, anti-melodic, anti-harmonic, arrhythmic. The meter constant shifted and felt turbulent. Yet it was oddly and eerily coordinated; self-aware.
It was not the kind of music that one would want to hear at the end of the world. It was not comforting or soothing. It was more the sort of music that one might hear in one's head if one were a European who'd had classical music training and felt the end of the world was nigh. Regular sounds become disturbed, panicky, overly-rapid, then the mind seizes control of them again, marshals them ,imposes will, but dissonance and crazy thoughts and sounds seep through, then explode. The pace changes again, it slows to become mournful, baleful, somber, but still arrhythmic.
There were solos for each of the instruments. There was frenetic clarinet. The mournfulness of the cello was set against the piano played almost like doleful metronome. The musicians' faces held intense expressions as if the difficulty of what they were doing was almost physically painful. The meter changes and the anti-melodic discord made those looks vibe as if the players were fighting against their instruments and instincts. Within that, their ability to sync up what they were doing precisely with the timing of what someone else was doing was remarkable. How hard must it be, how inhuman and against the nature of the beat that thrums within our caveman souls must it be, to play against the musical instinct of rhythm and harmony. There was a tension between lack of tempo and the simultaneity of sound. The strain on the musicians was evident.
In the audience the emotion of the music was conveyed, too. It was fear music. It was disturbing, its eeriness echoed and underlined by the changes in lighting, primal colors. Not much of the music was downright sorrowful, but if one were used to listening to classical music, hearing it and anticipating what might come next through the forces of habit and the expected form of the usual, some of this music could have freaked one out. It went nowhere it was supposed to, it went there vitriolically, then it went slowly back, still off-beat and discordant. The music shrieked and screeched in dissonant ways to totally other places, only to circle back to vague hints of oddly familiar lines, bars and scales.
The only way the conceit worked was to play the whole thing through start to finish, to have had it stop and then start up again, with what they were playing, aurally the nature of it, the act of it would have been somewhere between too irritating and too disturbing to be acceptable. It would have been highly agitating. The music was quite literally off-beat, a frantic pace, then almost East Asian sounding calm, a subdued moment beyond the storm. Nope, it was the eye, more unpredictable crashing and madness. It almost felt like the music could be seizure inducing, especially combined with the lighting changes. There was a palpable panic.
Highly effective, not comforting. Let us hope the world never faces days as dark as January 1941 again.
The Clarion Content correspondent attended the performance of David Krakauer's Akoka, Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, and Josh Dolgin aka DJ SoCalled's remix of Messiaen called Meanwhile. The performance was held Saturday on Duke University's campus at the Page Auditorium. It was performed by clarinetist David Krakauer, cellist Matt Haimovitz, violinist Todd Reynolds, and pianist Geoffrey Burleson. They were joined by DJ SoCalled for the final piece.
The show was seventy minutes of music straight through with fascinating and evocative lighting changes that are rare for a classical music concert. Messiaen wrote his piece during the darkest days of World War II, January 1941 when the Germans occupied nearly all of Europe. It is music written in at the nadir of a great crisis. Hope for the free world was dim. Henri Akoka was an Algerian Jewish clarinetist who played with Messiaen at the premier of his piece, in a German Prisoner of War camp, Stalag 8-A. Akoka was left behind when a music loving German guard released Messiaen and the two other French musicians to the collaborationist Vichy-French government. He later escaped and went on to a career as a character actor.
As for the music it was dissonant, anti-melodic, anti-harmonic, arrhythmic. The meter constant shifted and felt turbulent. Yet it was oddly and eerily coordinated; self-aware.
It was not the kind of music that one would want to hear at the end of the world. It was not comforting or soothing. It was more the sort of music that one might hear in one's head if one were a European who'd had classical music training and felt the end of the world was nigh. Regular sounds become disturbed, panicky, overly-rapid, then the mind seizes control of them again, marshals them ,imposes will, but dissonance and crazy thoughts and sounds seep through, then explode. The pace changes again, it slows to become mournful, baleful, somber, but still arrhythmic.
There were solos for each of the instruments. There was frenetic clarinet. The mournfulness of the cello was set against the piano played almost like doleful metronome. The musicians' faces held intense expressions as if the difficulty of what they were doing was almost physically painful. The meter changes and the anti-melodic discord made those looks vibe as if the players were fighting against their instruments and instincts. Within that, their ability to sync up what they were doing precisely with the timing of what someone else was doing was remarkable. How hard must it be, how inhuman and against the nature of the beat that thrums within our caveman souls must it be, to play against the musical instinct of rhythm and harmony. There was a tension between lack of tempo and the simultaneity of sound. The strain on the musicians was evident.
In the audience the emotion of the music was conveyed, too. It was fear music. It was disturbing, its eeriness echoed and underlined by the changes in lighting, primal colors. Not much of the music was downright sorrowful, but if one were used to listening to classical music, hearing it and anticipating what might come next through the forces of habit and the expected form of the usual, some of this music could have freaked one out. It went nowhere it was supposed to, it went there vitriolically, then it went slowly back, still off-beat and discordant. The music shrieked and screeched in dissonant ways to totally other places, only to circle back to vague hints of oddly familiar lines, bars and scales.
The only way the conceit worked was to play the whole thing through start to finish, to have had it stop and then start up again, with what they were playing, aurally the nature of it, the act of it would have been somewhere between too irritating and too disturbing to be acceptable. It would have been highly agitating. The music was quite literally off-beat, a frantic pace, then almost East Asian sounding calm, a subdued moment beyond the storm. Nope, it was the eye, more unpredictable crashing and madness. It almost felt like the music could be seizure inducing, especially combined with the lighting changes. There was a palpable panic.
Highly effective, not comforting. Let us hope the world never faces days as dark as January 1941 again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)