Neoteny is the greatest state of mind (Prelude)

... especially when one can project a dark chocolate exterior of sophistication and gravitas to contain the lively maverick of fruity caramel inside. Maybe a little rum and vodka too, to aid with neoteny.

I let my inner child out to romp and my inhibition loose in the Pacific wind this weekend. Friday featured an Exploratorium meandering, Saturday (late night) the newest Star Trek movie, and Monday Fanime-Con (something I would not imagine myself doing five or ten years ago).

Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet

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I almost couldn't get tickets for this Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet concert... The tickets sell out frustratingly early. All the retirees in the area buying up season tickets months in advance!

It was amusing to see the only gal in the group (may or may not be the youngest?) holding the biggest stick (i.e. bassoon). Their program was refreshing, spring-like, and most of all whimsical. Only musicians of their caliber can pull this off! I had a lot of fun visualizing dramatic scenarios during the pieces...

W. A. Mozart (1756-1791), Fantasy in F Minor for a Mechanical Organ, KV 608 (Arr. by Michael Hasel): Mozart being the timeless classic he is, I had no salient mental imagery other than the abstract notion of spring and joy. This seemed to be their warm-up piece, as I felt they were tweaking some intonation along the way. I know this because once the air inside the instrument gets cold, it takes a few minutes to warm it up and get the pitches right again! Mmm wave physics.

Kalevi Aho (b.1949), Kvintetto (2006): Wild safaris with cave spelunking, scuba diving, jungle trekking, and desert traversing. Along the way, the travelers encountered a pair of elephants lumbering in heat, a mixed chorus of howler monkeys and macaws, a near-death experience of almost crashing into a cliff in a propeller plane, and an explosive symphony of color-shifting corals, tropical fishes, and octopi. The last movement starts with the flute, oboe, and clarinet playing offstage, and then they come back. And then the French and bassoon leave and play offstage until the end. Curious stage effect.

Jacques Ibert (1890-1962), Trois Piecès Brèves (1930): A lovely garden in the height of spring with serene fountains, butterflies dancing among the flowers, birds chirping amidst the arboreal foliage, and squirrels darting around the branches and tree trunks in their vibrant acrobatics.

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), La cheminée du roi René (1939): Young Franciscan monks hiking in an ancient and pristine forest, seeking enlightenment. Magical spirits visit them every once in a while to commune with the monks and make fun of how little they know about the wisdom of the forest.

Jean Françaix (1912-1997), Quintet No. 1 (1948): The Marauders (may or may not include Lily Evans) pulling a Ferris Bueller by ditching their Hogwarts classes for a day, solemnly swearing they're up to no good. They must be constantly looking out for people who might recognize them, but that doesn't stop them from going to a bar and drinking a bit more than they can handle. James and Lily (or Sirius and Remus or some combination thereof) danced around in awkward and silly moves, before Remus reminds everyone they must head back pronto or they would really be in trouble. The next day, while passing time during a boring class hungover, they're planning their next adventure.

The quintet did an encore of a folk song medley that included "Oh Susana" and "Yankee Doodle" among other tunes I couldn't immediately recall :-P I wonder if they have an encore book of folk tune arrangements from every country they've performed in?

I wanted to ask them if any of them can circular breathe, but sneaking backstage seemed to be tricky. Too bad!

Visitations: Theotokia and The War Reporter

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One of my recent conversations discussed the following proposition: when attending an avant-garde opera, instead of dressing up in the usual evening formal attire, one could don the hipster gear of thick-rimmed glasses, hoodie, brightly-colored pants, converse sneakers, and mismatched socks. I'm really milking my grad student status for all it's worth.

As quoted from the concert program:

Visitations presents a pair of tender and powerful dramas about individuals haunted by inner voices. The first, Theotokia, takes the audience inside the consciousness of a man who, beset by hallucinatory voices, is taunted and seduced by the mother of God. The work illuminates the experience of Leon, a schizophrenic who is possessed by ritualistic and religious hallucinatory delusions and suffers from obsessive, ritualistic behavior.  

The second opera of the set, The War Reporter, depicts the true story of the inner struggle of Paul Watson, a war reporter who believes he is being haunted by the spirit of the desecrated American soldier he photographed in the streets of Mogadishu in 1993 (a photograph that won Watson the Pulitzer Prize shortly thereafter). Although the libretto's narrative traverses six geographical locations, the actual drama is set entirely in the psyche of the reporter as he struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder. 

I was totally mesmerized by the juxtaposition of Gregorian chant (parallel fifths and octaves) with augmented/diminished fourth/fifths, major/minor seconds reminiscent of the soundtrack from North by Northwest and Inception. The St. Lawrence String Quartet really pulled out all the chords and shook them in pizzicatos. The texturing of various percussion instruments and the alto flute was particularly effective. Kudos to the composer and the entire "pit" orchestra! (There's no real pit on stage in this concert hall.)

The New York Polyphony gave a fantastic rendition of all the angst and nuances. The countertenor (who played Leon and one of Paul's inner voices) sang with the delicate tension of stretched pizza dough, constantly stringing my ears along with the anticipation of delicious harmonies and suspension chords. It was amazing how high his range can get! The baritone (as Paul) swept me away with all the power of crashing waves on a stormy shore. The soprano's singing (Theotokia: Mother Anne, Leon's mother, Yeti Mother; The War Reporter: Paul's boss, Paul's inner voice) soared like an albatross surfing in the mountain wind.

The set design once again evoked an abstract sense of unsettling, as per Rinde Eckert's signature in his works. The visualization in Theotokia reminded me of fertilized cells dividing...

... and ferrofluids morphing...

I also enjoyed how the vocalists took over the role of the stage crew, rearranging props while doing choreographed interpretive dance moves that illuminated plot elements. This aspect of the performance was implicit and understated, letting the audience make the conceptual leaps, a fresh contrast to the special effects overkill in contemporary cinema. :-P

At some point, I wondered about the anachronistic superstition that upon taking a shot, the camera would extract the subject's soul... or perhaps the photographer's?

Double, double, toil and trouble;

... Fire burn, and pseudopotentials bubble. That about sums up my research these days.

Fiddling with the mysterious inner workings of how to best represent atomic orbitals so they appear to behave just like in experimental observations...

It's like the simmering of a secret sauce where each ingredient must be mixed in the right amount and added at the right time. Otherwise dramatic explosions break out in the form of error messages like "Jacobian has collapsed", "5s is unbound", "x1 must be monotonically increasing", or "failed to bracket eigenvalues". 

Now I know why Snape the potion master is perennially frustrated. At least my research group appreciated the Shakespeare reference and the clip-art of a bubbly cauldron.

A lack of dérivatory excursions can trigger...

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... a recurring bout of suburbanitis, and the only known relief (no known cure) is the application of a transcendiary experience. The torching of perma-numbness. Not just simply ordering a different burger combo or smoothie flavor at thereby unnamed campus eateries.

As I sampled my inner space groups with a denser grid of k-points under the waterfall simulacrum, I wondered if I'm merely rotating within the same dimension, without awareness of high-order fields.

Perhaps I am succumbing to the all-permeating Postmodern Surrealism, whatever that entails.

Meanwhile, I'll keep on keeping on... keep on believin'... Believe in the future.

Curse the wedding-industrial complex!!!!!!

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My thoughts exactly. Like ZOMG, how did this whole shindig get so blown out proportion and out of its ... mind? Like a "phallocentric fairy-tale grotesquerie" (30 Rock!) What happened to a quiet, understated, and totally intimate moment with one's significant other? Screw people's opinions!! They are irritating like raw onions.

From the second link above...

One consultant at a wedding-industry conference told his audience, "You are selling dreams, and you can charge anything."

Wat. WAT?!

As a response, this anti-wedding is a totally siiiiick haaack.

House ended

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and I lost some sleep.

In some ways, TV series are like start-ups... a group of creatives and builders trying to survive the scrutiny and at the mercy of network execs (i.e. VC's, angel sponsors or whatever funding sources a start-up can get).

In other ways, they're unlike most start-ups... i.e. the crew has access to the fancy gadgets and equipment (might be similar to a start-up that somehow leverages the manufacturing capability of an established company).

And also, many of them get axed after one or two seasons (i.e. like a start-up runs out of funding). In House's case, it's almost like the start-up grew and grew and then a profitable buyout. I think it's a good thing that Hugh Laurie decided to end the series before it becomes overripe. FOX network does have a tendency to make some controversial decisions...

By the way, I see a parallel between the House stunt and the Sherlock stunt toward the end of the series finale...

Poetic connections to quantum physics

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        THE LOCKLESS DOOR

        by: Robert Frost (1874-1963)

        It went many years,
        But at last came a knock,
        And I thought of the door
        With no lock to lock.
        
        I blew out the light,
        I tip-toed the floor,
        And raised both hands
        In prayer to the door.
        
        But the knock came again
        My window was wide;
        I climbed on the sill
        And descended outside.
        
        Back over the sill
        I bade a “Come in”
        To whoever the knock
        At the door may have been.
        
        So at a knock
        I emptied my cage
        To hide in the world
        And alter with age.

Sublime description of two eigenstates superimposing on each other (I read it as a metaphor of life/death, of being/non-being, or just two different perspectives...) and the observation paradox of Schrödinger's cat :-P

Duct tape should hold...

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My Doink-it dartboard fell and landed on my synthesizer
that is covered with pale blue bedsheets too small for my current bed.

The thud shattered the pale blue illusion of silence
with reverberations of dissonance from an imaginary time and space.

The black circular plastic raft still floated on pale blue wrinkly water waves
like a very symmetric and frozen body bag.

I wonder why the dartboard fell.
It was duct-taped to an adjustable metal easel.

Duct tape should hold.

Why did the dartboard fall?

On conducting (and perhaps parenting, among other things)

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Charles Hazlewood - #TEDGlobal "Conducting is like holding a bird in your hand – too tight, you crush it. Too light, it flies away..." (quoted from Sir Colin Davis)

It's really about the trust. If that is granted, all else follows. (... borrowing from George Orwell again) The lack thereof begets hatred and contempt.

I admit it is very very difficult for me to completely trust another. But I guess there're still safeguards that keep me from degenerating into a sociopathic criminal...

Associative Musical Visual Intelligence

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Take the quiz here. I thought the analogy between musical phrases and geometrical shapes is interesting but has room for interpretation. I got one question "wrong" out of twenty. I also had to listen to each one 2-3 times. So meh. Although I suspect the average score would be significantly lower if they don't have the replay button. I wonder if they take into account how many times something is replayed or how fast the tasks are completed.

Narrative shot [003]

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(Warning: angst.)

Radiating waves of self-hatred, insidious as hydrofluoric acid on skin, were slowly corroding his tattered skeleton of rationality. He slammed the porcelain onto the table and felt the shards digging into his hand, followed by an explosive sensation in maniacal glory. Possessed by a demonic impulse, he proceeded to hurl everything through the 7th-floor glass window, tearing apart the room and his every muscle fiber, all while roaring like the death of a magnificent beast.   

What unspeakables happened to Douglas Coupland...

... that compelled him to write with such a giant psychedelic squirming teratoma of disdain for contemporary society? (Okay, I empathize)

He's a master of spinning absurdist scenarios into a coherent and dark lore of what is dysfunctional in the modern world. His metaphors are almost, dare I say, Picasso-like? I think that's the most refreshing aspect of his writing. It speaks to my stretched-over-the-elastic-limit pseudo-intellectual ethos. I can read his books when I'm anywhere from 30% to 80% awake, preferably in a shroud of disillusionment.


I read Player One, Generation A, and JPod (reverse chronological order of when he published them) In all three books, the story would center around a quintet or sextet of characters thrust into an epic adventure against their will. Despite seemingly very different from one another (different walks of life, different parts of the world, different upbringings), they are united first by their bizarre circumstances and gradually come to the realization that they are more alike than they have thought. That they are all equally screwed over, but somehow things work out. More or less.


There's a stronger autobiographical presence in JPod than in Player One or Generation A in that there is one main narrator and more of the characters are connected to him than others. Later in JPod, however, the narrator's work life and home life become unwittingly stirred into a peanut butter and wasabi mix. Perhaps Coupland has felt like that at some point in his life. I can only speculate...

There's also a lot of stream-of-consciousness in JPod which many other readers have found distracting, not to mention random typographical feats like the word "ramen" in size-7 (?) Helvetica repeated for one whole page, or the first ~50,000 digits of pi, or random Chinese characters. I personally loved the "ramen" page. Hit rather close to home.

Perhaps these are meant to be subliminal bombardment of modern culture? Or the author got lazy? In any event, I found this somewhat amusing. The digits of pi though is rather overdone and a waste of ink. ~200 digits would be adequate. :-P

I might give his earlier books a read, although I have gotten a pretty good idea what to expect. He seems to alternate between rambling stream-of-consciousness (JPod) and intricate story weaving (Player One) and somewhere in between (Generation A). I can empathize too, even though the longest (fan)fiction I've ever written is barely 6,000 words. Or was it less than that? Oh well. So I understand that everyone has more inspired days than others. I'm still a fan.

Ship of Fool by William Trowbridge

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Wonder what drew me to pick up this little anthology from the myriad of lineups on the library bookshelves. Was it the white-on-black text on the book's spine? The petite size? The ohh-so-shiny gloss suggestive of a published year coincident with the current calendar year? I'd go with all three. After all, the mind draws from a lifetime of associations when making split-second choices. Like what books to read over the next few weeks... The intriguing intro on the back cover merely confirmed my intuition that this would be a good read by my dictionary. 

(The title is not to be confused with the ship of fools, which is an allegory of civilization. Although the concepts are loosely related.)

This is a collection of poems about the fool archetype. Imagine a combination of Yiddish comic characters "schlemiel" and "schlimazel", where the former is "a bungler who's always accidentally breaking and spilling things on people", while the latter is "a sad sack who's always getting his stuff broken and spilled on him". Trowbridge's Fool is both.

Reminds me of comic characters whom Robin Williams and Jim Carrey played in movies. Or Forrest Gump. And perhaps the Fool is not so foolish after all.

After all, Cupid's fool of a peon calls himself "a flyboy from the infantry of love".

I mean, everyone has been a fool at some point. Perhaps the Fool speaks to that primal curiosity, the (blind?) courage to believe that the world is still beautiful, or the (naïve?) earnestness to try and make it so.

Despite being (seen as) perpetually awkward. Nevertheless, he deserves some applause for trying. To help. To live. To love.

To be.






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Copenhagen (play)

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The title aptly plays on the locale and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. This play is about intentions and their interpretations thereof. And the difficulty that arises when things are left unsaid.

Niels Bohr had treated Werner Heisenberg as more than a colleague, closer to a star protégé or a son. And Heisenberg was the prodigal upstart of the physics world who corrected Bohr's math error at a conference when he was a 21-year-old grad student. Thus began ~20 years of collaboration that revolutionized quantum physics until they had a falling-out when Heisenberg insisted on meeting Bohr in WWII-raging 1941... while they were on the opposite sides of the war.

In a way, they are both like experimenters trying to characterize an elusive particle, trying to understand why one wants to meet the other while the potential barrier is overwhelming. (Oh punny puns...) In the attempt to gauge what the other is thinking, they ask questions (make a measurement), all the while tiptoeing around political landmines (stringent experimental conditions).

I would like to think that Heisenberg wanted to warn Bohr about the destructive force of atomic fission and thereby dissuading the governments (on both sides) to develop weapons from it. Or he could have been trying to fish out information from Bohr. Or he missed his mentor after being out of touch for many years. Or some combination thereof. So many eigenstates... whose wavefunctions collapsed into a broken friendship.

All the while, Niels' wife Margarethe stays mostly in the background as an observer, albeit not a neutral one. Like a meta-overseer whose presence keeps the particles from bouncing off into Neverland, i.e. talking in math equations and throwing nerdy references around.

My favorite scene is where Heisenberg likens Margarethe to an atomic nucleus, Niels to an electron who is "here, there, everywhere and nowhere", and himself to a photon trying to find the electron. Upon meeting, both particles are deflected, i.e. affected forever. It captures their dynamic rather well...

As an aside, all the actors are fantastic in this. Daniel Craig (Heisenberg) is probably the most famous of the three in the U.S. at least, and it was fun watching him play a brilliant, troubled, earnest character.






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Life (NBC TV detective procedual) [Spoiler alerts!]

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Watched the entire series (32 episodes) in 3 days because the main story arc proved too compelling for me... The lead character is unlike most I've seen. Like an Edmond Dantès who space-warps to a Zen Buddhist temple after he gets out of prison. The central difference is that Detective Charlie Crews' (partial) revenge is to protect someone important to him, rather than his desire for vengeance. 

He has a habit of "micro-meditation" during conversations, when he would either stare into space or quote some very Daoist riddles. The actor has done a superb job with this character, who reminds me of a crater lake atop a dormant volcano... deep, dark, mysterious, usually serene yet capable of immensely explosive power.

Crews' foil character has about as much of an angsty past, although she stays rather grounded while often snappy. Their interactions most closely resemble those of the duo in The Dresden Files, although Harry Dresden is mildly klutzy and Crews is very methodical... almost like a Zen master :-P

There are times when Crews actually reminds me of Dr. Gregory House. They both have that rugged (British) look and the dogged persistence that does not let go until the problem is solved. And they rarely smile... if one appears, it is often forced or pained. Le angst! I want to escape to a Zen temple, but there would probably be no Internets, rawr.






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"Music between nature and architecture"

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Being the pan-aesthetics enthusiast that I am, I went to this talk (blog title) by Leon Botstein. I can see why he gets to be the president of a preeminent liberal arts college... I can almost imagine him in a Count Dracula cape, working semantic and symbolic abstraction magic with his dramatic intonations and lexicons. He would have made a terrific orator in the Greek tradition. :-P

This is his ongoing project, and not so surprisingly, he started with mostly German composers and architects, stemming from his German-Hungarian (Jewish) background. Here are the main associations he made -

(1) Architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel :||: Composer Felix Mendelssohn, based on their style that is evocative of 19th Century pastoral Romanticism. Schinkel did paint some rather magical Gothic cathedrals nestled in beautiful forests (below), and Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture is demonstrative of the spirit of nature (I played this with an orchestra and also happen to really like this piece).

(2) Architects Otto Wagner & Joseph Maria Olbrich :||: Composer Gustav Mahler... Initially ornate, Baroque, rectilinear and true to traditional form, later on more subtle and philosophical. I'm not as familiar with Mahler's music (will listen to his symphonies at some point). The Vienna Secession movement seems interesting to look into...

(3) Architect Eero Saarinen :||: Composer Jean Sibelius ... The connection is fairly obvious here because these two were good friends, and their styles influenced each other -- with organic, iteratively evolving themes. I could hear this in Sibelius's violin concerto. I like Saarinen's buildings, especially the staircase. I am drawn to staircase designs...

(4) Architects Le Corbusier & Frank Lloyd Wright :||: Composers Edgard Varèse & Igor Stravinsky ... Neo-Classical, functionally aesthetic/ aesthetically functional :-P Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring was definitely a neo-shock at the time. And Varèse wrote this wicked difficult piece "Density 21.5"... One of Le Corbusier's buildings reminded me of Simmons Hall and another of the Green Building, huh. I didn't know he also designed the Carpenter Arts Center @ Harvard, which Botstein said was "hard to find an angle that actually looked attractive".

The Q&A session was illuminating as well. It gives a window that glimpses into Botstein's persona (at least in public...) which I find to be cogent, eloquent, uncompromising, territorial, and domineering. :-P

The first question was how did Botstein made the associations he did, i.e. what basis, and whether other scholars in the field would make the same associations. Botstein replied that these connections are not arbitrary as he approached these from a historical point of view, based on actual contacts between the architects and the composers. Since they were contemporaries, they were therefore subjected to similar social influences and Zeitgeist of the time. (Thank you, GRE vocab list...)

The second question was from another musical scholar, who asked about the influences of the French Revolution on the arts/architecture, i.e. pre-revolution being more formulaic and post-revolution being less so... Botstein said that he didn't quite agree with this, although I don't recall the details of what he said after that...

The third question was from an architect, who wondered about how to reconcile the improvisatory nature of some music with architecture, which is very planned. Botstein answered that these architects were also very much painters and sculptors, so their creative process involved lots of sketching in the beginning. The editing part was what he drew parallels to.

He also commented on concert halls and how their design influence the sound, which reminds me of David Byrne's TED about music and the architecture of concert halls. Botstein quipped that it's much harder to build a concert hall in a rural area, e.g. Bard College than in an urban area... hence Carnegie Hall is "unremarkable" and Lincoln Center is "an abomination"... har har har...

Well, it was a great talk for sure. I look forward to see how he'll continue this project.

Contemplations

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On a good day, at least 30 ideas (+/- 10) emerge in my head. For fleeting moments, I would be improving the environment, creating artworks, composing songs, writing stories, making (self-proclaimed astute) social commentaries, forming connections, or generally toying with abstractions. Unfortunately, these ideas rarely cross my brain-hand barrier.

Is it laziness? Fear of rejection? A combination thereof?

Is "too busy with research" just a lame excuse?

Or is there something else, something more sinister lurking below the noise threshold of my consciousness?

If I continue reading The Zen of Creativity, will I find my answers?

Random dialogue with Dr. Tony Hill (Wire in the Blood)

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You say that “manifesto” suggests a sense of grandeur,
an illusory perception of reality...
But please, my Dear Shrink,
let me enjoy my fantasies
for just a little bit longer...

Amount of responsibility is (approximately) proportional to the number of keys owned

- - -
Or perhaps to the weight of the keys, but I think that's a weaker correlation.

Keys unlock doors. Keys catalyze. Keys open up dimensions.

Or just locks one into the daily humdrums.

I returned half of my keys some weeks back, and I'm enveloped by an unbearable lightness of uncertainty in momentum space. Where to go from here?

If I spin my set of keys on the lanyard, lasso-style, and let it fly tangential to my peripheral field of view, I can see dragonflies rising from the dews. They dragonflies I see are free, free from the laws of Nature and physics.

My key set flies parabolic across a scrapyard of abandoned space-time fragments. No resistance. It will fly forever.

And I might not even miss it.