Hey Josh, You In?

OK—it’s one of those videos that Hallmark could have produced, and any diabetics out there should perhaps take a shot more of insulin. But for all of that, a lot of trite expressions have some truth in them. Remember, “today is the first day of the rest of your life?” Believe it or not, that poster was hanging on the studio door in Gunnar Johansen’s house. And Johansen was no sentimentalist, but rather the first Artist in Residence at any university, and a grand student of Liszt.

So what’s the video all about? Well, I first came across it—if memory serves—in some Malcolm Gladwell book. The Washington Post had decided to see what would happen if they put Joshua Bell, an extraordinary violinist who’s got a three million dollar fiddle (called the Gibson ex Huberman Strad), in jeans and a baseball cap, instead of a tuxedo, and in a Metro station at 7 AM instead of Carnegie Hall at 8 PM. Would anyone pay attention? Or is the truism that site and expectation dictate our experience…well, true?

Contrary to the video, the Post reports that 37 people stopped and listened. Right—but how many went by? Almost 2,000.

It leads to interesting questions. By and large, the street musicians I hear range from medium to awful. I have heard, however, a few absolutely world-class musicians—women and men who deserve the stage of any major hall in the world.

Maybe some will get there. But my suspicion? The road to Carnegie hall has both a lot of tricky exits and a lot of twists. There is personality, for example: for some people, the pressure of performing for hundreds of people, some who have saved for months to hear you, others who are tired after a day’s work and are being dragged to the concert by their spouse…well, some very good musicians can’t handle that pressure.

But Bell isn’t one of them: in fact, Bell said that the most disconcerting thing was the silence that followed the performance. And though not explicitly stated, the implication is that Bell wasn’t happy with his performance—he needed to feed off the energy of the audience.

In my case, I buckled miserably under pressure, and choked in every audition I took. Note for any readers wanting to pass a pleasant day: don’t walk onto a stage with your sweaty fingers, your roiling stomach, your Sahara mouth, produce horrendous sounds for two minutes, only to hear “gracias!” That being your cue to limp off the stage, avoid the eyes of your competitors, all of whom have left earprints on the stage doors, so ardent were they to hear every wretched noise you made.

Right—I’ve never done it, but still, given the choice of falling down a 200-foot elevator shaft and going through one of those auditions again? Wouldn’t be an easy decision.

So that meant that I put the cello down, and went off to work in the corporate world. And here I confess, I would have heard instantly how good a violinist Bell was: I’m conservatory-trained and have spent decades playing the Bach cello suites, and hearing the violin partitas. But would I have stopped? I didn’t have a time clock to punch, my boss arrived to the office hours after I did, nobody would have snarled if it had been seven AM instead of my usual 6:45.

But the sad truth? For me to listen to such beauty, to open myself to so much loveliness, only to tear myself away, close up again, put on the corporate face as I put on my tie every morning…I might not have stopped. I might have shuddered, remembered someone I came close to being but never became, and hurried away. Time to answer those emails!

My release came, and though the slip wasn’t pink, but a lawyerly-prepared package, I was escorted by “Loss Prevention” out of the building, the inside of which I have never seen again. So Lady, the owner of the café where I work, challenged me, when I proposed picking up the cello again, “why not do it here and let us be part of the process?” Meaning pouring a lot of DW40 on some very rusty fingers, and seeing what sounds would come from a decade-mute cello?  Why not play in the open mic area of the sister shop, where there are chairs and sofas? If it’s horrible, people can move on—otherwise, they can stay.

Casals once said (disclaimer—I think he said, but he’s not around to dispute it) that playing in a café is excellent preparation for a musician. Why? Because people are talking, laughing, clinking silver and plate, and generally treating you like you are the least important person in the room. So that first day in the café? Horrible, and made worse by the fact that my husband and his family were there to give me “support.” Guys? When you’re about to commit the musical equivalent of a seizure accompanied by projectile vomiting, you don’t want family and friends there….

I got through it, though it was 49.9% flight, and only 50.1% fight. And so I’ve done it for months now, and guess what? It’s no big deal, and if people listen, great. If they throw money into the cello case, I donate it to four excellent charities. And if, as happened a week ago, a young man of merciless beauty comes in (with his girl-friend, dammit) just as I had put the cello in the case, well, what else was there to do? He filmed me with his iPad, I gazing at him all the time, and the Bach?

…never sounded better!

It worked out, you see. The performance anxiety is—at least partially—over. But put me in Carnegie Hall, which was where Bell—at age 17—played with the St. Louis Symphony? Who knows? What I now know is that I could make the progression from café to church service to joint recital to….Carnegie Hall?

Because here it’s time to confess—I’m an excellent cellist. That, if I had anything to do with it, would be vanity. But as anyone who has felt the flow of playing well can attest, there’s an eerie feeling that someone else has borrowed your fiddle and your fingers. You’re less a musician than a medium….

So Bell has gone on to a distinguished career, though is he always going to be the “guy-who-played-in-the-subway?”

Yes.

And now he’s going back there, this time at noon, and with publicity at 12:30 on 30 September. And in addition to being there, he’ll be with nine young musicians, with whom he’s been working in the National Young Arts Program. Here—drawn from their website is what they do:

 YoungArts provides emerging artists (ages 15-18 or grades 10-12) with life-changing experiences with renowned mentors, access to significant scholarships, national recognition, and other opportunities throughout their careers to help ensure that the nation’s most outstanding young artists are encouraged to pursue careers in the arts. Support is offered in ten artistic disciplines: cinematic arts, dance, design arts, jazz, music, photography, theater, visual arts, voice and writing.

 Bell’s other point in going back underground? Well, classical musicians have got to get into the public arena and start playing in cafes, coffee houses, bookstores, bars, anywhere where real people are, and then something will happen.

People will love the music we play.

My dream? Get a cellist or violinist in every café in the country at 5 PM, when people are leaving work, not rushing to it. Let people buy a beer, drink it, and listen to Bach. Contribute whatever money you collect to the excellent organizations: here’s the link….

Josh—you in?

Three Men of God, Three Prisons

You know what? I have become smitten, utterly enraptured, with this disease, this chikungunya, because whatever responsibilities I might have had before? Gone! Vanished! My house resembles London immediately after the blitz—actually, London looked better; I have no sink but I do have a bucket—which happens to be blue, my favorite color, so I’m immediately cheered walking into the kitchen. Normally, of course, I might occasionally change the kitty litter—but if I can’t carry two bottles of wine and a package of chicken thighs home, what hope do I have for a 16-pound bag of kitty litter. So sorry, cats!

What have I discovered? Ah, the joys of illness, which provides me a perfect excuse not to do anything I don’t want to do! Damn, wish I had gotten this disease decades ago.

As a responsible blogger, read and feared in the most Olympian circles, I should really be telling you the story—ah, the old, old story—of Jozef Wesolowski, that 66-year old Papal Nuncio… Wait, former Papal Nuncio to the Dominican Republic, since he got defrocked and is now—horror of horrors!—under house arrest in Vatican City. So this is major news: yes indeed, our new pope is going to be a veritable lion, roaring his way through the naves and confessionals and parish houses of his church, seeking whom he may devour.

As they might say in the Vatican, merda taurorum.

Wesolowski was shuffled out of the country—one of two priests, both Polish, who were screwing (right, due to a howl from the legal department, I will add the word “allegedly” up there) young boys. Gentlemen—have you no imagination?

So one priest—who was going by the name of Alberto Gil, since his Polish name was completely daunting to Spanish tongues—ended up in Poland, where he sat around for months until the Poles, whose Spanish may be a bit rusty, decided they really should arrest him. What have they done with him since? Well, using my last ion of bloggerly energy, I looked him up on Google. And there’s nothing recent. So presumably, he is still “awaiting trial,” but who am I to say? In those distant days of salubrity—lump it, computer—I used to Google the Polish articles, and get wonderful, contorted but quite informative news on the gentleman. Oh, and I learned a lot about Polish syntax!

All of this is relatively out there—but what isn’t being said? Well—according to one report from, I believe, the Dominican journalist Nuria Piera—one or both of the guys may have slid out of the country on fake IDs.

The second thing? Wesolowski was Papal Nuncio to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and according to one report—again by Piera—he spent at least some time in Puerto Rico, where he stayed in a diocese currently being investigated by U.S. federal officials for sexual abuse of minors and the subsequent cover-up. (see below for a video—in Spanish—about his activities here.) So why is that a big deal?

Well, I just walked out to Plaza de Armas in Old San Juan, and peered up at the three flags that adorn the city hall. And here’s what I saw:

I wanted to make sure, you see, that that star-spangled banner was still waving over the land…OK, I’ll stop being cute. What am I saying? That I’ll bet anyone a good bottle of whiskey that Wesolowski committed crimes in US territory. So why aren’t we hauling Wesolowski over here for trial? Don’t think it can’t be done, because—ah my dear Google!:

The Vatican said Monday it had cooperated with U.S. law enforcement officials working to extradite an Indian priest charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota.

Given that Wesolowski is defrocked, how much of a problem would that be?

Right, so what else are we not being told? Well, we have one now-ex-priest under house arrest in Vatican City, we have another priest in protective custody in Poland, and is that all?

Nope, since absolutely nobody is mentioning a deacon called Francisco Javier Occi Reyes. Wait—Google again came through!:

SANTO DOMINGO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC - The Justice Ministry of the Dominican Republic on Sunday said it has evidence of pederasty against nuncio Józef Wesolowski, while a deacon has confessed to "pimping" minors for the senior prelate as well as of being his sexual partner, the website dominicantoday.com has reported.

Oh, and where is this guy? From the same website:

Mr Sanchez also said that a deacon, Francisco Javier Occi Reyes, who is being held in a Dominican jail on charges of paedophilia, said at the time of his arrest he was "pimping" a youngster for Wesolowski.

My final point? Good student that I was, I was trained—in every essay exam I took—to “compare and contrast” two or more elements. But here, I have to say that I’d fail miserably at contrasting the conditions of a Dominican Republic jail with a Vatican apartment. OK—the “contrast” I could do. But the “compare?”

I told myself at the beginning of this post that I didn’t have to do it, and that really, really, the charming alpha virus that has brought me this delicious disease has utterly freed me from tidying up the massive hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. And indeed, what I really was going to tell you about was that the last of the famous Mitford girls, who ended up as Duchess of Devonshire is dead. And since Deborah Cavendish (nee Mitford) had saved Chatsworth, shouldn’t I take an hour to watch a documentary about the house? So I did, and then promptly started out my post about the fascinating history of the family and the home!

Don’t bother—I know….

I’m outta control….

Notes from a Latter-Day Anglo Saxon

OK—the only good thing to come out of yesterday was the realization: I’m much better off than Queen Elizabeth of England.

The day started with an emergency breakfast, since Lord—the brother of Lady, who owns the café—was going to arrive with his 25-foot serpiente, since our kitchen sink, always temperamental, had had a complete breakdown, and was tremendously refusing to do what a sink should do: drain.

The plunger had been tried, boiling water had been tried, Draino had been tried, a huge Shop-Vac had alternately blown into and out of the respirator of the drain. And at last, and not without considerable sweat from Lord, the 25-foot was introduced. No luck.

OK—time to go to the hardware store, and buy a 50-foot snake. With even more difficulty, 30 feet of this snake—more like a boa, now that I think about it—was introduced, but the obstacle was impenetrable.

“I have no idea what the hell this is,” said Lord, looking at what was a thick, grey, slightly greasy paste, “but it’s definitely not food-related. Never seen anything like it…”

In the meantime, my sister-in-law had called and dropped the news: in a moment of supreme luck, my 25-year nephew had impressed some high-tech company that was now happily going to pay to build him a high-tech studio, and then pay him $50,000 a week to do whatever he does. Oh, and he only has to work one week a month.

So Lord had spent four hours sweating to ream out the drain, and I had spent a hundred bucks paying him, all the while sitting on the kitchen floor, in completely useless solidarity with Lord. And why? Because the chikungunya was particularly awful yesterday, my feet and ankles were especially affected, and I was utterly exhausted. Oh, and without a kitchen sink.

Time to confess: somebody needs to invent a new concept—self sorrow. Because self-pity is justifiably despised, but aren’t there times when truly, truly, you have a right to feel sorry for yourself? For over a month I’ve been in varying states of pain, I’ve been tired, I’ve not been able to exercise or play the cello, or even write. Oh, and did I mention that the disease also produces depression?

“It would probably do you good,” said my sister-in-law, when I confessed that I had this inexplicable desire to cry. But it wasn’t crying yesterday, but keening and wailing. The poet Gerard Manly Hopkins said it better:

Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must

Disappointment all I endeavour end?

And who was the sinner? Sorry, but it was my 25-year old nephew, who has had wonderful parents, excellent schools, and is now getting 50 grand a week once a month. If he bothers to do it for two years, he’ll be a millionaire.

I feel guilty about it now, but I didn’t then. I was raging at life, at the disease that had robbed me of my life, and the injustice of a young man who has had so much, and has been given so much. The Manley Hopkin’s poem ends, “Mine, O though lord of life, send my roots rain.” I was considerably less eloquent.

So what to do? Life teaches you—you wail, then you get up to do the rest of your day. First, of course, was to get to Ayurveda, down the street, since if my only hope from Western medicine is Tylenol and water? Screw that, I’m in the arms of the Hindis, or at least their traditional medicine. And the clerk, instantly, had the answer: colloidal silver and turmeric. Total cost: 47 dollars, which I would have paid for even one moment of relief.

 Wailing drains you of energy, nor could I be alone; I had to have people around me. So that meant the café, and YouTube, which is—at times—the only thing I can do. And what—for whatever reason—was YouTube suggesting I watch? The Royal Servants.

Was it ridiculous? Of course—but it was all I could manage. So now I can tell you that Prince Charles has a really bad temper; once dropped a silver stud down a sink in a house he was visiting. In a rage, he tore the sink out of the wall, retrieved the stud, and then decided to almost throttle the butler. Right—so think twice before you invite the guy to your house.

The other thing I learned? The queen and the royals are essentially at the mercy of their servants—who know how to do things they can’t do (such as put in their own studs….) And then consider the case of Princess Diana’s butler, Paul Burrell, who, if he didn’t kiss, definitely told. So the royals are in a fishbowl, and any wailing they want to do? Sorry, guys—tough luck.

And the relationship of—at least—the queen to her servants? Well, apparently it’s utterly impersonal: there is a barrier, and it is never breached. On the day one of them left service—after many years—he tucked the queen and her husband into the car, spread the rug over their knees, and stood stiffly at attention. The queen gazed forward—knowing perfectly well that the servant was leaving service. Did she so much as glance at the man? According to the source—no.

And here it might be time to admit—I never read or watch anything about the royal family, since it seems to me disrespectful. Do I need to know that Princess Margaret, a chain-smoker, had to have someone around her always, holding the ashtray so she could flick away without looking? Isn’t it enough that these people are always having to smile, to wave their silly waves, to say the things that have to be said but that they may not possibly mean? Though I did enjoy the story about the Queen Mother’s reaction when a footman spilled piping hot gravy down the queens cleavage.

“I’m dreadfully sorry, your Majesty,” said the footman.

“The fault was all mine,” replied the queen, “I’m afraid I nudged your elbow.”

In fact, she had done no such thing.

Well, the colloidal silver and turmeric may be working, because today I’m better, feeling guilty about my pique at my nephew, and wondering if Prince Charles was truly such a jerk. Had I been fair? Would my father, striding through the celestial newsroom, approve?

Well, time to spend an hour with Charles, and check out his ambitious project in an impoverished area of Scotland. And since part of the project features Dumfries House, which besides being built in the 1750’s by Robert and Charles Adam, has all the original furniture by—among others—Chippendale. For a certain type of gay man, stuff like this is a variant of pornography…..

So I followed the Prince around, and no—I’m happy to say that he was on his best behavior. So I was explaining all this to Lady, and telling her how—at least I—thought the Prince was doing something a little more worthy than sitting aroun waiting for the old lady—I mean his mum—to die. Save a beautiful house, start a housing project, train people in traditional crafts, get ‘em working as guides and butlers and wedding planners—hey, not bad. Then I told her about the colloidal silver.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” she said, echoing what the good Taí had said, “since it will turn your skin blue.”

My skin blue?

So now I have a choice—walk around like an Anglo-Saxon with woad warpaint, or crawl around wincing in pain at any movement I make.

Well, at least I’m not depressed about it…..      

Rest, Tylenol and Handel

How bad is this thing, this virus-borne disease called chikungunya? I give you one example….

Stephanie is what the writer Malcolm Gladwell once called a weak connection—nor is there anything pejorative about that. It simply mean that we have—as we’ve so far discovered—three things in common: we both play the cello, she walks dogs and I love dogs, and we both hate Monsanto.

All of this mean that you really should say hello to Stephanie when you meet her on te street, so I did. We gave each other the standard Puerto Rican peck on the left cheek. And five minutes later? We were all but writing each other into our wills!

“It’s been seven weeks with this thing,” she said, which were the first clues. Because despite every web site that says, “most cases of the disease resolve within two to three days,” I’ve met only a few that have. Instead, this disease is carving out new territory: it is both acute and chronic.

“You know what the worst thing about this disease is,” I said. “It’s having to hear every healthy person tell you their home remedy to cure it.”

That’s when it clicked.

“Totally,” she said, “I had one friend tell me to take a red-hot pepper….”

“I can see so clearly where I would have put that pepper….”

“And you know, I went to this specialist speaking to a crowd out on the plaza a couple of days ago, and guess what he said? He urged people not to go to La Perla….”

“Why are people going to La Perla?” It’s our nearby slum, where you can get drugs slightly stronger than the Tylenol that the doctors are recommending.

“They go, buy some heroin—just enough to test positive—and then register to receive methadone, which is one of the strongest pain medications. Then, they get their doctor to prescribe steroids, so now, guess what? They’re telling people they’re perfectly fine, they feel great, and guess what? They’re out there fucking running! They still have the disease, they still have the virus, but they’re medicated up to their tits! And they’re out there fucking running!”

“I get that,” I told her, “since I went to my doctor and she suggested Tylenol. And I said sure, as well as we augment with a morphine drip….”

“And you know the other thing about the disease? Besides the joint pain, the fever, the cold sweats, it also gives you depression! Isn’t that great! And then you have your friends looking at you like you’re an alchie who refuses to go to AA, and they’re saying, ‘well, why haven’t you boiled a mango and added a little cinnamon?’ Well, I tell you why: the effort of bending over to dig out a pan, much less the pain involved in peeling a mango….”

I knew just what she meant.

“What I hate,” I told her, “is that the person who tells you about the mango and the cinnamon? The next day he tells you that the mango / cinnamon thing is completely worthless, and today what you have to do is get star anise and malagueta leaves (sorry—too tired to look that up) and infuse them in boiling water…”

“And you know what,” she interrupts, but that’s totally OK, because we both surfing the same wave, so who cares what surfboard we’re on? “They’re telling people NOT to go to the emergency room, since why bother? They might as well record a message, and play it over the PA system: “If you are experiencing severe joint pain, fevers of up to 105 degrees, inability to move, severe fatigue and crushing depression, get the hell out of here, go home, drink lots of water, and take Tylenol. And good luck, because you’re screwed.”

“First, of course, they’d charge the fifty dollar deductible….”

“Well, you have to admit, it would be more efficient,” I told her. “A friend went with his son to the ER, and it was filled with kids, all bent over, all walking around looking sort of like miniature Frankensteins, just after they had been zapped to life. Nine hours, he spent, just to be told….”

“And what is this shit about ‘drink lots of water?’ You know what? Any time a doctor has no goddamn clue what to say to a patient, he or she advises rest, Tylenol, and drink lots of water! Why? It’s a litany for them!”,

So today? The virus is doing a variant of the 19^th century grand tour, since it’s not just my wrists and fingers that hurt, but also my hips and ankles. I’m still fatigued, I’m still sweating, I want to be in bed but guess what? There’s a point when lying in bed hurts just as much as being up.

And this post ends with something far more efficacious than that trinity of water, rest, and Tylenol. Try a little catharsis, via Handel:

I will bemoan my fate

so cruel and brutal

as long as there is breath left in my body.

And when I am dead and become a ghost, I will haunt the tyrant night and day.

(English translation grabbed from this Kimmel Center website.)