The other day, a friend of mine decided to take advantage of a pretty amazing 2-for-1 offer at West L.A. Music. He went shopping for an electric and a new acoustic, to replace the entry-level guitar he'd had for years. I went along, always happy to watch someone else spend money, but once there, I had practically nothing to do.
I play no instruments, it's just not something that comes naturally to me. I took a music theory class and found it even harder than math--this with a very good teacher, Tony Tommasini, who is now one of the classical music critics for the New York Times. I also took exactly one piano lesson from Tony (won it in an auction), who declared that I had good large hands with a long reach, but never said anything about my having any observable aptitude for the instrument. I pretty much decided it was all too hard, and let the whole thing drop. Sure, I taught myself to sing reasonably well, even did a little recording with a madrigal group, but believe me, I've heard Pavarotti sing and the man has nothing to worry about.
And yet. When you watch Inside the Actors Studio and James Liption asks his list of questions, one of them is always "If you couldn't do your current profession, what other profession would you choose?" And every time, for me, the answer is one of two: either astronomer or musician. And astronomy involves math, really ridiculously high-level math, so you know how likely that is.
So I went along on this guitar-buying excursion because I figured it was the only way I'd ever actually participate in the process of buying a guitar. And like I said, once there I had little to do because I had almost no idea what anyone was talking about. I would be asked "How's this one sound?" and I would say "Sounds pretty good" every time.
Then the next day I went out and bought a guitar of my own. Because damn it, that little trip put a bug in my head and I knew I wasn't going to be able to shake it. But hey, I've always intended, for years, maybe decades, to try to learn an instrument some day. And since I don't have a time-consuming dayjob anymore, now seemed like an ideal time.
My friend went along because honestly, I could pick up a guitar and strum it, but I was utterly unequipped to tell a good one from a bad one. (Plus he needed an amp for his new Strat.) I'd seen on the internet that Fender makes a beginner's kit with a guitar, a strap, some picks, a tuner, some extra strings, a gig bag and a DVD with some lessons on it, all for $200. Fender's a good name, it seemed like a good deal, and it was in stock at the Guitar Center in Hollywood. Off we went.
In the end I picked a guitar that wasn't part of a kit, it was simply a solid $200 Yamaha (the FG700S, in case you're curious), then I bought the other stuff separately. Took it home, and since then I've been going through the exciting, agonizing process of learning the guitar, completely from scratch.
And what can I say? I completely suck. My fingers hurt (and when I took a shower this morning, oh how they throbbed in the hot water), there are chords I can barely manage even when I spend five minutes trying to get them right, my sense of rhythm is beyond shaky, and even though it's hot I always close all the windows because if there's anything a neighbor doesn't want to hear, it's the fractured sounds of a novice guitar player wafting through the air.
No, not wafting. These sounds definitely do not waft.
But at the same time, I can now (laboriously) form four of the principal chords, and a couple days ago I couldn't have picked those chords out of a lineup. It's a start. And I know from my experience that my learning curve has always gone like this: when I first start something I am beyond terrible, and I stay that way for a frustratingly long time. Then, at some point, suddenly it all clicks, it's all just kinda there. So I'm going to keep on with this: I've spent the money, I have the time, and for years now I've had the desire.
If only there was some way to skip the whole protracted-suckiness stage and just get to a basic level of competence, that would be soooo cool.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
The Big One
Very early in the morning, two weeks ago. I woke up fast, hearing a sound: my window was rattling, and it sounded like someone was trying to get in. The sort of thing that will in fact wake up anybody mighty damn fast. But there was just enough vibration working its way through the mattress that I realized: Oh, okay. Nobody's trying to get in. It's just an earthquake. Contented, I went back to bed.
The occasion was a 4.6 seismic event, 3 miles north-northwest of Chatsworth, which is to say, pretty close to where I live. (The U.S. Geological Survey's report on the event is here.) A 4.6 earthquake is a solid earthquake, but even so, not much happened. No deaths, no injuries to speak of, no real property damage. All that happened in my apartment is that an unlit candle, stuffed in a closet, tipped over. But a few days later, a friend of mine (hi, Sarah!) happened to ask me what I thought about our chances of The Big One hitting.
The Big One is a favorite topic amongst Californians, for obvious reasons. As John McPhee details in his wonderful book Assembling California (collected with two other books in the wonderful
Annals of the Former World--and by the way, I think McPhee is an incredible writer, and I would happily read his writing on any subject under the sun), the state of California was put together in pieces over millions of years. (The great central valley, for instance, is a huge hinge--two gigantic slabs of earth at angles, forming a huge V, into which sediment has slowly filled and filled the V and thus created that massive flat plain between two mountain ridges.) You've got the Pacific Plate over here, pushing against the continental plate over here, plus a smaller plate (the Juan de Fuca) to the north, and it's all inherently unstable. Big earthquakes are, in a word, inevitable.
But precisely because of my reading of Mr. McPhee, I have a remarkably casual outlook toward The Big One. Yes, it's gonna happen. Will it happen in my lifetime? No, probably not. So I just don't worry about it. This is because of an idea called "deep time."
We could call it geologic time as well. For a geologist, a million years is the smallest unit of time s/he cares about. That's how long it takes for any geologic change to happen. And once you start thinking in terms of deep time, your perspective starts to shift like crazy. Here's an example of why: look at a ruler. At the far left you have the first black marking, the Zero line. If you consider the ruler as a timeline of earth's entire geologic history, the entire span of human history wouldn't get past the Zero line. It's that small.
So if you then consider my individual lifetime against the entire span of human history, well, that's so small it simply doesn't show up on that ruler at all. That's deep time. Which means that yeah, a gigantic earthquake in my neighborhood is inevitable; these faults will one day rupture and California will one day break apart just as it formed, in pieces, separating and then drifting away toward future collisions and reconfigurations. But the chance of the first part of that chain, a major event on the San Andreas fault, happening in my lifetime is so small that I just don't see any point in worrying about it.
Think about it this way: there are no guarantees in life. None. There's no guarantee that the sun will rise in the morning tomorrow--there's only the probability that it will. Based on what we have observed in the past, there is an extremely high probability that in the morning, there it will be, the sun, shining forth as usual. We all go to sleep at night perfectly content that the odds are in our favor on this one. Well, I have the same attitude toward The Big One.
Then again--there was a small earthquake maybe two years ago, when I was at work, in Santa Monica. At the time I happened to be on my lunch break, sitting in the lobby of the building with a book in my hand. I felt the ground jump a little and then looked up--to realize that I was sitting in a glass-roofed extension of the lobby, and that these gigantic panes of glass were shivering above me.
And yeah, I'm not crazy--that made me a little nervous.
The occasion was a 4.6 seismic event, 3 miles north-northwest of Chatsworth, which is to say, pretty close to where I live. (The U.S. Geological Survey's report on the event is here.) A 4.6 earthquake is a solid earthquake, but even so, not much happened. No deaths, no injuries to speak of, no real property damage. All that happened in my apartment is that an unlit candle, stuffed in a closet, tipped over. But a few days later, a friend of mine (hi, Sarah!) happened to ask me what I thought about our chances of The Big One hitting.
The Big One is a favorite topic amongst Californians, for obvious reasons. As John McPhee details in his wonderful book Assembling California (collected with two other books in the wonderful
Annals of the Former World--and by the way, I think McPhee is an incredible writer, and I would happily read his writing on any subject under the sun), the state of California was put together in pieces over millions of years. (The great central valley, for instance, is a huge hinge--two gigantic slabs of earth at angles, forming a huge V, into which sediment has slowly filled and filled the V and thus created that massive flat plain between two mountain ridges.) You've got the Pacific Plate over here, pushing against the continental plate over here, plus a smaller plate (the Juan de Fuca) to the north, and it's all inherently unstable. Big earthquakes are, in a word, inevitable.But precisely because of my reading of Mr. McPhee, I have a remarkably casual outlook toward The Big One. Yes, it's gonna happen. Will it happen in my lifetime? No, probably not. So I just don't worry about it. This is because of an idea called "deep time."
We could call it geologic time as well. For a geologist, a million years is the smallest unit of time s/he cares about. That's how long it takes for any geologic change to happen. And once you start thinking in terms of deep time, your perspective starts to shift like crazy. Here's an example of why: look at a ruler. At the far left you have the first black marking, the Zero line. If you consider the ruler as a timeline of earth's entire geologic history, the entire span of human history wouldn't get past the Zero line. It's that small.
So if you then consider my individual lifetime against the entire span of human history, well, that's so small it simply doesn't show up on that ruler at all. That's deep time. Which means that yeah, a gigantic earthquake in my neighborhood is inevitable; these faults will one day rupture and California will one day break apart just as it formed, in pieces, separating and then drifting away toward future collisions and reconfigurations. But the chance of the first part of that chain, a major event on the San Andreas fault, happening in my lifetime is so small that I just don't see any point in worrying about it.
Think about it this way: there are no guarantees in life. None. There's no guarantee that the sun will rise in the morning tomorrow--there's only the probability that it will. Based on what we have observed in the past, there is an extremely high probability that in the morning, there it will be, the sun, shining forth as usual. We all go to sleep at night perfectly content that the odds are in our favor on this one. Well, I have the same attitude toward The Big One.
Then again--there was a small earthquake maybe two years ago, when I was at work, in Santa Monica. At the time I happened to be on my lunch break, sitting in the lobby of the building with a book in my hand. I felt the ground jump a little and then looked up--to realize that I was sitting in a glass-roofed extension of the lobby, and that these gigantic panes of glass were shivering above me.
And yeah, I'm not crazy--that made me a little nervous.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Free the Old Head!
Y'know, without context, that title looks more than a little odd...
Yesterday I was channel-surfing and ended up watching most of a Discovery HD program on the sinking of the Lusitania, which was torpedoed just a few miles off the Irish coast in 1915--nearest a diamond-shaped strip of land that juts out into the Atlantic, known as the Old Head of Kinsale. As I've mentioned before, my grandparents lived in Kinsale for several years, my grandmother died there, and I've always loved the place--particularly the Old Head, which is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Here's proof:
(Mom took that picture, by the way; it's better than any of the ones I took.) The Old Head is one of those geological oddities, a strip of sandstone that will probably be an island someday when the narrow isthmus connecting it to the mainland erodes away, but that someday is very far off indeed. Back when my grandparents lived there, the Old Head simply was. You could go there whenever you liked and explore as much as you wished. And believe me, every time I went to Ireland I made sure to visit the Old Head. To wander for a couple hours, breathe the sea air, revel in the views, find that particular peace that comes with such a beautiful place. And honest, the goats never bothered me even once.
Ah yes, the goats. The stalwart defenders of the Old Head. If they decided they didn't like you, they were perfectly happy chasing you back to your car and then ramming it a few times to let you know that you were not welcome. They were just part of the charm, you see. As you can see from the photo, they were perfectly placid whenever I visited, which can certainly be chalked up to sheer chance, or maybe they just recognized that I too was someone who loved the place as much as they did. If only they had been able to defend the Old Head against the wretched forces of consumerism, then maybe...
The last time I visited, I was given the bad news: some real estate developers had purchased the Old Head, and were planning to put a golf course on it. As an Old Head-loving member of the non-rich general public, I would never be able to go there again. And, indeed, I never have. The course opened ten years ago, and people have been shut out ever since. So when I saw this program on the Lusitania, I was again reminded of the Old Head. And of the enormous crime that has been perpetrated on the people of the world by the owners of that damn golf course.
I went to the course's website (no, I will not link to it, nor honor the place by mentioning its name). Green fees are 295 Euros, which is about $406 in U.S. currency. (For comparison, the legendary old course at St. Andrews, birthplace of golf and one of the homes of the British Open, only costs 125 Euros in the high season, or about $172.) That's not counting rental of a golf cart and a caddy. There's fine dining, for members only. And high fences with razor wire to keep people out.
On their site there is a video where they actually say that the course "helps nature fulfill its potential." As if nature wasn't already doing a spectacular job all on its own, which is why the wretched O'Connor brothers bought the place to begin with. They also advertise helicopter charters "for the discerning golfer," which "cuts out significant time lost on road travel, [and] alleviates time pressures...." Because, don't ya know, their visitors are so in-demand that they simply must be able to chopper in, play a few holes, then get the hell out without having to be bothered by, you know, the rabble on those twisty roads. Why, there's barely a straight road anywhere on the whole island, and you're constantly being stopped because there are sheep being herded across the road!
Of course, some of us see that as one of the great joys of Ireland: the pace is different, and being in a hurry is just plain wrong. Don't these people realize that if the point is to relax by playing a few holes, then stressing out by taking a helicopter in and out completely wrecks the whole thing? Those roads do not efficiently get you from Point A to Point B, no they don't; ain't it great?
But you've gotta love the web. I found this site, Free the Old Head of Kinsale, which is exactly what it sounds like: a site agitating for the Old Head to be opened again to the public. They're not trying to oust the golf course at all, they're not unrealistic about their goals: they simply want a trail, something, to be opened to the public so that the common folk can enjoy this most beautiful of places as they have for centuries. There is apparently a court case pending on this very issue of public right-of-way, and I dearly hope they prevail. In the meantime, there's a web petition you can sign, and I am extremely dismayed to find that my signature was only number 56. Maybe you might find yourself so moved as to visit the site and sign on as well. Here's another reason why you should:
Yesterday I was channel-surfing and ended up watching most of a Discovery HD program on the sinking of the Lusitania, which was torpedoed just a few miles off the Irish coast in 1915--nearest a diamond-shaped strip of land that juts out into the Atlantic, known as the Old Head of Kinsale. As I've mentioned before, my grandparents lived in Kinsale for several years, my grandmother died there, and I've always loved the place--particularly the Old Head, which is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Here's proof:
(Mom took that picture, by the way; it's better than any of the ones I took.) The Old Head is one of those geological oddities, a strip of sandstone that will probably be an island someday when the narrow isthmus connecting it to the mainland erodes away, but that someday is very far off indeed. Back when my grandparents lived there, the Old Head simply was. You could go there whenever you liked and explore as much as you wished. And believe me, every time I went to Ireland I made sure to visit the Old Head. To wander for a couple hours, breathe the sea air, revel in the views, find that particular peace that comes with such a beautiful place. And honest, the goats never bothered me even once.
Ah yes, the goats. The stalwart defenders of the Old Head. If they decided they didn't like you, they were perfectly happy chasing you back to your car and then ramming it a few times to let you know that you were not welcome. They were just part of the charm, you see. As you can see from the photo, they were perfectly placid whenever I visited, which can certainly be chalked up to sheer chance, or maybe they just recognized that I too was someone who loved the place as much as they did. If only they had been able to defend the Old Head against the wretched forces of consumerism, then maybe...The last time I visited, I was given the bad news: some real estate developers had purchased the Old Head, and were planning to put a golf course on it. As an Old Head-loving member of the non-rich general public, I would never be able to go there again. And, indeed, I never have. The course opened ten years ago, and people have been shut out ever since. So when I saw this program on the Lusitania, I was again reminded of the Old Head. And of the enormous crime that has been perpetrated on the people of the world by the owners of that damn golf course.
I went to the course's website (no, I will not link to it, nor honor the place by mentioning its name). Green fees are 295 Euros, which is about $406 in U.S. currency. (For comparison, the legendary old course at St. Andrews, birthplace of golf and one of the homes of the British Open, only costs 125 Euros in the high season, or about $172.) That's not counting rental of a golf cart and a caddy. There's fine dining, for members only. And high fences with razor wire to keep people out.
On their site there is a video where they actually say that the course "helps nature fulfill its potential." As if nature wasn't already doing a spectacular job all on its own, which is why the wretched O'Connor brothers bought the place to begin with. They also advertise helicopter charters "for the discerning golfer," which "cuts out significant time lost on road travel, [and] alleviates time pressures...." Because, don't ya know, their visitors are so in-demand that they simply must be able to chopper in, play a few holes, then get the hell out without having to be bothered by, you know, the rabble on those twisty roads. Why, there's barely a straight road anywhere on the whole island, and you're constantly being stopped because there are sheep being herded across the road!
Of course, some of us see that as one of the great joys of Ireland: the pace is different, and being in a hurry is just plain wrong. Don't these people realize that if the point is to relax by playing a few holes, then stressing out by taking a helicopter in and out completely wrecks the whole thing? Those roads do not efficiently get you from Point A to Point B, no they don't; ain't it great?
But you've gotta love the web. I found this site, Free the Old Head of Kinsale, which is exactly what it sounds like: a site agitating for the Old Head to be opened again to the public. They're not trying to oust the golf course at all, they're not unrealistic about their goals: they simply want a trail, something, to be opened to the public so that the common folk can enjoy this most beautiful of places as they have for centuries. There is apparently a court case pending on this very issue of public right-of-way, and I dearly hope they prevail. In the meantime, there's a web petition you can sign, and I am extremely dismayed to find that my signature was only number 56. Maybe you might find yourself so moved as to visit the site and sign on as well. Here's another reason why you should:
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Coming Soon...
I looked around a couple months ago and realized that over the past few years I've started three companies. (Really, I looked around and there they were, strung in a line behind me, staring back and blinking.) There was the not-for-profit NOWtheatre back in Chicago, which alas does not exist anymore (this one seemed the most forlorn, and blinked only in memory), and then there are the quite-alive-and-still-blinking Zenmovie (an LLC) and Lightwheel Entertainment (a C corp.)
And I realized that every time I started one of those companies, I kept wishing that I could find, somewhere somehow, a list that would tell me the stuff I needed to know in one place: what documents are due to the various government agencies, federally and locally; how much money to pay; and on what dates said documents and payments are due. I scoured the internet blah blah blah, and never found such a document. So finally it occurred to me: I should make one.
So that's one of the things I've been doing. Finished the first draft about a month ago, whereupon my friend Buffie did an extraordinary annotation that led me through the second draft, which I finished last night. Now friend Marc will help me set up a website and, probably early next month, we'll launch the book on the web and see if others find it as useful as I believe it to be.
The book bears the beautiful and mellifluous title Incorporation for Artists, Writers, Musicians and Filmmakers. It ain't literature, it's information, which was an interesting challenge in itself, turning off all my let's call them Thereby-esque writing instincts, my automatic tendency toward the prolix, in order to just convey information. But that's one of the things Buffie is extraordinarily good at, so all praise to her, and I can't wait till we can get this little devil out into the world.
And I realized that every time I started one of those companies, I kept wishing that I could find, somewhere somehow, a list that would tell me the stuff I needed to know in one place: what documents are due to the various government agencies, federally and locally; how much money to pay; and on what dates said documents and payments are due. I scoured the internet blah blah blah, and never found such a document. So finally it occurred to me: I should make one.
So that's one of the things I've been doing. Finished the first draft about a month ago, whereupon my friend Buffie did an extraordinary annotation that led me through the second draft, which I finished last night. Now friend Marc will help me set up a website and, probably early next month, we'll launch the book on the web and see if others find it as useful as I believe it to be.
The book bears the beautiful and mellifluous title Incorporation for Artists, Writers, Musicians and Filmmakers. It ain't literature, it's information, which was an interesting challenge in itself, turning off all my let's call them Thereby-esque writing instincts, my automatic tendency toward the prolix, in order to just convey information. But that's one of the things Buffie is extraordinarily good at, so all praise to her, and I can't wait till we can get this little devil out into the world.
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