One of my favorite anecdotes from my dad is one he tells about a conversation he had with (I think) a professor in college who asked him how majoring in music would play itself out after school.

“I want to be a string quartet,” my dad answered.

The prof gave him a quizzical look and said, “You mean, you want to play in a string quartet.”

“No,” my dad responded.  “I want to BE a string quartet.”

This wonderful artistic, musical, and personal sensibility (which I hope I’ve managed to find in my own way) is on display, too, in Arnold Steinhardt’s musical memoir Indivisible by Four: A String Quartet in Pursuit of Harmony. Steinhardt was a member of the Guarneri String Quartet, which was in existence from 1964 until their recent retirement earlier this year.  Somehow I hadn’t heard of them before stumbling upon this book in a used bookstore, and thinking it might be useful for the ideas I’ve been kicking around.

Steinhardt has a very open and generous approach to music-making, and occasionally taps into some authentic stuff about what it feels like to be in the creative/responsive moment within an artistic ensemble.  The chapter “In Perfect Four-Part Harmony” is a nice exploration of why it is that 4-parts is such a satisfying musical configuration.  Steinhardt describes the notes of a major triad with the root octave added above as having “a satisfying completeness to them.  They foster an almost physical sense of well being.”  Anyone who has sung Madrigals or barbershop quartets knows this to be true.  He quotes Mendelssohn, (discussing a book of four-part songs he had published, meant to be sung out of doors) – “The most natural music of all is that which comes from the heart when four people are strolling together through a wood or out in a boat.”  Those were the days, huh?

The blended sentiments here reminded me of a great tidbit I learned from the liner notes of Sting’s recent album of John Dowland tunes, “Songs From the Labyrinth.”  The album is a mixed bag, but Sting does the valuable service of proving that this was indeed popular music, meant to be sung and experienced intimately and simply.  The notes mention that the 4-part madrigals of that era were published on a single square sheet of paper, with each voice part facing a different direction.  This was so that each singer could sit around a table and read their part.  This gets right to the core of what that kind of experience should feel like, and why it is that “chamber music” has it’s own special and elemental effect on performer and listener alike.

Steinhardt quotes Marx as saying that the string quartet form is “the refined, intellectual conversation of a small and intimate circle.”  (Now that I think about it, perhaps, Marx being Marx, this was meant to be derisive…)  But it seems on first glance, at least, to be a celebration of a musical form whose pleasure is found as much in listening as in speaking, as much in responding as in inventing, and as much in surrenduring to the whole as in releasing your own voice.  The kind of pleasure that, once you get a taste of it, makes you want to BE the string quartet.

Federer in flight

One of my favorite pieces of writing is DFW’s essay about Roger Federer from the NY Times magazine in 2006. The title is “Roger Federer as Religious Experience.” It’s a wonderful exploration of the powerful feelings engendered by watching the masterful Swiss at work, and at play.

The picture here is one of many balletic shots one can find of him. What strikes me about this particularly Michaelangelo-esque one, is the incredible balance of effort and ease. When teaching and rehearsing, I find myself talking about this balance all the time – how do we know when to make something happen and when to let something happen? Developing the ability to know the difference, and the understanding to choose is what makes for great artistry “in the room.”

Sometimes, of course, one has to do a bit of both – to be most at ease when most engaged. That is Federer. That is his thrilling artistry, long my it thrive.

As the hour-long discussion the two of us just had proves, there’s far too much to try to say about this, and I’m still managing my own instinctive responses to the information.  It’s emotionally and intellectually complicated.  But here are some broad initial thoughts.

1) It is infuriating the way the so called “free-market fundamentalists”/”ardent-defenders-of-capitalism” always rush to the defense of massive, multi-national, billion dollar corporations that function totally outside the supposed fairness of capitalism.  As we saw with the actions of the huge financial companies, the agenda of these places (specs coming) is not to make a better product than their competitors and so earn the patronage of discerning customers.  Their agenda is to dominate every scrap of the “market”, punish those who don’t comply, cajole the government into allowing them to run wild without any consequences, refuse to amend factually-proven dangerous practices, and cloak all of their actions behind a powerful veil of secrecy.  That sounds nothing like “capitalism”, the “free market”, or, perhaps most importantly, a functioning democracy.  And anyone who suggests that the government needs to back off and let the market right itself when it gets into trouble has failed to realize that there is no market in these circumstances.

more coming…

There’s a lot to say about health care reform, but I’m not going to do that since I’m not qualified (except to provide a working/uninsured person’s point of view to Orzag, Sebilius, Dean, and others).  But this article made me think of something else as I emerged from Penn Station on to 7th Avenue.  The business of acting.

If you spend any time trying to be a professional actor in NYC you will begin to hear lots of people telling you that you have to start treating yourself “as a business”.  You will hear many people (including, of course, some who have businesses allegedly dedicated to helping actors succeed in “the business”) telling you that “it” is a business, and you have to treat it as a business, etc.  In other words, they are making a seemingly sensible argument: if you want to be in the business you’d better become a good businessman.

The problem with this argument is that it will turn you into the acting version one of the corrupt McAllen doctors.  When you decide to approach something that is inherently not a business (medicine, theater) exclusively as a business, the only thing you get better at is “being a business person.”  This may lead to more money and exposure (indeed those are the only things you’ve decided are important) but it cannot lead to you being a better physician or a better artist.  There is no correlation.  But, you might say, what’s the point of being good if you’re not successful in your business?  The point of being good, as far as I can tell, has always been being good.  It is, of course, it’s own reward.

In the places where lower-cost, higher-quality care is being offered, the doctors are paid salaries and share ideas.  If there were a way to have some “theatrical” Mayo Clinics, the shape of the theatrical profession would be profoundly different.  This is how and why the regional theaters arose the way they did; to change the geographic and financial model so artistic work could authentically flourish in a community that understood how it was being served by the theater in town.  A variety of factors have undone many of the intentions of that movement.  But the core principal remains – all of those theaters are Not-for-profit.  They are for something else.  They are for being good.

It seems to me that telling someone to treat themselves like a business is morally bankrupt advice.  After all, look what happens when those at the top of our private sector treat the rest of us that way.

When I was a kid in Boston I had a tennis coach named Keith. I believe he was from Trinidad, or so he said. He was a very handsome black guy with a wicked smile, and a habit of saying inappropriate things to my 10-year-old self (e.g. “Benny, you getting any pussy?” After I said no – since even though I wasn’t exactly sure what he was talking about I was pretty sure I wasn’t getting any of it – he would then launch into a very detailed description of his sexual encounter from the night before…) He also had a variety of morally dubious catch phrases, meant to introduce my essentially wimpy friends and I to the real nature of competitive sport (e.g. What to do when you’re not sure if an opponent’s shot was good or not: “When in doubt, call it out.”) He also gave all of us nicknames (I was Senator, there was also the Professor, and, yes, Fruity.) He was the one who taught me that it’s always better to shake the man’s hand than to get his autograph (a rule I still follow.) The other quirk I remember was that when he drove me around town (how was I allowed in that car?!?) he insisted on putting the back seat down in his Nissan station wagon so that it could become his “sports car.” Needless to say, I thought he was awesome.

Anyway, I bring all this up because I remember one crisp autumn afternoon in Dean Park when he asked me who my favorite player was. I’m pretty sure I said McEnroe. With great certainly and seriousness he said something like, “Good. If you’re a tennis player, you’re favorite player is McEnroe.” Even from this (even then I think I sensed) troubled, unconventional, and beguiling guy there was a beacon of clarity that everyone connected to tennis seemed to share – that whatever civilians didn’t get or didn’t like about him, John McEnroe was a genius.

This understanding is explored with great intelligence and detail in a book I’ve been plowing through tonight – “On Being John McEnroe”, by Tim Adams. It’s really quite great. It begins with a sensational description of the Borg-McEnroe rivalry and the dynamics leading up to their epic Wimbledon Final in 1980. (The description of Borg’s pre-match and in-tournament rituals is astonishing.) Amazingly, the book has found ways to rope in anecdotes from my wheelhouse – Tom Hulce talking about using Mac as a model of the infantile genius to prep for playing Mozart:

“McEnroe resembles Mozart by his attitude. John is young. Talented. Shining. But he cannot be kept silent. He refuses to take account of the rules. People compare themselves to him and try to control him because of his lack of control. That’s exactly what happened to Mozart.”

Here’s Ian McKellen on McEnroe and Coriolanus: “It’s just a reassurance that there can be someone at the top of his game…who has something in his spirit which despises the praise as much as the criticism he might get from the crowd.”

There are also references to Robert Bly – dealing with the 70s/80s obsession with self, staying young, and the potential consequences of a permanent adolescence that creates a nation of “half-adults”. (Yes, a book about tennis is referencing “Amadeus” and “Iron John.” I mean, come on!!!) And, in exploring various reactions to McEnroe’s behavior on court, Adams brings in some remarkable observations from Arthur Ashe about why Mac’s outbursts and fury never bothered him, and why he never tried to control them as David Cup captain; in “Days of Grace” Ashe explains that John was “embodying feelings I could only repress…Now I wonder whether I had not always been aware, at some level, that John was expressing my own rage, my own anger, for me, as I could never express it.” Wow.

So here’s to Keith, and John, and Tom, and Ian, and Robert, and Arthur.

I’ll try to expand this soon…

What I’m calling formality, on the other hand, is something that is built into the playwriting – a stylistic or genre-based choice that helps put our attention on the right stuff.  In a chat with Jonathan K the other day, I suggested five possible formal guideposts that might work for AAC:

1) GREEK – we follow the protagonist on his quest, deal with the cosequences

2) SATIRE – it’s about issues, not character; skewers those who should be

3) COMING OF AGE – about what being an adult means

4) DOCU – show becomes specifically about its subject –> education

5) HISTORICIZATION – whole thing stands in for some other aspect of history, etc

I’ve begun reading his sad, surprising, evocative, and engrossing memoir “All in Good Time.”  I knew nothing about his background; it’s quite a story.  His childhood (thus far) involves growing up in both NYC and Beverly Hills; the neighborhoods he describes I know well.  Because his father was a successful songwriter, young Jonathan finds himself in the company of a wild range of figures and personalities including Richard Rogers, Ira Gershwin, Danny Kaye, and eventually discovers playmates in Carly Simon and the children of Don Budge and Jackie Robinson.

Pretty amazing stories, including one about the night when Judy Garland appeared at the foot of his bed to sing him to sleep.  He writes, “Her lullaby was ‘Over the Rainbow’.  Afterward, she giggled.  Then she left.  ‘Sleep well,’ she said from the doorway.”

She pointed out that “compassion” means to feel with the other, and explained how the Greeks invented tragedy so that they could better understand each other’s experience of life.  They wept together at their theater (rather than wiping a single tear and gulping hard, as Armstrong noted) so they could feel each other in a deep and truthful way.  Those plays must have been pretty good.

One of the other many exciting nuggets from the interview was Armstrong’s description of Socrates’ teaching.  A student would show up thinking they knew something, and Socrates would quickly dismantle the poor sap.  Now, he would say, your quest for knowledge and understanding can begin – when you get that you know nothing.  It is in that willingness to change and grow (without destroying and humiliating your “opponent”) that all the good stuff becomes possible.  Armstrong also gave a lot of love to the early prophets, who were willing to leave the text behind when their understanding of the world demanded it.  This plugs right into West’s call for all of us to pledge to blend “the Socratic and the Prophetic.”

Another sublime observation related to the unintended consequences of the scientific revolution and mindset of the Enlightenment; it meant that people started looking at the Bible for it’s literal meaning, rather than embracing the symbolism and allegory that previous peoples always  understood as unherently built in.  Fascinating point about the limits of literality.  This is what allows Armstrong to access the mindset of previous thinkers and writers – she does not use a contemporary mind to explore an ancient creation.  She asks herself, essetionally, “what would it be like…?” –> the credo of the actor.

The other great lesson of the program was donate to PBS.  And NPR.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2009/03/compassion_idols_and_ideals.html