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June 25, 2005
Trailway to Heaven
Yesterday Torch and I, after over a week in Aspen, finally got our butts out of the room and onto the trails. We made up for our laziness on the hiking front by starting with the Ute...and continuing all the way up Aspen mountain, a vertical gain of over 3000 feet. In two and a half hours. If you're counting, on average, that's a gain of 20 vertical feet per minute. Needless to say, I'm riding my bike considerably slower today.
We started with the Ute, a short (25-40 minutes, depending on pace) but difficult trail I did many times last summer. The view from the top is quite stunning (click on the black links to change the picture at right, or visit here if that doesn't work for you), with the town of Aspen in one direction and upvalley towards Independence Pass in the other (yes, that's Torch, looking awesome). Continuing past the Ute, we ran into an abandoned silver mine, and up very steep skin runs towards the summit.
As we got higher, I found what I think is bear sign (droppings and print), although it'd be a pretty small bear -- I did find a larger print a dozen yards away. Maybe a female and cub? It wasn't long before we hit snow (maybe I should say, before snow hit me!). I was absurdly exhausted at the top, but the view is breathtaking....thankfully, we made it to the top in time to take the gondola down the mountain.
I would appreciate comments on this method of photoblogging. The pictures really don't do this place justice. When we had been hiking for nearly two hours and got high enough up that the wind hit us and the air cooled down, Torch and I both agreed that the old metaphor between height and perfection was considerably more than a metaphor in our case.
After the gondola descent, we rushed to the Chamber Symphony concert (first concert in the tent!), which deserves comment, but not now, since I'm hungry, and it took me quite a while to figure out how I wanted to do the photoblogging.
UPDATE (30 August 7:20 EDT): Changed the way the photos are displayed -- originally, I tried to have the images popup when you rolled over the links, but I think I prefer flipping images in a "viewpane" on click. I'll use this method in the future. Feedback welcome, as always. Also corrected elevation gain figure.
Posted by David Richmond at 1:30 PM EDT | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Speechless
This hits a little too close to home:
"Every instrument has an archetype," Eric Tipler said. "Trumpet players are outgoing. Trombone players are usually jolly. Flutists can be high-strung. But the bassoon is just this quirky instrument that attracts quirky, good people."
So it was for his friends Andrew Michael Popper and Heidi Vanderbilt-Brown, who played bassoon beside each other in the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra in the mid-1990's. Whenever there was a break in a piece, they would chat so much that Ms. Vanderbilt-Brown, now 28, said that her musicologist father and flutist mother once asked why "the conductor didn't yell at us for talking so much."
Posted by David Richmond at 12:55 PM EDT | TrackBack
June 23, 2005
Spreading Cultural Viruses
If you haven't already seen them, a few hilarious viral videos off iFilm:
- This apparently genuine mockumentary about former President Clinton's last few lame-duck days in office.
- When Pratt & Whitney says their jet engines are rated for tens of thousands of pounds of thrust, they really mean it.
- Jon Stewart's appearance on the now-cancelled CNN show Crossfire is legendary, and I'm ten months behind linking to it. But I never actually saw it at the time, just read the buzz, much of which centered on the importance of the online peer-to-peer distribution of the clip, since so many more people saw it that way than actually watched CNN in real time. While that's interesting from the standpoint of a cultural critic, you should still go watch it if, like day-late-and-dollar-short me, you didn't last fall. Impressive. (Best quote: After Jon Stewart attacks Crossfire etc. for being worthless to the public discourse, Tucker Carlson berates Jon Stewart for being soft on John Kerry in a Daily Show interview. Jon Stewart fires back with, "You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is 'puppets making prank phone calls'.")
- And finally, something rather more....risqué: this French (according to iFilm, anyway) public service announcement promoting safe sex. If it is French, gotta love the gratitous slam at the German male endowment.
Posted by David Richmond at 2:56 PM EDT | TrackBack
June 22, 2005
Aspen Week 1: Of Beethoven and Sousa
I received my Week 1 orchestra assignment on Monday (winds rotate), and I am exceptionally pleased, having been assigned to play principal on Beethoven's Seventh with the Sinfonia orchestra. Sinfonia is one the two orchestras made up entirely of students, aside from a faculty concertmaster, the two "flagship" festival orchestras, Festival Symphony and Chamber Symphony (sized as you would expect from their names), having faculty principals in all sections. Incidentally, this allows for one of the best experiences of the festival, namely being able to play second to your teacher in a "live" orchestra. Nothing is simultaneously more exciting, eye-opening, or nerve-wracking than that; it creates an awfully steep improvement curve to be asked to play up to the standard of your teacher.
Beethoven bassoon parts are the best (with the possible exception of Mozart), and even better, enough players were assigned to Sinfonia that I won't have to cover anything on the first half of the program (meaning, first, that I'll have less rehearsal committment, and more time to practice, and, second, that I won't get tired at the show). Even more better, I know all other the wind principals from last summer and various other past haunts. In particular, the principal clarinetist, Michael Shane, is a friend of mine; we played the run of Rigoletto at the end of last summer, and experienced together the terror of being called privately into the Maestro's office (though as it turned out, he came not to bury us, but to praise us). That's a good thing, too, since the Seventh has that lovely bassoon/clarinet duet in the second movement (and it was quite good this morning in rehearsal, for a first run). I doubt this will be the last time I mention Mike here, since he demanded a post all about himself, and how could I possibly refuse a request like that?
My bassoon colleagues are excellent players, which always makes the principal (me) sound better. Yes, colleagues -- I was assigned an assistant. What a luxury! Overall, an excellent and congenial wind section, and I think it will turn out well, maybe even impressively well. We might even agree on pitch! (Those involved would undoubtedly concur that this, if accomplished, might stand as a Wonder of the Modern World)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my roommate Martin, aka Torch, (cellist, Cleveland Institute of Music) and three other cellists (including one Nicholas Finch, formerly of Harvard fame) have been putting together some sets to play on the downtown Aspen mall. That these sets have included arrangements of Sousa marches and other typical concert band repertory for four celli is a source of neverending amusement to me, who spent a substantial amount of time playing such music in concert bands in high school. As I'm listening, cracking up, and getting flashed weird looks from Torch and Finch, I ask by way of explanation, "Have you ever played this stuff before?" Of course, none of them had -- but I have. Oh, the memories.
Posted by David Richmond at 7:08 PM EDT | TrackBack
Pistons!
I held my breath for Game 6 because I had run out of Spurs players to Curse, and the Pistons prevailed in a clutch win anyway, forcing the first Game 7 in the NBA Finals in two decades etc etc. Unfortunately, we all know (cough) that the Pistons have no chance. Not only are the historical "odds" against them, but the Spurs lost only three times at home during the regular season, plus once each to Denver, Phoenix, and (now) Detroit in the playoffs. In fact, the Spurs have not lost consecutive home games since January 2004 (a close loss on the 24th to New Orleans followed by a loss to Sacramento on the 29th), and they have not lost back-to-back home games (i.e., without any other games in between) since November 2003, when they lost to the Lakers on the 6th and Dallas on the 8th. Check ESPN.com (or yahoo, whatever) if you don't believe me. All of this adds up to a simple fact: the Spurs are not (I repeat, NOT) about to drop two back-to-back games in the Finals.
Posted by David Richmond at 6:53 PM EDT | TrackBack
June 20, 2005
Auditions: Wagner, Tchaikowsky, and Bears, Oh My!
My orchestral placement audition was regrettably late last night, both scheduled (8:00 pm) and actual (8:50 pm), which meant not only that I missed most of an excellent Game 5 (though the Pistons lost...as a small consolation, my curse is alive with Duncan failing in the clutch), but also that I was not on hand for the first bear sighting here at Marolt (my dorm / apartment building / housing complex). Disappointing. Bears are awesome.
My audition, however, went pretty well (I think, anyway). On hand for repertoire was the ever-frustrating second bassoon part for the opening of Wagner's Overture to Tannhäuser, which for its pianissimo playing and low register is murder anywhere, but especially at altitude where reeds get stiff, sharp, and stuffy down low, plus a healthy dose of the usual Tchaikowsky solos (fourth and fifth in this case). My only disappointment was that I was not asked for the Mozart concerto, which meant I didn't really get to open up and play true forte, although that might have been positive since my reeds are (for the moment) refusing to give me any volume. Hopefully they'll still project well enough in the various halls here, although maybe I'll be playing lots of second and less projection will be a feature?
I also learned by accident that the best cure for pre-audition jitters is a very aggressively-tempied Mozart rondo sung through in one's head.
Posted by David Richmond at 11:50 AM EDT | TrackBack
June 17, 2005
Altitude Adjustment, Part II
It turns out that the bassoon is, in reality, a very sophisticated pressure-sensing device. When pressure drops, any given reed "seems" more resistant to the player, since for an equivalent muscle power input, less actual pressure is generated (as ambient pressure is lower). I can confirm, therefore, that I am in fact at quite high altitude, as my "Aspen special" reeds appear to be working as designed.* This makes situation number three considerably less likely.
*The theory behind their design is this. Any reed that works at sealevel will play very, very sharp (30-50 cents) at altitude. One needs a weaker reed. One can obtain said weaker reed by whittling away at a "normal" reed until it is paper-thin, but this has unfortunate drawbacks. To begin with, it makes them fragile and so they don't last as long, and the thinness also has undesireable effects on tone quality.
An improved method is to use softer cane. Unfortunately, softer cane in general is often not as "good" as hard cane, which is to say that it doesn't respond as well to adjustment and doesn't like to keep its form. It turns out that the biological structure of reed cane is such that the harder, more springy (and hence more resistant) fibers are nearer to the bark (the bark itself, of course, being most springy and resistant of all). To make my "Aspen special" reeds, then, I gouged cane thicker, so that when it was profiled (that is, the bark taken away from the blade area of the reed via a machine that's sort of like a lathe), the blade would be comprised of those softer fibers further from the bark. This has the nice effect of weakening the reed evenly overall, but leaving enough material intact that the cane retains longevity and luster of tone. Or so it works in theory....
Posted by David Richmond at 9:48 PM EDT | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The Curse Lives
I see The SymphonicMan Curse is alive and well after a stunning Pistons blowout that saw a mediocre performance (6 for 13, but 4 assists to 3 turnovers) from Tony Parker, contrary to my (tongue-in-cheek?) prediction. Well, on the theory that my wrong-ness can't last forever (heh heh heh), I predict a career game from Tim Duncan in Game 5. He doesn't take well at all to being brutalized like in Game 4, so he'll come out strong.
Posted by David Richmond at 9:41 PM EDT | TrackBack
June 16, 2005
Altitude Adjustment
The air is, you know, thinner up at 9600 feet. I, however, seem to be adjusting to this new respiratory circumstance far, far better than I remember last year. Several factors could possibly be involved:
- My pulmonary system "remembers" what it's like to pull just as hard and get 30% less air in return.
- I'm in better aerobic shape than I was at this time last year.
- Either I'm not in Aspen, being flown instead to some alternate location that looks suspiciously like Aspen, or the atmosphere has eerily thickened itself. This latter possibility deserves substantial scientific inquiry to determine whether or not we're all going to die.
And while all of you down in the low countries worry about being crushed by an expanding atmosphere, I'll go play my bassoon.
Posted by David Richmond at 10:52 AM EDT | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 15, 2005
Wifi From Heaven
I partially retract previous post: to begin with, how can I possibly predict where my capricious blogging whim will take me? On second thought, "look at this pretty mountain" makes an awesome blog post. But I digress. Somehow, my room in the middle of nowhere, Aspen, Colorado is in a wireless hotspot. So much for dialup! I will attempt to track down the source of this mysterious technological benefactor. I suspect that someone nearby might have plugged a router into cable internet (we have cable and phone lines run to our rooms). Whoever you are: thank you for your $40/month contribution to my roommates' and my technological bliss.
Posted by David Richmond at 9:45 PM EDT | TrackBack
Greetings from DIA
I'm in Denver, waiting for the puddle-jumper to Aspen. Sitting here in the terminal with wifi and food is far preferable to the five-hour bus ride I took from Denver last year, even with scattered thundershowers all but guaranteeing a bumpy ride up into the mountains.
My internet access in Aspen will be dialup, and I'll be busy. My blog priority, as always, is a high signal-to-noise ratio. In other words, I promise to resist the temptation (ooo look at this pretty mountain I climbed yesterday, and here's a picture of me and some random person you don't know at the Cooper Street bar) to turn this into some sort of event diary. And let me remind you that RSS is the way to go if you find my frequency of updates...uninspiring.
Posted by David Richmond at 6:34 PM EDT | TrackBack
A Blog Curse
I anoint Ginobili as preferable to Bron, he lays a 2-for-6, 6 turnover egg. Awesome, I have power. I predict a dominating performance from Tony Parker in Game 4.
In all seriousness, it was good to see the Pistons play with some pride. One more win and it's best of three.
Posted by David Richmond at 6:28 PM EDT | TrackBack
June 14, 2005
Archival: On Understanding
Since I've had this blog, I've let my AIM profile sit there unmodified, the 1024 character limit of which was, as I've said, the (only slightly) tongue-in-cheek raison d'être of the reconstituted SM.com. Nevertheless tonight I right-clicked on my own screenname to puzzle out what I had left behind before the jump....
Warning: you have entered the sentimental zone
Right. Anyway, the following came to me in a flash one warm night last summer, and has apparently achieved permanent profile quote status:
The ear hears, but the heart listens.
Now it occurs to me that this again touches on the ontological nature of understanding as outlined by Gadamer, but rather than continuing to harp on Gadamer's (good) philosophical argument, I thought I would return to some of my own (sometimes mediocre) verbal sentimentality. Why? Because I can. And because you didn't actually read the Gadamer post, did you?
I remember once trying to say exactly what you meant tonight and knowing that I could not say it; I tore up what I meant and wrote only its shadow. Finally, tonight, I suspect that you understand. [Winter 2003-2004]
Disarming smile, careful speech
Passing yourself off as nothing
More than meets my eyes, indeed
Until I catch the light lying behind yours. [December 2004]
And to what end? If everything must have an end, you'll never get past the beginning. [February 2004]
I threw my worries off the footbridge, but for you it means fear, not redemption, an unknown fear lurking just across the water. I am intrigued by these differences between you and me: but 'contrast is everywhere' while 'similarity is hidden; it must be sought out' (Stravinsky) and I search for the similarities in the rhythms of our separate songs, similarities I know are there, hints of recognition with every smile, every word, every step along the cobblestones. But we do not have much time. I am a man these days long on dreams, but short on execution. [29 April 2003, which was actually posted on the original symphonicman]
If the world seems ever more petty, and if emotion is eschewed in favor of irony, it is only because we lack the confidence to say what we feel even while knowing that it has been better said before. [March 2005]
Okay, done.
What's the point? Obviously, the point is not the specific situations that spawned these various reflections. Rather the point is to highlight just how much give-and-take, how much dialogue, is inherent in the process of true human understanding. Any time you have two people, two societies, two groups, or two cultures trying to understand one another, where they meet honestly and openly, the past gets revealed in light of the present, the present is revealed in light of the past, the future is revealed in all its untidy glory, and so we move forward in life, one smile of recognition at a time. I claim this messiness is not best seen as an "imperfection." Actually, it's quite beautiful. What the hell: if I may be permitted the metaphor, it's rather like life itself, growing from near-barren inorganic nothingness into verdant and azure complexity.
Oh, dear. Where the organic and aesthetic meet, the Romantic finds his royal road to trouble. I suspect I will have much more to say about this.
UPDATE (3 December 2005 6:27 EST): I've referenced this post and added some related thoughts to the Stravinsky reference here.
Posted by David Richmond at 2:33 AM EDT | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Dvorak's Sixth is Good? Who Knew?
Listening to KBPS during the Great Wild Compass Chase this morning (looking for a decent drafting compass with a set screw for reedmaking purposes), a rather schlocky and sentimental, but, overall, quite excellent and pleasant symphony presented itself. Superb command of orchestration and a thick nineteenth-century texture were clues to its origin. The well constructed first three movements had me desperate to know who wrote the thing (the finale, unfortunately, was a trite disappointment). "Definitely German [inspired]," Emily concluded. "Sounds Russian," I offered; "Could it be Tchaikowsky?" Emily wondered out loud. "Yeah, but it's too good," I quipped, meaning that the material was too well-developed. "That sounded like Liszt," Mom chimed in, correctly.
If it was Tchaikowsky, we agreed, it was some hidden gem we hadn't heard yet; I half-heartedly suggested Borodin but hedged with the assertion that if it were Borodin, I would be forced to conclude he was a far better composer than I had previously supposed. The guessing stalled with a stab at Janacek, and then we played the waiting game. Turns out -- wait for it -- it was Dvorak's Sixth. Altogether a far, far superior offering to the Seventh and Eighth. I had always assumed Dvorak was more-or-less a one hit wonder with the Ninth (From the New World), a few excellent chamber offerings notwithstanding, which is too bad since that renders his one good piece severely overplayed. Instead it turns out that the Sixth is quite comparable to the Ninth and even to a number of pieces by better-regarded composers, and definitely preferable (to my taste, anyway) to the Seventh and Eighth, which unjustly receive far more attention.
This is when I wish Dr. Y were reading my blog, because, personally, I would much rather be playing Dvorak's Sixth in HRO next year instead of Dvorak's Seventh, which I've already played, and I don't much like. But any conductor who gives me Rite of Spring and Beethoven's Ninth in the same season really ought to be exempt from further criticism.
Posted by David Richmond at 2:07 AM EDT | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 13, 2005
More Basketblogging: Game 2
Man, was I ever wrong on that one. The Pistons came out flat, Rasheed Wallace disappeared again....and it's another Spurs blowout win. Manu Ginobili is playing out of his mind. To me, the most remarkable statistic is the three steals for Ginobili, and four for Horry. That tells you all you need to know about the Spurs' hustle.
So I'm eating crow on all my private smack-talking about Ginobili, I guess, although Bill pointed out to me that his 13 free throws are much less likely to happen in Detroit where the refereeing will be less sympathetic to San Antonio. But even if you think Ginobili has a rather strange knack for drawing "contact," you have to admit he plays with heart. Some advice to my Argentina-bound friends: get yourself some Ginobili trading cards before you go. I bet they'd be worth far more than original cash value in barter exchange. After the Argentine gold medal in Athens, and these finals, "national hero" seems rather understated.
And while I hate to dredge up this old story, I have to admit an affinity for Ginobili's hustle-and-teamwork style of basketball. The Spurs play unselfishly and efficiently. For that matter, so do the Pistons -- usually. And to be fair, the Pistons' troubles right now stem more from lack of energy than from selfish play, and so we'll see what they can do back at the Palace of Auburn Hills. Don't count them out.
With that pro-Pistons disclaimer out of the way, I see this crap over at CNN/Money claiming that the lack of "star power" in the Finals hurts ratings and merchandise sales for the NBA. Maybe so. But if this is true, it's the league's own fault. Tim Duncan is the best player in the NBA, period. If players like LeBron James, Tracy McGrady, Kobe Bryant, whomever are marketed -- I emphasize, marketed -- more heavily than him, that's the league's own blunder. When the Miami Heat pay Shaq $30 million a year, why is anyone surprised that they have trouble surrounding him with the kind of exquisitely balanced talent San Antonio and Detroit put on the floor? After Jordan, the league has followed a goose who lays eggs of fool's gold, because Jordan, too, was successful because he was surrounded by exceptional talent. Pippen, Rodman, Cartwright, Paxson -- excellent players all, and in complement to Jordan. From Jerome Kersey in Portland in the early 1990s, I've always had a soft spot for the hustle players who can change a game with pure heart. Those guys can't get paid enough.
The league thinks it marketed Jordan, but it was only able to market Jordan because Jordan was successful, and Jordan was only successful because his franchise -- the other players, and the management that was smart and/or lucky enough to get those other players -- was successful. Since Jordan, the NBA has been stupidly marketing stars in poor franchises. I love Kevin Garnett, but his franchise sucks. Likewise for Vince Carter in Toronto. Now he's in New Jersey. Just great. LeBron is on the Cavs, who vie yearly with Golden State for the crown of "worst offseason move made." Why oh why do you market LeBron as "the future" when you know damn well that his team might not even make the playoffs, much less vie for the title?
In short, the league doesn't have anything to market in the NBA Finals because they don't market the best teams, or maybe even the best players. Go watch Ginobili, and tell me you'd rather have LeBron -- whining, entitled, market-me Bron-Bron -- instead.
Posted by David Richmond at 3:29 PM EDT | TrackBack
June 11, 2005
Words to.....
Live by? Sleep by? Flirt by? All I know is, they're good to quote by:
"I don't really even like sex, so I might as well have a good story."
My dearest friend Lauren, on the desirability of sleeping with a pair of male twins
Posted by David Richmond at 4:00 AM EDT | TrackBack
Ladies and Gentlemen, I Present to You....
....the inimitable Drew Heckathorn.
Some background: I requested on my facebook profile some help in coming up with humorous short descriptions of myself, since I found myself unable to write about myself (please spare me the obvious quip, "you mean you found yourself unable to write tersely about yourself"). Drew, being an engineer, took my "10 words or less" to heart.
Wait, some further background. 20 May 2005:
Re: Higgins' birthday
From: Drew Adam Heckathorn
To: David Richmond
CC: [The Fourteen minus Bill]
Date: 05.20.2005 7:40 pm
I also suggest you check out DR's blog. http://symphonicman.com It's crazy good shit, and I'm the star.
-- dh
---------------------------------------------------
Drew Heckathorn '06
http://readdavidrichmondsblog.ca Eliot A-12
cell: 617.899.4219 AIM: Capital34
And now, 10 June 2005:
[GZ] Another Challenge Bested
From: Drew Heckathorn
To: gz06@hcs.harvard.edu
Date: 06.10.2005 11:43 pm
reed rebel oboe / linux mack lady killer / my hero D R
Another challenge overcome.
Booyakasha.
-DH
_______________________________________________
GZ06 mailing list
GZ06@lists.hcs.harvard.edu
http://lists.hcs.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/gz06
Not only is it exactly 10 words; it's also a haiku. Congratulations, Drew: you are now the "star" of my blog.
And you meant bassoon. Right? Right?!??!?
Posted by David Richmond at 1:04 AM EDT | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 10, 2005
Charles Barkley, the Playoffs, and the Pistons
If you're a basketball fan in any sense of the term, this collection of Charles Barkley quotes, which I found a few days ago, will have you in stiches for hours (recall he analyzes for TNT now). Considering Bill's (and hence mine, for the moment) Pistons' unfortunate loss to Manu Ginobilithe Spurs tonight, this is apropos:
"Isiah Thomas is building a championship team... too bad it's in San Antonio."
-- Charles Barkley on the Nazr Mohammed deal
How important is Nazr Mohammed to that Spurs team? Granted, it's Manu who's really had his coming out party during these playoffs, but with Rasho Nesterovic in the middle, the Spurs just aren't as good. Period.
Good the Spurs might be, but the Pistons will come back fired up for Game 2. Do remember that tonight's Game 1 was marked by disappearing-Rasheed-Wallace syndrome -- like about 50% of the Piston's games during these playoffs. I am intimately familiar with this syndrome from his Portland days. Luckily, it usually seems to be a 24-hour-type deal.
Posted by David Richmond at 2:30 AM EDT | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 8, 2005
Apple and Intel
Everyone's excited about the prospect of Intel microprocessors in Apple computers, and with good reason. Steve Jobs made it very clear in his WWDC keynote that this move is all about performance-per-watt: in other words, it's all about the Pentium M, the core of the Centrino mobile platform. Pentium M is an amazing chip, beating out Pentium 4 on the latest benchmarks and leading to rampant speculation that Intel will move to Pentium M-like products on the desktop within the next 12 months. Who wants a Powerbook built on a Pentium M? I know I do, and I'm pretty happy with my IBM Thinkpad T40 (which, thanks to deep Harvard-negotiated IBM discounts, is a near-ubiquitous accessory on campus).
Despite worrying in the NYT and on Wall St. to the contrary, the keynote shows that this will be a remarkably painless transition. Mac OS X is already ported and running (and has been since its introduction), and the recompile of third-party applications is promised to be relatively painless, producing a single so-called "Universal Binary" that will run on (what will be) both types of Macs, those based on PowerPC, and those based on Intel chips. Applications that don't make it over, perhaps because their developers have disappeared or because they're older versions, will run under binary translation (called "Rosetta") which is (it has been confirmed) based on technology from Transitive, and to my amazement actually got demonstrated in the keynote, Jobs running both Photoshop and MS Office under binary translation on the keynote's Pentium 4-based presentation machine. Both Adobe and Microsoft, for what it's worth, promise to support Intel-based Macs with Photoshop, Pagemaker et al and MS Office.
Meanwhile, the best analysis of what this all means comes from the British rag The Inquirer:
Apple's receipts from its 76% dominance of the MP3 market plus Intel's cash mountain gives them the financial clout to take on Microsoft and Dell. Luckily for the Apple-Intel team, they have superior technology too. Granted, Intel's latest processors are dogs but the main event is eighteen months out, when Microsoft ships Longhorn, so Intel have the interim to get their act together. The next revision of Mac OS X, named Leopard, will be launched then too....Eighteen months and counting. Eighteen months and the choice will be simple: buy a solid operating system running on a PC designed by the coolest computer company ever or buy something of dubious ancestry out of a car boot.
The pieces have been set in motion; the PC world will look very different in eighteen months' time.
Posted by David Richmond at 10:53 PM EDT | TrackBack
Gadamer, Part II
Several months ago I noted a connection that I saw between some ethical ideas involving honesty and Hans-Georg Gadamer's concept of "play" in Truth and Method. Gadamer, it turns out, is interested in describing the process of human understanding not as it "should" be, but as it actually is (i.e., ontologically). Hermeneutics, the interpretation of texts -- or language, or art, or whatever -- is, in Gadamer's exposition, not a process or a method aiming at some "perfect" or "absolutely valid" interpretation, but rather forms the ontological mode of understanding itself.
This is opposed to the Romantics, who saw all interpretation and understanding as aiming at some transcendental truth. A critique of transcendental or absolute truth is not, of course, uniquely Gadamer's, although his critique is especially lucid and powerful. But what makes Truth and Method so audaciously appealing to me is that while he rejects absolutes, he refuses to abandon the concept of truth per se. Ultimately, he rejects not absolutes so much as the pretension that one can find and verify absolutes: that is, Gadamer rejects method. To paraphrase the title, Gadamer's project is Truth Beyond Method.
He finds this claim to truth, which is, I should add, the very claim to truth of the humanities, art, music, literature, and messy human (as opposed to formal mathematical) language, in the ontology of understanding, which comes from his insightful analysis of play:
All playing is a being-played. The attraction of a game, the fascination it exerts, consists precisely in the fact that the game masters the players. Even in the case of games in which one tries to perform tasks that one has set oneself, there is a risk that they will not "work," "succeed," or "succeed again," which is the attraction of the game. Whoever "tries" is in fact the one who is tried. The real subject of the game (this is shown in precisely those experiences in which there is only a single player) is not the player but instead the game itself. What holds the player in its spell, draws him into play, and keeps him there is the game itself. (106)
The experience of a game thus exists in the space between the players. Such, Gadamer argues, is the nature of human experience in general. Our experiences unfold in shared historical time and against the background of tradition, and are as limited by that context as players are by the rules of the game. Detached subjectivity -- that is, the position from which one can study objects distinct from oneself -- is impossible.
But truth is not impossible. This very process of understanding, dictated to us ontologically, "happens to us over and above," Gadamer argues, "our wanting and doing," and reaches a claim to truth. How? Because all understanding happens in conversation. Like play, understanding happens in the space between people, or between a person and history (or time), and that implies conversation. In order to have a conversation, the dialogue must be approached openly, and honestly. Thus I return to the ethical connection I saw in April. Honesty itself, earnestness, guarantees a claim to truth through conversation and dialogue. There are many possible conversations, and many possible truths, but each can separately be evaluated as truth or not-truth, based on how closely it comes to the ontological structure of understanding.
I recall something I wrote in August 2003:
All human life is musical by nature. To live is to balance art, structure, passion, restraint, melody, counterpoint, consonance, and dissonance into a single sublime whole. What is now gains meaning through its relation to a whole work of life, stretching as it does through some finite section of time. This is my response to those who say that any part or any act of life is intrinsically meaningless: of course it is; it expresses itself.
I was myself grappling with the same problem of meaning. Gadamer is more eloquent and thorough, especially considering that my own concern did not extend to reaching a claim to truth or understanding with others, but only to reaching an understanding about the meaning of my own life in relation to itself and in relation to my own history. Nevertheless, the juxtaposition should explain why I find Truth and Method so deeply exciting.
I return again to that sentence I found so striking (and which has been hanging around on my facebook profile for quite a while):
Someone who can perceive the comedy and tragedy of life can resist the temptation to think in terms of purposes, which conceals the game that is played with us.
This is a reminder to live for now, not for some future end or purpose. Only by living in the moment and in the experience of now can one embrace the game of life and the play back and forth of the liquid nature of understanding. If you do not thus play life, life will play you. And when life hurts:
Même qu'on se comprend moins, peut-être on comprend plus. [September 2003]
Posted by David Richmond at 3:05 AM EDT | TrackBack
The Return of the Blog
I suppose I should mention that I'm home in Oregon. Yes, the junior paper got finished. No, I still haven't really finished unpacking. Yes, I'm leaving for Aspen in a week.
In the meantime, in addition to a healthy dose of doing nothing important, I've been sorting papers and reorganizing my bookshelves, a project long overdue and made especially urgent by the four boxes of books I sent home from school. Turns out I don't really need my calculus book at school anymore, for instance, and if I do come to need one for some bizarre reason, it's relatively easily obtainable via Cabot library, or, failing that, the United States Postal Service.
The theme, therefore, which I alluded to in my previous post, is "clearing out the attic." Turns out I have a lot of stuff I've been meaning to tell you about, dear reader, from some thoughts on the new Pope to various quips from daily life. Some of this I've forgotten, some of this will occur to me in four weeks, some of it is no longer relevant, and some of it I've actually made note of and the likelihood of me blogging about it is high.
Especially if I get back into the habit of doing this. When I wasn't feeling swamped (see also, the month of May; my roommates will be quick to notice the significant distinction between feeling swamped and actually being swamped, as I'm typically the former first, leading quickly to the latter as my feeling swamped destroys my ability to focus), I found that blogging, despite its nominal status as a "distraction," actually helped me to focus on work etc. by providing a place for me to voice tangential thoughts. It also tended to be a good transition into "productive mode."
This summer is extremely important for my work on the bassoon. But it's also an extremely important summer for me personally. Intellectually, emotionally, and artistically, the past year has been very...experimental. Now I think it's time to take the results of that experimentation and get it out in the field. Which is why the point of this blog is to get stuff out to you, whoever you may be. Just by doing that, I force my little mental experiments and fancies into the real world.
Posted by David Richmond at 2:08 AM EDT | TrackBack