The moral of this story is: bunnies will be bunnies.

Which gets me, in a roundabout sort of way, to the point: blogs will be blogs, and DRs....well, I'll be me, too. There's been sort of an explosion in Harvard-related blogs this spring, with a mostly amusing Undergraduate Council race and the usual potpourri of campus issues. With the recently-minted Campus Tap aspiring to be the Facebook.com of the blogosphere, the number of voices out here in cyberspace is growing like, well, a population of bunnies, and my usual jokes about the "SymphonicMan.com Media Network" seem even staler than usual. Thanks to thesis-inspired oblivion, this blog has been silent for over two months, and thus the question: what's to come of all of this? Whither SM.com?

An answer: I suppose it will have to grow and change as I do. I started this blog because I enjoyed the sound of my own voice shouting into the perceived chaos of my life. My life is less chaotic now, and I'm inclined to be somewhat more soft-spoken, though I still enjoy my own voice (and some would say too much so). If I am one thing, I think, it is passionate, even if this passion is sometimes indeterminate and often unfocused. I am easily distracted, which only really means easily engrossed.

Rise from the ashes, SymphonicMan.com. Rise up with an update on the status of my life: I am not going to graduate school next fall, because I did not get in, although to be truthful I only wound up auditioning at one school. My thesis is done and I am proud of it, more or less, though there are holes in the scholarship and many, many, so many unanswered questions. I still want to be a bassoonist more than ever, but even more than that I want to be a musician. The dream begins now, because I want it to: and no, it is not exciting, it is terrifying and worrying and anxiety-provoking and every other reason one could give for not jumping off a cliff named desire. So what? As I proved to myself one hot August afternoon in Aspen: once I begin the countdown, I intend to jump, even if it takes me five millennia to scare up -- as it were -- the will.

Dear Dr. SymphonicMan,

My brother is a dork. He tries really, really hard, and he even dates cute girls, but deep down I know he is a really big dork. The people would like to present Exhibit A: His blog. Also Exhibit B: His bassoon. Exhibit C: his CD collection (it's mostly classical... I know, maybe it's just to get chicks, but I think he actually likes Mahler more than most chicks).

Please do anything possible to help him. Though I have already been diagnosed with Terminal Dorkitude, and am hoping to use my condition to raise awareness and get a Ph.D., perhaps it is not too late to save him from the same fate.

Sincerely,
Sister of a Seriously Dorky Dude

Note: SM.AC is a series of "advice column" (AC) posts based on actual questions from actual readers, who may or may not be telling the truth, and may or may not be blatantly misrepresenting who they are and what they actually think. Send your questions here.

Your brother's condition sounds serious, but remember: it could be worse. It could be much worse. If it is true that he has a blog, I hope he updates it regularly. The only thing worse than having a blog is having a "blog" upon which the "blogger" never writes. As for playing the bassoon, again, it could be worse: he could be an oboist. And as for his CD collection: well, at least he has good taste. Mahler is, in fact, quite preferable to "most chicks," being altogether more passionate, fulfilling, and beautiful. Have you considered that the reason he only dates cute girls is perhaps because the non-cute ones don't compare to Mahler, Beethoven, Debussy, and Mozart?

But what makes music special -- what makes it special for identity -- is that it defines a space without boundaries (a game without frontiers). Music is thus the cultural form best able both to cross borders -- sounds carry across fences and walls and oceans, across classes, races and nations -- and to define places; in clubs, scenes, and raves, listening on headphones, radio and in the concert hall, we are only where the music takes us.
-- Simon Frith, "Music and Identity," in Questions of Cultural Identity ed. Stuart Hall and Paul de Gay (London : Sage, 1996)

For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.....
-- T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets, "The Dry Salvages," V
(online here)

Interestingly, the Eliot is quoted as the inscription to Douglas Shand-Tucci's biography of Isabella Stewart Gardner, The Art of Scandal. Definitely a nod to intuitions about the relationship between music and identity (or culture and identity). Notice also this idea again about boundaries and games, and their relationship.....something that's come up on this page before. Further development in my senior thesis on Debussy's music in Boston....

My need for Chinese food satiated, I then had an orange/strawberry/banana smoothie. The place I got it from called it the "fresh" smoothie. This picture was the result. The bunny is Emily's, and he is presented in the spirit of Mad Magazine's "monkeys are always funny" feature.

I am sure you will agree that this is an epic story.

In other news, Emily and I decided that we will be editing, to be published in 2035, a book series: The Death of the Author on Whose Authority? Competiting Claims of Authenticity in the Twentieth Century. Submissions welcome.

On the bright side, it's not like I'm at a loss for words when I do post. Then again, it's not like I'm ever at a loss for words whether I'm posting on my blog, writing email, or talking your ear off in person, so.....

Advice questions:
1) What are some really good audibles to set up for Madden?
2) What are the differences between a full back and a half back?
3) How does one become a better person (at Madden) ?
4) Where are some good places to put a Catlin mask?

Your adoring fan,
Jeff

Note: SM.AC is a series of "advice column" (AC) posts based on actual questions from actual readers, who may or may not be telling the truth, and may or may not be blatantly misrepresenting who they are and what they actually think. Send your questions here.

Advice answers:

1. Ask someone who actually knows something about football.
2. Ask someone who actually knows something about football.
3. Contrary to all reports, football is not life. Neither is Madden.
4. Definitely somewhere right in front of his face, where he's sure to miss it. If he notices it, he'll tear it down and rip it up. This would be bad.

Ah, one of those "difficult questions." On the one hand, Jeff's questions are esoteric and arcane, and presented in such dry, hyper-logical fashion (this is why Jeff is a Math concentrator). On the other hand, he professes himself my adoring fan. How, then, can I refuse his plea for help?

Yet while I can only attempt to answer the football questions, I can answer the Catlin Mask (tm) question quite conclusively. The Catlin Mask (tm) was invented to prolong the life of Super-Assassin (tm) Mike Catlin through positive camouflauge. The idea was that if the enemy's perception could be overwhelmed by the suspicion of multiple identifications of Mike Catlin, the Real Mike Catlin would escape unscathed. Preliminary field trials were inconclusive.

However, an unexpected side effect soon presented itself: despite his roommates' declared best intentions, the Real Mike Catlin was not pleased with the invention of his doppleganger. The precise emotional mechanisms behind his significant aversion to the Catlin Mask (tm) could not be ascertained. They are being investigated by the same team in charge of limiting physical damage to video game controllers due to their cooption as projectiles, protecting television screens from flying objects, and protecting wood floors in Eliot House from water damage. In the meantime, the engineering team responsible for the Catlin Mask (tm) has shifted its efforts away from perfection of the Mask itself and towards Real Mike Catlin evasion.

If the Catlin Mask (tm) is to be deployed in mission-critical situations, the Real Mike Catlin must be prevented from destroying the device. The best way to do this is to prevent his detection of the device. This is the thrust of Jeff's question. Jeff, after consulting with my crack consulting team of crack consultatns, they've consulted me to keep Catlin Mask(s) (tm) in clear view of the Real Mike Catlin's perception at all times. This will prevent his detection of the Catlin Mask (tm) up to 90% of the time. A similar perceptual mechanism is believed to underlie the heretofore poorly understood survival of objects on the Real Mike Catlin's floor beyond an expected length of time, including but not limited to dishes and laundry.

Finally, Jeff: nomenclature in football doesn't make any sense, so don't ask too many questions and nobody will get hurt. But as far as I can tell, the halfback usually does the running and the fullback usually does the blocking, and a fullback is usually bigger and stronger, but also slower and less agile than a halfback.

Greetings,

I saw your postings asking for advice. My name is Subbuni and I enjoy reading your contemplatives on music and artistry from Chennai. Oned ay I hope to partake of an academic experience as yours. Please answer my question in your advice column: whenever I see my step-sister my heart speeds up to no end and I become tense. I think I lust after my step-sister. Is this wrong? She is hoping to enroll in the Oklahoma University for a MASTER's degree; should I follow her?

I do not know what to do, Symphonic Man. I am sending you anonemous email becaus my mother may read this e-mail.

Nanedri,
Subbuni

Note: SM.AC is a series of "advice column" (AC) posts based on actual questions from actual readers, who may or may not be telling the truth, and may or may not be blatantly misrepresenting who they are and what they actually think. Send your questions here.

In my ignorance about Indian culture, Subbuni, I have to confess I have no idea what your gender might be. Still, whether you are a girl or a guy, there's nothing "wrong" with feeling attraction to your step-sister. But presumably your brother (or sister, if in Massachusetts, New York, or Canada) has a monopoly on her affection, so your attraction will remain unsatisfied whether you follow her or not.

SymphonicMan is last to condemn the reckless pursuit of love and first to cringe when it goes painfully awry. And this situation, I'm afraid, is going nowhere but awry for you. But fear not! I have a suggestion: attach your lust to a celebrity. Americans do. And remember you've always got a shot at catching his or her eye. Thus is the clarion call of Kevin Federline. Lusting after a celebrity has the added bonus of glorifying fame, so that you too! can aspire to frequenting overpriced clubs, drinking overpriced drinks, partying excessively, and dying an unnaturally early death surrounded by scores of lechers and hangers-on....I mean, of course, adoring fans.

But SymphonicMan is also last to condemn adoring fans (ahem). So I have more advice for you. Think carefully to yourself: self, why is it that I am so attracted to my step-sister? Try to extract what it is about her you find so appealing. Then go looking for it, whatever it is: regular bathing, auburn hair, attractively long legs, huge....tracts of land, etc. Remember that there are not only lots of good fish in the sea; there are also lots of different fish in the sea. One of them, dear Subbuni, might even be attracted to you.

UPDATE (2 January 11:10 PM EST): Aw, shoot, Bill's right (see comments). Subbuni wanted to know about her step-sister, and I answered as if he/she wanted to know about his/her sister-in-law. Shoot. Well, this is substantially more difficult. My advice remains good advice, insofar as any of my advice can be called "good". As to the ethical question of whether or not it is wrong to lust after one's step-sister....well, it's not, biologically speaking, incest. But neither does it seem particularly productive to me.

My readers, I feel as though I have failed you with this one. But there are more advice questions coming soon....

It burned when I urinated. I thought it was a one-time thing! But then it happened again. Should I just hope it goes away?

Sign me,
Burnin' in Boise

Note: This is the inaugural entry of SM.AC, a series of "advice column" (AC) posts based on actual questions from actual readers, who may or may not be telling the truth, and may or may not be blatantly misrepresenting who they are and what they actually think. Send your questions here.

Okay, look. This type of thing is indicative of a very serious medical problem. You need professional advice immediately. As in, not from me.

Also, disease is never funny.

Hoewver, I can tell you some things not to do:

• Don't use a new partner as your screening test. (Hi, honey, I had fun last night...what's that? Oh, yeah, of course we can go out on Friday....hey, listen, I was just wondering, um, did you notice anything strange this morning when you....what? Oh, no, no reason, it's just that, I mean, I was just curious.....)
• Don't wait to see if it gets better. Whatever it is, it's already kicked your immune system's butt.
• If you are diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease, don't beat yourself up.
  
  If you're a guy, remind yourself of the following situation in Office Space:
  
  Peter: That's it? If you had a million dollars, you'd do two chicks at the same time?
  Lawrence: Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I had a million dollars I could hook that up, cause chicks dig a dude with money.
  Peter: Well, not all chicks.
  Lawrence: Well the kind of chicks that'd double up on a dude like me do.
  
  In other words, why are you pretending to be surprised?
  
  If you're a girl, remind yourself: whoever gave this to you was a huge asshole. Not that you were attracted to that very same blind self-confidence in the first place.
  
  Readers not covered by the above explicit and implied categories, I apologize. I leave it in your own, ever capable hands to invent reasons why whatever happens to you is somebody else's fault.
• Finally, DON'T write in for advice to a blog. Very, very bad idea. This can only end badly.

All the best, Burnin' in Boise. I hope all your medical and other problems are solved soon, and I wish you long life and good health.

At a crossroads, I once wrote: "...in both music and in life I need someone, anyone, to hear what I'm trying to say, signal embedded within the noise of life" [February 2004]. What I did not know then was what Sontag has taught me now: "In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art." Continental philosophy (Gadamer) has moved away, I would argue, from the sort of hermeneutics Sontag means, which is why I've found Gadamer so intriguing. But the point still stands: it is not that I needed someone to hear what I was saying. It's that I needed someone to understand what I felt.

Wilde quipped that life is usually imitating art, but the need is quite real: we need an erotics for the art that is life. My past self wrote "say" and "hear," a revealing combination. Intuitively, I had given up on trying to interpret myself; I had given up on self-hermeneutics. Instead I hoped that an other could interpret me, for me. I revealed instead my own pressing need for an erotics of my own life. I needed to unlock my heart. I needed to stop worrying about what I was saying, and start worrying about what I was feeling. And I needed to stop worrying about hearing, and start worrying about listening.

Ironically, that Rosetta stone had always been there, waiting. Which is why, late at night on August 20, 2004, I sat up with a start from my bed in Aspen, Colorado, and wrote on the pad of paper I kept on the table by my bed: The ear hears, but the heart listens, thus contradicting, without conscious understanding, what I had written in February.

I am a musician because I am trying to teach myself how to feel. If society needs me -- if you need me -- in this role, it is to the extent that I, quite incidentally, show you how to feel. I believe that music can be the erotics that Sontag found so lacking in modern (or post-modern) life. And I further believe that we so often look to fulfill that erotic need -- whether we are aware of its existence or not -- in places that will never even come close.

SM.RFC (Request for Comment): Your comments, as always, are more than welcome.

The scene is even eerier inside the old airplane hangar, where the production team rebuilt a portion of the World Trade Center concourse - complete with period handbags in the Coach storefront, clothing in the Banana Republic windows and shoes from Johnston & Murphy.

"Period handbags." Those two words speak volumes about our historical imagination. What I remember -- what everyone remembers about that day is where they were. What they were doing, who they were with, how they knew. For New Yorkers, of course, the event means something far more intense than for anyone else. And yet the process of history -- which happens inside our collective imagination -- has already begun to create distance between our lives now and that day.

"Period handbags." That fall morning, did I walk into a period high school, wearing period jeans and a period sweatshirt, ready to play in period wind ensemble on my period bassoon on my period reed? Did I watch the period tower fall at 6:59 am Pacific time on a period television? Did I make a period call on a period telephone to my period mother? And did I write a period blog entry on a period blog using period software on a period computer on the period internet?

sidenote: one thing's for sure, I was a bad writer. Period.

In fact, I did: life was different then. Then again, I didn't: so many of those "period" elements are still here. Or, if not, there are their echoes. We are held together through the passage of time by flimsy threads of meaning. It is true that those meanings are sometimes consciously woven. It is also true that they weave themselves -- often almost imperceptibly, and always immediately. It is the relative historical immediacy that astounds me. September 11, 2001, was just over four years ago. Only four years! And how much was different then, for you?

This has to be a record for freshman Fete-awareness. Which means -- kudos to the House Committee and the Laurens (HoCo's social chairs last spring) -- that last year must have been especially awesome.

my response to her:

you might be lucky enough to get into Eliot yourself, you know.

-- dr
--------------------------------------------------
David Richmond '06
http://symphonicman.com Eliot GZ/B-41
cell: 617.xxx.xxxx AIM: Dxxxxxxxxxxxx

In short, Voith/Gadgil told opposite things to HRC and BGLTSA about their stance on ROTC, and both groups are now mobilizing against them. The Dems, also in response to the revelations of the past 24 hours, are stepping up their efforts for Haddock/Riley. I don't think I've ever seen a campaign have a day this bad...

Not to mention the Voith/Gadgil campaign's blatant disregard today for our no-doordrop policy, clearly disclosed by a sign on our Eliot suite's doorbox. And the shady behavior disclosed by The Crimson. I must admit to a certain amount of fascination as I watch the burning wreck / fireworks; however, I think Robert Ballard's comments on some recent Titanic discoveries are strangely apropos:

Explorer Robert Ballard found the bulk of the wreck in 1985, at a depth of 13,000 feet and about 380 miles southeast of Newfoundland. Ballard was not impressed with the expedition's find.

"They found a fragment, big deal," Ballard said. "Am I surprised? No. When you go down there, there's stuff all over the place. It hit an iceberg and it sank. Get over it."

*by which I mean, two.

Contrast produces an immediate effect. Similarity satisfies us only in the long run. Contrast is an element of variety, but it divides our attention. Similarity is born of a striving for unity....Variety is valid only as a means of attaining similarity. Variety surrounds me on every hand. So I need not fear that I shall be lacking in it, since I am constantly confronted by it. Contrast is everywhere. One has only to take note of it. Similarity is hidden; it must be sought out, and it is found only after the most exhaustive efforts. When variety tempts me, I am uneasy about the facile solutions it offers me. Similarity, on the other hand, poses more difficult problems but also offers results that are more solid and hence more valuable to me. (page 32)

Very meta, but I think it's interesting, given the above, that my rationale for playing has shifted from a desire for difference to a desire for similarity. And, moreover, that my desires in my life have shifted from always tending to try to stand alone and apart from other people towards trying to understand and connect with other people. The latter, after all, takes actual effort. Willingness to expend energy now for further gain later is, I'm told, the definition of maturity.*

* told, that is, by the font of all wisdom in my life, my dad.

Classical music was my teenage rebellion.

My parents put me in keyboard class when I was three, but I never found myself particularly drawn to the piano. I played too loudly and too percussively. I didn't actually listen to much music at all. But my piano abilities were still good enough to differentiate me from my schoolmates, and for a young sixth grader, that was enough for me to want to sign up for beginning band. I started with the clarinet.

I wasn't very good. Worse still, everyone and anyone seemed to play the clarinet. I wanted to stand out. I wanted to be different, because, just like every other middle schooler, I felt different. Misunderstood. When my parents and band director suggested the bassoon, I had to ask: what's a bassoon? But an instrument was obtained and I found the strangeness of it appealing and fascinating. Then I heard the bassoon section of the Oregon Symphony, calling themselves the "Bassoon Brothers," play in concert. I think I had been playing for six weeks, at most. But they were having more fun on stage than I had ever seen anyone ever have, and certainly more than I had ever had in my entire life. I was intrigued.

The funny thing about being a bassoonist is that, early on, doors open for you just because nobody else wants to go through them. When I applied to the Interlochen Arts Camp on bassoon after the eighth grade, I wasn't a very good bassoonist. I wasn't a very good musician, either. But I got in anyway. I had never played in an orchestra. Truth be told, I had never really listened to an orchestra. The camp was fun. I had a good time. I made good friends. I was happy that summer.

Towards the end of my first four week session at Interlochen, in the waning twilight of a warm Sunday in August, I heard the World Youth Symphony Orchestra, the top student group, play the Eleventh Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich. And sitting quite far away from the right side of the stage, I felt something stir inside me that I had never felt before. Emotion and passion gripped me like the Revolution the Eleventh Symphony ostensibly depicts. At that moment, I became irrevocably addicted to anything beautiful. Especially beautiful music.

When I got home, I started high school. And I began to listen to the most passionate music I could find. Barber. Mahler. Tchaikovsky. I could put this music on my stereo and lie back on my bed and let myself feel all the confusing things you feel when you're fifteen. My parents listened to Tchaikovsky and liked it a lot, or even loved it. But I knew - in the self-sure way that only a teenager can know - they didn't feel the way I did when I listened to it. The music became a secret refuge for me, like a secret code. A Rosetta stone for my adolescence.

If life were a script, what should have happened next is that I found that same intensity and power through my own playing. But life's not a script. I had some amazing and powerful moments on stage playing with orchestras in high school. And I was driven to seek those moments wherever I could. But any real artist will tell you that passion is not sufficient to succeed in music, or any art. It has to become a craft. And I was never very good at crafts. School came easily. The bassoon, too, came easily, at least when measured against other high schoolers. I never really worked at anything.

Here too, then, I should have followed a script. I went to Harvard because I had made the painful and difficult decision that bassoon could not be a craft for me. And so I should have outgrown my teenage rebellion, became an amateur performer and auditory connoisseur, and gone and studied something else. But a funny thing happened on the way to "something else": music caught my intellectual imagination as nothing else ever had. As I began thinking about music and not just "feeling" it, a basic, self-reflective question occupied my thoughts: why do I love this music so much?

This essay is part of the answer to these questions. So is much of my academic work here at Harvard. I have asked my professors, my colleagues, and myself this questions, directly and indirectly. I have probed and searched for a better definition of what, exactly, "this music" that I love actually is. Does it have to be passionate? Does it have to seem to consider itself art? Does it have to be "classical"?

In the process I have learned that I cannot answer those questions without a bassoon in my hands. Partly this is because, in playing, I explore that which I love from the inside out. It is also because of the defiance implied by the subject I in the question, "why do I love this music so much?" The implication: does everyone love this music? If not, why not?

What began as a way to differentiate myself has become, now that I am older, a process of searching for similarity instead. If I feel something on stage when I am playing, I want the audience to feel the same thing. If the audience doesn't get it, I want to learn to do better, to communicate more effectively with my audience. I want to make an audience feel what I feel, love what I love, and sing what I sing.

Bassoon, in other words, has become, quite unexpectedly, my craft.

That is why I am applying to Juilliard. I want to hone my craft, so that I can say the things I want to say, and feel the things I want to feel. And so that I can perform them for others, so that they, too, might be moved to ask that very same question, the answer to which I will be seeking for the rest of my life. I want them to wonder: "Why do I love this music so much?"