I’ve been getting up
at 5:00AM for a while now to meditate before taking my older daughter to school
around 6:20AM. Settling, focused, I
appreciate this placid ritual. I’m surprised sometimes because even if I’m
tired, I find it easy to settle in and work at slowing the mind down. Today I got up late. So much for the placid ritual. “Expletive!” Put the phone with it’s clock
back down. I was dreaming of being in
San Francisco. I was walking to
somewhere up past Delores Park. I’d
found a short cut. I was arriving
early. I’d 另辟蹊径[1] and this was good. I hadn’t realized there was a short cut
between the suburban New York town I grew up in and this section of San
Francisco. An irresistible, imaginary discovery that unwittingly cost me an
extra hour of my morning.
I tend to have, or tend to disproportionally recall, dreams
that have new discoveries in old, well traveled areas. One of my favorite repeat dreams cast me back
in the Lower East Side. I used to live
on the corner of Pitt St. (Ave C, below Houston) and Delancey St. Back in the early 80’s as a teenager it was
exciting to see music on Avenue A. You
needed to be careful heading to Avenue B, and beyond that you didn’t go. I remember seeing a show on Avenue D, and
feeling as if I was on maximum high-alert the whole time. This all changed by the time I lived there,
in the late 80s. And it all changed
dramatically again in the 20 years since then.
But, for those of you who aren’t familiar, there is no street after
Avenue D, other than the FDR Drive, then the East River Park and finally, the
East River. But in my dream, I regularly
discover Avenue E, and Avenue G, and whole new section of New York that I never
knew existed. And it is terribly
exciting and, appropriately enough, very cool to be in this new place. And I always reach that point in the dream
where I say “Why didn’t I know that these were here?”
I met a fascinating gentleman yesterday who is involved in
green tech here in China. A broad
discussion we covered a lot of ground. A topic I always like to push in high
tech and can certainly learn about for green tech is on innovation in China. “Have you seen anything that constitutes real
innovation here in China?” is the perennial question. Largely the answer was “no.” A lot of imitation or localization but not
much of note. The funding and the
ecosystem to support real innovation isn’t present for clean tech any more than
it is for high tech. But he did see one
area in building that made sense. China
can build buildings now, fast. Real
fast. They can put up a thirty story
building in a few weeks. They’ve had a
lot of practice. He mentioned an
interesting company in Hunan that has found innovative ways to reduce
significant waste in the building processes.
If you have enough experience throwing up constructions fast, you can be
at the forefront of figuring out how to do this more efficiently.
My friend pointed out that unlike the U.S. where most of the
consumption of energy occurred on the individual consumer side, in China it was
disproportionately a function of the industrial building side. So if you want to move the needle
on reducing energy consumption in China, the construction area was the place to
focus attention. Then, to my mind, this
sort of “innovation” becomes relevant in the rest of the developing world,
where all the roads, bridges, and buildings have yet to be built. So China will be able to export this
technology, and compete better because of it, in places like Sub-Saharan
Africa, rather than North America or Western Europe.
Biden is over in Japan.
He’ll be here before long. Presume
he’ll visit Seoul as well and give Pyongyang a miss. I guess we need to brace ourselves for a
battle between him and Hillary before too long, which seems enervating to ponder. The U.S. has not called for the renouncing of
the Air Defense Zone. They are calling
for Japan and China to talk. Abe then,
did not repeat the official Japanese call for China to renounce the Air Defense
Zone in what he presented at Biden’s side in the press conference. Again, does China win, if it can show light
between the U.S. and Japanese position?
Or do they spoil whatever wins they secure by the abrupt, unilateral way
in which they introduced the new initiative. How long before a Chinese leader shares a
public gut-laugh as it appears that Joe and Shinzo did in this press
conference?
Speeding along back from dropping my daughter on, the disc
in the car that’s been in there for the last week, and been in my consciousness
for the last few decades was Jackie McLean’s 1956 release “4, 5, and 6.” The Lexington Avenue is (was? Did they ever complete the Second Avenue
line?) as far east as you can get in mid-town but it doesn’t get you anywhere near the “far east” of
Alphabet City. This disc is like an old
friend. From “Sentimental Journey” on, I
know ever track, every lick, down to the squeaking of Doug Watkins high-hat as
he presses the pedal, over and over.
Jackie, a young Harlemite, blown away by Bird, who got to play with other
native New Yorkers, like Sonny Rollins and Monk and when he played with Mingus
and got punched he pulled a knife on the big Angelino bass player.
I got to see Jackie McLean once at the Village Vanguard
during what was a bit of comeback of his in 1989. I don’t believe he’d played out in a
while. He was quiet and dignified. Another time twelve years later out at
Yoshi’s in Oakland with Cedar Walton and he was sharp and animated. I hadn’t realized that “Fine Nappy Jackie”
passed in 2006. That’s a shame. Tough uptown kid, carves a way out for
himself as a musician and somehow his story gets crossed in my mind with "Subway" Joe
Bataan, also from Harlem, who came up in a different genre, salsa, in a different decade, the
sixties. Perhaps I’ll go see them both
tonight over on Avenue H somewhere.
[1]
lìngpìxījìng: to take an alternate route
(idiom) / to find an alternative / to take a different approach / to blaze a
new trail
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