Thursday, August 21, 2014

Notes At the End of the Day





Trying to pen something off at the end of the day.  The end of the day is always different.  The end is near.  It must be like the end of a life.  There are graceful ways to end a day and sudden ways to end a day, regretful ways to fade out, and triumphant, symphonic summations to the inner audience.  And you’d probably be happy if you just stared back at it and surmised you were productive, and nothing too terrible transpired.  

Muhal Richard Adams apparently taught himself how to play piano.  That’s beyond me.  Guitar?  Maybe.  Piano?  But here he is behind me playing it out confidently if strangely.  I’ve got this 1977 set “1 Oqa +19” on the mix.  I found it randomly by searching things akin to William Parker, the bass player, who was akin to Chico Freeman and so on.  I am digging the cover of this album, no doubt.  I’d have stopped and picked it up, just to check it out no matter where I saw that.  It looks earlier than the year it is from.  I am considering, rather than fully digging the interplay between Henry Threadgill’s exploratory saxophone solo and Adams ambling, and occasionally, communicative piano work.  They are both burrowing about wildly.  It’s a wonderful contrast to the calm of the cover photo.

Born in Chicago in 1930, he is still alive, still playing at 83.  How does one stay fresh enough to play with the boppers in the early fifties to driving the experimental loft jazz movement in the 1970s? He must have stayed particularly hungry, curious, searching.  That song just now “Charlie in the Parker” was lovely and angular.  Nothing wrong with those who wanted to always play the music they came up with.  Dexter Gordon, our first DB feature, comes to mind.  But hurray for the souls who just never stopped pushing for something further beyond anything akin to anyone’s comfort zone, like Sun Ra or Mr. Adams.  We don’t always want to be so far from terra firma, but without explorers, the music, like the world, would be flat.



I had my second parents’ night tonight in a row.  This was for middle school, and my older daughter.  Amid learning about all the remarkable things they can take and will take and how they will take them I had an uncomfortable feeling.  I think it was when the guy my age, in the suit was talking.  It crept up on me:  “I feel like I’m in America.”  Indeed, most people in the audience were ethnically Chinese, whatever their passports.  The teaching staff had plenty of Australians or Canadians, I suppose.  But the guy in the suit was American. His accent was American.  And so were many of the other teachers, and so sounded much of the English being thrown about, everywhere I turned.  It felt great to have a Chinese conversation with two parents, who were confused about the confused about what to do as we regarded the five pillars of school community with the cue cards and number two pencils we were given. 

I’m not supposed to feel like I’m in America in Beijing.  I am decidedly 离乡背井[1], at least until next summer.  America happens when you go back home.  But on two consecutive nights now, the unexpected familiarity continued to wax.  The feeling was unmistakable, not unlike being at the Irish Ball in Beijing and being surrounded suddenly by hundreds of Irish-looking faces like some hall-of-mirrors, family reunion where the majority of faces, suddenly look rather related to you.  No one is.  You don’t know anyone.  This feeling is surreal though because you’re in China, very far from Dublin or South Boston.  But there it is.  Erie staring back at you from everywhere, in a wonderful, but artificial way.



For me, for a while now, my kids school has been a challenge, as its all in Chinese and I have to work so hard at being non judgmental and patient.  And there was an ease too because, no one expected me to completely understand and I only pushed myself so hard to "completely" understand.   Now, suddenly I understand absolutely everything, as one should, as is normal. What’s more I have strong opinions and my preference are largely being balmed, and massaged.  Things I want and expect are nearly all being completely addressed and as a result, I feel buoyant.  “We’ll be studying how the media forms people’s opinions, revolutions of the world, and Chinese geography and kids will be posting things on their blogs weekly.”  Cool.  Can I take this class? 

My younger one wants to know if I prefer the school photo of her wrapped on to a mug or the option wherein I can have her fashioned on to a calendar.  Tomorrow is the LAST chance to order these and other remarkable products.  “Do they have just a square photo option?  I’ll take that and put it in a frame.”  “Dad??!!”  Chinese pedagogy isn’t so nearly well covered, in comparison, when it comes to selling things and obliging you to make purchases.  It’s all rougher.  Sophisticated, Amerian-style marketing purloins your bills before you can consider that it was anything other than normal.  I think back to all the mint cookies we sold to raise money for whatever it was we were raising money for, baseball jerseys?  Door to door we went, earnestly.  Some kid always came back having sold a phenomenal amount more and you knew his parents had deputized their friends to help. “ “Can you do that for us mom?“  "No.  Parents who sell cookies for their children are simpletons.  You do it yourself." 

This isn’t America.  Even at the school.  All the annoyances have been carefully removed and rather it is like some kind of Athenian America of one’s dreams.  Some other time, they’ll have to consider how to maintain equanimity amidst the America with all the rough edges.  But there is a long way to go, for them at least, till nightfall. 

  



[1] líxiāngbèijǐng: to live far from home (idiom) / away from one's native place / to leave for a foreign land

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