Month: December 2010

Musical Barriers

The other night I watched a riveting documentary “Genius Within:  The Inner Life of Glenn Gould” on American Masters (PBS).  Although I love music I’ve never been able to get into classical music.  I had encountered Glenn Gould decades ago when I read gushing review of his 1955 performance of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” so I rushed out and bought a copy.  Boy was I disappointed.  I thought they were nasty little gnarled piano riffs that were cold and unfeeling.  After watching the biography on Monday night, I went out and bought a new CD copy of Gould’s “Goldberg Variations” on Tuesday.

Guess what?  I found them just as unpleasant as ever.  How can compositions so admired, played by a performer deemed so astounding, be so unpleasant for me to hear?   Has my mind programmed with 59 years of pop music unable to fathom the implied beauty of Bach?

To be honest, the piano is not an instrument that soothes my soul, and Gould plays it in a style that I find painful.  Watching the films of Gould playing, it’s obvious he’s lost in a deep trance and I know he finds tremendous beauty in the sound he produces.  I can admire his skill, even though I don’t have the training to even begin to understand what he is doing, but as a listener trying to find a way into the world of classical music, not enjoying it is a real barrier.

While researching the “Goldberg Variations” I came across an article in Slate, “The Goldberg Variations Made New:  Move over Glenn Gould, here’s Simone Dinnerstein,” by Evan Eisenberg.  Within the article are downloads to three Goldberg variations played by Gould and Dinnerstein.  I find them as different as rock and rap.  Please download and play #28 (labeled 29 on the files) of each performance (Dinnerstein-28 and Gould-28).  Gould plays like a wild madman, while Dinnerstein makes her piece serene, which makes the piano seem warm and friendly to me.  I’m not saying I’d put the Dinnerstein cuts in heavy rotation on my playlists, but she makes Bach more accessible to me.

This brings up a number of questions.  Is there anyway I could train my mind to break through the musical barriers that keep me from enjoying classical music?  Could I ever love the “Goldberg Variations” as much as even “Animal” by Ke$ha, the song I’m playing at the moment as I write.  Is it a cultural barrier?  Did I grow up with wrong long hairs, The Beatles instead of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms?  If I played the “Goldberg Variations” enough would my brain grow new neural pathways and sooner or later I’d break through the classical musical barrier?

And why do so few people still listen to classical music?  Does it take a fundamental knowledge of music and music history to appreciate classical music?  Does classical music push the same buttons that rock and pop music push in my head?  Or is like ducks, and I just imprinted on rock?  If my Mom and Dad had played the “Goldberg Variations” in 1955 when I was four, would my musical tastes have formed differently?

And my music tastes do change.  I’m listening to Nicki Minaj and Kanye West at the moment.  Their rap and pop styles are light years away from the music I grew up on in the 1960s.  I started off with rock, went to folk, country, jazz, big band – hell I even love Ravi Shankar’s Indian music – so what keeps me from enjoying classical music?

JWH – 12/29/10

2010 Year in Reading

It’s that time of year to look back over my reading log and analyze my bookworm habits for the year.  In my 2009 Year in Reading I declared I wanted to read twelve to fifteen books published in 2010 as they came out during the year.  Well, I failed to do that because I read only nine books, but I read ten from 2009, so that makes me feel somewhat better about keeping up with current books.  I also wanted to read less science fiction, and I failed miserably at that!

  1. The Rise and Fall of Alexandria (2006) by Justin Pollard & Howard Reid
  2. Prehistory (2007) by Colin Refrew
  3. The Bible: A Biography (2007) by Karen Armstrong
  4. Martian Time-Slip (1964) by Philip K. Dick  (3rd time)
  5. The Caves of Steel (1954) by Isaac Asimov  (2nd time)
  6. Endymion (1996) by Dan Simmons
  7. Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) by D. H. Lawrence
  8. We, Robots (2010) edited by Allan Kaster
  9. Darwin’s Origin of Species (2007) by Janet Browne
  10. Earth Abides (1949) by George R. Stewart (2nd time)
  11. The Edge of Physics (2010) by Anil Ananthaswamy
  12. Farewell, My Lovely (1940) by Raymond Chandler
  13. Wake (2009) by Robert J. Sawyer
  14. Needle (1950) by Hal Clement
  15. The Windup Girl (2009) by Paolo Bacigalupi
  16. The Lovers (1961) by  Philip José Farmer
  17. Watch (2010) by Robert J. Sawyer
  18. Jesus Interrupted (2009) by Bart D. Ehrman
  19. The City & The City (2009) by China Mieville
  20. The Last Picture Show (1966) by Larry McMurtry (2nd time)
  21. Julian Comstock (2009) by Robert Charles Wilson
  22. Classic Women’s Short Stories (2005)
  23. Food Rules (2009) by Michael Pollan
  24. The Dragon Masters (1963) by Jack Vance
  25. Riders of the Purple Sage (1912) by Zane Grey (2nd time)
  26. Out of the Silent Planet (1938) by C. S. Lewis (2nd time)
  27. Little Brother (2008) by Cory Doctorow
  28. Texasville (1987) by Larry McMurtry
  29. Boneshaker (2009) by Cherrie Priest
  30. A Practical Handbook for the Boyfriend (2007) by Felicity Hoffman & Patricia Wolfe
  31. Duane’s Depressed (1999) by Larry McMurtry
  32. When the Light Goes (2007) by Larry McMurtry
  33. Hunger Games (2008) by Suzanne Collins
  34. Rhino Ranch (2009) by Larry McMurtry
  35. Beatrice and Virgil (2010) by Yann Martel
  36. Bonk (2008) by Mary Roach
  37. Catching Fire (2009) by Suzanne Collins
  38. Mockingjay (2010) by Suzanne Collins
  39. Packing for Mars (2010) by Mary Roach
  40. Robert A. Heinlein v. 1 (2010) by William Patterson
  41. The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger (2nd time)
  42. The Visitors (1980) by Clifford Simak
  43. What the Dog Saw (2009) by Malcolm Gladwell
  44. Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women (2010) by Harriet Reisen
  45. Freedom (2010) Jonathan Franzen
  46. The Fountains of Paradise (1979) by Arthur C. Clarke
  47. Monument (1974) by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
  48. A Great and Terrible Beauty (2003) by Libba Bray
  49. Starman Jones (1953) by Robert A. Heinlein (6th time)
  50. Rendezvous with Rama (1972) by Arthur C. Clarke (2nd time)
  51. Mindswap (1966) by Robert Sheckley (2nd time)
  52. Talent is Overrated (2008) by Geoff Colvin
  53. The Warrior’s Apprentice (1986) by Lois McMaster Bujold

Favorite Novel Read This Year:  Duane’s Depressed by Larry McMurtry.  This novel meant a lot to me because it was about a man my age coming to grips with getting older.  Duane’s Depressed is third of Larry McMurtry Thalia novels, with the first being the beautiful The Last Picture Show.

Favorite Non-Fiction Book Read This Year:  Jesus Interrupted by Bart D. Ehrman.  Historical analysis of the New Testament brings up many theological questions but answers even more secular questions.  I felt it goes a long way to explaining the origins of conservatives and liberals, if you look at this book with the right slant.

Most Fun Fiction Read This Year:  The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.  I don’t know why, but YA novels are often the most gripping page turners I read.  I was amazed by Suzanne Collins’ skill at developing characters and plotting.  She never took the expected route and always dazzled me.

Literary Read of the Year:  Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence.  It’s famous for the sex and dirty words, but it has lasting power because of its deep insight into human nature.  The story also chronicles the divide between the pastoral past and the early days of technology in the 20th century.

Most Admired Science Fiction Novel Read This Year:  The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.  I wished they’d make a movie of this book because it’s so visually imaginative.  It would also show the world outside of written science fiction where it’s at.  Movie science fiction needs to get beyond 1930s space opera.

Science Book of the Year:  The Edge of Physics by Anil Ananthaswamy.  This is the only science book from 2010 that I read this year, but it was an inspirational one.  Ananthaswamy took a tour of the world writing about the big physics experiments going on today that are exploring the edge of reality.

Inspirational Read for the Year:  Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin.  Like last year’s The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, this book is about how brilliant people become brilliant, not through innate talent, but hard work.  Last night I watched a documentary about Glen Gould, the pianist, and he fit Colvin’s pattern perfectly.  It really helps to have the right parents, not for their genes, but for their dedication to raising a successful child.   There are probably no genes for specific talents like music, chess playing, mathematics, physics, finance, etc.  But I wonder if brilliant people have genes for the ability to concentrate on one topic so intently.  Or, is even that. just a conditioning of hard work learned at an early age.  I recommend this book to anyone who is a parent and to anyone who wants to be a success at any task.

Goals for 2011

Again I want to push myself to read more contemporary books.  This year I returned to contemporary music and I feel very excited about music again.  I’m fighting a tendency of getting old of looking backwards and living in the past.  It’s quite delicious to cherish old favorite works of art but it’s also a kind of death trap.  Part of the vitality of youth is surfing the cutting edge of pop culture.  I don’t expect to rejuvenate by keeping current, but at least I hope to fight off brain rust.

JWH – 12/28/10

Movies I Love to Watch at Christmas Time

For Christmas 2010, Entertainment Weekly came up with their “20 Top Christmas Movies Ever” which included movies which I found downright bizarre to be calling Christmas films, like Gremlins, Die Hard, Trading Places and Bad Santa.   What kind of uplifting holiday spirit do folks get into from watching those flicks?  No wonder Christians are worried about the corruption of their sacred holiday.  Wikipedia does tally a very long list of what some people consider Christmas movies, but most of them miss the point of what I think of as Christmas spirit.

I am not a Christian, but I love the spirit of Christmas as defined by Charles Dickens in his 1843 book, A Christmas Carol.  Christmas is not about Santa Claus, Christmas trees or giving presents.  Christmas is about being grateful, compassionate and giving.  You don’t need to be religious to appreciate the struggle to become a better person by trying to improve the lives of people around you.  I love Christmas movies because I’m a selfish person and I need constant reminding to be more generous and selfless.

To me the classic Christmas movie to watch at Christmas time are those that inspire me to be more charitable, compassionate and considerate.  It takes a great movie to move me.  Die Hard and Home Alone are lots of fun by not uplifting.  And I really need to watch Christmas worthy movies all year round because I need steady inspiration to remind me to be less selfish.  That’s why some movies on my Christmas movie list would be bizarre to other people making their list of favorite Christmas movies.  For example, I think of Groundhog Day to be a great movie to watch at Christmas time, or any other time of the year to inspire Christmas spirit.

For me, a great Christmas film must inspire us to be more like Jesus.  Now that’s a weird statement to come from an atheist, but let me explain.  We know very little about the man Jesus.  Most everything written about him is pure speculation, especially about his birth and death.  But there is enough evidence to believe there was a man who tried to invent a philosophy about compassion.  That core philosophy about compassion is taught in many religions.  It has nothing to do with life after death, God or other metaphysical beliefs.  A Christmas Carol or It’s A Wonderful Life attempts to inspire this philosophy too.  I think it’s the spirit of Christmas.  It should work for both believers and non-believers.

With that said, I’d like to list some films I think are inspirational to watch at Christmas time.  Several of them are not about Christmas, but they are still great to watch at Christmas time.

It’s A Wonderful Life

A Christmas Carol (1938)

The Bishop’s Wife

Groundhog Day

You Can’t Take It With You

Miracle on 34th Street

Gattaca

Dances with Wolves

Battleground

On Borrowed Time

We’re No Angels

Little Women

The Shop Around the Corner

The Wizard of Oz

JWH – 12/21/10

Comcast–Customer Service

Comcast does try to fix things, but they aren’t persistent until the problem is solved.  I have internet and telephone service with Comcast.  Months ago my phone started acting up after many months of perfect use upon switching from AT&T.  I was also experiencing outages with my internet too.  The phone service is voice over IP, so it’s dependent on the internet.  The trouble was the outages were intermittent, the worse kind of technical failures for customer service.

When I’d call Comcast they’d run tests and tell me everything was fine.  I complained enough they sent a tech guy out and he tested stuff.  He checked my lines out to the pole and declared that everything was fine and I should call when the outage was happening so they could run a test.  The trouble is my phone doesn’t work when the outages happen, and my damn cell phone doesn’t work in my house.

Just when I was researching returning to AT&T my phone started working again.  It then worked  without any problems for several months.  I assumed Comcast fixed something in their system and nothing had been wrong at my house.

Well, the problem is back and my friends are again tired of trying to chat with me on the phone.

The outages are fleeting.  I’ll be talking on the phone and I’ll have random moments, seconds or even minutes, when the people I’m talking to can’t hear me.  I can hear them fine, they just can’t hear me.   My wife works out of town, so I like to talk to her, or other friends in town.  But my phone service is so annoying people don’t want to talk to me.

And I just don’t want to go through the same customer service rigmarole as before to get it fixed, when customer service didn’t fix it the last time.

Concurrent with the phone outages my Netflix is giving me trouble – and I’ve become quite addicted on streaming Netflix.  My daily life has become dependent on Comcast technology – for socializing on the Internet, talking on the phone, and watching old TV shows late at night.   I wish I could just pack it in and be content with reading books in the evening and live without the aggravation of fighting with Comcast customer service.  And it’s not that Comcast isn’t pleasant to deal with on the phone, they are very nice, but like I said, they are quick to get rid of me when they don’t have something to work on directly.

I wonder why they don’t build modems that automatically monitor uptime and just inform the central office when their service is out or deteriorating.  There’s no reason why they can’t build self-healing networks.  In fact, they should be able to build networks that notice the trouble, inform the central computer, email me an apologetic note saying there is a problem and they are working on it, and then send the technicians a diagnosis of the problem to be fixed.  Now that would be great customer service.

So what are my options?

  • Install my own monitoring tools and try to decipher the problem myself?  Even if I could provide event logs I doubt if Comcast customer service will want to study them.  It’s out of their work routine.
  • Wait for the system to fix itself like before?
  • Call AT&T and ask them to install U-verse?
  • Split my services so I go back to a AT&T land line but keep Comcast for internet (assuming things get fixed) and not have all my communication needs provided by one supplier?
  • Get a dual WAN router and pay for two internet services hoping one will always back up the other.  I could get a land line and keep the VoIP, so I had dual phone systems too.

Notice, none of my options expects Comcast customer service to solve the problem.  I sent Comcast an email and got a nice email back with several suggestions.  The same tips they give you to try when you talk over the phone.  Because my system works great most of the time, it shouldn’t be my system at all, unless it’s a flaky modem, and they claim they have run tests on it.  The email was much more apologetic than the phone person, but the results are the same.  They are rid of me until I try again.  But I’m tired of calling.  And I’m frustrated I can’t talk on the phone.  And I’m annoyed that Netflix has stopped working like it did.  And I’m depressed that my Rhapsody music stops and starts.

Ah, the woes of internet life.

JWH 12/14/10

Starman Jones, Then and Now

Memory is a peculiar attribute of consciousness.  Who we are, and what we know, is based on memory, but our memories are so damn faulty.  I first read Robert A. Heinlein’s Starman Jones back in the 8th grade, which was 1964-65, making me about twelve or thirteen.  That’s as good as my memory gets.  I wish I was one of those people like Isaac Asimov, who could say, on November 17th, 1964, a Tuesday, I was visiting my school library when I discovered a green book called Starman Jones – and it changed my life.  Well, I can’t.  I do know I discovered Red Planet first among the Heinlein juveniles, but I haven’t the slightest idea in what order I read the next eleven.  I doesn’t matter, but I wish I knew.  I think remembering all the details would have saved me from a life of absentminded existence.

I do have a few artifacts from the past that help verify my memory.  Below is a scan of a hardback copy I bought with my first paycheck of my first hourly job.  The book is signed by me 2/8/68.  I had gotten a job at the Winn-Dixie Kwik-Chek in Coconut Grove, Florida in November of 1967, when I turned 16.  I ordered all twelve Heinlein juvenile titles directly from the publishers and it took about six weeks to get them.  Next to my signature in this edition are three tick marks, meaning I had read it three times, but I stopped making those tick marks decades ago.

StarmanJones

I am sure I discovered Heinlein in the 8th grade because my 8th grade English teacher had put Heinlein on an approved reading list we could use for extra credit.  I had discovered a few classic science fiction books by then on my own, like H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, but I had not yet discovered the genre of science fiction.  I am 59 now and it’s extremely hard to imagine my 12 year-old self.  I’d give anything to have perfect memory of being 12 and reading this book for the first time.  I do know I was seriously into Heinlein by the Gemini space mission years and dreamed of growing up and becoming an astronaut.

I bring all this up because I recently listened to an audiobook edition of Starman Jones.  This is the second time I listened to the story, and I’m quite confident I read Starman Jones at least four times between 1964 and 1992.  For me, the book holds up extremely well.  And in the Classic Science Fiction book club I’m in, we’re reading it for our December selection.  Several people are reading it for the first time, and I get the impression they like it.  [Here’s Carl’s review.]  

Maybe Starman Jones will become a science fiction classic.  It’s among my Top 10 favorite Heinlein stories, and I consider it one of the Top 25 science fiction books of all time – but that’s my prejudice nostalgia talking.

Can I make an objective case why I think Starman Jones is a great science fiction novel?  Why does a book first published in 1953 for boys deserved to still be read by people of all ages in 2010?  Does it have qualities like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice or Great Expectations by Charles Dickens that make them readable and loved so long after they were first published?  Austen and Dickens wrote two of the greatest love stories of all time, and I’m afraid Max and Ellie are no Pip and Estella.  Max Jones is more like Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island, a young man who gets to travel very far from home.

Starman Jones is for anyone who daydreams of exotic adventures.  Starman Jones is for readers who want to escape their mundane life and see the universe.  That’s the key, I didn’t say, “See the world.”   The quintessential science fiction novel is about going to the planets or the stars.  Max Jones is an Ozark farm boy in the future that has an eidetic memory and has memorized his Uncle’s astrogation manuals – the mathematics for navigating in space.  Many of the book club members got into science fiction because of seeing Star Wars when they were nine.  Luke Skywalker was also a farm boy that wanted to go into space, and he had his own special hidden talent too. 

I think those overlapping story aspects reveal qualities that go into great science fiction.

I wish I could remember what being Jimmy Harris was like in 1964 – because being Jim Harris of 2010 isn’t the same.  Back then I was naïve enough to believe I would actually go into space like Max.  Now, I can only read books and judge them for their ability to help me forget that I didn’t grow up to live the life of the romantic fiction of my youth.  Why has the Harry Potter books become so successful with young and old alike?  I think we all want to be 11 again, and live in a world where we can find Platform 9 3/4.  Kid readers don’t know that magic doesn’t exist – us old farts don’t care that it doesn’t.

Starman Jones has that quality that makes readers believe in the magic of space travel.  At 59 I know I would hate being an astronaut, so I’m not reading Starman Jones for the same reason I loved it as age 12.  But this revelation might point to why Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations are great books in the same way.  When we’re young, reading those books make us  want to find love and romance in our real lives, but when we’re older, we read those books differently.  We know we’re too old for new love and romance, travel and adventure, except through books.  We understand why Dickens made up the story about Pip and Estella.  (Dickens wrote Great Expectations while he was an old man chasing a very young woman chaperoned by her mother.)

A great classic has to sell the future as a possibly reality to fuel our youthful dreams, but it is also has to satisfy us late in life as a substitute for waning love and adventure as a dying fantasy we embrace to fuel our wilting spirits.  I wish I could perfectly remember who I wanted to be when I was young, but then I wish my younger self could have experienced what I became – in other words, if I could have only known then what I know now.  If I did, would I have known when I first read Starman Jones what it would eventually mean to the 59 year old me?  Could a wise young me have thought, “This is the fantasy of my life.”

JWH – 12/7/10