Emergency Brake

My heart is broken but the shards are full from witnessing the outpouring of love and gratitude for Robin Williams and all the joy he gave the world. I could never look into his eyes in a photo or his expression in film or video and not see a depth of character that defied containment. My generation grew up with Mork as our crazy space cousin, and then all the other facets of Robin started breaking through as his particular genius unfolded throughout decades. The world has so much to miss and mourn, and we recognize it and are showing it. But I am a little amazed and further heartbroken at the idea of people who have reacted to Robin Williams' suicide with judgment. I understand the impulse to call suicide a selfish act. After all, everyone else is left to pick up the pieces. But this impulse to judge is wrong and comes from a place of fear and darkness that is its own separate beast.

Not only wasn't it a selfish choice… it wasn't even really a choice. Calling depression a choice, calling suicide a choice... is like calling being dizzy from an octopus ride a choice. You can't will yourself to not be dizzy if you're on a ride designed to make you dizzy. Clinical depression is like waking up somehow having been strapped into an octopus ride against your will. You have been on its tamer cousin a few times before, it's nothing you can't handle. You've even thrown up once from a ride that lasted one rotation too long. Maybe in a fit of boredom you even spun yourself around and around to simulate the ride. But you eventually figured out you didn't really like that ride, would rather go on a ferris wheel or a nice long stroll instead, and got off at the next opportunity, because it stops and starts all the time. The fluid in your ears sloshed back down and the world stopped twirling, and you went on with life. Set some goals, did some charity work.

But it is slowly dawning on you that this ride is different. It doesn't seem like it ever intends to slow down, let alone stop and let you out, and curiously you are too tired to feel scared because you are still feeling half-asleep. After the initial confusion there are different ways you can react. You can white-knuckle it and hang on for dear life, squeezing your eyes shut and not moving a muscle; you can try to briefly orient yourself by spinning your head in tandem with the rotations and gyrations until your neck seizes up; you can grasp the restraint bar with one hand and flail your free arm around and yell for help (although calling attention to yourself was never your wish, and even then, people on the ground look up and smile and wave back;) you can just go with it and throw both arms up in the air, cackling and whooping; when all of that tires you out further, you can contemplate the meaning of amusement park rides and wonder how long this ride is, who built it, who is at the controls, and whether you'd insult them by rejecting their sleek design; and finally, unable to stop the madness and unable to imagine it ever stopping, you can unstrap yourself and jump out. One thing you cannot do, and never did, is choose to be on this ride in the first place.

What you didn't know and couldn't fathom, was that any of the people on the ground could have run for the emergency brake at any time. Instead, most of them screamed as you fell, while a tiny few stood around - people who didn't even know you! - muttering inexplicably about selfishness, not even realizing which ride you were on.

RIP MorkGarpFisherPeterDoubtfireGenie... Robin. Robin. Thank you and we are so sorry. We thank your family for sharing you with us and for doing all they could to make your journey here longer and brighter.

ADDENDUM: this post has gotten a big response and I want to make absolutely certain I am not misunderstood. Just as I'm not judging suicide, nor am I advocating for it. I simply want to help people get inside that mindset and have a deeper, more empathetic understanding of it, so that everyone might be a little better off. By all means, seek immediate professional help if you are in that place. 1-800- 273-TALK. I would be one of those screaming on the ground if you didn't.

The Time for Singing Has Come

"Embracing the Journey" happens tomorrow evening, and there is much excitement, not to mention literal lightning, in the air!

There is a whole website dedicated to this event from director Ryan Ellis here. Go take a look!

Embrace the Journey

First off, I apologize but it turns out I inadvertently fibbed on my last post. Was so proud of having created everything from one source (MRI scan sounds) that I forgot that I also used a sample of Bermuda tree frogs. Okay then, a mere TWO sources, for all of the colors of the sonic rainbow. Still not bad, I say!

And then there is the string quartet. Can't wait to hear them tomorrow.

Here is the poster for the concert. It looks great. We heard more soloists at rehearsal tonight… and… just… wow. You really want to come see this.

Ah the Sheer Grace

(I have been electronically manipulating sound files of recordings of MRI machines and using these new sounds as the exclusive material for transitional interludes, as part of a collaborative compositional effort for an upcoming choral concert...)

It has been a powerful feeling to take this blaring, intrusive, mutation-conveying MRI noise and impose mutations back onto it, and in the process, take back a measure of control from an uncontrollable, impersonal void and reshape it into something with dignity and grace. The experience is transformative in the literal sense. In the same way that our challenges shape who we are as people, the underlying malignancy of the sound informs the end result which is all the sweeter for having transcended its own grim origins.

***

The above statement, while absolutely true, may be the closest I have come to an actual BS Artist Statement. The thing is, it really is the clearest way I know how to convey it in words. That it has so very many words, I will make no further apologies.

You should come to our concert August 13! The program will be amazing. The title of this post is a lyric from "Dark Night of the Soul" by Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo. It is very cinematic. OH! Funny thing: having googled a bit was going to say the sound, with its grand chromatic voice leading chord progressions is similar to what I remember the Alan Silvestri score sounding like for "The Abyss," and weirdly, it turns out Gjeilo has collaborated with a different Silvestri on a companion piece called "Luminous Night of the Soul." I love the internet. Ok, back to work.

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Been workin'

Just signed a contract. Can't say more, but very excited to share everything when it's time! Everything is Awesome, everything is cool when you're part of a team!

One thing I didn't really expect in this business but should have, is all the stuff I can't talk about. 

But, just so this post is not entirely vague, I'll tell you that 8/13 is a UW Chorale concert that will feature a string quartet playing interludes between pieces… beautiful little interludes...

Woof Woof

I've "embarked" on something big, and you can help fund it! 

http://igg.me/at/Oso-Dogs

It is actually an offshoot of something bigger I am working on: an orchestral suite honoring those affected by the mudslide at Oso, WA. Working like a dog, I am.

Brief, Heavy, Recurring

Not to be presumptuous or anything, but if you ever happen to want to look through a big picture window straight into my soul, when the sun is low and making the best shadow patterns, take a couple of hours and read a beautiful children's book by Lois Lowry called A Summer To Die. She can be forgiven the earnest, sledgehammerish title for the fact that right up front it spares you the shock that certain other children's stories are guilty of slamming you with, and because she is a gifted writer and it was her first of many children's books. You can practically feel her soul pouring into it from her own experience. If you need a simple catalyst for your own complex grieving process, you can walk through it with her. "It was Molly who drew the line" is still one of the most memorable first lines of any novel I've read.

The number of things I directly relate to in the story is, frankly, absurd. The quiet awkwardness of dorky, weird, brainy Meg compared to her outgoing, popular, pretty older sister(s.) Her preoccupation with creating delicately decorated eggs and of hiding behind a camera as a way of relating to people. The era when she grew up, with no hint that digital tech was soon to take over every aspect of life, Photoshop was about to replace the darkroom and texting would replace the phone. A new life arriving as an older one is exiting. And of course the primary element: the death of an immediate family member, in a hospital that she was too young to be allowed to visit. In fact I identified so closely with Meg that, for awhile, I had a not unreasonable fear of my own sister, with whom I bickered constantly, contracting something fatal and it would feel like my fault. The parts I directly identified with are so numerous (if she'd mentioned piano on top of everything else, my head would have exploded) that it only highlights what was different. I longed for my dad, or even a Will Banks as a surrogate dad. "It is Margaret you mourn for." It is Susan I mourn for.

Every few years I pick up my sister's old copy of this little book from where it rests and read it again as quickly as possible when I know it will be safe to have a little grief hangover. This morning I sniffled at my twelve year old son with his head nodding that I would love for him to read it, now or someday. It will always be there for him and for my daughter, and every page in it can give them a very good understanding of a very good many things. 

It holds up well. Go read it in the two hours you might have spent zoning out to another stream of click bait articles on the Twenty Most Insanely Amazing Whatevers That You Won't Believe. A book title "A Summer to Die" may be just as dramatic, but there is substance to back it up. The internet tells me that Lois Lowry has said, "My family, stoic, Wasp and Nordic, was silent after the loss." Yet another thing to relate to. I should contact her, and thank her. 

San Francisco

At the Musée Mechanique at Fisherman's Wharf. Nice bit of "coding" here...

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