Things our teenager selves loved

I wasn't going to post anything about Michael Jackson, partly because of the everyone's-doing-it-so-I-can't (the same thing that sometimes prevents me from ordering the same thing as anyone else at the table), and partly because I didn't believe I really had much to say. Unlike every other person on the web, I can't remember when I first heard his music. From the current standpoint, there's no denying his impact on the pop music scene. I know I knew it growing up, and I know I never paid much close attention to pop music growing up. But it filtered in, and I think what Michael Jackson's death hammered into me was how quietly this music entwines itself with your life, even when you aren't looking. There's something unnamable about the music, something immediately likable about it (it's easy to see why it was such a sensation, even from those delightful Jackson 5 videos), something that leaves you saddened at the loss, a loss that began years before, and grateful that music is something that stays around. How fortunate a gift music is.

In the past few days, there have been tributes, there have been the awkward moments recalling the numerous Michael Jackson jokes that underscore that aura of sadness that enshrouded his most recent years, that misplaced idealism, the bizarre fixations on his face, the questions never answered, and most potent there has been his music, heard anew. I'm not sure whether it excuses or makes us forget the man himself, but it seems to have restored something of our faith in him. I've been tearing through the writings of Charles Ives in these days before the 4th of July. Ives has much to say about the character of man, about spiritual strength endowing music with substance. It's presented me with a conundrum, one which has been debated of late: what impact does/should a musician's personal life have on our appreciation of his or her music? Does Elia Kazan's naming of names affect how we receive his movies? It certainly did for years, as Karl Malden's death notices point out frequently. What of Wagner? It's a hard thing to reconcile, but I believe art is greater than a human's faults. Plenty of mediocre work is done by perfectly nice people. But whatever Michael Jackson's personal failings, the truth about which I'll never actually know, they don't take away the power his music, music that invites us to envision a world of closer unity, and even helps create it by sharing his music.

I'd love to close with a pithy line of Jackson's or Ives's, but all I can think of are the lyrics to Fame, actually. Even if he doesn't make it to heaven, he does light up the sky.

California Adventure

I'm back from grey, rainy, chilly (man, was I unhappy about that) California, where I attended the IASPM Conference, giving my Weezer paper. It's probably my favorite paper to give, if only because everyone promptly tells me how much they love the Blue Album, how they haven't listened to it in years, and how they're putting it on when they get home. I remember writing the paper for a seminar, and enraging the people who came upon me watching music videos and having the gall to call that work. The conference itself was entirely delightful, despite only knowing a couple people (and not that well), but relaxed and friendly, populated with a nice variety of disciplines happy to meet new people. Elsewhere in California, I enjoyed brief jaunts to the Warner Brothers Archive at USC and Bernard Herrmann Papers at UCSB, both of which were more or less successful (I wasn't sure what I was looking for at USC, and they don't have a finding aid, so I really didn't know, and UCSB had the Vertigo score but nothing else), a delightful chamber music concert at the beautiful Disney Hall (Dvorak Piano QUintet and Schubert B-Flat Sonata, two of my favorite chamber pieces), the SFMOMA's excellent Robert Frank and William Kentridge exhibits, the Exploratorium (a blast), a walk along the Sutro Baths, and of primary importance the company of a number of good friends I hadn't seen in years. Business and pleasure.

In other news, I'm intrigued by this pair of posts from Greg Sandow, discussing meaning in classical music in China and Palestine. In the former, he sees a lack of political content:

Rock, again, has meaning. Which means it has content. Rock songs say something. ...Classical music, by contrast, has no such content. You can study Chopin, let's say, without much chance that you're going to explode on the scene playing his music in ways that threaten any government.

In the latter, he writes that the music gives Palestinians a sense of escape, as well as a connection outside:

Classical music thus takes on a political meaning, precisely -- what a paradox -- because otherwise it wouldn't have any. You rise above any stereotypes others might have of you (or at least in principle you could) , and take your place in a worldwide enterprise in which those stereotypes no longer make any sense.

I think there's something to be said about the contrasts in how the music is viewed across (and even within cultures), and I will readily make the caveat that I'm not an expert in either of these two cultures, but these posts feel oversimplified. The comments do a nice job of drawing out at least some of he complexities. To me, these seem less about whether classical music has content (it always does) or what it is for whom (it varies), but about the intersection between the two. Classical music is easily seen as apolitical (is in the China posting), or universal (as in the Palestine post), but these ideas trouble me, about as much as the ideas about classical music as escapism trouble Mr. Sandow. Might we ask what it means for a state to sanction classical music at large, or more intriguingly, only by certain people or in certain contexts? Or what it means for classical music to be "international"? Which is not to say we should deny that these myths are very powerful ones (about as powerful as the myth of authenticity in indie rock, to bring it back to my Weezer paper), but simply acknowledge them for what they are- and what they aren't.

The other IMF

One of my other, nondissertation duties here is co-running the Interdisciplinary Music Forum. Most of the time, it's fairly small scale, things like organizing forums for students to share their work, inviting scholars to give talks, reading groups. But my favorite part is the two-day residency we hold with a scholar, and this year I was very very thrilled (as I think was everyone) to have Professor Philip Bohlman from Chicago.

Yesterday, he presented some new work and in conjunction with his highly-recommended book The Music of European Nationalism, opened up a discussion. His own work touched upon some fascinating bits including Jewish populations in Europe, parades, Herder's folk collections, and the Eurovision song contest. I know for me, it opened up some new windows of thought for my own dissertation. His distinction between national and nationalist musics strikes me as a rather important and undervalued one, and raises the question of how the national music is arrived at and how the idea of sameness is negotiated. I was also fond of the striking images Bohlman picks- the parade, the song contest, the Euro, the anthology. That's the art historian in me, which brings me to what Professor Bohlman's stressed at the very start: interdisciplinarity. The need for musicologists to engage with broader audiences, to realize that your dissertation isn't as narrow as you might think (actually he highly recommended writing your first book not on the dissertation). And Bohlman is a terrific role model for this. He is, after all, the author of one of the more foundational texts in my personal canon: Musicology as a Political Act. He also exposes the myth that there's some deep chasm in between historical and ethno musicology, between scholar and performer, between musicologist and anybody else. The only thing I'm not sure I'd want to emulate is his getting up before 7.

Oh, and the Norwegian winner of the Eurovision is adorable, the back up dancers are doing a halling and the song has been stuck in my head all day. See for yourself!

Fanboy

While everyone else was out seeing the Star Trek movie, I was seeing something else at the local theater. But first, an admission: I love sports movies. I rarely watch sporting events, let alone follow them, but put a formula will-they-pull-off-the-victory screenplay in front of me, I will root tirelessly. So I can happily report that Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 is nothing short of supremely entertaining. There's not much to the film: clips of the game interspersed with reminiscing interviews with the members of each team. But amongst the name dropping and bizarre facts comes little snatches of the political and social upheavals (or not) from that time. And not least, the game itself: WOW!

In other cinema news, I can recommend Adventureland and I Love You Man if they're still playing. The former (from the director of Superbad) is another entry in the coming-of-age-post-college film, dropping the bizarre humor of the Superbad and opting for sincerity. Sometimes, the earnestness and quirky atmosphere becomes sort of suffocating, but the lead actors sell it well enough. And I Love You Man is another study in male relationships, and whatever it lacks in insight, it makes up for in Paul Rudd's incredibly funny and appealing naturalism.

Finally, I'll put in a plug for Hunger, one of the grimmest and yet most strikingly beautiful films I've ever seen. It tells the story of Bobby Sands and the hunger strike in Northern Ireland but avoids any clear political lines or easy sympathies. Rather than a sweeping epic, chock-full of social meaning, we have a carefully detailed, claustrophobic, and ultimately immensely personal study of violence. If the first third is stomach-churning in its violent, shit-smearing realism, the final third is equally disturbing in its austerity as the hunger strike wears on. Dividing these bookends is a lengthy discussion of morals between prisoner and priest that strikes the perfect tone and weight, intense and vital, the center around which the swirling events are anchored. The movie is directed by the video artist Steve McQueen, and shows in its aestheticism and asceticism. Beauty has never been so viscerally haunting.

Spring Returns

In the past week, Ann Arbor has erupted into a verdant sea of nature, made twice as idyllic by the absence of tens of thousands of undergrads. And with that, I feel I should make my long-negligent return to the internet.

I have a lot to show for my absence. I wrote what will be my last academic class paper. This class, which I've probably raved about already, was fantastic. Ostensibly on film historiography, it presented a lot of theory and practice, dos and donts for any type of academic research. The class had 8 students, all of us with historiographic archival projects. Our penultimate and antepenultimate classes were devoted to workshopping our papers, and the last class to general musings about what else we'd like to learn, suggestions for the course, and good cheer- and it was held at a bar. This I approve. And I think the course helped me concretely, not to mention really pushed my research skills. The result, a 54 page paper. A paper I felt invested in, one I hope to convince my committee should be in my dissertation, and one that left me pondering what next. Writing and researching it was hell, hours and hours of microfilms, keeping track of over a hundred film reviews. But it's that energy, that feeling like your writing isn't just an exercise or the final step to dump whatever you've read but a process of continuing discovery.

Also, the end of the semester means grading. You know, I put on three Gene Kelly musicals, and just sat there grading essays until I finished. The exams are the sticking point here. I loved teaching, I loved the engagement with the students. We had plenty of great in-class discussions, and I felt like they not only grasped things, but could offer their own ideas and felt safe and encouraged to do so. That's a major victory. But the exams sink back to mediocrity- playing it safe by regurgitating ideas, convoluted and unengaged writing, and the occasional bizarre leap or interpretation that only builds my excitement for something daring but never delivered. And so I continue mulling over how to design an exam or paper that doesn't just challenge but encourages students to really engage personally. (Actually, I do like much of the exams and the papers, but it needs work as always).

But these things are past. It's spring, I can enjoy the weather. I had a lovely lunch today with three of my undergrad friends. And I'm making progress on my first chapter draft, which I started Monday and have found a nice, relaxed, productive pace to start the summer. Later there will be a conference, friends in distant cities, archival moments, and the usual. But for now, it's enough to enjoy that walk to the library through the green campus, and the satisfying walk back in the afternoon and put the computer and books away.

Musicology nice

I've been thinking about Phil's recent post on the subject of politeness and the lack thereof in our field.

A lot of what he writes I don't doubt its veracity, but I haven't seen it. I'm thankfully a couple years and a dissertation away from being on the job market. I've gotten turned down a lot for conferences, but I'm not vindictive about it, just resigned to keep trying. There are some people whose papers I find not terribly well-delivered or clear or maybe I just disagree with the premise. There are some I disagree with politically. There are some who, frankly, annoy me. But that doesn't mean I can't chat with them in the book room or that I won't listen to what they have to say, or solicit or offer advise when it's desired. There's room.

And I expect the same, not because I'm a musicologist, but actually because I was born in the midwest. I think a lot of it is a cultural thing. Midwesterners, I've found, do put on a veneer of niceness and politeness at all costs, and it's hard to break that expectation. I like to think that in most occasions it is deeper than that though.

One thing Phil talks a lot about is the high-small-stakes competitiveness. I'm not very competitive. And one of the big reasons I chose Michigan over the other school I was accepted to was because of the student interaction (not that the other school was competitive per se, but because I didn't get a community sense). I like the idea that you're part of a larger community of scholars and friends and mentors, and that there's room for disagreements of all sorts, but that doesn't mean we don't care. Or at least that I don't. And over the years, I've been witnessed some tackier moments from friends. Once someone responded to someone's paper by asking what conference it was from, and upon learning said, "Oh, you mean the one I got rejected from?" Please. That's not getting your paper in, and that's not helping the other student. At the same time, my silence probably wasn't helping either, but neither would severing ties. This is actually part of why I like community- when someone makes a bad comment, you can feel slightly better that it's not ill-intended.

And I like Phil's suggestions. We should be willing to listen, to rethink, to question ourselves and each other. That's not beneath anyone. And I'll add one more- make sure whatever you do is helpful. Promoting fear isn't helpful. Pointing out weaknesses can be, but in order for it to be, you have to know that the person means well. That's where niceness, real niceness, goes a long way. There's no denying the arguments get heated because we care enough to actually do this for years and years. But we're people first, scholars second, and there's a difference between calling someone's work idiotic and getting personal. So the midwesterner in me says keep it nice, and the scholar in me says keep it honest. I don't think that's contradictory.

Click

I've always been really bad at taking photos. I get too caught up in actually experiencing the moment to step back and want to preserve it. And as much as I like looking through photos which call to mind wonderful memories of a summer at dance camp, a house I used to live in, a pet I loved, a friend who moved away, a joke I shared with someone, there's also something captivating about looking at a stranger's photos. I do the thing at other people's houses where you look at their books (and music and movies) and judge them, but every now and then it's not half as attention-arresting as a candid photo. Oddly enough, photography exhibits intrigue me only to a certain point. No, there's a certain intimacy in photographs- personal memories that I think gets lost in most public photography.

This comes to mind, because I went to see Everlasting Moments last night. It's a wonderfully intimate film, anchored by an indelible performance by Maria Heiskanen, but I especially admire how well the film captures the alluring beauty of a photograph, equal parts affect and aesthetics. The movie is a sort of family history tale, of a family in Sweden at the turn of the century, of the father's love and drunken anger over work, infidelities hidden and assumed, the aspiriations of their children, but mostly about the mother and her discovery of a camera and what her forays into photography give her. The cinematography is lovely, spare, striking in its beautiful plainness, and the score is utterly effective, a fragile array of roughly-played strings and piano, as if Webern or Ligeti had arranged Hans Zimmer. Actually, if you know the O Albion movement from Thomas Adès's Arcadiana, it's similar to that.

I also really prefer the original title: Maria Larsson's Everlasting Moments. It really is her film, and these moments truly are hers, and the film respects that sort of intimacy and allows us to steal a peak at them. Broader themes impinge upon the story (the abusive husband, socialism, gender issues), but these scenes almost feel out of place when they threaten to tip the balance too much from the heart of the story, which is simply Maria's self-discoveries, small, quiet, but never insignificant.