The Standing Room

Lovely Rose, Gone

Bert and Tiny: sad, sad, sad.

Silver Apples of the Meem

...And, in fact, [Herb Blau] made the first season so uncompromisingly difficult from a social standpoint that he was fired after the first year.

BERNSTEIN: Oh, I didn't know that.

SUBOTNICK: We started with Danton's Death, which is almost impossible to do anyway.

A couple months ago, I was tagged by both Devin Hurd at HurdAudio and Peter Matthews at Feast of Music for the book meme that's been floating around for some time. In essence, pick up a book close at hand, open to page 123, find the fifth sentence, and post the subsequent three sentences. Appropriately enough, given the proclivities of the two gentlemen who tagged me, the book sitting at the top of the pile right now is The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde, edited by David W. Bernstein. (If you're unfamiliar with the history of the SF Tape Music Center, click here for a PDF of the Cliffs Notes version.)

The book release event two weeks ago couldn't have been more fitting. It was held in the basement of a public library a block off of Haight. I showed up about a half hour early, and nearly all the seats were already filled. I chose to stand (naturally) off to the side, and for the next 30 minutes watched the room fill beyond capacity. Every seat was taken, and all the space around the seats was occupied. There were even people standing outside the room in the entryway, standing on their tiptoes and craning their necks. They were of all ages, and it felt like we were all there to pay homage to these legends who had such a profound impact on the cultural legacy of San Francisco in the second half of the 20th century.

Stuart Dempster—whose Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel completely blew my mind when I first heard it about 10 years ago—opened the event by didjeriduing the room. (I myself have never before used "to didjeridu" as a transitive verb, but it was in the promo language for the event, so I'm not neologizing here.)

After we had been didjeridone (didjeridid?), the panel was about get underway when a very commanding, uniformed woman strode into the room and spoke to the event organizer. The fire marshal demanded that the room be cleared of most of the people who were standing, or else the entire event would be shut down. Honestly, all I could do was laugh, because how wonderful that the Tape Music Center folks, who are now in their 70s, can still bring out the fire marshals more than four decades after the premiere of In C.

Many of the folks did leave the hall, but those who stayed opened all the windows so that people could sit outside and listen to the talk. From left to right were Don Buchla (not pictured), Ramon Sender, David Bernstein, Morton Subotnick, Bill Maginnis, and Stuart Dempster. Terry Riley was scheduled to be there too, but had to decline at the last minute and sent his regards in a written statement. And Pauline Oliveros was saluted at length, and they played an excerpt from Bye Bye Butterfly (which manipulates an excerpt from Madama B., if you're looking for an opera angle here).

It was an extraordinary evening, listening to these artists tell their amazing stories of ingenuity, resourcefulness and creativity. By all rational standards there's no way they could have created the work they did with the resources that they had—or, more accurately, didn't have. And yet in the process they laid the groundwork for so many things that are integral to music as we know it today, including synthesizers and tape loops.

Unfortunately I only had my phone that evening, so for better images take a look at this Flickr set. There are also accounts of the event at Matrixsynth and Overlap (which includes a photo of people kneeling outside at a window, listening in).

The End of an Era:Bert and Tiny Kitten (1988-2008)

We let Tiny Kitten go on Thursday, less than four months after Bert's death. She, too, was 20.

She was in most ways a Yin counterpart to Bert's Yang: she was as reclusive as Bert was sociable, as neurotic as he was easygoing. She was sparing in her interactions with interlopers (i.e., our friends; indeed, some people we've know for years have really only seen her in pictures), but she was as big a presence as gregarious Bert, in her own kooky way (c.f. Koyaaniscatsi).

Tiny underwent a number of transformations in the time I've known her, from an itty-bitty frightened little thing under the covers to a big-through-the-hips roomy gal who dared to sleep on my chest, to the Empress Dowager barking out demands from her throne, and back to the tiniest kitten in the world, reduced to 1/3 of her peak weight, feeble and confused. The last transition was surprisingly fast, almost too fast for me to realize what was happening. On Thursday I was concerned when we got to the vet that she might still have some fight left in her, but in fact she passed in seconds, without any resistance in her eyes. She was clearly done.

And so in just a few short months a period in our lives has come to a quick close, the era of Bert and Tiny Kitten. We spent much of the weekend disoriented in our own home, unaccustomed to the stillness in the absence of our daily companions. While looking through a stash of old photos, I remembered that, years ago, I used to think of Edmund Waller's Go, Lovely Rose—"Bid her come forth,/ Suffer herself to be desired,/ And not blush so to be admired"—when trying unsuccessfully to coax Tiny out from under the bed so that one or another visitor could become acquainted with her loveliness. Upon re-reading it today, I was reminded of the final stanza, which immediately follows the lines above:

Then die—that she
The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee;
How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!

Good night, kittens.

Garden of Memory 2008

Each year on the summer solstice, the indomitable Sarah Cahill gathers the Bay Area new and experimental music community together for Garden of Memory, an extraordinary event at the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland. This is a venue like no other: it's a labyrinthine, Julia Morgan-designed columbarium that honestly defies belief. This year's installment is on Saturday, and I will be performing there for the first time.

The event features simultaneous performances in different spaces within the building by an eclectic collection of musicians presenting a variety of acoustic and electronic music, installations, and interactive events. The audience moves freely throughout the multilevel maze of internal gardens, cloisters, alcoves, stairwells, fountains, and stained glass skylights. Sfmike covered last year's event on Civic Center.

This year I'll be singing a set of solos and duets for unaccompanied voice by Meredith Monk as the solitary West Coast representative of The M6. My plan is to do a set of solos, and then I'll be joined by the delightful Elisabeth Commanday (pictured above, having an exceedingly bright idea) for a couple of duets from Facing North. The set will be repeated several times throughout the event, which lasts from 5pm to 9pm.

If you're interested, details are after the jump. Advance purchase is strongly encouraged, so that you're not stuck queuing up on-site to buy tickets. (Last year's event had 2400 people going through the space, so this is a real possibility.)

Parking is (of course) limited.

Short Stories:Vanya on 57th Street

Illustration no. 3 from Daniil Kharms’s Four illustrations on how a new idea disconcerts someone who is not prepared:

Composer: I am a composer.

Vanya Rublov: I think you are shit!

(Composer, barely breathing, falls to the floor and is carried out.)

h/t Vladimir Martynov, from the liner notes to Come In! (aka the music used by Jorma Elo in his exceptional work for the SF Ballet's New Works Festival; some video here of Elo's piece, though the music is Dvorak, not Martynov)

Short Stories:Tepper Goes Out

Tepper wakes with a start. He has to move the car this morning, before the street cleaners and their attendant Cushmen arrive. He hurries up the hill, buffeted by winds. He joins the community of groggy, pre-coffee sweatpants wearers, climbing into their dew-soaked vehicles. I won't be picky about my spot right now, he thinks, since I have to drive my car to the office in a couple hours so I can get to an appointment this afternoon. He ponders taking MUNI for a moment, but quickly dismisses the thought, knowing that MUNI can't get him there on time. He finds an OK spot, not bad, not great, and heads back down the hill for his coffee.

On his way to work later that morning, Tepper remembers that he likes driving his car. He hasn't driven it very much since gas went over $3 a gallon some months back, but he does enjoy driving it. It's just parking that he doesn't like. Approaching the office, he finds an OK spot, not bad, not great, but it's not a big deal because he won't be there long: he has to go to an appointment that afternoon.

Around 12:30, Tepper puts on his hat and heads back to his car. As he approaches, he sees his old friend, who has gotten pretty beaten up over the past decade, but it still runs true, despite all the squeaks and squeals. As he head up and down another hill, taking curve after curve, he remembers again that he likes driving his car. He arrives at his appointment on time, and as he pulls up, he sees a Great Spot, in a four-hour zone just across the street. It is one o'clock, and he is pleased.

Three hours later, he emerges from his appointment, tired but satisfied that he has done good work. He walks across the street to his car, and gets himself comfortably seated. And then he sees it. The envelope. The DPT logo flapping in the wind. How can this be?, he asks himself perplexedly. He gets out and looks at the parking sign. "Four-hour parking," the sign proclaims magnanimously. Puzzled, Tepper removes the citation from the windshield.

"Time car checked: 9:51 AM. Time citation issued: 2:45 PM. $50."

He cannot muster up indignation any more, much less anger. This has happened too many times. He thinks back to the time he sat in the DPT hearing office with multiple affidavits in hand proving that he could not have been where the citation said he was at the time his car was purportedly checked, and relives the disbelief upon hearing the arbiter say that the only acceptable proof would have been a garage receipt that covered that precise moment. He considers the fact that his $50 will go to subsidize a dysfunctional MUNI system that is run by the second-highest paid employee in the city, a system he would have used himself that day had it been reliable enough to get him to his appointment on time.

He puts on his hat and climbs back into the car.