Friday, September 28, 2012

Warrior's Rage


This is me and Gary.

Gary is a Vietnam vet, a tough, no-nonsense kind of guy.

To see him dance is like watching a hawk soar above the ground in search of game: smooth, graceful, effortless, constantly aware. He dances with a singleness of purpose expressed in every movement, no show, no exhibitionism.

Pure grace and power, Danger and beauty. The perfect dance of a warrior. I can only move smoothly and, awestruck, try to keep out of his way.

But if you'll notice, he's very blonde; up close he has electric blue eyes.

And when I first met him, a decade or more ago, I was stupid enough to think he was a Caucasian (or "white guy", as we Natives say), a member of what I've dubbed the "Kakkapoopoo Tribe", wannabes aspiring to connect to Native wisdom, as if seeking wisdom from any source wasn't a legit way to become wise.

Shows you how stupid I was. I've since apologized to him.

Because his parents are from Tahlequah, the tribal headquarters in Oklahoma, to which place my father has just recently moved.  He has 50% Cherokee blood in the Bird clan, which makes him distantly related to me.

It also makes me an even bigger fool.

Earlier this week a CBS affiliate in Boston released footage shot at an Elizabeth Warren rally, footage of major staffers from her opponent's campaign making tomahawk chops and fake war whoops at one of her rallies. Video feed follows ...



Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The argument from the pasty-faced, over-priced doughboys being that Dr. Warren should not be taken seriously because she's Native, that because even the small degree of blood she possesses disqualifies her candidacy.

No. I believe they think it entirely removes her right to aspire to a position of responsibility.

Scott Brown said, right off the bat in their first debate, that looking at Dr. Warren would tell you she wasn't Native. Then he waved the flag of "Affirmative action", guaranteed to get white men off the couch to vote her down.

"Because you are, you cannot".

One of the great lies in human experience.

I heard that lie buried behind so much of what I was taught during my formative years. I learned it between the shining lessons and discipline of my amazing schooling - on the playground, from "playmates", teachers on duty, my parents - eventually myself.

Learning from that voice - not drowning it out or silencing it, but turning it on itself as a bass line for really joyous music-of-life - this has been the greatest achievement of my recent years and it's only just beginning.

And now comes the mayor of Lewiston, Maine,  Robert Macdonald, telling the Somali immigrants that make up %10 of the town's population that they need to "leave their culture at the door".

"When anybody comes here from any country, they have to embrace our culture." Right. 

I'll drop by and visit him in his tipi anytime. What a dumb bastard.

"Because you are, you cannot".

Because you are gay, you cannot marry. Because you are Native you cannot lead. Because you are Jim you cannot be happy. Because you are fat you cannot dance. Because you are black you cannot vote. Because you are a woman you cannot have the same pay. Because you are a man you cannot cry. Because you are old you cannot learn.

One of the great lies. Buy into it and they have ropes tied to your very soul.

Belied by one of the great truths: because you are alive, you can.

Simple. How simple.

Monday, September 17, 2012

DanceLight

High and Congress Street - Portland, Maine.

Congress Square.

My daily constitutional.

After the Children's Museum and Theatre's Golf Tournament. After a nap on the Eastern Prom, a quick visit to wave at a friend and her daughter.

After an episode of "Top Gear" (the British one).

After seeing the bricks of the building across the street had lost their fireglow because the Sun had set.

Meine Spazierengang.

After the cemetery, the Exclusive Private Schoolyard, the Former Apartment Now A Condo, the House with the Tango Room in the Basement, the Dear Friend's condo, the B&B With the Strange Sculpture, the Old Church with the Bagpiper, the Scene of the Great Whorehouse Riot and after a stop for sobetto and a break.

After the Old Port Bar Row, the Shapely Women/Girls in the Twisty Skirts, the Tall Lady in the Classy Black Tights, the Cute Boys with Lattes, the Young Family with the Bouncy Little Girl and the Park with Large Stones Decorated with Tattooed Guitar Players.

After the Statue of the Unknown Lobster, after the Movie Theatre, after the Civic Center, after Portland's Oldest Pub, after the Children's Museum and the PMofA.

After I cross Congress to arrive at the last light before crossing High Street for my final stretch home.

After I follow my usual procedure and tap the "cross" button with my foot nothing happens.

The traffic light turns green but the "walk" light stays red. The traffic light turns red but the "walk" light  does not change to green.

The traffic crosses in front of me, continues down High Street.

The traffic passes  but with the "walk" light still  red a few pedestrians use the empty street to cross - but the "walk" light is red - the button has had no effect.

I tap it with my foot again and wait for the entire sequence. Still no "walk"light and still people cross over in both directions.  A cab driver turns right, in front of me, hesitating as if I'm going to cross but there's still no "walk" light so the cab driver continues, with the cab.

I walk to the other light on my corner and smoothly tap it with my foot, then wait for the sequence a third time. Still no "walk" light. The second button has had no effect.

Finally I give up. I run across High Street to the other side. It's only a simple, practiced motion to tap the button with my foot and then run back across High Street to the my corner to wait.

Sure enough, the traffic from High Street stops, the Congress Street traffic goes, the oncoming Congress street left turn comes toward me and then turns across and onto High Street, crossing in front and then on down and away. The button across the street seems to work.

And finally the "Walk" light comes on.  I jump, stomp. wiggle-hop, ocho and slide my way across the busiest street in the busiest corner of the busiest town in Maine.

And continue my walk home.

How do you celebrate your triumphs and joys?

Portland, Maine

Sunset and the Bridge


Related Facebook album is here.


Hard to believe the contrast time can cause.

This morning I'm at the Nonesuch Golf Course in Scarbourough. As a Board member of the Children's Museum and Theatre of Maine I need to support as many activities as I can, especially as I don't tread in the exalted financial levels that other people do.

So on this bright Monday morning I'm taking photographs, haring around in a golf cart documenting people having fun for a very good cause.

Saturday night I was on foot, wandering around the Western Promenade of Portland. I'd gotten off work late in the afternoon, stunned that I had to take yet another test to qualify for training at the Mothership in Cupertino, CA. I was pretty sure I'd already passed it two years earlier but we couldn't find the scores so taking it again was my plan B. (I went ahead and took it Sunday - passed, 90% - whew)

Melancholy feelings and the beauty of a sunset on a bright clear day both resonate at the same low note. This prompted me to get out of my chair and head out with my camera.

Both of Portland's Promenades - West and East - are vestiges of the old sea captain days of the city - much like my old neighborhood in Tulsa was on the edge of the "old oil money" section. The houses are old and evocative of long past ages, different economies and sociologies.

The Sun sets behind the White Mountains, on this particular day you could see Mt. Washington, some 60 miles away. Somewhere in all of that was the Arethutstra Falls, which I'd hiked a few weeks ago.

The light was golden but fleeting. The Fore River estuary spread out below me, the Jetport on the other side, rail tracks, the new Mercy-On-The-Fore hospital complex, the county jail.

Far below, to the right, was the new Veteran's Bridge, the back door to Portland. The old bridge was being disassembled, its green-steel skeleton stripped of concrete roadway, was a ghostly sight as day ended.

It was a quick drive down the Prom, a parking space in the old Stephens Point traffic stop and then I was out in the dwindling light, a tripod and camera back both in tow.

Photographing the new bridge has been in my mind's eye for a while. It's a very simple, modern span. A pedestrian/bike path, well lit with overhead cantilevered lights, runs along the side; the rails are low, you have a great view of the water as you drive over.

The late Summer - well, early Autumn, to be honest - air was becoming brisk. I'd brought a long-sleeved t-shirt to layer on but still wound up wishing I'd brought a jacket. Cars drove by, no one honked. Even with so much traffic I felt oddly, comfortably alone.

Intricacies of mastering a new camera - in this case a Nikon D-70, a gracious gift from my dear friend C - can take your mind off physical discomforts - at least for a while.  Lying down on the concrete to get the angle of a jet flying over can put your mind back on it.

Autumn is definitely arriving, Summer is leaving. The signs are around us, the celebration changes from a picnic to a dinner party, a symposium on living, on transitions.

I love this time of year. Of course, if you've known me for a while you know that I love every time of year.  I love it like I love a good Malbec, it has a rich, complex flavor that I really don't have time to think about as I experience it.

So complexity, introspection, harvest and transition - deepening and darkening. Good verbs, good adjectives.

Shall we see how the leaves dance?

Scarbourough, Maine


Friday, September 14, 2012

A Place to Start, A Place to End


This photo, I might have mentioned before, is taken from live PBS broadcast of the 1977 Drum Corps International Championships, held in Denver, CO at the old Mile High Stadium.

PBS did a closeup of me on the very last note of the show. Not shown is the shot that followed afterward, a medium shot of my part of the baritone section, arms raised diagonally in a "V", horn in one hand, index finger of the other pointing "one" skyward - as my silver cummerbund almost slid down from my waist due to the weight I'd lost in an entire Summer of marching and working.

Well, dignity and victory may not always go together.

Today, I'm please to report - they did.

click to see full size

The software is called Logic Pro and I use it almost every day to create and produce music.

My goal for today was to be able to demonstrate my knowledge of every menu, slider, button, dial and colored box on this screen shot. Not only what they were but what they did and most importantly - why one might want to use them.

And wonder of wonders, I did it.

This was my fourth try. Had I not made it there would have been "professional consequences" - namely I would have had to have taken another test, this one on professional photography software, which I sometimes use but don't know in detail.

I will take that test but for right now I'll settle for letting my soul unwind to enjoy what I've accomplished.

I'm not used to feeling success. That might sound odd but I'm not used to it. I am used to being successful - had I not been so almost none of my career would have happened.

What is odd is that I don't feel successful.  Oftentimes I feel arrogant or misanthropic or plain scared - but it's hard to let the particular feeling of joy in oneself come to the surface.



Many of my Facebook friends have been graciously tolerant of my reclusive behaviour - I've said before i'm barely human at the best of times, I know I've been unbearable these last few weeks - well, more unbearable than usual.

So with this test done, and in good measure (89.71 over 80 possible) I can focus on writing again, focus on teaching, dancing, building relationships - as much as I can manage it.

Most import, again, is that I can focus on writing. I have a lot to say.

So thank you for keeping me in your thoughts - I will try to be more communicative in future, as much as I can.

Just for fun the YouTube video for the music you see in the Logic Pro screenshot is just above.....

Portland, Maine

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

The Soundtrack of My Life



I have to admit it.

Most every moment of my waking life has some kind of music playing in the background.

There's never been a time in my memory this wasn't so. Looking at childhood pictures can bring to mind many things - for me the strongest impression is the sound that accompanied me - it was only years later that I realized it was called "music" and helped focus and clarify my tempestuous emotions.

It still does.

I would walk along and sing themes under my breath - sometimes full voice if I knew I was un-observed.  "633 Squadron" was a favorite. I remember seeing the movie at the impressionable age of 8, caught up in a boy's unknowing love of war movies - the story of a fictitious squadron of Lancaster Mosquito bombers sent to blow up a giant rock ledge under which the Nazis had conveniently built a heavy-water factory.

Remember the "Death Star" trench?  George Lucas explicitly stole the sequence.

I also realized, only today, when downloaded to my iPhone, that I'd been singing the main horn part wrong - I'd shifted it one eight note ahead - da DA da DA da da da daa daaaaah - it actually goes DA da da Da da da daa daaaa (ONE two three four five six as opposed to one TWO three four five six ).

No wonder I was such a messed up child.  But I could keep a beat really well.

Melodies from school, Mrs. Johnstone's music class, my trombone book, TV, birds, winds in the trees, pow wow singing, church choir (which, at the old Witt Memorial Indian Methodist Church, only sang melodies - never harmony - but did so in full robes) - wow, especially pow wow songs - all of these kept me going.




The next obsession happened between Elementary ("dear-ear  old Lee-ee, the school for me ...") and Junior High ("Horace Mann, dear old Horace Mann, You're the best school in the land ....").

"The Prisoner" was a summertime replacement for the Jackie Gleason show and still amazes and mystifies people today. The entire show had a strange, cheerful, bright, light-of-day Gothic feel to it and the music, by Ron Grainer (who also wrote "Doctor Who") still evokes mystery, hope and danger in a very British, rock-harpsichord-big band way - and as a budding trombonist, how could I not love his badass low brass writing.

It caught me so much that I made - and wore - a "Village" ID badge, the Pennyfarthing bicycle with a number - on the first day of school. Absolutely no one got it. I realize only now, more than 45 years later, how far that school was beneath me ....

Moving on ....



The 1972 David Wolper production of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" first caught my eye as a TV production short - a sort of "in production, coming this Fall" advert. I'd never read the Roald Dahl source book, not until undergrad school, but the music, by Bricusse and Newley, caught my ear - and this song, "Pure Imagination" has served as my anthem for decades.

The woodwind 9th chord - when the camera turns to show the Chocolate Room - was so wonderful that, trying to describe to my Junior College friends why I was seeing the movie so often - ultimately I lost count at the 350 mark (back before VCRs and DVD's) - I could only say "there is this incredible "CHORD" right then" - and that became my nickname in the Ultra Sonics performance group I was a player and arranger for.

The final line was a last-minute save by the screenwriter, David Seltzer. A curtain line was needed, the director, Mel Stuart, called Seltzer, vacationing here in Maine, begging him for help. According to legend, Seltzer called back to Munich (where filming was waiting) with the line "You know what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted don't you?" "No", Charlie replies.

"He lived happily ever after". End of film.

Wow.

By now I was into formally writing my own music (I started really composing in 6th grade), listening and playing jazz, early drum corps, string quartets (the Ginastera Quartet #2 was a particular favorite - though hard to sing ...) and my subconscious soundtrack became more understandable.

Now it's often a tango, often of my own writing - though I have to admit "633 Squadron" will serve me well on my morning commute.



So I leave you with Doctor Who - I especially like the 1:30 mark, the "hero/goodguys win" theme, because I think that's what I so desperately need to see myself as.

All this music - so much of it, from so many places - all of it is the steel girderwork that holds up my heart, that braces it and allows the rest of my poor soul to bear up under the thunderous pounding of my feelings and thoughts - otherwise I think I would have flown to unrecoverable pieces before the age of twelve.

More importantly, I have something to share.

If you have a soundtrack, let me know in the comments.

Portland, Maine

Thursday, September 6, 2012

The Last, Perfect Day of 2012


Associated FaceBook photo gallery is here.

Maybe it's a Native thing... at which point all but about 2 of you can stop reading - or continue and maybe learn something .... but it's really easy to see the moments of change from season to season.

At least they strike me very clearly.

The boundaries of one thing becoming another thing are like crystal to me. Perhaps it's knowing the taste of salt water well enough to know when you've left the rive and entered the sea.

Not really sure. I think that's it. I'm OK with not being really sure but still being sure enough to act, feel or think.

A respect and delight in ambiguity. Puns and tango. Never being quite sure which way I'm going to go and the best partners are the ones who are willing to rush in and tug in a new direction I hadn't considered.

The fruit-based tech company I work for actively encourages us to live in ambiguity, to make choices based inside it - and work with the result.

Yesterday I took an involved but fairly straightforward test on productivity software. Not hugely difficult but a challenge I'd assiduously prepped for.

It went well - next week I have an even greater professional challenge - Logic Pro, music writing software I use every day. This is arguably the most complex test we give. I've failed it three times before - the last by .24 of a point.

So I'm fairly confident - but confidence in myself is a very new emotion for me. It's not something I was encouraged to feel as a child. Many of my friends had parents at games, concerts, people who understood what was going on and not only were there (as were my parents) to attend but specifically told their child they were capable - that they were deserving of trying, that success came if you worked hard enough.

Apparently that wasn't something I heard. Self-confidence, the belief in one's own basic confidence to accomplish, deserve what is attempted, is a very scary feeling for me. Sounds like begging for disaster.

But yesterday was pretty much proof that wasn't always the case.

So after a small celebratory sushi feast - ambiguity indeed - I walked around the neighborhood with my camera.  The day was bright, warm. I'd dawdled over my gyoza and tea, the Sun had passed just a little too low to light the wonderful old brick buildings completely.


Still, the steeple tops were splashed with brightness, the shadows of leaves dappled them with jewels of light. Bright red sandstone was flush with late Summer sun's warmth.

Even the statue of Mr. Longfellow was a chiaroscuro etching against the westering Sun.

It felt good - and therefore strange - to just walk about and enjoy the day, to specifically continue the glow that started when my test score appeared in the passing category.

Usually I'd have shut it out and found something offensive in the water fountain or been frightened by the round of applause that burst out when I walked out of the test room door (Often at tango that gut-wrenching fear comes so fast I'm incapacitated and have to hide, often in plain sight). Maybe the curtsy I dropped in the moment helped fend it off.

Either way, the day was warm both because of what was outside and inside me.

I walk around dumbstruck by the beauty around me all the time.

I am surrounded by beautiful things and even more beautiful people and I love them all with a frightening intensity - as I've been informed on more than one occasion.

Just this once I was part of the crowd of lucky, happy people who could be themselves and just have fun.

The bricks were very, very warm. And very, very beautiful.