lies like truth

A couple of years ago, while attending the NEA/Columbia Arts Journalism and Opera Institute in New York, a professor from NYU gave a lecture about how we listen to music. The lecture was mind-expanding though infuriating. The session basically consisted of the guy asking the same question — “how do you listen to music?” — over and over again. No one, including him, was able to answer the  question in a satisfactory way. “With our ears?” was about as close as anyone got, to which the professor replied, “yes, but how?”

My own pretentious attempt to respond to the question — something to do with hearing sound in terms of layers of melody and rhythm — was deservedly scoffed at and instantly dismissed.

I’ve given the question thought on and off since then, without making much progress. But while watching Thomas Riedelsheimer’s 2004 documentary about the Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie, Touch the Sound, a couple of days ago, I realized that maybe Glennie might be in a better position to answer the question than many other people.

As a profoundly deaf musician, Glennie often encounters the question, “how can you hear music if you’re deaf?” Glennie sees this line of thinking as an affront. In the documentary, she’s adamant that she hears music — with her entire body. What if we all hear music with our entire bodies and not just our ears? Perhaps ears are only part of the equation.

This thought lept out at me as I watched Touch the Sound, a film which in most other respects doesn’t provide any particularly interesting insights into the nature of sound or Glennie’s life and work. Riedelsheimer’s previous documentary — Rivers & Tides — about the envrironmental artist Andy Goldsworthy, was much more intriguing. The documentarian’s languorous, intuitive approach works much better I think for capturing the life of a visual artist than it does a musician. I found myself getting impatient with Touch the Sound. Romantic, endlessly lingering shots of Glennie thwacking a snare drum in the middle of a train station or burbling on a vibraphone in a disused warehouse reminded me of an 80s pop video. Rather than connecting me with her sound, the documentary estranged me from it.

Follow up:

Thanks to Jonathan Mayes of The Barbican Centre in London for forwarding a link to  a fascinating essay on Glennie’s website about how the percussionist hears music. From the essay:

A common and ill informed question from interviewers is ‘How can you be a musician when you can’t hear what you are doing?’ The answer is of course that I couldn’t be a musician if I were not able to hear. Another often asked question is ‘How do you hear what you are playing?’ The logical answer to this is; how does anyone hear?. An electrical signal is generated in the ear and various bits of other information from our other senses all get sent to the brain which then processes the data to create a sound picture. The various processes involved in hearing a sound are very complex but we all do it subconsciously so we group all these processes together and call it simply listening. The same is true for me. Some of the processes or original information may be different but to hear sound all I do is to listen. I have no more idea of how I hear than you do.

After four months, the rumors have finally stopped flying. The Board of Trustees of the Magic Theatre has finally appointed a new artistic director in the shape of Loretta Greco.

Greco takes over from Chris Smith, who is leaving the venerable 41-year-old San Francisco company this season after just five years as artistic director.

I am personally very sad to see Smith go. He has worked with indefatigable energy, generosity of spirit, and good humor to prop up the Magic’s slightly saggy reputation as a national landmark for new plays. It’s been tough going, to say the least.

On one hand, Smith has been instrumental in nurturing the careers of such up-and-coming playwrights as Betty Shamieh and Mat Smart, created a welcoming home for new work by established names like Rebecca Gilman and Josh Kornbluth, and pushed through the installation of the Magic Cafe — a great space to hear live music, check out production-inspired fine art, and discuss plays over a pre- or post-show drink. On the other hand, high-profile world premieres such as David Mamet’s Faust (which the author directed himself in 2003) and last fall’s staging of Bill Pullman’s Expedition 6 were artistic misfires, despite breaking box-office records. Commendable efforts to lure younger audiences to balance the theater’s maturing core clientele, such as offering discounts to under-30s, have so far done little to lower the audience’s median age. Meanwhile, recent season programs featuring a baffling assortment of mostly pedestrian new plays and turns by decaying celebrities like Joan Rivers and Marlo Thomas have undermined the company’s mission as a producer of “hot cool new plays.”

Still, the new appointment looks promising. I’ve admired several of Greco’s recent Bay Area productions. Her no-nonsense takes on David Harrower’s Blackbird and Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow at the American Conservatory Theatre have been slick and spunky. She also managed to make relatively compelling theatre out of Courtney Baron’s flaccid domestic drama Morbidity & Mortality at The Magic a couple of seasons ago. Greco comes to her new job with producing experience as the Producing Artistic Director of Women’s Project in NYC and as Associate Director and Staff Producer of McCarter Theatre, so it looks like she has some clue about the programming and management side of things.

The next few months should be interesting ones for Bay Area theatre. I’m also keen to see what Smith goes on to do next as a freelance gun for hire.

Did you hear the one about
the dyslexic agnostic with insomnia?
 He lays awake at night wondering if there
really is a dog.

According
to Yoga Journal, 54 percent of adults in the United States suffer from insomnia
at one time or another. Artists and writers seem particularly prone to this
problem. People who spend their days creating art or spinning ideas into prose
often have a great deal of trouble switching off at night. The other day, I
came across an unusual approach to the issue while doing some research on what
I thought was a completely unrelated bodily process – indigestion.

I don’t think there’s much of a future for me as a self-help columnist, but I can’t help sharing my thoughts on this topic. While
I have known for quite some time that eating too much of the wrong foods late
at night, such as caffeine or sugar, can keep a person up for hours as the body
attempts to process these substances, I always thought of indigestion as a
purely physical problem. Some foods keep the stomach churning and the esophagus
burning well into the night.

But
what I didn’t realize is how digestive afflictions can also be mental and
emotional.

Even if a person maintains a healthy diet and his physical digestion is in good order, he can keep himself up all night with his brain chewing endlessly over the previous day’s activities, cogitating about what lies ahead or attempting to make sense of how the world works. This is mental indigestion. The cogs whirr and it’s impossible to push the off button and sleep.

Emotional indigestion works in a similar way. Feeling upset about a painful memory or excited about a professional opportunity or personal relationship can throw us into maelstrom at night. Our pulses race and adrenalin courses through our bodies when we should be winding down for seven or eight hours of rest.

Unfortunately, the article I read online linking insomnia with indigestion (which I stupidly didn’t save and can’t seem to find again) didn’t go into how people suffering from sleepless nights might use this theory to help them get some rest. But I wonder if it might make sense to treat all three forms of indigestion – the physical, intellectual and emotional – in the same way?

Treating physical indigestion is relatively simple. I’m not talking about taking antacids to relieve the symptoms, but finding ways to prevent indigestion in the first place. These might include avoiding certain foods like wheat or dairy, eating more slowly, eating less and not eating for several hours before bed.

Perhaps the same thinking applies to emotional and intellectual indigestion. To avoid “chewing” thoughts and feelings over in the middle of the night, a person might try being less busy (“eating less,”) taking more time over their activities throughout the day (“eating more slowly”) and/or avoiding going to bed in an over-stimulated state by chilling out with a glass of wine and a trashy novel, having a bath or playing with the cat (“not eating for several hours before bed.”)

Depending on the seriousness of the insomnia, he or she might even consider more radical lifestyle changes, which would translate in physical terms as “changing one’s diet.” This could include anything from getting a different day job to deciding to talk through a problem with someone rather than keeping it to oneself.

Of course, there are many artists and writers out there who actually manage to put their sleeplessness to good use. They get up in the middle of the night and get on with their work rather than lying there in the dark picking their noses and wandering, like the dyslexic agnostic insomniac of the aforementioned joke, if there really is a dog. Yet tiredness is debilitating. No one, least of all those among us who have to balance making art with keeping a roof over their heads and caring for a family, can survive on little sleep.