Humanity sans humane

It’s time, now that vacation has arrived, to restart this early morning automatic writing thing that I used to do. It always produced interesting thoughts, and it definitely filled up my blog, even if it bored some of you to tears. At least I could say then that this blog contains the whole gamut of human emotion, especially since I can be pretty sure that frustration and anger have been induced in my readers from the beginning. Now, what about love. Pesky little bugger.

On Saturday night Chris and I were walking home from a party, we were both quite drunk, actually, a rare occurrence for us both. We were about 5 minutes from home and we passed an apartment where a heated argument seemed to be taking place. It’s hot in Europe now, and all the windows are open, allowing one to hear on the street just about everything that goes on, even, as is this case, on the second floor of a building. Something bad was going on up there, I could just tell. We started to walk away, figuring that it was a typical social disturbance. Then we heard glass breaking and woman’s voice screaming bloody murder. I said, “Should we call the police?”

Ok, people, I just have to pause here to say, if the words “should we call the police” ever come up in conversation, just call them. What if they come and end up breaking up a completely benign fight between husband and wife, all is well, and the police leave? What has one lost in such a thing? If you get the feeling that you might need to call the police, just friggin’ call them.

There was something so horribly eerie about the sounds we were hearing--screaming, yelling, even moaning. I could see a man standing in the middle of the room raising his hand into the air and then down again with some kind of shortened belt in his hand. Chris called the police, in his typical, polite telephone voice. “Tell them it’s urgent”, I said. “It sounds like someone is being beaten to death.”—not, in my estimation, an exaggeration.

The horrible time that one is forced to wait, helpless, as the police or ambulance arrive on the scene after a call, can seem, to me, unbearable. The helplessness is the part that cannot be rationalized in any way; it will not later give way to self-forgiveness or absolution. Just standing there, being forced to hear the sounds of someone, presumably helpless, being beaten, systematically, over and over, until their cries become weaker and weaker, is a sort of torture all of its own set. Frightened, I could not take my eyes away from that window, even when I really should have just plugged my ears and ran away like an innocent child, blocking out the poison of the world, running back home and crawling under the bed.

In a glorious example of Pforzheim and her police, it could not have been a very long, extended dream sequence, as I seems it could have been. It really could not have been more than 30 seconds before a squad car came screaming down the street and to the house. I was inclined to stand and watch, insanely curious to know what these horrible sounds that I had heard meant. Was someone dead? Would the ambulance bring out an unconscious wife and rush her off to the hospital? Or, would we wait and wait only to see a gurney completely covered on its way to the morgue. Thank God for Chris, he simply said “Let’s leave it to the police. They have it covered.”

It seems to me that had I seen something in particular instead of just shadows and amorphous figures, I may have been able to block it out of my mind or to somehow understand it, uncomfortably digest it, and quickly move on. But, it was the sounds, those horrible sounds that upset me all the way home, and for the remainder of the evening. How horrible sounds can be. Maybe being a musician makes them even more dramatic. But the live sounds, traveling through the air of a horrible situation just hurt me terrible. Terribly.

My commentary really is: sometimes it is so horrible to be a member of the human race. What people can do to each other is simply unfathomable to me. These sorts of things occur especially in families in heated rages, someone being beaten into submission, perhaps having embarrassed the family unit, or the father. Women getting acid thrown into their faces in Pakistan for not wanting to marry a suitor, being permanently disfigured, the “if I can’t have you, no one will.” in its most terrible form. Public rapes in town squares, punishing women for having shamed the family in some, bizarre third world way. Women being beaten into submission for speaking their minds. How can people do such ghastly things?

A Little Man with Big Ideas

Did I ever talk to you about the little man that lives in my belly? Remember him? Yeah, he’s this little guy that, for a long time, was given no power over me and appeared to be sleeping. I discovered him, and, through meditation, have slowly come to realize that I have to become really “centered” in order to listen to him.

He is me, you see. He is the wise old man that is my inner self. Any of you that really know me can understand why I identify myself with a wise old man—kind of act like an old man, anyway. (It was a horrible commentary on my lack of fashion sense when I looked around the chorus the other day, realizing that the only people that dress like me are all retirees. What’s up with that?)

Anyway, as time went on, I began to understand certain things about myself, and the little man that had been given no voice. In time, he was given freer reign over my psyche, letting go of my silly, often illusory and child-like conscious desires, and, replacing those with sounds from the deepest part of me—the supposed real me.

Jayne say that I will be ready to start auditioning by January, and, after my last lesson, she was so enthused (even more so than me) that she recommended that I go coach with the main vocal coach from Mannheim, so that I can get my repertoire ready for the Spring. Wow. Translation: she’s convinced that I am going to come onto the scene with a grand entrance. It is really inspiring to see her exuberance.

Anyway tying this all together, I spent much of my life convinced that I had something to give. I kept trudging along even when it appeared that I was going to be a has-been, over.thirty, loser singer with no real future. Coming to such psychological lows, though, has helped me, allowing me to realize that life can still be complete even if the little, oblivious man seated in the cockpit of my brain thinks that I have veered fatefully off course. The Driver, though, is the part of our consciousness that thinks we are in control of our own destinies, that we can plot our own courses, and perhaps the most silly of all, the Driver thinks that he knows what we want and need.

Focing myself to let go of these stupid notions was what the circumstances of life over the past few years have given me. Being able to work in a chorus and see, up front, in focus what this career actually has to offer allowed me to take the mystical ideas out of what it means to have mzusic as a job. Knowing that my life can be a happy one without a solo career, that life can go on, often beautifully, if one listens to oneself and is open to what life brings are the lessons that have allowed the Old Man to come out of the recesses of my inner dungeon.

The Bombing of Bayreuth

My friend Amanda Mace, with whom I went to UMKC, is singing in Bayreuth. This year she is singing one of the Valkyries in Walküre and next year she will sing Eva in Meistersinger. Anyway, she wrote me an email last week asking if I want to come and see one of the Final Dress Rehearsals of one of the shows. I said “hell yes”, of course.

To those of you who do not know: Bayreuth is the theater that Wagner, with the help of the Mad King of Bavaria (Ludwig II—yes, the one that built Neuschwanstein.), built to highlights his own works. The theatre was designed according to Wagner’s specifications and is still run by his direct descendants.

Basically, people who really love Wagner are a part of the sort of very strange cult that live in a completely different time period. They would be most like some kind of creative anachronist, but without the clothes. (At least those people can go back to their regular lives after a bit of jousting on the weekend.) Wagner fanatics tend to be intellectuals that take “affectation” to an entirely new level, almost taking that “crazy yet brilliant”, “weird but in a questionable way” thing to its most sheer, incredible edge.

I felt I was a casual observer in the proverbial lion’s den seeing Das Rheingold on Monday. I had studied Wagner extensively in a doctoral seminar that I had taken before coming here, so I already felt that I was “filled to the brim” with needless, pointless knowledge about the great man and Gesamtkunstwerk creator himself. (God, using this word is like some kind of fucked-up name-dropping. Oh well, it doesn’t stop it from being a cool word.) The other students of the course started with about the same mindset as myself when the course began: Wagner is an egomaniacal, anti-Semitic blowhard who was more of a conman than a genius. What is interesting is that, after studying him for that semester, I can safely say that our prejudices were only fulfilled and strengthened by our further knowledge of him and his “creations.”

The famous thing about the construction of Bayreuth is that Wagner designed it so that the orchestra plays under the stage. The sound comes out from a small slit that is in front of the stage. I never realized, though, that, in addition to this, there is a shell above this slit that redirects the sound onto the stage where it mixes with the singer’s sounds and then bounces back into the audience. I had always thought that the stage of Bayreuth was ideal for Wagner’s works because boxing up the orchestra meant that the singers didn’t have to sing their guts out just to get past the wall of sound that an orchestra can often be. That’s not really true, though. The singers all had big voices on Monday and they were using them pretty much to capacity the entire time. These brilliant “pianos” that I had always heard about coming from Bayreuth’s stage seemed either to have not happened at all, or maybe I just missed them.

The most surprising thing was how this “ingenious” idea of an operatic concept, that of putting the orchestra in a box, made all of the orchestra music sound extremely muddy and amorphous. All of the brilliant rising and falling violin articulations sounded like some kind of sonic swoop and the brass sounded like it was being broadcast from a Victrola. The singers, too, when their sound was mixed with this, tended to be very, perhaps too, homogenous in nature. It was like a big waft of sound came lulling over me from time to time, undulating not unlike a calming sea. That effect plus the fact that they performed it as the Great Master had intended it, from beginning to end without a break, meant that in this 2.5 hour multi-million dollar extravaganza, my eyelids were, yes, getting heavy. What a total traitor! A classical musician, and even Heldentenor almost fell asleep in Das Rheingold? Yes, it’s true.

But, whereas Wagner’s genius is often cited in his using secondary dominants, extending the typical tonal rhythm until one finally gets a great fulfillment when the whole thing resolves itself (for one second before moving on to something else...God, Wagner was such a CT. No, not ‘cock tease’, a ‘cadence tease’.), his genius should never be seen as the way that he actually ordered his operas. Das Rheingold is practically one voice singing after another, without any real melodies, no real ensembles, no big chorus scenes and no ballet. The whole thing is like some kind of souped-up recitative. I have some bad news for you Richard, no one wants to hear that for 2 and a half hours!

Wait, I’m obviously wrong. The place was packed, and will be sold out of every performance of everything they run this year, as it is every year. And, if you are wanting to come and see something, you had better apply for tickets now, because the waiting list in 7 years long.

Do you have to be German to love Wagner? No, but, it obviously really helps.

Anti-Semites masquerading as Germans?

Because Emma was not eating at all, was barely drinking, and was barely able to move around without become completely disoriented, Chris and I decided that it would be cruel to wait until Saturday to put her to sleep. We went to the vet on Friday morning. The vet gave her a narcotic that made her sleep, we petted her, cried a whole heck of a lot, and said our goodbyes. The doctor came and collected her and gave her something ending her life, and put her in a box.

We decided to bury Emma in my Schrebergarten. It took us nearly two hours to dig a whole deep enough for her (the ground in the Schwarzwald is as hard as stone, because so much of it is made up of just that.) I said a prayer, read “The Runaway” by Robert Frost and “Going to Heaven” by Emily Dickinson and we covered her body with earth and planted sunflower seeds on top.


As one may expect, the news about the conflict taking place between Hezbollah and Israel is headlining the news here. What is most interesting, though, is how much the slant is against anything, and I mean anything, that Israel does. A notorious hick and the son of a Czech farmer, one of the long-time members of our chorus was informing me of why exactly everything that Israel was doing was horrible. I asked him, since he seemed to be an expert on Israel, how many Jews there are in the Czech Republic. His response of “many” intrigued me enough to dig up some statistics.

The Jewish Virtual Library, using its 2005 estimates, say that the Czech Republic, a country of 10,241,138 citizens has 3,072 Jews. This means that Jews make up 0.03% of the Czech population. This certainly begs the question ‘what does “many” mean, then’?

Germany, in 1901, had 56,400,000 total citizenrs of which 586,948 were Jewish. (At that time, 1% of the population.) Today, Germany has 82,431,390 citizens, 107,160 of whom are Jewish, bringing their percentage down to 0.13%.

Hitler’s “final solution” sought to bring Jewish culture to an abrupt end by simply eliminating every last Jew in his over-reaching territories. The holocaust saw the murder of 6,500,000 Jews, bringing, both by his immediate actions and those that followed, the percentage of German Jews down from 1% of the population to 0.13%. As sick as it sounds, he succeeded, at least partly, with his goal.

What is even scarier than the numbers is that the people who are most hardcore against just about everything that Israel does are the Germans that I come into contact with at my job. And, as a side note, because there are no Jews left here, they have no idea about Jewish culture whatsoever. They don’t know what a Yarmulke is, or a Bris. Astounding as it may be, the typical German doesn’t even know what a Bar Mitzvah is.

The ultraconservative bass in the choir who was born and bred in this little town showed his real colors yesterday, proclaiming that the rising gas prices were because of the Jews. The funny thing is, these people think that they’re not being racist in any way by being completely prejudiced against the State of Israel, because they don’t say things like “the gas is going up because of the Jews.” No, no, that would be too obvious. Instead they say “yeah, and look at the gas prices, that’s because of the Israelis.” Hmmm. Doesn’t take a total genius to read through that.

I don’t agree with everything that Israel has done in this conflict. (I especially do not agree with the shelling of Beirut.) But, the Jews are surrounded by a bunch of third world people who would like nothing better than to see every Jew wiped from the face of the Earth. Hezbollah is funded by Iran, a country whose president has said publicly that the holocaust did not even happen. When their soldiers come across the border and kidnap Israeli soldiers to use as ransom, there should be no big surprise that a strong response came from Israel.

Can you imagine what would happen if Mexico were harboring thousands and thousands of terrorists on the US border, and some of them came across, killed some US soldiers and took several others as hostage? Yes, we would be pissed as hell and bomb the shit out of them. And, you know what, they would deserve it, in my opinion.

Yes, it has gone too far and Israel has been a bit too over-bearing. That being said, let’s not forget that it was not Israel that crossed Lebanon’s border, it was the other way around.

Emma

I took Emma to the vet again this morning. Her condition has only worsened, and, as I had suspected, we will have to put her down. I asked the vet if she had a week, and she just shook her head slowly in response. Chris wanted to be there, too, so I set up an appointment for Saturday morning. The vet will give her a narcotic and then Chris and I will be able to hold her as it takes effect. The three of us will be together for one last time. And then she will pass on.

I called Chris to tell him the news and he came home from work early, because, understandably, he was quite upset. We lay in bed in each other’s arms and just wept and wept. Then we heard a “peep” and it was Emma, barely able to move, coming in to see why we were so sad. She was coming to comfort us. She has, really, no energy at all, but wants to be near us. I think she knows what is going on better than we.

I’m just so torn up about this. I know that it is just my own pessimism getting carried away, but I can’t help but feel this extremely bitter feeling, unable to accept that life seems to take away all those things that are pure and good. She is just such a sweet cat, you know? Just so sweet.




When I calm down, because the grief travels in waves, I realize that we must remember that life is not permanent. The Buddhists are right about this. The Tibetan monks often make elaborate works of art using colored sand. “Mandalas” take days to finish. Then, people can come and observe the beauty that was created. Then, in a final, telling ceremony, the monks simply brush the sand away, emphasizing that, because life has no permanency, we must not try to hold onto it.

We have only today to appreciate the souls that have come into our lives. As cheesy as it may sound, please do me a favor, and tell someone that you love “I love you.” today. Just do it, now, while you can.

Die Anerkennung

Emma, my little cat of 13 years is dying. The vet thinks that she has Feline Renal Failure, a disease that often attacks older cats, disallowing their kidneys to function properly. She has become emaciated, weighing only 2 kilos. She simply won’t eat. She has constant thirst, a common effect of the disease, but is terrible weak, and my once-spry cat who always welcomed me home from work, always followed me around, and lied next to me while I wrote, is now barely finding the energy to walk. Twice yesterday she tried to jump up onto things in the house, completely missing the mark and tumbling to the ground. I cannot tell you how terribly tragic that is to see.

And me, like a veritable child, wept myself to sleep last night, remembering, even before she is gone, how this little cat was, for years on end, my only companion, watching out for me, always seeming to show up to delicately meow in her little soprano, cheering me up even in my darkest hours. As hyper-romantic a notion as it may be, I always thought she was sent to help me get through this life, giving a little nudge here and there to keep me going. When hope was lost, she came to me stroking my hand with her little head until I would pet her, and she was right, I did need that, and it did make me feel better somehow.

When I was in my undergraduate in Cleveland, I went one day to the animal shelter to get a kitten. They were all grouped together in massive cages; the entire room seemed to be simply swarming with kittens of every kind, shape, color. It was an impossible decision...should I pick the prettiest one, the funniest one, the most energetic one, the most docile one? Finally, I just ended up sitting in the middle of the room knowing that such an idea was senseless. My cat would pick me. And she did. She just stood, calmly there, with this aura about her “ahem. um, yes, I believe I am meant for you...over here.”

The humane society gives cats away that are supposed to be about 6 weeks old. I have a hunch, though, that she was much younger. I had to teach her to use the litter box, a trait that she, presumably, should have learned from her mother if she had been with her long enough. I cannot tell you with what degree of fear I tread those first days, fearing that me, a 6 foot 3 man with size 14 shoes would accidentally end her fragile existence. Even today I wonder if my occasional need to shuffle my feet came from those days when I refused to actually lift them and walk normally for fear of finding her, unexpectedly, under one.

Emma was always just the right combination of loveable yet independent, never demanding too much attention from an already self-absorbed host. I did the best I could for her, though, and I have to keep re-assuring myself of this, as I start to feel guilty, especially for leaving her behind for 2 years as I tried to start my career here. Those 2 years must have been torture for her, not knowing why I had abandoned her, even when she was so lovingly looked after by one of my dearest friends. But I have to stop thinking about that. I did what had to be done.

Last night was a bitter reminder of what I must now do. As I cried, reflecting on all that Emma has meant for me, I began the first stage of the mental process whereby I will be able to, eventually, make a decision that will be for Emma’s best. This disease will eventually rob her of her will, of her happiness, and even of her mobility. Before she gets to the point where her life has so deteriorated, though, I will have to decide to let the Veterinarian put her to sleep. I know in my heart that this is a decision that I will have to make, and that it will be difficult, but that I will do it because it will be for her own good.

The poor little thing. I just hate to see her like this.

The Held Held Up

Things have been going well.

I am getting more and more excited because my lessons are really getting better. I, for a very long time, have listened to my lesson tapes with pure fear oozing from me, practically clutching the arm rests while listening, and hating every sound that I made. Well, I can kind of understand that, though, because, frankly, a lot of the sounds I was making were pretty ugly. That being said, though, I also needed to change my perception of what “beauty” really is. Wagnerian singers do not tend to have what most people refer to as “beautiful” voices. They always get adjectives like “big”, “strong” or “powerful”.

After seeing Parsifal in Frankfurt where Stuart Skelton sang the title role, I left feeling somewhat disappointed. The production was wonderful, overall. The chorus was fantastic. (Alexander Marco-Buhrmester as Amfortas was truly impressive—I could have written his text as in dictation, his diction was so good. Michaele Schuster was also quite a wonderful Kundry, even if she was a bit too sexy for the part.) A friend had recommended Stuart after having heard him in something else, and I made a special trip just to hear what other people in my Fach sing like. He had a very pretty voice, yes. But, it just was not powerful enough. There were many times when I simply could not hear him. “Heldentenor” translates as “heroic tenor”. It doesn’t always need to be pretty, but, folks, it does need the capacity to be loud.

In other news, my friend Karen came to Germany and somehow forgot to look me up. Actually, I was terribly upset by this. I REALLY wanted to see her. I also really wanted to meet the man that she married. Of about the 20 people that I know in New York City, I wanted Chris especially to stay with her. I have always felt a very strong kinship with Karen wanted Chris to know her. She was a wonderful host for him and he was really looking forward to returning their favor by hosting them here. He even shortened his vacation to Hamburg by two days in anticipation with their visit on Friday of last week. When she just didn’t show up and then sent an "sorry we missed you" email after having gotten back to America, I was very hurt. When will the next time be that I can see her? It will be years and years before I end up in NYC again, and I am assuming she doesn’t plan on making visits to Germany an annual outing.

I guess part of my hurt, too, though, is because I thought that we were closer than that. I didn’t think that she would just blow me off. Imagine for a moment that you haven’t seen someone that you actually care about for years. They come within 30 minutes of where you are and don’t connect with you. Do you see it as some kind of not-so-subtle rejection? Yeah, me too.

Tonight the craziness is going to be over. The French and the Italians are hashing it out as I write. I want the French to win. i find their style of playing to be quite “gentlemanly”” somehow. The Italians play with a lot of gusto, but the French have got such a precision with their feet. You gotta love that.

Ok, I take that “gentlemanly” thing back. Zidane was just thrown out for head-butting some guy in the chest. What an ass.

Sent in, Helmut in hand.

Sure enough, not long after that last entry, the riot police were sent in. Fans had started to gather on the corner of Leopoldstrasse and Zerrenerstrasse, the Italian fans on one side, and the German fans on the other, creating a dangerous mix that was blocking traffic. They were both taunting each other, and it seemed that trouble might ensue.

Sorry it's so dark and of sub-poor quality:



Not long after, the mob dispersed, though. Trouble averted.

This reads kind of like an over-dramatically police report, doesn't it?

Riot Mix: add defeat and stir.

There are a lot of unhappy Germans in the world tonight. Italy has won their place in the finals of the World Cup. Pforzheim happens to have a lot of Italians, “imported” here in the 60s and 70s because of a German labor shortage. They are on the streets at the moment reveling in their success. Unfortunately, though, frustrated, German hooligans are on the streets with them. This can only spell trouble as I have already witnessed several groups antagonizing each other in the street below my window. I can only imagine what is going to happen tonight. It’s the first night that I have actually padlocked my door closed. I just think the potential for disaster is there. I can feel something brewing in the air. We’ll see what happens.

It doesn’t help that the Italians here have adopted the German slogan of “Berlin, Berlin, wir fahren nach Berlin” (We’re going to Berlin.—where the Finals will be played.) The fact that they are singing it, and in German, unlike their other soccer chants seems a bit of an provocation. Whatever...let’s let the two former fascist partners hash this one out, I guess.

In a strange stroke of the German obsession to follow rules to the letter, my entire district has put all of their recycling, including paper, out on the streets. Every few moments, you can hear some young rogue kicking trash into the street. I can only imagine what things will look like in the morning. It is now 12:07 AM and things appear to be just getting warmed up down there.

My newest, favoritest food for the summer: a nice, big, very cold glass of buttermilk. Yum. Good and good for you.

Oh, and thanks to a call from my mom and dad, I now know that it’s Independence Day. Happy 4th!