You know then that it is not the reason

It looks as if the Fates have conspired to make me stay inside and compose all day. I woke up at 9, willingly no less, to slight cold and a drizzle of rain. It looks like Dublin again, finally.

The other night, after scrapping that Node Ensemble stück once I missed the deadline, Ben called me to tell me that they were planning on programming it for their April concert. So, no rehearsals have happened yet; I minimized it to electric guitar, violin, and recorder, hopefully to decrease rehearsal time and make it more precise. Four short movements, less ambition than the original, but I think it will turn out far better. Plus it gives me a chance to use that movement for electric guitar trio, without having to bother with an extra four instruments. It's still the poem "Of Mere Being," by Wallace Stevens; the electric guitar trio movement is the stanza:

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

Four more days (I hope) of work. This Sunday, and all next weekend. Oh, and I got the grant from Willamette to study the community of living Irish composers, so I'll be here all summer, until late July or early August. Stop by. It's a nice place; I hear it rains all summer. I'm really getting into delicious mushrooms now. The yuppie grocery store (Fallon & Byrne) has all their specialty mushrooms at a mix-n-match price, so I just get a bit of each and throw it into an risotto (two days ago) or an omelet (this morning) or maybe even a pasta dish, with caraway seeds (T.B.D.).

I haven't been up this early (willingly) in ages. I don't know what to do with myself.

Red Rice Risotto; Deutschland

It was 4 a.m. and I couldn't sleep, so I bought tickets to Berlin (26 euros, return). I also got tickets to a chamber orchestra performance of some Webern, Berg, and Schoenberg works at the Berlin Philharmonic hall (18 euros) and a performance of Wagner's Tannhauser at the Berlin Philharmonic (16 euros). All in all, a productive evening. I also read all of Philip Larkin's collection The Whitsun Weddings, which mostly just made me think about death and still not be able to sleep. More about that another day. Today is light-reading Wednesday.

And what's lighter than a cookbook? With no plot, no characters, and the self-consciousness of itself as a text to be interacted with, there's a fine line between a cookbook and a postmodern novel. So, think of this post as whichever you feel more comfortable with.

You start with 2 to 3 cups of water, I can't remember which. Maybe it's somewhere in between. You boil it, anyway. While it's coming to a boil you consider what it means to boil. To boil over, after all, is to fail to boil. To boil over is to spill all over the stove, cooling the water, and preventing it from reaching its premium state. So, don't boil over. Boil steadily, and as the boil begins add some salt and about a cup of red rice. The boiling should stop; the simmering should begin. We are in the grey area between boiling and not boiling. This is where we want to be. We're going to simmer for a while, so start chopping some mushrooms. We've got some shiitake, some oyster, and some other strangely shaped mushrooms. We're going to thinly dice the gouda that is still in our fridge, because it's about time to get rid of it and we don't have a cheese grater. We also bought some Parmesean, which is pretty good, so let's chop some of that up. We're heating up a second saucepan now, throwing in some butter and garlic and black pepper (ground). We toss in the mushrooms and let them simmer for longer than seems prudent, but trust me it's worth it. We add olive oil, take the thickness off of the butter and give it this strange interplay of flavors, the animal and the vegetable combined into one bubbly oily mess. Add the cheese. Add the white wine, maybe about a 3-4 second pour. Really let it get in there. The rice should be done, if it's been about 30 minutes. You used extra water than you thought was necessary, but that's because this is risotto not just standard white rice. You've also been stirring the whole time. So, now I add the rice to the mushroom mixture, stir for a while. Taste every one in a while, because I'm really hungry at this point and just want to eat. Finally, while it's still chewy, take it off the stove. It is the best thing I've cooked all week, which includes last week.

I have another jazz gig this Saturday, Ballsbridge Court Hotel. Also, I quit my job.

The text shows the inability of leaving Ireland

I went to a talk on Irish writing in the 50s this evening, and one main topic was the problem of emigration. The best, they say, leave Ireland (usually meaning go to London or Dublin, which doesn't qualify as "Irish") while the slackers stay behind and drink away their inheritances on the ruined family farm. Now, Claire Wills (wrote a good book on Paul Muldoon as well) did a fine job deconstructing that monster of a commission--something about population policy--but she also did a fine job of making me want to get out. So, going to Galway next weekend. I feel like that's a start. First Galway, then maybe Vienna. Ich bin aus Österreich.

I've taken to learning German online. It gives me something mechanical to do, anyway. I probably should have learned Italian or something, but I have less of a desire to go to Italy. Too warm, too sunny, too delicious. I almost bought tickets to the Dresden music festival, but I'm not sure when my exams are. We'll work on that.

In other news, I finished four of my nine movements for this desert suite. They are, played by my computer:

1. Presto (score)
2. Allegro Pizzicato (score)
5. Geese (score)
9. Very Slow (score)

The first two movements are meant to be directly conjoined--the first, slowing down from presto to allegro, also becomes pizzicato.

In case you missed it, they get slower as the suite goes on. That haunting chord you hear the cello and viola play (and the two violins outline) at the beginning of Presto is (I know you're sweating with anticipation, sweating everywhere) a perfect fifth, D and A, in the viola, played as a double-stop on strings III and IV, and a very, very flat (49 cents flat, almost halfway to the next lower note) G#. Pretty mad. A vicious 3/4-tone leap there in the violins; you think it's a leading tone but oh you are so wrong. It's so flat it wants to pull you down to the G, not up to the A. It's almost exactly between the F# and the A, even, (the F# being the major third of the elusive triad) so it may as well just suck it up and pretend it's an out-of-tune 4-3 suspension.

I finished applying for the summer grant as well. Something changed a bit, so it's more community-oriented. Probably make things easier to get a grant than some esoteric ethnomusicological project practiced by one or two other people.

And, as a plug, our community blog slaughter and laughter is back, thanks to Alyssa. I'll throw up a new color scheme some time. I'm thinking rot und schwartz.

Reduce; reuse; recycle

Such a good motto. I have been drinking more water in the past week, because of a new program (falling under the "reuse" category) in which I fill old whiskey bottles up with water and bring them to my room so that I don't have to go downstairs for water, thereby increasing my water intake. Then, eventually, I recycle them when the time is right and I feel like I need to change it up a little. Still working on the third part, though. Wish me luck.

I'm branching out on this grant now, encompassing pretty much all living Irish composers. I just think that a broader topic will lead to a better project, especially in allowing me to follow leads which develop along the way.

Had another dinner party last night. Fresh pita, hummus, tabouleh, soup, and some other store-bought dips. More pudding, but vanilla this time. Never gets old. David requested a cast list last week ("I checked your blog, and you listed the recipes but not us."): David, Niamh, Julia, Kate, Paula, Francis, and I'm sure I'm forgetting someone. I feel pretty bad about this. Anyway, pretty nice time.

The Crash Ensemble plays again next Sunday. Also, the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers is being held here from July 9-13, and the Crash Ensemble is playing on June 10. I've heard two of the five pieces they're playing, and the other three composers are excellent. So, try to stop by. Buy your tickets today.

I wrote a country/blues song about Ezra Pound. The chorus goes "Ezra Pound come home, Ezra Pound come home, Ezra Pound come home to Idaho." If you come to Dublin you can hear it.

As promised

But first, before we get to the main attraction (for me), let's tell some dinner party stories. It went will, the dinner party. Six of us, from my Monday Irish lit class. I really have no stories. Just, you know, had dinner, sat around the table for a while. Perfected my Irish coffee recipe, including the method of using empty whiskey bottles to shake the cream so that you can float it on top of the drink delicately, with a spoon, as we know all things done with spoons are inherently delicate. One swash of whiskey at the bottom, blended with extra-dark brown sugar. Make double-strength french press coffee; don't use a french roast or anything too dark, as the cream really enhances a lighter Guatemalan or Nicaraguan origin (I used Ethiopia). Delicately (did I say with a spoon?) float the shaken cream (NOT WHIPPED CREAM, ESPECIALLY NOT FROM A CAN) on top of the coffee. Imbibe.

The rest of the menu was:

Butternut squash and parsnip soup
Whole wheat pasta with pecorino cheese and black pepper
Salad
German chocolate pudding dessert thing, actually from Germany

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First, read some of Beckett's Watt while listening to Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 2, preferably the last movement. Youtube it (This is all right, This kid is wretched, but funny). So, you have an almost crude sense of humor here, repetition to excess. Op. 2's last movement, the endless barrage of eighth-note triplets, Beckett's endless permutations of every possible instance (which he will keep throughout his career). Conventional, but almost. Paragraph breaks where they make sense; cadences and repeat signs at the end of the very clear development--Beckett writes a clear "II," one of his few chapter headings (which seems more like a movement marker than a chapter marker) at the point of completion of development, Watt's entrance into Knott's servitude. It is even somewhat crude, but yet it doesn't seem to care. Actually, it's very crude, rhyming Watt with Knott with pot--at what point does the pot stop being a pot; at what point do the eighth-note triplets become the beat? We claim to be in 2:4, cut time, yet we hear nothing but triplets. Is it 6:8, then? Has the pot become something else?

Now listen to Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata No. 23, Op. 57 while watching your local theatre troupe perform Waiting for Godot. Delicate banter, arpeggios of a minor triad--ominous, but not crushing. Quick eighth-notes of things to come (specifically, the fifth symphony) in the bass. And bam, it breaks into pounding chords, juxtaposed with delicate lines. Minute 1:41 of the recording (when played with more melancholy, as I believe it should be) is, in itself the phrase "Nothing to be done." Yet, it still clings to a semblance of form, even as it continually rehashes the same phrases punctuated by silence.

This is the point at which Beethoven is coming to grips with his total deafness; it is also one of the first works which Beckett writes in French. He said he wanted to write in French so as to strip himself of all style, of all conventions of the English language. He could not have that hanging over his head, the whole past of the language--it must be new, it must be constructed based on no preconceptions. In the starkest sense, it must come from his head, not his heart. This theme, this motive of the Appassionata seems to go nowhere, it leads only to itself. It is melancholy; it is earnest.

Now (if you've made it this far) read Molloy while listening to Beethoven's Große Fuge (Op. 133). Better yet, try to find some of Beckett's later pieces for theatre (Breath, a 35 second pan over a trash heap, or Not I, a mouth in darkness). Not I is, itself, a Große Fuge, Große Fuge apparently meaning large joint, according to my computer's translation program. It is beyond earnest; it is truly nuts. It is beyond (my) words. It is Beethoven at his most deaf, Beckett rejecting not only English but well over 99%of the human form. It is manic, above all else, unsettled. There is a determination, however. They are not nihilists, after all. After the violins play unresolved lines, like a last lament, they just dig in, they get frustrated, more silence, more repetitions of this broken cadence, until it finally succeeds.

Beckett's closing of The Unnamable, his last extended work of prose, is the most cadence-like of any: "I can't go on, I'll go on."

Happy pancake tuesday.