Category: Boston

The crack in the world

Three things entwine for me this morning: the beginning of the Christmas season, the 100th birthday of Olivier Messiaen, and the crack in the wall of Old South Church.

I spent Monday night and Tuesday morning in rehearsals for the upcoming Boston Pops holiday concerts at Symphony Hall (my performance schedule: 12/12 4 PM and 8 PM; 12/14 7 PM; 12/20 11 AM and 3 PM; 12/23 8 PM; 12/27 8 PM), marinating in the secular version of the holiday. It’s always a colorful but thin broth: reindeer and snowmen, with the occasional “Hallelujah Chorus” bobbing by to provide sustinance. This season we add a new arrangement of music from “Polar Express,” the culmination of which is a pop ballad exhorting us to “believe.” In what, it’s not quite clear: the train? Santa Claus?

Last week, a crack was found in the wall of Old South Church, a long standing Boston institution that is quite clear about what it believes and is growing as it continues to celebrate the inclusion of all God’s children, not just the straight ones, in God’s kingdom. The crack, potentially a disaster for the church, has been made an opportunity for reflection on the potential for cracks in any institution or relationship and for thanksgiving for the wisdom of the church’s leadership in ensuring that the MBTA and their contractor, not the church’s insurance, must pay in the event of damage. And yet, there it stands, an irrefutable proof of movements deep below that may at any moment cause a fundamental shift in our world.

That shift, that crack in time, is what pulses through the best of Messiaen’s work, his pieces for solo organ (Le banquet céleste, Apparition de l’église éternelle, L’Ascension, La Nativité du Seigneur, Livre du Saint Sacrement) and a solitary choral motet O sacrum convivium! For Messiaen Christmas is something entirely different: a meditation, an epiphany, on a fundamental shift in the world. Hearing Messiaen in a candlelit sanctuary awaiting an 11 PM Christmas Eve service, the apparition of the eternal church sinking into my blood and bones as the organ opened the doors to the miracle: a transformation out of history that continues to transform us two thousand years later.

(Update: As always, Nancy Taylor’s sermon the Sunday after the discovery of the crack is insightful, and echoes some of my own thoughts in a more coherent manner.)

Happy Halloween

Random collection of thoughts this morning:

  • I just rode on my first Segway this morning. One of our QA engineers was an employee and got a pre-production experimental model as part of his severance, and he brought it in this morning. My question to him after tooling around a little on it: how on earth did W manage to fall off the thing? His response: a combination of his getting started before the diagnostic mode had finished, and “natural talent.”
  • Listening to the full Black Album for the first time, and while there’s no denying the brilliance of some of the beats, I have to say that I prefer Danger Mouse’s version.
  • How we got such a gorgeous October is beyond my comprehension. We’ve had astonishing sunrises and clear, crisp skies for a few days now. Now the trick is to find some time to get out and enjoy it.

Should Massachussetts abolish the state income tax?

The endgame of the 2008 election season is interesting in a few ways. First, I find it interesting that Obama’s numbers go way up after people get to see him in action (e.g. during debates), and start to edge back down when robocalls and other personal attacks start to hit. In particular, it’s interesting to compare the projected electoral map from the beginning of the week to today, when Florida becomes a toss-up state again, as well as seeing the effect of ebbing Obama support in West Virginia and New Hampshire (and a gain in South Dakota).

But of more interest to me at the moment is a local question: what if Massachusetts abolished its state income tax? What’s interesting to me is not the question itself, which as I wrote yesterday is an idiotic response to crisis (and the New York Times agrees), but rather how loud the voices are about the question. The question isn’t drawing the same urgent public outcry as the effort to get the legislature to put marriage to a referendum, but it’s a pretty loud outcry nonetheless. And it makes me wonder: what’s really going on? Does being a social conservative in a state like Massachussetts just get more and more frustrating until one feels compelled to hold the recipients of critical government services hostage to get one’s demands met? I sometimes think that if I were conservative here, I’d feel effectively disenfranchised and thus would be inclined to grand gestures.

Nevertheless, there are quite a few people I’ve heard from who think it would be a good idea because it would make the legislature “pay attention” to their concerns about waste. To which I reply: there are more constructive ways to pay attention, and more constructive ways to reform. Specifically, I urge anyone who’s thinking about voting Yes on Question 1 to try making the cuts yourself first, with the Boston Globe’s Massachusetts Budget Game Calculator. The brilliant thing that you learn as you go through the budget item by item is just how limited the options are, and just how many challenges are in your way.

And there are challenges, because the budget is non-linear. Reducing spending in some areas leads to reduced state revenue and federal grants, making the job that much harder. Here’s an example: cutting 25% from the $32.2 billion state budget across the board (a chainsaw of a budget cut, if you will) nominally removes $8 billion in expenditures but only closes the budget gap by $4.9 billion, thanks to losses in federal funds and inability to get revenue. In fact, even a 50% cut across the board still leaves a $2.5 billion deficit.

The irony is that we’re already seeing big cuts in state government, thanks to the market meltdown, and we’ll see more. So even with a nationwide progressive sweep on November 4th (and that’s an unlikely scenario), the state is going to have to be fiscally conservative to make it through the coming recession. And that’s without a yes vote on tax abolition. Proponents of the abolition of the tax claim it will make the state a more attractive place to live and work, but the massive hatchet of Question 1 could ruin us.

BSO and TFC: Brahms Requiem, September 26-27, 2008

As promised earlier, I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts about our performances of the Requiem this weekend, now that I have some distance on the music (meaning: the third movement fugue is no longer obsessively pounding in my head).

I have a long history with the Requiem. I first almost performed it in the late 1990s with the Cathedral Choral Society in Washington, DC, but a family death took me away from the performance after I had almost completely learned it. I finally got a chance to sing it in 2004 with the University Presbyterian Church choir in Seattle, but in English and with a bad head cold. The first time I performed any of it in German was our tribute to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson at Tanglewood in 2006, when we sang the fourth movement (“Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen”).

But of course, any performance of a full work with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus is different from any prior performance of the same work, for the simple reasons that (a) you’re singing with one of the best orchestras in the world and (b) you’re doing it from memory. In this case, that’s seventy-five minutes of German, including two bloodying fugues, by heart.

So my perspective on the Requiem has two aspects: one rather like a marathoner’s perspective regarding his last run, and one of a participant in the creation of great beauty.

From the former perspective: pacing is the biggest problem in singing the Brahms, because there are three Heartbreak Hills. The first and fifth movements are calm and fairly easy to sing, the fourth and seventh are louder but also even tempered. But each of the other movements has its own unique challenges. The second movement has those stretches of the funeral chant (“Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras…”) that are sung over the full orchestra at forte volume, down in the bottom of everybody’s tessitura. And then there’s the “Aber des Herrn” at fortissimo, followed by a nice fuguelike section which is thick and inspires a certain tendency to shout. And the third and sixth movements have full-on fugues and climaxes–they’d both be finales in a lesser composer’s hands. Plus, even in the low and medium movements, you have challenges — for the tenors, there’s the high A near the end of the first movement and the final “wie lieblich”, which calls for the tenors to do a very controlled crescendo at a very high point in the range while keeping extremely beautiful tone. So the profile of the work from an emotional perspective is low – high – very high – moderate – low – very high – high, but the technical difficulty profile is basically high – very high – very high -high – high – very freaking high – high, and you have to really husband your emotional and physical energy accordingly.

The alternative: you hit the wall sometime around the sixth movement, the real uphill battle of the work, before you even get into the fugue. And in that fugue, as our director said, there is inevitably “blood on the walls” in every performance thanks to the demand on the singers and the difficulty of the preceding music. So the secret is to remember what’s ahead and never, ever, ever go full volume. If the director asks for more in a climatic crescendo, focus the voice up into the face so that it projects more clearly, rather than simply opening up to full vocal throttle.

From the second perspective: I’ve never sung in a performance where every chorister was so on top of the music, and so together–total telepathic connection from person to person. And every one of them singing right to the limit of the safe range of the voice, without going into the danger zone, thanks to lots of “marathon” experience. And with the improved acoustics of Symphony Hall, being able to hear other voice parts as though they were standing right next to you. So performing it was a joy. I can’t pretend to be able to provide an objective review of our own performance otherwise, but if the hall was enjoying it half as much as we were, it’s no wonder they applauded as vigorously as we did.

Brahms Requiem: gearing up

I’ve been in rehearsals all week at Symphony Hall for the Tanglewood Festival Chorus’s first concert of the 2008-2009 Symphony Hall season, the Brahms Requiem with the Boston Symphony under James Levine. It’s an amazing work–I’ll try to describe it in more detail after our performances. But the two really amazing things for this weekend for me are the same things that Jeremy Eichler flagged in his review of Wednesday’s season opener, namely, Levine himself and the windows in the Hall.

Losing Levine to two months of cancer treatment after the opening of the Tanglewood season was a blow to audience and performer, although some of the resulting performances under guest conductors were still pretty spectacular. But it’s great to have him back and he is as energetic as ever.

The clerestory windows … well. Eichler gives the background in his article (part of the original design of the hall, they were covered over during World War II to comply with blackout requirements and never reopened). But what he doesn’t mention is the effect on the hall’s sound. The window openings had actually been plastered over, and the removal of all that plaster and introduction of glass (albeit a special glass that doesn’t resonate) means that there’s a new brilliance on the sound in the hall. Levine remarked on it, our director remarked on it, and it was even apparent on the stage in the reflected sound during our rehearsal. We’ll see tonight whether it makes as much difference when the hall is full of people.

It certainly has a striking visual effect, especially for a daytime rehearsal. I only had my iPhone on me so the picture I got was pretty poor, with lots of streaks from the light sources running through the pictures, but you can still see how alive the hall looks now.

Around Boston: new light, old park

Two stories caught my eye in the Globe, one with proximity to my vocation and one to my avocation.

The first was regarding the undeveloped land to the south of our offices in Burlington. Pointedly subtitled “city can’t develop land in Burlington, Woburn,” the story details the ongoing dance between citizens of the suburbs who want to see the Mary Cummings Park maintained as parkland, and the City of Boston, which was deeded the land by Cummings on the condition that it stay a “public pleasure ground,” who apparently would prefer that nothing ever be done with it. If the city can’t develop it, that is. A word to the Friends of the Park: better keep a close eye on the docket. Boston’s actions here smell like a delaying tactic until they can get a judge to break the conditions of the deed and allow them to sell the property to developers.

Speaking of delays, the second article regards the removal of the blackout panels over the top windows in Symphony Hall. I remember looking up at the interior panels from the stage during a rehearsal this spring and wondering about them to my fellow tenors, none of whom agreed that they were really windows. And no wonder; there’s no living memory of them ever having been windows. The panels were put into place in the early 1940s, and their removal, I imagine, leaves the old hall emerging blinking into the sunlight like Hiroo Onoda. But the removal, as the article highlights, indicates the profoundly conservative attitude of the BSO regarding the hall’s acoustics. I wonder what the impact on the aesthetics will be?

Upcoming: Business of Software 2008 in Boston

I was about to delete an email from Bob Cramblitt on my old blog, until I actually read it and realized it was relevant to at least some of my readers:

Hi Tim:

Thought you’d like to know that Seth Godin, Joel Spolsky, Jason Fried and others are coming to Boston for the Business of Software 2008 conference.  This is the only conference run by people who actually manage successful software companies.  All substance, no BS and not a Web 2.0 to be found.

Your blog readers can get $100 off registration by entering “MASS” when registering at www.businessofsoftware.org.

So there you go. Never let it be said that reading my blog got you nowhere. (Disclaimer: this was my only contact with Bob Cramblitt and I’m not getting anything for posting this.)

I’m going long in arks.

Seriously, people, what is going on with the rain out here? We have had deluging thunderstorms every day this week. There was a stranded van on my commute this morning. On Route 2A in Burlington, for heavens’ sake.

On Monday this week, I was picking up some things at the Walgreens in Arlington Heights, which has the World’s Smallest Parking Lot™ — and shares it with a Trader Joe’s and a Starbucks. The parking lot abuts the Minuteman Trail, which runs alongside some six feet below street level between the parking lot and a field behind. On this particular day, there was a lake about fifteen feet across in the middle of the parking lot, of unknown depth. I skirted it carefully as I parked my car, but when I got out I heard a noise like a waterfall. And I realized that there was a storm drain in the middle of the lake, which connected to an overflow pipe that emptied out beside the trail. Well, there must have been a few hundred gallons a minute going through that pipe:

(That’s the overflow pipe on the left. The lake in the background is the bicycle trail.)

It was raining so hard on Monday that Mass Ave flooded in Arlington Heights in front of the Panera. There were still sandbags there later in the week. And it was raining harder than that this morning.

All I’m saying is, when I start to see animals coming up the hill to get to higher ground at my office, I’m cornering the market on gopher wood.

Friday: too busy working …

… to write anything halfway intelligent, so you get this instead.

But Estaminet has been writing a fair bit; check out her travel journals from her Oregon trip.

She’s back staying with us, and our parents come in late tonight, so it’ll be a fun full house. This is, of course, the other reason I’m not writing so much–lots of stuff to take care of before I pick them up from the airport.

And I’ll be checking out the temporary James Hook lobster shack this weekend to see if they’ve been able to resume any level of retail operations. It would be great to get some in time for my dad’s birthday.

Over the grimy deep

I participated in a corporate regatta sponsored by America’s Growth Capital yesterday, which will no doubt surprise those of you who know I don’t sail. It was an interesting experience. Three of my coworkers and myself, fortunately accompanied by an able and professional captain, on a sailboat, running races back and forth between the Boston Harbor Hotel and East Boston across the lovely waters of Boston Harbor.

My job was to be on the foredeck, hoisting the spinnaker, assisting with the genoa and the jib as we tacked, hiking out my bulk to keep us from keeling over in the strong wind of the last few races, and otherwise staying out of the way of the boom and the sheets. It was entertaining for sure, but a good reminder that I’m a little shy on exercise.

Afterward we grabbed dinner in the North End, at Assagio. It was frankly disappointing. I remember having a very decent meal there almost eight years ago when we were just getting started at business school, and scoring a few points with my tablemates for recommending a red wine from Campania which turned out to be outstanding. Last night, by contrast, the most exotic wine I could find on the menu was a Chianti from a producer that I knew that turned out to be too lightweight, and my meal proved that amatriciana, mozzarella, and gemelli don’t mix, and that Assagio doesn’t know real pancetta from their elbow, and that they don’t know that amatriciana needs hot peppers. As Nero Wolfe would say, pfui. Fortunately the North End has its compensating pleasures, like a dish of grapefruit gelato that was perfectly tart and light, giving a nice end to the day.

links for 2008-05-30

Lobstah

Lisa and I had dinner with George and Becky last night. I hadn’t seen George, a Sloan classmate (and fellow E-52), since one of the last times I was in San Francisco. They’ve been anxious to get some Boston specialties during their visit, so they asked if they could bring lobsters to our house from James Hook in Boston. “Sure,” we said, and thereby began a veritable orgy of gluttony that ended only after five lobsters had gone to their fates–in our collective tummies. Mmmm, lobster.

Today my boss asked about my night and I started telling her the above story, until I remembered that she’s a devout vegetarian. So I skipped some of the details.

Arlington infrastructure

Doc Searls has a nice photoset of Arlington’s infrastructure as seen from the most infra structure of all, the remains of the rail line that forms the Minuteman Trail. He also points to a blog about the trail that makes for interesting reading.

Doc and his commenters have done a lot of digging on Arlington history, and made some good observations about the town, such as the homemade curbing in many streets (legacy of our “private road” peculiarity).

Beautiful day

It was an amazing weekend. I spent the last half of last week dying of some sort of cold/allergy–it was so bad that I think I was running a fever a couple of nights. But on Saturday morning I could move again. And it was a good thing: since it rained the whole previous weekend, my lawn hadn’t been cut yet and it was almost ready to start swallowing small dogs and children.

So I got the mower going for the first time in 2008. It was slow going; the grass was so long and heavy with dew that I had to empty the bag every two rows, and had to scrape the deck clean every four so that the blade wouldn’t get choked. But it was nice to start getting the outside of the house into shape again.

This should be a nice week. No Tanglewood commitments for a while, and I have a trip this weekend to DC to see Lars Bjorn and Craig Fennell, along with some other folks I haven’t seen in a very long time. The occasion: Craig’s bachelor party. Which, since we’re all in our late 30s, should be fairly mellow.

Opening Day, very early in the morning

New York Times: Red Sox Top A’s, 6-5, in Tokyo Opener. For the curious, no, I did not get out of bed at 5:30 to watch the opener. I did, however, tune into the game on AM radio—something I haven’t ever used on my car before—on the way in to work, to hear that the As were up in the seventh inning.

Yes indeed: daytime temps nearing 50, the Red Sox are back in action, and it’s still light when I drive home from work. Must be spring.