pages tagged collegeYareev's schmonz.comhttps://schmonz.com/tag/college/Yareev's schmonz.comikiwiki2022-08-15T18:42:02ZDaily piano miniatureshttps://schmonz.com/2022/08/15/daily-piano-miniatures/Amitai Schleier2022-08-15T18:42:02Z2022-08-15T18:12:30Z
<p>Since May, I’ve been posting a new video just about every day.
What’s in the videos?
A short piano piece, played as well as I can quickly learn it.
“Short” means, based on a sample size of 72 videos, two and a half minutes on average.
(You’ll probably agree, coming from the
<a href="https://agilein3minut.es">Agile in 3 Minutes</a>
guy, that tracks.)
Don’t like what you’re hearing?
No problem, the next piece is short too.
Here’s the
<a href="https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkuryjnRFclQJqoIVpk9W9-eIRswejo-R">full YouTube playlist</a>,
totaling over 3 hours of music so far.</p>
<p>Half a lifetime ago, I was already a musician and a technologist.
I’d have believed the future existence of a video-hosting platform such as YouTube.
Everything else, nope, no way that’s future-me.</p>
<p><img src="https://schmonz.com/2022/08/15/daily-piano-miniatures/recital.png" width="400" height="400" alt="1997 CWRU recital program" title="1998 CWRU recital program" class="img" /></p>
<p>I’d given this recital hoping for a tuition grant.
Having heard me play, the university accepted me as a music major.
Problem is, I hadn’t wanted that.
I wanted CS classes more than anything and my advisor from the music department couldn’t get me into those.</p>
<p>I frazzled out at that university, and almost certainly would have regardless of which courses I took.</p>
<p>8 years later I
<a href="https://schmonz.com/2005/09/07/first-week-of-classes/">tried again at another university</a>.
At that point music <em>was</em> what I wanted to study.
I graduated at 30 with a bachelor’s in it.</p>
<p>I also graduated with a changed belief.</p>
<p>My belief at the time of the pictured 1997 recital, and at the
<a href="https://schmonz.com/2007/11/14/medtner-music-and-me/">beginning of the fall 2005 semester</a>:
reading music is an aptitude, I lack it, and I compensate well enough by memorizing quickly.</p>
<p>My belief a few years later:
sight-reading is a skill.
By practicing it, I’ve gotten much better.</p>
<p>Obvious to me now, and surely obvious to you well before now.
But young-musician-me had been resigned to playing only pieces that others could show me and help me with.
I would never have believed a different experience were possible.</p>
<p>Lots of lessons in this:
for me personally, for how I raise (and praise) my kids, for
<a href="https://latentagility.com">how I work in and with teams</a>.
Most of all:
by changing a key belief, I changed how I relate to music.
You can
<a href="https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkuryjnRFclQJqoIVpk9W9-eIRswejo-R">see and hear the fruits of that</a>.</p>
<p>How did I get that belief to change? Well, that’s the magic, isn’t it.
Lots of things had to change a little bit.</p>
<p>What else changed when I gave myself a more direct relationship to music-making? Another thing I never would have guessed:
making more direct relationships with you.
In conclusion, behavior, conditions, beliefs, mindset, behavior, and so on, forever.
But mainly, thanks for listening.
And I don’t mean about the music.</p>
What I'm Doing Nowhttps://schmonz.com/2019/10/11/now/Amitai Schleier2019-10-11T12:48:35Z2019-10-11T12:43:01Z
<p>We celebrated my parents’ 50th anniversary last week by having them stay with us for a week, punctuated by turning Shabbat dinner into a surprise party.
Their imminent arrival was just the excuse I needed to get back to daily pianoing, so I could be ready with another Medtner piece as part of the surprise.
Turns out that was the first time I’ve learned music on deadline since high school.
And if I can make a good-enough recording, it’ll be the first time I share one here (and on
<a href="http://www.pianosociety.com/members/schmonz.2437/">Piano Society</a>)
since
<a href="https://schmonz.com/tag/music/">college</a>.</p>
<p>Professionally, I like to alternate between
<a href="http://agilemanifesto.org/">doing it and helping others do it</a>.
My parents arrived just as a full-time remote programming gig wrapped up, and in a couple weeks I’ll return to coaching at a favorite client.
It involves travel on alternate weeks, which presents some challenges, but it also affords me full attention for my family and myself on the other alternate weeks.
And it leaves room in my schedule to continue taking local and remote consulting clients.</p>
<p>When I returned to the IT workforce as a 30-year-old with a music degree, my first wish was that someday my enormous private loans would be paid off.
Still working on that one.
My second wish was that someday I could work less, make more music, and have a family with whom I could be fully present.
It was never any sort of coherent plan, but it seems to be coming together anyway.
I’m more than willing to agree that I’ve done my part to make this happen.
I also can’t quite believe my luck.</p>
<hr />
<h3>What’s this?</h3>
<p>It’s a
<a href="http://sivers.org/nowff"><code>/now</code> page</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://nownownow.com">nownownow.com</a>
is a directory of people with <code>/now</code> pages.
<a href="http://nownownow.com/p/JtD5">I’m listed there</a>.</p>
Why I went to fat camphttps://schmonz.com/2016/03/03/why-i-went-to-fat-camp/Amitai Schlair2019-05-27T04:16:25Z2016-03-04T17:37:28Z
<p>A month ago, when I shared some of <a href="https://schmonz.com/2016/02/01/a-meta-sabbatical/">what I’d accomplished during my
time off</a>, I promised to share the rest
when I got back to work. I’m back now and there’s lots to tell, but most
of it will have to wait, because first I need to tell you about the
single most important thing I accomplished.</p>
<h2>I’ve been fat once before</h2>
<p>I grew up playing sports. I was decent at some of them, played a lot,
and enjoyed myself. I loved to run fast and jump high.</p>
<p>In 2002, having dropped out of college-the-first-time, gotten my first
programming job, and gained 40 pounds too many, I lost all the weight
(and <a href="https://schmonz.com/2003/12/07/atkins-vs-south-beach/">improved my blood chemistry</a>)
with the Atkins diet. At 23, changing how I ate was enough. When my
condition had sufficiently improved, I started playing competitive
Ultimate frisbee again. I was running fast and jumping high.</p>
<h2>I got better</h2>
<p>I promised myself I’d keep it that way. For the better part of the next
6 years, whether or not I was playing Ultimate, lifting weights,
learning Krav Maga, or eating French fries and ice cream (not usually at
the same time), my weight stayed in the right spot. When it went up a
bit, I’d eat carefully for a few days and it’d come right back down.</p>
<p>I was no longer on a strict Atkins diet, but I’d still occasionally be
reminded of my sensitivity to carbohydrate. After one weekend Ultimate
tourney, I came home more tired than usual — and despite running around
for two days straight, 10 pounds heavier. Why? The tourney had provided
the typical sideline fare of bagels, bananas, and soft pretzels, and I’d
eaten some. I have no other guesses. It took a full zero-carb week to
overcome my lethargy and point the scale back where it belonged.</p>
<h2>I broke my promise</h2>
<p>When I was considering college-the-second-time, one of the scariest
ramifications of the decision was the prospect of going deeply into
debt. I couldn’t begin to pay for <a href="https://schmonz.com/2005/06/28/arrivalderci/">where I wanted to
be</a> unless I got sizable private loans. I
accepted that, but in my final year, the loans didn’t accept <em>me</em>. (It
was the market downturn of 2008, a bad time to ask for credit. Still,
you’d think they’d factor in that a diploma would probably help me pay
them off for the previous three loans.) Even though I’d hoped not to use
it, I took the money my parents had set aside for my higher education.
Boy, was I lucky to have the option. It was enough to register for
classes and figure out the rest later.</p>
<p>Suddenly it was later. Exactly seven years ago, midway through my
final semester, with my credit cards maxed out, my bank balance said:
$80. I snapped to attention. No matter what, bills would soon be going
delinquent. All things being equal, I figured I’d rather have food on
the shelves than not, and spent all $80 at the grocery store before
one more bill could be auto-paid. To make my meager holdings last
longer, I sought out free food at events on campus. Occasionally
friends would treat me to something. It wasn’t often the sort of food
I’d prefer to eat. But I preferred even more, between March and May,
to be able to eat.</p>
<p>I had no plan for after that. I knew I’d have to move out of my student
housing after graduating, but to where? With what money? With what job
prospect might I stand a tiny chance of persuading anyone to lend me
money or put me up someplace? New York was expensive. I couldn’t even
afford to leave.</p>
<p>Also I was gaining weight. But so what? The risk of taking on all that
debt had turned into consequences. At 30, for the first time since I was
19, I couldn’t handle meeting my own basic needs.</p>
<h2>Friends saved me</h2>
<table class="img align-right"><caption>This cat once woke me from a nap, not because he was draped over my throat and mouth, but because his fur was poking into my nostrils.</caption><tr><td><img src="https://schmonz.com/2016/03/03/IMG_0449.JPG" width="400" height="300" alt="This cat once woke me from a nap, not because he was draped over my throat and mouth, but because his fur was poking into my nostrils." class="img" /></td></tr></table>
<p>Some extraordinarily generous friends invited me into their home with
their bright and bouncy two-and-a-half-year-old child and sweet and
cuddly older-gentleman cat. They lent me their car to move most of my
stuff into a storage facility they’d paid for. They fed me. They found
me some contract work that helped me back to my feet, which I followed
as soon as I possibly could to a cheap room in deepest Brooklyn, like
you do, in an apartment shared with weird flatmates and bold rodents. I
was relieved and happy to be able to pay my own way again, relieved
some more to be out of my friends’ hair, and happier still to be
undertaking the lifelong project of attempting to find ways to repay
them. Did I mention their home had been undergoing a construction
project at the time? One of them had forgone the use of her office so I
could live in it.</p>
<p>Another friend got me a full-time job, from which I ultimately learned a
great deal about effective software development and found my way toward
<a href="https://schmonz.com/coach/">what I do now</a>. But to begin with, I was mainly concerned with
<a href="https://schmonz.com/2014/06/01/tdd-in-context-1-keeping-my-job/">keeping my job</a>. As I grew
competent and confident within some context, I’d be given responsibility
for a larger, more stressful context. Doubtless my body was being bathed
in cortisol at all times.</p>
<p>Certainly I was urgently working at most times. I gained more weight.</p>
<h2>I started rebooting myself</h2>
<table class="img align-left"><caption>Schmonz Haven on day 1.</caption><tr><td><img src="https://schmonz.com/2016/03/03/IMG_4200.JPG" width="300" height="400" alt="Schmonz Haven on day 1." class="img" /></td></tr></table>
<p>I couldn’t manage to concern myself with that. I was occupied with my
comfort. As soon as I could just barely afford to move out of Rat Haven
into a quiet, spacious, calming apartment near my generous friends, I
piled up all my nickels to make the security deposit. The place remained
mostly shiny floors and white walls for months, but I didn’t mind. I was
there, alone, in my own space, calm and safe. I could afford to order
in, and did. I could work from home several days a week, and did, even
as my “desk” was a bookshelf plank laid across a couple upside-down
U-Haul boxes. I slowly built up my savings, credit, and furnishings.</p>
<p>Self-displays of agency were themselves comforting. I could visit
out-of-town friends on weekends, and did.</p>
<h2>I learned some things</h2>
<p>When I once again had some credit and some savings, I was able to take a
deep breath and reflect.</p>
<p>I didn’t have a family to somehow take care of. I never had to live on
the street or go hungry for days. I even got to keep all my stuff.
Still, I learned a lot about what it’s like to be poor. I’d already
understood that having money means no more and no less than having
options. Now I understood that being poor means you have many fewer
choices, and each of the good ones costs you far more, so you can’t
afford to make many good ones, so you keep having fewer choices. It’s
self-perpetuating.</p>
<p>I found that even when I started having money again, my mental state was
self-perpetuating too. When I’d wanted to do any small thing for myself,
since I couldn’t afford to do it, I’d write it down for later. This
habit, learned under deprivation, was very difficult to unlearn. In a
hundred tiny ways, my internal logic continued to be founded on the
assumption that “I can’t, not right now, I just can’t.” One case at a
time, when I observed myself limiting myself, I’d <a href="https://schmonz.com/2015/07/29/enthusiasm-engineering/">retrain
myself</a> that I could, right now, I
just could.</p>
<h2>I continued to boot up</h2>
<p>I got better, mostly. I even made a <a href="https://schmonz.com/2013/02/26/how-to-maybe-lose-45-pounds-in-a-year/">project of improving my
weight</a>. Changing the
way I ate lost me about 20 pounds, then stalled out. (I wasn’t 23
anymore.) I <a href="https://schmonz.com/2013/03/10/strength-gains-after-15-workouts/">returned to strength
training</a>, and it felt
great, but didn’t help me lose more weight. It was a minimum viable
health regimen: my energy felt relatively consistent throughout the day,
and for the first time in a while, I wasn’t getting fatter. But I wasn’t
running fast and jumping high, because that would’ve hurt; and I wasn’t
striving for it, because I couldn’t, not right then, I just couldn’t.</p>
<table class="img align-right"><caption>One of the many hills of southern Indiana.</caption><tr><td><img src="https://schmonz.com/2016/03/03/IMG_6495.JPG" width="300" height="400" alt="One of the many hills of southern Indiana." class="img" /></td></tr></table>
<p>On a 2012 road trip with my friend Henry, as we were driving through
northern Vermont toward Quebec, we were talking about what had happened
to me and what I’d been doing about it, and the conversation led me to
an insight: maybe the weight I was carrying around was the last chapter
of the story of a tough time in my life. As soon as I stopped carrying
it around, the story could be over.</p>
<p>It was a clarifying thought. I was thinking of it when I set out on
that 2013 weight-loss project. I was thinking of it last year when I
tried lifting twice a week on my own, and again when I hired a personal
trainer and worked out every day at lunch. And I was thinking of it
again when I couldn’t see any feedback that my incremental efforts were
doing any good.</p>
<p>During that time when I couldn’t do things for myself and had to write
them down for later, one of the less quotidian items I wrote down was
“go to fat camp”. Apparently I somehow knew that when the time came,
I’d need help and focus to get the needle to move in a way I could see.
That item sat, unaddressed, until I finally had money and time at the
same time.</p>
<h2>The last chapter</h2>
<p>On Saturday, I hiked 11 miles. I’d been doing a lot of hiking every day
for a few weeks, so that was no big deal. (Which is a big deal.)</p>
<p>Also on Saturday, I was deemed ready for a high-intensity strength
workout. It pushed me, and I responded by pushing myself at a new
level. Afterward, sitting outside in the spring February air to cool
down a bit, I was surprised to find myself weeping. That’s when I
realized it wasn’t a new level at all. It was a familiar old one, long
lost and now found.</p>
<p>I’m almost done rebooting. I can tell because I’m no longer concerned
only with my comfort, but also with <a href="https://schmonz.com/2015/10/14/my-writing-workflow/">productive discomfort</a>. I still have
an uphill climb to return to, say, Ultimate-playing shape. But I’ve
relearned how to push myself about how I push myself.</p>
<p>Can I finally see how this story will end?</p>
<p>I can, right now.</p>
<p>I just can.</p>
<table class="img"><caption>One of the many new dog friends who accompanied me on my hikes.</caption><tr><td><img src="https://schmonz.com/2016/03/03/IMG_6502.JPG" width="300" height="400" alt="One of the many new dog friends who accompanied me on my hikes." class="img" /></td></tr></table>
Live-tweeted haiku on the nature of reserving a room for a week in January, during the CodeMash conference, at the famed Kalahari Resort of Sandusky, Ohiohttps://schmonz.com/2014/11/13/live-tweeted-haiku/Amitai Schlair2016-11-12T01:39:43Z2014-11-13T16:11:11Z
<p><em>[Performed on my behalf by Chris Travis]</em></p>
<p><em>Author’s note:</em> This really happened. These are real tweets. At 10am
on October 10, 2014, 2000 people with conference tickets started
vying for 1000 on-site rooms via one hotel telephone system. After
a half hour of not getting through, I began to tweet.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/schmonz/status/520583485309087744">10:35am</a><br />
Fleeting dialtone<br />
For a moment, heart racing<br />
Nope, busy again</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/schmonz/status/520587845669761024">10:53am</a><br />
Questioning memory<br />
A tone I thought I once heard<br />
Maybe I didn’t</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/schmonz/status/520588290463105024">10:54am</a><br />
Life has no meaning<br />
We must choose our own values<br />
Have I chosen well?</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/schmonz/status/520589398921195520">10:59am</a><br />
Leaves turn, the wind blows<br />
Telephones stand still, unmoved<br />
Gray sky, the leaves fall</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/schmonz/status/520590969558036480">11:05am</a><br />
Ancients spoke of flow<br />
Bottleneck, constraint, lead time<br />
Watch cost of delay</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/schmonz/status/520592298510651392">11:10am</a><br />
Developers’ time<br />
Beautiful and limited<br />
Don’t use for haiku.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/schmonz/status/520593968590225408">11:17am</a><br />
The present moment<br />
A signal of busy-ness<br />
Mine is signaled here.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/schmonz/status/520595196653080576">11:22am</a><br />
A drop of water<br />
Another and another<br />
One hundred attempts</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/schmonz/status/520596664592396288">11:28am</a><br />
A long time ago<br />
I was not calling hotels<br />
There was such a time</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/schmonz/status/520597919242944512">11:33am</a><br />
There is hope, you say?<br />
I must choose to believe it;<br />
Choice is not easy.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/schmonz/status/520600025555279872">11:41am</a><br />
Programmer and coach<br />
Acquiring new specialty:<br />
Fruitless phone calling</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/schmonz/status/520601603276292096">11:47am</a><br />
Great holy shitballs<br />
Ethereal female voice<br />
Holding gratefully</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/schmonz/status/520608009673003008">12:13pm</a><br />
A kind voice intones<br />
All rooms sold out. La Quinta?<br />
Yes, I’ll drink a fifth.</p>
A Premeditated Improvisationtag:www.schmonz.com,2013-11-15:ed4417a7059b5d1ff91904645c482f4b/78e5256097fff7792ddc5c10fec5246cAmitai Schlair2013-11-21T14:53:35Z2013-11-15T14:33:49Z
<p><em>Schmonzcast #15</em>: Last night was the 28th Annual <a href="http://www.wikicu.com/Joyce_Kilmer_Memorial_Bad_Poetry_Contest">Alfred Joyce Kilmer Memorial Bad Poetry Contest</a>. Since discovering it (and the Philolexian Society) <a href="https://schmonz.com/2005/11/18/school-for-the-poetically-declined/">as a Columbia freshman in 2005</a>, I've attended every year save one. In my statesmanlike role <a href="https://schmonz.com/2007/11/16/explosion-at-the-poem-factory/">as a past laureate</a>, it is <em>de rigueur</em> that I reliably make a good showing. Here's the text of my entry and the <a href="https://schmonz.com/2013/11/15/a-premeditated-improvisation/20131114-kilmer-premeditated-improvisation.mp3">audio of my performance</a>.</p>
<p><em>On The Late Elinor Ostrom, Distinguished Professor At Indiana University, Which Is A University in Indiana, Which Is A Place That Exists, At Least Last I Checked, Which Illustrates The Epistemological Limits Placed On Human Knowledge Without Even Having Gotten Past The Title, So Check This, Because I'm About To Blow The Goddamn Doors Off Your Mind: A Premeditated Improvisation</em></p>
<p>by Amitai Schlair, GS '09, 2007 Poet Laureate</p>
<p><em>(inspired by “An Untitled Poem” by Everett Patterson, CC '06, 2003-04 Poet Laureate)</em></p>
<p>Elinor<br />
Elinor Ostrom<br />
Elinor Ostrom Ostrom<br />
Ostrom</p>
<p>Elinor Ostrom, you were an economist<br />
Milliner nostrum, willing colostrum<br />
Toast in her oven, osh kosh b'gostrom,<br />
Jellybean estrus, billionaire ostrich</p>
<p>Melon or onion? Colostomy instrument<br />
Excrement increment, Pandora's boxtrom<br />
Bloomington Bloomington Indianomically<br />
Estimate, aestivate, inner astronomy</p>
<p>Elinor Ostrom, economostrum<br />
Public choice theory phenomenostrom<br />
Nobel Prize winner, <em>per aspera ad astra</em><br />
Elinor, add sarsaparilla to blossom</p>
<p>Elinor Ostrom, Elinor Ostrom,<br />
Estrellanor Indianapolostrom<br />
Anchorbutt rancorous wankernut rostrum<br />
The budget shows us running Attention Deficit Disostrom</p>
<p>Elinor Ostrom, when you existed, you had been a person<br />
So far as we know.</p>
Literature Humanities: Paper #2tag:www.schmonz.com,2012-01-05:ed4417a7059b5d1ff91904645c482f4b/2c629e673c89f305c713f57dda0c8899Amitai Schlair2012-01-05T07:04:27Z2008-12-09T19:23:00Z
<p><em>Compare Aristophanes' and Diotima's speeches in Plato's “Symposium”. You should analyze each one carefully, thinking about the context, themes, structure, images, language, and references to other texts already studied in our class, as well as the role of each passage within the Symposium. From your analysis consider if those ideas have permeated our contemporary conception of love and how. Feel free to use contemporary references such as novels, quotes from movies, news articles such as <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/features/style/fashionandstyle/columns/modernlove/">Modern Love</a> in the NY Times. Notice that both speeches are very rich and you have limited space to write about them: choose the features in them that you find more interesting, and talk about them in detail.</em></p>
<h2>A little love, now and then</h2>
<h3>Ancient and contemporary Greeks in conversation</h3>
<p>The speech of Aristophanes in Plato's <em>Symposium</em> is notable in that its central metaphor survives to the present day. Though people are not generally aware of its attribution, in its genericized form it is part of contemporary discourse. Audiences require no explanation when hearing the title character in the film <em>Jerry Maguire</em> utter “You complete me” to the one he loves. Nor does she, but rather is overcome by the sentiment. It is a poetic formulation, the idea that human loneliness and the need for companionship are borne of estrangement from our original selves and that this eternal dissatisfaction was meted out by a higher power when we overreached our bounds. We had it, we blew it, we lost it. A later formulation of the same idea, the Old Testament tale of Adam and Eve, has achieved even wider cultural currency. In the conceptions of both Genesis and Plato's Aristophanes, companions share a connection rooted in the physical. Where Adam suffers the loss of a rib as raw material for the construction of his Eve, in Aristophanes the bonds between pairs of humans exist from the outset, as they share eight-limbed bodies, and the pain of their later separation is suggested by the bodily aspects of their forcible disjunction (26, 190E-191A). It is as though Aristophanes is responding to Eryximachus in kind, medical explanation for medical explanation.</p>
<p>Why has this metaphor retained its appeal? Plato's Socrates knows, because Diotima has taught him that ”…we divide out a special kind of love, and we refer to it by the word that means the whole — 'love'; and for the other kinds of love we use other words” (51, 205B). Today's discourse works the same way: unless they specify otherwise, two people talking about “love” are almost always talking about romantic love between two people. And Aristophanes' conception of love, focused as it is on the emotional experiences of individuals and their ideal states, meshes well with Romanticism (a precursor to our lowercased term), even as his story undermines the very etymology of the word “individual.” Upon finding each other, two matched dividuals “are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don't want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment” (28, 192C). We identify with this description because it is the very same experience we ourselves seek. Love is, by Aristophanes' lights, “the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete” (29, 193A). It would seem there is something timeless about the notion.</p>
<p>Socrates, speaking last and only after much characteristic self-deprecation, aims for a different sort of timelessness. Rhetorically, if not factually, he gestures away from himself as the source of any wisdom he may possess. Instead, he positions himself as having thought as his fellow revelers do until he received the wisdom of Diotima, prefiguring both the impact he wishes his speech to have and the distinction that speech (in the voice of Diotima) will soon make between the roles of lover and beloved (49, 204C). (Of course, the rhetorical layer of abstraction pointing to itself also points up Plato's role as the true author of all of <em>Symposium</em>'s speeches.) Diotima's speech begins, like Aristophanes' and thoroughly redolent of Aesop, with reference to god and myth. The properties of Love are initially explained as a hybrid of the properties of Love's parents. The speech's approach begins to depart from that of Aristophanes, however, when Socrates first interjects to ask a question of Diotima (49, 204B). From that point onward, the speech becomes recognizably Socratic, with the clever inversion of Socrates in the role of the student. Diotima asks so that Socrates might struggle toward the answers himself; as the character doing the speaking at this point in <em>Symposium</em>, Socrates affords the same luxury to his listeners, with the added benefit of providing his own answers moments later (an understandably proferred shortcut — after all, he knows they've been doing some drinking).</p>
<p>Aristophanes and Socrates both trade in abstractions, but the nature of the abstractions differs. Aristophanes relies on striking images and metaphors that are pleasurable to essay. That the whole of love can be explained in terms of paired permutations of sun (male), earth (female), and moon (both), that Zeus “cut those human beings in two… the way they cut eggs with hairs”; that Apollo created the navel as a result, is all persuasive in the same way any other origin myth is persuasive — which is to say, better at a glance than under close inspection. Socrates, on the other hand, is ready for his close-up. Once the Socratic portion of Diotima's speech is underway, the debate begins from definitions and first principles and follows a chain of dialogic discourse and stepwise discovery, along the way subsuming the speeches that have gone before in a symphonic synthesis. Aristophanes, for instance, is quickly deconstructed and dismissed in terms of Diotima's established chain of logic (52, 205E). This moment in Diotima's speech is a rich site for comparison between the intellectual capacities of Aristophanes and Socrates; the latter can dispatch the former's ideas as rapidly as that, and it is because the abstractions of Diotima (which is to say, Socrates) are less for artistic purposes and more for conceptual ones. That is to say, Diotima reaches for abstractions not to avoid confronting faulty logic, but rather when the complexity of an idea demands a level of abstraction, as for example drawing a distinction between the “object” and the “purpose” of love (52, 206B). This prepares the listener as well as possible for her explication of the ultimate progression of love, for the conception of Beauty “itself by itself with itself” with which her speech concludes (59, 211B). Having seen how Socrates makes a detailed logical argument, it is hard upon returning to Aristophanes to interpret it as anything more than a potent metaphor.</p>
<p>When Socrates speaks in the guise of Diotima, he is disguising more than his voice. His view of love places heavy demands of anyone who would try to understand and enact it, as Diotima says: “But as for the purpose of these rites when they are done correctly — that is the final and highest mystery, and I don't know if you are capable of it” (57, 210A). Socrates attempts, as per usual, to lower his apparent status (and thereby hearten his friends) by having Diotima preface her remarks with “Even you, Socrates, could probably come to be initiated into these rites.” But it remains apparent that achieving such a level of enlightenment is open only to the very few. Otherwise, if everyone could reasonably aspire to direct cognition of abstract beauty, which concrete individuals would be left to engage in concrete acts, to give literal “reproduction and birth in beauty” (53, 206E)? A society consisting solely of the enlightened would have to either compromise or die out. Aristophanes, by contrast, has a more egalitarian view in which any two people (for the most part, of any genders) can potentially be a match and achieve love. End of story.</p>
<p>The novel <em>Middlesex</em> presents several views of love over the course of the last century. In one, a brother and sister move from Greece to America, getting married on the ship over and swearing their only knowing American relative to secrecy. In another, a neighbor's daughter almost marries a priest before realizing he is the wrong man. Her realization hinges on the romanticized medium of Saturday matinee movies. In one of the movies she sees, a man played by a Claude Barron goes off to war in the desert because the woman he loved married another man who proves a poor choice. She goes to the desert and finds Barron, wounded, to confess her love. His reply, before dying:</p>
<blockquote><p><br />
'I went into the desert to forget about you. But the sand was the color of your hair. The desert sky was the color of your eyes. There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.' (189)</p></blockquote>
<p>A few pages later, another film viscerally reminds the neighbor's daughter of her non-priestly suitor, and suddenly she knows who her other half truly is:</p>
<blockquote><p><br />
She doesn't want to be a priest's wife or move to Greece. As she gazes at Milton in the newsreel, her eyes fill with tears and she says out loud, 'There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.'” (193)</p></blockquote>
<p>This archly romantic phrase figures at one more juncture in the novel, pertaining to the main character, who is born (unknown to anyone until puberty takes a strange turn) with a hermaphroditic condition, thanks to his/her brother-and-sister grandparents. After being informed that she is in fact a he, he runs away to San Francisco to try out his new identity. In this context, seeking and failing to find the self-love of his own other half, his suffering takes on a richer, more harrowing meaning:</p>
<blockquote><p><br />
Mostly I hung around the mimosa grove, in growing despair. A few times I walked out to the beach to sit by the sea, but after a while I stopped doing that, too. Nature brought no relief. Outside had ended. There was nowhere to go that wouldn't be me. (473)</p></blockquote>
<p><em>Middlesex</em> navigates family, gender, identity, and love — frequently blurring the boundaries of the familial, the friendly, and the romantic — through several generations. In so doing, it illustrates aspects of Aristophanes' quest for one's other half, as well as aspects of Socrates' quest for something more significant than a particular beautiful body. If <em>Middlesex</em> is relevant to contemporary life and love — and the decision of the Pulitzer committee would strongly indicate that it is — then the ideas it explores, old though they be, must themselves also be relevant today.</p>
<h2>Works Cited</h2>
<ul>
<li>Eugenides, Jeffrey. <em>Middlesex</em>. Macmillan, 2003.</li>
<li><em>Jerry Maguire</em>. Dir. Cameron Crowe. Perf. Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Renée Zellweger. 1996.</li>
<li>Plato. <em>Symposium</em>. Trans. Nehamas, Alexander and Paul Woodruff. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1989.</li>
</ul>
Thankstag:www.schmonz.com,2012-01-05:ed4417a7059b5d1ff91904645c482f4b/ee05c1932d4f60b1c01509b2f1d50ea6Amitai Schlair2008-12-01T17:25:00Z2008-12-01T17:25:00Z
<p>This may be prolix. I've wanted to write since approximately forever, and my mind and heart are awhirl, plus when not reading for class I've been reading novels (lately <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlesex%5F%28novel%29">Middlesex</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilead%5F%28novel%29">Gilead</a> and a quick review of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodbye%2C%5FColumbus">Goodbye, Columbus</a>. Apologies if I wind up writing one here.</p>
<p>Of all I can be thankful for, the most timely was Thanksgiving break. Mired as I have been in my muck, any time off would have sufficed, but the calendar afforded an especial reprieve with its prod toward gratitude and perspective.</p>
<p>I learned a few things over a relaxing, refreshing, and <a href="https://schmonz.com/2008/06/06/summer-of-road/">eventful summer</a>. At KlezKanada I sought to soak up Jewishness for use in my compositions only to realize that it's been there, always and unavoidably. At the <span class="caps">LSA</span> Summer Meeting and Mini-Institute I tried to fall under the sway of the linguistic lifestyle but was insufficiently moved. I won't be going to graduate school for music either, at least not now. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senioritis">senioritis</a> that is inconveniently peaking at crunch time got its start months ago, maybe even almost a year ago. I'm ready to be done with academia, ready to be back in the world, ready to <a href="https://schmonz.com/2007/11/11/advanced-composition/">enact my plan</a>.</p>
<p>For all the travel and discovery, my Google Summer of Code project suffered. This disappointed me and, I'm sure, others (though I'm hoping to have time for it soon, belatedly). Had I done particularly well, it could have helped my chances applying for a job at Google; it may be that having done poorly hurts my chances, or it may not. If I apply there, we'll find out. The job hunt is due to begin in earnest over winter break, which arrives in a few short and intense weeks and lasts for a beautiful month. I'm not wedded to New York by any stretch, though I'd stay if the right offer came along (I appreciate having my sister near; also, after four years of a student budget, it'd be nice to try being a grownup here). I have a more than vague interest in moving to the west coast, however, and will be attempting to make that a possibility as well.</p>
<p>Winter break will be lonely but productive and, as such, restorative. I'll be reorganizing physically and emotionally. I've been doing Krav Maga three days a week this semester; over break my schedule becomes amenable to five. I'll have time for various projects and overdue tasks, time to see friends, time to write music, time to think about how I want my last semester of college to go. Because after this semester, my only remaining requirement is a single social science course. At the moment I'm inclined to register for no more than that, to extend the feeling and freedom of winter vacation right up until graduation, after which my father and I will take a summer vacation in Israel.</p>
<p>Before any of these dreams can come true, I have to grind through the next few weeks. The courses I'm taking (with the exception of piano lessons) are all core requirements, my major having been completed in the middle of last year:</p>
<ul>
<li>Earth, Moon, and Planets</li>
<li>Galaxies and Cosmology</li>
<li>Literature Humanities</li>
<li>Asian Music Humanities</li>
<li>Principles of Economics</li>
</ul>
<p>None particularly excites me (the astronomy courses are at a sixth- to eighth-grade level), so I'm glad I'm taking them now, when the end is in sight, rather than earlier, when my alacrity to study music and language would have met with such discouraging dullness. Columbia has been amazing — I'm a composer now! — but like I said, I'm ready to be done.</p>
<p>I'm thankful for this journey and for nearing its terminus; for my health, as good as it's been in quite some time; and for love. After losing some, I'm rediscovering how much I still have.</p>
A lesser poet of Athenstag:www.schmonz.com,2012-01-05:ed4417a7059b5d1ff91904645c482f4b/3caec4c85512e38da7525a736aa2cf51Amitai Schlair2012-06-30T23:56:56Z2008-11-14T02:00:00Z
<p>Last year, as you may recall, I experienced the uniquely ignominious pride of <a href="https://schmonz.com/2007/11/16/explosion-at-the-poem-factory/">winning a bad poetry contest</a>. In this, my last contest as an undergraduate, I settled happily for dishonorable mention. Good enough for me; I've been to the mountaintop. Inspired (such as it is) by material from my <a href="http://www.college.columbia.edu/core/classes/lh.php">Literature Humanities</a> course, here's my entry:</p>
<p><em>Recently Uncovered Draft Manuscript of Ascrapius, a lesser poet of Athens</em></p>
<p>Sing, O Muse, of the varied and sundry accumulated experiences of Herodoklodophopilus, though they be difficult to translate in an elegant fashion, what with the language features of Greek grammar unavailable in English, not to mention the other limitations inherent to the work of translation, plus I don't actually know Greek at all. So sing, O Muse, loudly and clearly and in a way we over here can understand, if you get my drift. And don't worry about this little audio-recording doodad. Just pretend it's not there. Okay I'll turn it off.</p>
<p><em>[pretend to turn it off]</em></p>
<p><em>[clear throat]</em></p>
<p>Sing, O Muse, of the mild, persistent disappointment<br />
That plagued our somewhat interesting protagonist<br />
In manner nonetheless not unmanageable<br />
Or even memorable. The strong-greaved, rarely-greaved<br />
Herodoklodophopilus himself forgot<br />
Though it be him what at this tale is all up on.</p>
<p>So when you have put away your desire for eating and drinking,<br />
Put away in your minds this other thing I tell you.<br />
Many poets could have been chosen for the recounting.<br />
The muse chose me. What can I say, I gave her some good shit.<br />
Behold! Of all most honorable poets, this is Ascrapius you'll get.</p>
<p>And now, the moment you've all been waiting for already.<br />
Stay your poisonous, venomous, poisonous darts.<br />
No Aias-crapius to block them am I, with<br />
That big ol' shield. That you would harm, it hurts me right here <em>[gesture to heart]</em><br />
It's okay. I'm good. Story time, motherfuckers.</p>
<p>There once was a man called Herodoklodophopilus<br />
Who liked to stand on top of the Acropolis.<br />
But the Greeks all wore onesies,<br />
Which made it less funsies,<br />
Because noone ever walked around topilus.</p>
What's at staketag:www.schmonz.com,2012-01-05:ed4417a7059b5d1ff91904645c482f4b/020ddc23f9b1f5ddbab1aa2cae4f0cccAmitai Schlair2014-09-12T01:36:15Z2008-11-01T16:43:00Z
<p>This morning, as I watched an elderly black couple board a full subway car, a seemingly unremarkable series of events occurred: a young white woman rose and offered her seat, then a middle-aged Hispanic man did likewise. America at its best, in a nutshell, right? But it wasn't so long ago that America didn't work that way — as these two old folks doubtless knew better than I. With the election mere days away, I wondered: what would an Obama presidency mean to them? My emotional response was immediate and shocking. I had to turn my mind away from the thought to keep from bursting out in tears somewhere between 96th and 103rd Streets.</p>
<p>I don't know anything about these two people, I don't know how they've struggled, I don't know where their political sympathies lie. Maybe they aren't Obama supporters; it doesn't matter: I can easily imagine two more just like them who are, and I can make the leap to imagining that an Obama victory could be the sort of victory that justifies all they went through, that makes it all worthwhile in the end. Because they would have seen this happen, in their own lifetimes, with their own eyes.</p>
<p>Like I said, I don't know anything about these two people, other than their age and skin color (<a href="http://www.twainquotes.com/Congress.html">but I repeat myself</a>). Yet the narrative I facilely superimposed on them acted on me with tremendous force, and if I think about it only out of the corner of my brain, I can understand why. Freedom and justice are two of my most vulnerable emotional pressure points.</p>
<p>My ability to empathize with fictional people notwithstanding, for me Obama represents neither freedom nor justice. I fear his presidency almost as much as I suspect I'd like him personally. (In the interest of fair and balanced commentary: I fear McCain's presidency far more than I'd probably like him personally.)</p>
<p>I don't want to be 80 before my country shows signs of offering me the freedom and justice I deserved all along. I don't want a symbolic shift that's enough to let me finally die in peace. I want my government to recognize and protect my rights. I want it soon, so that my life can be the better for it. I want my own liberation in my lifetime.</p>
<p><em><span class="caps">P.S.</span> If you think I'm a jerk for even making this comparison, then you've just been a jerk. Don't presume to tell other people what their oppression feels like, let alone whose is more valid.</em></p>
Asian Music Humanities: Paper #2tag:www.schmonz.com,2012-01-05:ed4417a7059b5d1ff91904645c482f4b/c0f872b139738150c034702b6c01b364Amitai Schlair2008-10-31T19:19:00Z2008-10-31T19:19:00Z
<p>While browsing through the Smithsonian Global Sound archives, I happened across a recording by Sri Chinmoy, a name that sounded vaguely familiar for no reason I could think of. The title caught my eye, too: “Music for Meditation.” As a skeptic with my own ideas about spirituality, I wanted to know what this recording was going to sound like and, more than that, what it was supposed to <em>do</em>. What does it even mean for music to be <em>for</em> something? As a musician with my own ideas about music, too, the prospect of this recording was already a spectacle, and I hadn't listened to it yet.</p>
<p>It turns out Chinmoy's name rang a distant bell because he was a major figure in the 1960s and '70s bringing Indian music and culture to American spiritual seekers, and thus has entered American cultural parlance. And it turns out this record is a fairly smooth syncretism of all of the above. Recorded in New York City in 1976, with “cover design by Ashok Chris Poisson” and “cover photos by Pranavananda Anthony Hixon,” Chinmoy already had an American following. Track titles for side one: “Music (poem),” “Invocation,” “Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.” Side two: “I Sing Because You Sing (poem),” “Ke oi dake,” “Amar asru nire,” “Jibane marane,” “Jedike phirai,” “Amito tomare.” The ordering of the contents constitutes evidence for the Americanness of the record's target audience, starting with English-language titles and only entering into Bengali devotional song after turning over the record. The first track, “Music (poem)”, exemplifies Chinmoy's genre-crossing in the span of one minute. In spite of its title, it contains nothing that a listener would normally identify as music: the first half is spoken English, intoned as though from a hortatory speech, and the second half is a single long “Om” without a clearly defined pitch. Here we have Chinmoy immediately challenging us to relax our conceptions of what music is, what poetry is, and indeed to relax our conceptions in general in order to make room in the same arena of consciousness for a meditative <em>mantra</em>. He has rather cannily set the table for the record, prefiguring for the willing listener the nature of what is to follow.</p>
<p>My skeptical interpretation of the title “Music for Meditation” is that any effect the music has on the listener is largely due to the power of suggestion; put another way, the stating of its intention is necessary in order to achieve that intention. Toward the same goal, the pamphlet notes included with the record have much more to tell. First, they prescribe (along with the track listing and credits, on an unnumbered page) the recommended manner of usage: ” <em>Note:</em> This album should be listened to at a soft volume during meditation.” Chinmoy offers a more personal followup:</p>
<blockquote><p><br />
Let us not try to understand this music with our mind. Let us not even try to feel it with our heart. Let us simply and spontaneously allow the music-bird to fly in our heart-sky. While flying it will unconditionally reveal to us what it has and what it is. What it has is Immortality's message and what it is is Eternity's passage. (3)</p></blockquote>
<p>At a high level of awareness of his audience, Chinmoy then makes use of the preponderance of the available space as “a general introduction to meditation,” under the headings “Proper Breathing”; “Concentration”; “Meditation”; “Contemplation”; “Mantra”; “Flowers, Candles and Incense”; and “Choosing a Guru” (3). Mostly this contains no surprises, but there are two points which offer keys to interpreting his work. Early on, he steps outside of his explanation of breathing to allow that “This is not the traditional yogic <em>pranayama</em> , which is more complicated and systematised,” perceiving and reminding that these spiritual lessons are compressed versions of something larger (3). Near the end, he explains the <em>guru</em> as a spiritual master by way of a thoroughly modern analogy, placing his record in a particular place and time familiar to his audience:</p>
<blockquote><p><br />
Right now I am in London. I know that New York exists and that I have to go back there. What do I need to get me there? An airplane and a pilot. In spite of the fact that I know that New York exists, I cannot get there alone. Similarly, you know that God exists. You want to reach God, but someone has to take you there. (6)</p></blockquote>
<p>So this is what Chinmoy has to say directly about the ideal experience he wishes the music to engender. There are also a few revealing comments in the “About the Artist” section. For instance, ”…he has written nearly 300 books on spirituality and painted 120,000 paintings” (2). (If true, this number becomes more tractable to the imagination as an average of over seven paintings a day from birth to age 45, which is how old Chinmoy was at the time of the record's creation.) These numbers appeal to well-worn and still deeply held Western notions of the inscrutably creative artist (a holdover from the Romantic era) and of the tirelessly productive worker (an idea perhaps as old as the United States itself). The beginning of the following paragraph admits as much, then goes right for the American spiritual seeker's jugular via generic flowery language: “Sri Chinmoy's musical creativity is in a class by itself. It unites the lyrical, devotional tradition of India and the power, speed and vastness of the dynamic West — all in the universal human aspiration toward the Infinite” (2).</p>
<p>It is Chinmoy's own interdisciplinary approach that suggests such close reading of his liner notes, but what of the music itself? The Bengali songs (with English translations provided for accessibility) consist of Chinmoy's thin, wavering voice backed by a very simple waveform (not much more than a square wave) outlining the same pitches as the singer. His unsteady voice — or violin, on other tracks — is more than a little distracting to my ear. If this be music for meditation, it's for someone other than me, and here my reactions to the record begin to enact the same sequence of reactions to Ravi Shankar we discussed in class. There is something cheap about this Chinmoy record: it offers the impression of the ritual, the ascetic, the spiritual, but the impression is lightly acquired at a record store, and then experienced as needed, to taste, in the comfort of one's living room. Is the kind of meditation we can experience with the assistance of this record of the same kind Chinmoy himself experiences, or is it lesser not only in degree but also in quality? Does the process of meditation really benefit from certain kinds of sounds deliberately provided, or is it a shortcut of sorts? Chinmoy seems not to hold the American spiritual seeker in terribly high esteem. When what is desired is to pause from the practice of doing, of thinking, of feeling, and simply to be, Chinmoy presumes that this is too much to ask and instead offers a substitute activity, exaltedly relaxing though it may be designed to be. My least charitable interpretation is that Chinmoy is doing little more than cashing in on the Indianist trend that rose to prominence when certain of the Beatles took an interest in Indian music, but upon passing this judgment I become aware of what I've done and can take a larger view. A more charitable interpretation is that the effect of Chinmoy's album — whatever his intent — was to take advantage of the favorable cultural conditions to introduce, to a very wide audience, a set of ideas and beliefs worthy of being studied and discussed further. His continued American career suggests that this effort met with some success.</p>
<h2>Works Cited</h2>
<ul>
<li>Sri Chinmoy. <em>Music for Meditation</em>. Folkways Records, 1976.</li>
</ul>