Combing lions' manes and brushing crocodiles' teeth

So, my latest enjoyable pastime is to go on youtube, find what I consider to be really bad musical performances and make some kind of sarcastic comment about it, to see what people's reactions are (I know, I'm a jackass. Sue me). For example, the infamous Florence Foster Jenkins singing, or rather failing to sing, Mozart's virtuosic aria from the Magic Flute "Der Hölle Rache", which goes up to high D. She not only fails to get the high D, but fails to get every other note as well. Other people wrote comments like "total carnage", "I feel nauseous", "haha, it sounds like a little dog yelping" and "oh my god is this a joke?". So I wrote "Why is everyone complaining about this? It's beautiful! I've never heard a singer hit the right notes so often. Stop dissing her, and show some respect." I got a thumbs up from someone and a reply from someone called lucy()loves()music saying "rofl@ andrewesjames comment!" So that was a positive response. 

Next, I found a recording of Janine Jansen playing Bach's Chaconne, arguably the greatest piece of music for solo violin, or any medium, ever; her playing is extremely beautiful, even though not very baroque, but some guy had made a comment referring to the piece as a "song". This particular word gets my gander up when it comes to classical instrumental music, so I wrote back saying "The song? I wasn't aware the Chaconne had words." To which the original guy replied "Wow, you are impertinent." Sweet.

My personal favourite, though, has to be the following: last night I found a recording of Bach's beautiful aria from the St. Matthew Passion, "Erbarme dich", which has a stunning violin obbligato line throughout. It's about as beautiful an aria as you can get. This recording (Richter, with Julia Hamari singing) is not what I call beautiful though, unless lying naked and being covered with two truckloads of sonic maple syrup is what you're into. All the notes are there, it's all in tune, but it's still awful. All the notes are equally important, super-vibrated, and there's no sense of it being based on the siciliano dance form. The person who posted the video wrote "It goes deep into your soul. No words. Just watch, listen and get out of this world." So I wrote "You're right. This does take me to another world. A world filled with boredom." Because in the words of Nigel North, my esteemed Baroque Performance Practice professor, "all performers do actually express an affect successfully, even if it's mostly boredom". 

The epic reply I got to this comment is also out of this world. Here it is word for word:

"So I recommend you to comb a lion mane or brush a crocodile teeth. You can be sure that you will not be bored at all if you do that. It is a wrong place to you here."

Free refill alert!

July 21 was a momentous day this year. I woke up, walked through to the kitchen, looked at the coffee machine and.....ignored it. Yes, that's right, I ignored the coffee machine, having made the decision that I would never again drink coffee for the rest of my life. The next morning I woke up with a killer headache. The coffee machine loomed with a larger presence in the room. But I gave it a withering glance and it shrank back to size. The next morning a slightly less killer headache. And by the time the headaches had worn off, I felt good! No more caffeine in my system! My focus and concentration started to come back, I no longer felt jittery when playing the violin, and life was looking good.

Well, life kept looking good....for just over three months. On the 28th of October I went with a friend to a local café and decided that I'd just have a small coffee. American drip coffee is not the greatest thing in the world, but boy did it go down well. And then, a miracle happened. I looked away for one second, then back again, and the coffee cup was full again, like the magic sack of potatoes that never empties. Huh? That's right - America, the evil land of tipping, is also the evil land of free refills. Of course, I couldn't leave that poor coffee unattended to. That would be cruel. It had lived its life well, and ended up in my cup, so I felt obliged to give it meaning and drink it. "A bomb is made to explode", says psychopath Dennis Hopper to Keanu Reeves in Speed. "That's its meaning, its purpose. Your life is empty because you spend it trying to stop the bomb from becoming." He might as well have been talking about a cup of coffee and my life over the past three months.

Well, one cup had turned into two. Which turned into three, four, five and six. By the time I finally left the café, I felt like that bomb in Speed. Wired to explode. Since then I have had coffee every day, usually one or two cups. Yesterday I didn't, though, which explains why this morning I again woke up with a killer headache. So let's try this again, shall we? Perhaps I can make it to four months this time.

The tipping point

This post is about something which has long frustrated me in America - the requirement to tip at restaurants etc. Coming from New Zealand where 'service with a smile' is expected as a matter of course (most businesses actually get training through KiwiHost to give really great customer service), and where tipping is absolutely not expected or required, it has been a constant irritation at the end of a meal out to have to dish out an additional 15-20% just because the waiter or waitress did their job.

Today I chose not to tip for what I think is the very first time here in America. I went out with a few friends to get some food, and it was a less than satisfying experience. The douche who took our orders was really not with it, the food he brought was way below average and then he screwed up the credit card payments at the end, charging my friend's card double and my card nothing. And he didn't know how to fix the problem so one of his colleagues had to do it for him.

I have of course realised the obvious: when you pay for a tip, you are not actually paying for the service. A tip has NOTHING to do with service. It is a percentage of the bill. I could go out for just a drink and spend $4.50 for a glass of wine (leaving $1 tip; even though that's slightly over %20, it's considered a little bit rude to only leave coins). Alternatively, I could go out for lunch with a drink, and spend $15 (leaving a $2.50-$3.00 tip). Or I could go out for a three course meal at a fancy restaurant and spend $80 (leaving a tip of roughly $15). On all three occasions I could get exactly the same friendly and efficient service, yet would have to leave wildly different tips. The fact that the waiter might bring out more plates or uncork an extra bottle of wine is kind of irrelevant - this is no extra burden on his part, it's just his job. This system of tipping based on a fixed percentage of a bill is really absurd when you take it to an extreme level - imagine Donald Trump taking his entire staff out for dinner at the most exclusive restaurant in New York, and after meals and drinks, ending up with a bill for $50,000. That's a $10,000 tip right there. Now, you might say Donald Trump could afford it. Of course he could. But would the server really deserve an extra $10,000, just because he had the luck to serve Donald Trump?

The fact is, people in the food and service industry are paid less than the minimum wage: tips for them are necessary to make up for the stupid (and somewhat immoral) payment scheme that this country allows. So I would be happy to pay a tip, but only if tipping were genuinely based on service. I would really feel like I was saying thank you. And if tipping were really for the service, then I could choose to leave $1, $5, $10, anything I wanted, depending on whether the host made my experience pleasant or miserable. This would be great! Power to the customer, which is how it should be! Businesses would improve the quality of service if this were the case, because they would otherwise lose their customers and get no tips. But, as I have written, tipping has nothing to do with service, so I am never happy to leave a tip, even if I've gotten great service. I'm always just irritated.

Sometimes, I also have to wonder who the heck I'm tipping. About a week ago I went to the aforementioned place for lunch, had my order taken my one waitress, my drink brought to me by another waitress, my food brought to me by yet another person, and then my bill brought to me by the original waitress! The original waitress barely did anything, yet I bet it was her that the tip went to.

And I bet that the guy who gave me crap service today has stored my face in his memory, and will take revenge by giving me crappy service if he ever sees me again. And if that's the case, I will again give him nothing extra. This is war!

UPDATE: Here's a link to a story, revealing just how messed up this whole system of tipping is.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SmartSpending/blog/page.aspx?post=1393099&_blg=1,1393099&ucid=34715280#uc2Lst34715280

"Faster, slower, louder, softer". Is that really enough?

It's Sunday morning and as usual my stupid body clock woke me up at 7:30, after which there is no point lying in bed because that's just boring. So I'm writing at the computer and staring out the window at the train tracks that run behind my apartment complex. Every few hours, whether it be in the middle of the day or night, a train comes past, blasting its horn. Perhaps that's why the rent is quite cheap here. 

Life in Bloomington has so far been pretty awesome. I have made some bad-ass friends, and am playing some bad-ass music. The decision to switch to early music has definitely been the right one - I am now amongst people who actually think about music (my God, what is the world coming to?). Of course, this is a bit over the top, as there are truly great musicians and awful musicians in both the fields of modern music and early music, but I think it is generally true that most modern musicians think it sufficient to play music from a technical or sonic standpoint (if it's in tune and with a beautiful sound, it's good enough, thank you very much), whereas in the world of early music, that's just a given, and merely a foundation for the imagination and rhetoric that comes next. I remember playing in a full-time symphony orchestra, with a conductor who was trying to do creative things with colour and to get the musicians to think in terms of character. At the orchestra break, a fellow violinist came up to me and said cynically "Faster, slower, louder, softer, that's all he needs to tell us." 

I guess you have to have a balance of accuracy and imagination. One can have all the character, flair and imagination in the world, but if it's not in tune or rhythmically secure, then no one will even hear or care about what you're doing with the music. But if you lose yourself focusing on the technical aspects, then the performance comes across as accurate but boring. If you're hearing a great performance, you are minimally aware of the technical aspects of the music - the spirit and affect come across so strongly and you're captivated by every note. Two individual performers who I think do this so well are Andrew Manze and Cecilia Bartoli. 

Early music, though, has of course long been affected by the technical, historically authentic aspects of music, and has resulted in many-a-boring, bland and unimaginative performance or recording. But that kind of playing is happily being superseded by much more exciting and moving performances and recordings nowadays.

I'm starting to waffle. Speaking of which...breakfast! 

Hello!

Welcome to my blog! I've never done this before, but this is going to be the place where I have a few rants and raves and get creative with words. For those who don't know, I'm currently in Bloomington, IN in the first year of a Masters Degree in Early Music. I seem to be an eternal student - this is my fourth degree, and my third in America. But this degree really means a lot to me, as Early Music is the area of music that I've loved and wanted to focus on for so long. It's been a long road to get here, but it's all going fairly smoothly and I'm loving every moment of it! This is just a short, initial message, but there'll be more later and I'll try to make a regular weekly posting.