Gears not of stars, but stardust

Return to your rooms with portraited walls,

Rejoice as you pass through our hallowed halls.

Restart the gears turning! (obedient learning)

Set machinery whirring! (obsequious purring)

Swallow the Cipro, you need not protest;

Close your eyes and gain seasons of rest.

Exams stand imminent, entertainments await;

Sleep now, dear child, for the hour is late.

Empty your head of agitating ills,

Such addled designs strain common sense, defy common will.

There's nothing here to arouse any action,

All has been cared for to immense satisfaction.

(Bravo! Such a virtuosic performance of administrative abstraction!)

Insistence on truth only hastens your fall;

Ask not! Stay enshrouded in clouds, wrapped in your perfumed shawl.

Ideals dissolve you from inside to out,

Save yourself, lie back in silence: there's no reason to doubt.

With temptation unlocked, nothing else will suffice,
Feel the anxious, magnetic tug of aspiration enticed,
Propelled by inexorable, self-fueled volition,

Compelled by the majesty of self-burning ambition,

(Assisted conveniently by ethical concision!)

Find magical form in the substance of dreams,

Look only ahead for those bright, gleaming things,

Tomorrow's a new day, petals painted in dew;

oh blessed child, the future's waiting for you.



Inspired by the events surrounding the University's forced closure of the self-organized, student-managed Dining Commons at Suites. It has outraged so many, but the question remains: can anything actually be done? Or will we simply be lulled back into our complacent Stanford lives, which the University seems intent on doing.

Viennese Ball II

Early Viennese Ball Photos (c. 1979)

We are definitely part of a lineage, dear friends!

From Todd Doersch: "For the archives, attached are a few snapshots from Year Two (1979) that I scanned in a few years ago ... Alle tanzen!"

We belong here

Apparently there are ignorant, racially-insensitive white people at Duke. Who knew? Great for your reputation, Dukies. I'm simultaneously surprised and not surprised because ... this is America. -_-

I'm disappointed, but not entirely shocked. My heart goes out to the minority students at Duke who have to deal with this BS. (P.S. I'm refraining from going off on an "exoticizing/imperialist majority" rant; others cover that ground pretty well.)

The cynical part of me wants to say, "It's America folks. Get used to it." But then I rebel, because we are Americans, too -- not outsiders, not even immigrants. (Though all those cultural groups deserve respect.) We are as American as the next person sitting on the bus, or the neighbors who share the same communities we live in, or the teachers and students who walk along the hallways of our schools. We are also as American as a corn farmer in Iowa or a rancher in Montana. Engineers in Silicon Valley and environmentalists in Washington D.C. count too! Thus, the racially-charged actions by the Duke fraternity weren't just an attack on Asians and Asian Americans; they were an attack on the idea of a diverse America.

Yet I'm not giving up on my country, on our country, just because of the juvenile (and either malicious or devastatingly uninformed) actions of a few buffoons. There's nowhere else we belong more than here. I refuse to feel alienated; we aren't the ones being marginalized in society. The racist individuals are soon going to realize they just marginalized themselves.

Given that, I see why it's important for a united community reaction -- so those minority students don't feel alone, but know they have support, that they have allies, that there are people of decency who see and care. It's also critical for Duke to come up with an institutional response. They need to define what their university stands for.

Those fools picked the wrong ethnic minority community to mess with. We aren't quiet, docile and obedient anymore. We are educated, informed, outspoken, independent-minded and connected, and we aren't going to "take it" as our parents might have, the way earlier pioneering generations of AsianAms had to endure abuse without complaint, for fear of provoking further aggression.

Despite the stereotypical image of AsianAms staying silent, even before present times and the advent of social media, there already were courageous, articulate individuals in history who spoke up for our community. (Some of these heroes are still alive!) My hat goes off to all of them. Now, more and more as I write this, I am beginning to awaken to the important role an AsianAm *community*, including student groups, community centers and advocates, can play in the fabric of our schools.

I'll end by noting that I was actually born in North Carolina; and I'm sure glad my parents decided to move to Silicon Valley. My experience growing up here is one that AsianAm kids in other parts of the country might not have had, and this reminds me to be grateful for the Bay Area: its openness, its embrace of difference, its respect for those coming from distinct backgrounds (almost a given in a place that is a global crossroads), and the general sense of celebration surrounding all these variegated ideas and identities. We see diversity not only as part and parcel of daily life, but as something of value that enriches all of us.

Things I'm Listening to Lately

I caught the last few minutes of Dylan Mattingly's "Invisible Skyline" on the radio tonight. The Berkeley Symphony premiered the piece, and it was being re-broadcast on 91.7 KALW. (Funny timing; moments before, we had finished rehearsal with the Stanford Symphony).

I don't quite know how to compliment the music, but it really grabbed me. It feels like there are different parts of my brain being activated, attention being gripped and held. The music is both focused and atmospheric. I'm here and only here; yet simultaneously, I'm elsewhere, I'm away.

It explores little moments here and there. These moments carry you along, sonic gems, bright pockets of feeling and playfulness and motion. It's "new" music, but somehow it all JUST MAKES SENSE. And now I really want to hear the whole piece!

I searched on YouTube, and am currently listening to Mattingly's "A Way A Lone A Last A Loved A Long the Riverrun." It's awash with images and memories; maybe not my memories, but memories that I can imagine, floating to the surface and then drifting downstream.

To be here and not here ... the times I have been able to feel like this are when I am dancing -- waltzing, to be precise -- which is probably the best compliment I can give. It's strange, but the music generates a very similar feeling for my brain. It's something regular and synchronized, intertwined with something that feels absolutely spontaneous and open.

It's new and familiar all at once, like coming to where I know I'm supposed to be.





Interview with composer Dylan Mattingly, plus another blog interview and five facts.

Later on, I came across this Schnittke piece, played by "A Far Cry" which is an ensemble I'm a fan of!

Sustainable Flowers

 

Flower bases for Viennese Ball

Slumber

Let me bank sleep,
cup the wisps of z's in my hand:
snooze, slumber, hibernate.

No mere dozing, or afternoon siesta, but a
deep, bone-setting, earth-filling, sea-diving slumber.
An oceanic nap of eonic proportions,
dusted with the glitter of geologic ages.

Let me lie dormant,
spread porous, prone, and unconscious,
blissfully unawake.
unknowing unfeeling unseeing unthinking

I fall to earth and know the scent of loam,
the press of clean sand.

Found in notes (12-13-2012)

Fellow martyr—
          lie with me.

Cover the earth with the spread of our corpses;
fall into overturned furrows,
the clean soil and the gravity,
body pressed against the chiseled neatness of lined earth.

Such peaceful sleep. We will come to rest,
hand in hand,
the other wing returned
to level ground.

Lunar Times

Neat! This site from Helmer Aslaksen of the National University of Singapore describes how to calculate the Lunar New Year and other important Chinese holidays, based on the movements of the moon. In Ancient China, there used to be a government body, the Board of Mathematics, to carry out this function, though in the modern age, calendar-making has been privatized. My parents bring back a stack of lunar calendars from Taiwan every year, to distribute to family and friends.

If the goal is preserving tradition in daily life, it seems like it would be extremely useful for a society to have institutions whose sole cause is planning cultural affairs and defining and maintaining customs. That's why an executive ministry to govern cultural issues, with a real commitment to tradition, would be so interesting! (Not to sound monarchist, but an imperial body that claims a centuries-long legacy would potentially have more investment in cultural preservation and the esprit de corps to match).

Then again, in setting dates, the Board of Mathematics did not simply pinpoint occasional, optional celebrations. Lives and livelihoods were in the balance, as farmers relied on the agricultural calendar to time the sowing of crops. It was a genuine public service; the creation of the calendar helped to frame the activities of a whole year. So perhaps this is more like an NBER or an EIA, but with cultural implications.

Clear

Such a lovely tragedy,
repeated knife wounds to the heart.
The clean, sharp cuts of a well-honed blade,
metallic and ruthless,
shimmering in the dark.

Precise, proportioned jabs,
each with the force
to separate
              flesh    from     bone
pare the emotions;
such deliberate strokes!

Each cut liberates anew.
Each incision draws out a clean line of blood,
unraveling the tangled wires of emotional attachment.
We will clear this thicket yet!

Each slice, another
Gordian knot unwound,
coming loose,
falling uselessly away.

No need for such bindings any longer.

There's a story in here somewhere

At the end of the quarter, with exams looming and deadlines imminent, there's always the feeling of "Damn, I could have used that hour. I wish I hadn't wasted all that time last week on --------." It's in those moments that I wish we could bank free time and use the roll-over minutes when we need them. Instead of procrastinating on YouTube, I'd just make a deposit now and jump forward to the next assignment.

However, if we were actually graced with such a beneficent arrangement, it'd probably be a good idea for the Universe to impose a limit on the use of roll-overs per project. Otherwise, you might accidentally use up the precious minutes where you could have saved the Titanic, on a problem set -- and then really regret it

#storyidea #timemanagement

Invited Inspiration

One of these days, we are going to have the Facebook record of a literary or artistic group, a Generación del 27 or a Ballets Russes perhaps. We will be able to look back and see all the luminaries and balletic lights gathered for a Christmas party, or a hike to the woods, or a holiday dinner. It won't be mythical or poetically imagined, a wooden table under a tree by the dusty road side, oh Andalucía!, but have a name and a place and an address.

Scholars will delight as they comb through the records of our new Lorca's timeline, or discover a 21st-century Diaghilev hosting Nijinsky and asking Lydia Sokolova to bring loose-leaf tea. In 2020, the next Lawrence Ferlinghettii will still reference and publish the next Giinsberg, but readings at Ciity Liights could be traced online. We will have the URL of the next first reading of "Howll" -- what a page! -- and probably the podcast too.

When that day comes, Facebook will not just be a functional intermediary; it will also give us a sense of context and place, becoming both historical artifact and historian, by golly. We will marvel at how Zhimo 志摩 and Shih-qiu 實秋 and Hu Shih 胡適 all gathered together, and the Crescent Moon will be at once mysterious, and lofty, and wonderful, and tangible.

Escape. Such is dignity and grace.

Lin Huiyin devoted herself to the study of traditional Chinese architecture, as part of her generation's mission of social reform and renewal. She recognized “the necessity to winnow the past and discriminate among things foreign," while thinking with great care about "what to preserve and what to borrow.” It was a great loss that she died young, of tuberculosis in 1955; but perhaps there was some element of grace, for Lin was spared the nightmares that were to come. The horrors soon to engulf her husband Liang Sicheng, and their circle of friends and colleagues, would not have left her untouched.

Though her early death was tragic, some solace might be found in the idea that she was spared the descent into hell on earth: chaotic, tempestuous, murderous times, with punishments and executions levied for categorical faults, for free speech and thought crimes. Such was the country under Socialism, characterized by the onslaught of enormous political campaigns that consumed countless innocents.

We can weep for China, but I wonder if we should be glad that Huiyin escaped.

Modern Viennese Dance

For Thursday's Viennese Ball rehearsal, the choreographers declared, "All follows should wear white. And all the leads must wear a black-colored top." So the men of Opening obliged:

Here's how the choreographer reacted ...

Origin and Future

I've been reading a variety of articles about the leadership transition in China (the 18th Party Congress of the CCP is underway) and the positions of different leaders, including their support for liberalization/resistance to reform. In particular, this essay by Paul Monk, which makes some insightful historical allusions and references key Chinese intellectuals at the turn of the last century, provoked a reaction in me. I jotted these lines in response, as we await the ascendance of the new leadership:


A wellspring is memorial

Democrats hail from Thomas Jefferson,

the Republicans are the party of Lincoln.

You, leaders and adherents: whence came your Party?

Whose portrait hangs above your colonnades of gold and crimson?

Can you disavow the crimes of the past to begin anew?
Have courage! What pride is there in poisoned roots?

Or do you slink along with eyes firmly closed --

Set mute all tragedy! Dampen the truth!

Surrounded by memories in the streets assembling,

flooding the steps, the square is swelling.

With phantoms trailing in your wake,

pulse swiftly racing, you dash up the staircase 

-- and slam the door behind you.
Such is the portal to high office!

The ghosts do not disappear, but gather below

handfuls and hundreds outside your window.

Ones tens ten-thousands, deepen, upwell, 
the severals and scores become concerts and choruses.

It's an ocean of hope -- a broad, smooth sea

a wide river delta joined by many streams.

They lift misty eyes bright with
the iridescence of June morning, still shimmering from promises of May.

There once was spring ... 

They are not vengeful spirits, but martyred sons and daughters,
a stillborn dream, a dream still borne;

they will yet set you free!

They carry no hatchets in their sleeves,
they hide no garrotes in their pockets;

No sickles, no daggers,

no bullets or hammers;

only bright blossoms and streaming pens:

the poetry of lofted banners, the symphony of chained hands.

Take heart, for the streets do not run red.

They are filled with warbles of ev'ning song instead.

Beneath the gentle chatter, the shuffling gait of citizens on stroll,

the cobbles radiate the living patience -- the lifelong forbearance! -- of a gentle people.

Step down from such high places!

Open your heart to the melodies of day and night.

Prick your ears for a tune of utter freedom,

Hear our sacral song take flight.

for we will absolve you

Tagore, City and Village

Tanushree, this passage I read today made me think about the question you posed, and which we periodically discussed: "What does a prosperous village look like?"

Can we have people thriving in a modern agricultural context, able to cultivate the land and live in solid, comfortable homes? With access to economic opportunity, supportive family ties and healthy psychologies? Enough mobility, while feeling rooted, with a sense of place? That kind of stable, yet worldy and connected, community would be an important salve for the anomie of urbanized life. It provides an alternative approach to what we currently see as the model of "development."

From a book review:

"Tagore was drawn to the agrarian milieu of pre-capitalist India, to the villages where divinely ordained dispensation had a spiritual context. Urbanizing, modernizing India is fleeing from Tagore’s ideal, a circumstance Mishra has examined to beautiful effect in 'Butter Chicken in Ludhiana' (1995) and 'Temptations of the West' (2006), non-fiction books covering the contemporary Indian and Asian scene. Tagore’s radiant words enshrine a wisdom against which India’s geopolitical ascendancy can be measured."

So perhaps we can add to the list of the characteristics of a prosperous village a reverence for the natural world and a relationship to the divine.

Fitzgerald, meet Huxley

"Can someone please invent soma?"

"I forget what that is. Isn't that from Brave New World?" his friend asked.

Oh soma ... "the warm, the richly coloured, the infinitely friendly world of soma-holiday." "she swallowed six half-gramme tablets of soma, lay down on her bed, and within ten minutes had embarked for lunar eternity. It would be eighteen hours at the least before she was in time again."

Telling my friend about soma, I thought of John at the end of "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz" murmuring softly to Kismine: "Turn up your coat collar, little girl, the nights full of chill and you'll get pneumonia. His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours."

John could have used the right prescription. Oh the benefits of soma—take us away from here! More bright descriptions from Huxley of this luminous dot:

"Benito was notoriously good-natured. People said of him that he could have got through life without ever touching soma. The malice and bad tempers from which other people had to take holidays never afflicted him. Reality for Benito was always sunny. "

"'You look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma.'"

"The return to civilization was for her the return to soma, was the possibility of lying in bed and taking holiday after holiday, without ever having to come back to a headache or a fit of vomiting, without ever being made to feel as you always felt after peyotl, as though you'd done something so shamefully anti-social that you could never hold up your head again. Soma played none of these unpleasant tricks. The holiday it gave was perfect and, if the morning after was disagreeable, it was so, not intrinsically, but only by comparison with the joys of the holiday." 

"'All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.'"

"half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon..."

This particular quip, along with other descriptions of how taking soma ends thought, made me think it could be a bit like bottled meditation:

"Was and will make me ill,
I take a gram and only am."

Perhaps that's giving it a bit too much credit. Instead of self-awareness, and the moment ceasing thought, the effect of this drug could potentially just be un-inhibition, so no consideration of future or past is countenanced. I haven't taken any, so I'm unsure.

"'Every soma-holiday is a bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity.'"

In the end, let's just sing: "Hug me, honey, snuggly bunny; Love's as good as soma." Virtually, almost, nearly as good as soma. That love, it's something, ain't it!

From Vienna: "the hymn of acxiom (1st draft demo)"

Vienna Teng released a track to encourage folks to vote on Election Day. If you cast a ballot (of any kind), she sent you the link for the following song: http://soundcloud.com/vienna-teng/the-hymn-of-acxiom-1st-draft/s-PvfyU



What a haunting piece! I don't know if it's reassuring to be constantly understood, or if it verges on Orwellian. It feels like church music, except we're praying at the altar of Big Data -- a hymn to digital life. It also begs the question: if the receiver doesn't think or feel, even if it hears everything and says all the right things in response, are we truly understood?

The novel "The Quantum Thief" is a really great read that might strike a similar chord in readers. The story touches on the creation of new online worlds, private and public space, and the meaning of shared experience. Here's a glowing review of the book from the WSJ: on.wsj.com/zTpNHp

I was about to head out to practice with the folk band when I heard this song, and it really set the mood for my morning. Thanks, Vienna!

Civic Culture

Time to take part in our national ritual! In the United States, our civic religion is democracy, and our liturgy is voting. As we celebrate hard-fought, hard-won rights (from Revolution to Abolition, from Equality to Full Enfranchisement), we join hands in this political process to venerate freedom and sustain our civic culture.

Long life to the Republic! Remember that it is strengthened by our participation and aided by our commitment to democratic principles.

See this moving series of photos from The Atlantic Wire: "The Length Americans Are Going to Cast Ballots."

Wash it white

This line from an article in The New York Times on Asian Americans and affirmative action kind of pisses me off:

"More important, some argue, Asian-Americans themselves benefit from the campus diversity the system produces. Schools where admission is purely through a test, like the elite public New York City high school Stuyvesant, often have large percentages of Asian-Americans. The University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles are more than half Asian. That doesn’t help them integrate effectively, to pierce what some call the bamboo ceiling in the corporate and political worlds."

So we should "integrate effectively" by acting white? The problem of discrimination originates with the person who discriminates, not with the victim.

While I support diversity, and believe it is vital to respect and learn about the experiences of other cultural groups, this backward line of reasoning appears to delegitimate the heavily "Asian American" experience of students at UCB and UCLA. Somehow, they're "too Asian", and that's why they can't break through the bamboo ceiling? Maybe the bamboo ceiling is the problem, and the AsianAm culture extant at Berkeley is actually a legitimate form of being.

There may be features of the culture at those institutions that can be adjusted -- we can always talk about that -- but just because they don't mimic the dominant forms of the mainstream doesn't make them wrong.

Look, I get that there are advantages in learning to "play nice" and interact with people of different races. That's all well and good. But you shouldn't have to pretend to be something you are not in order to get ahead. That's like telling Tibetan minorities in China, "You should learn Mandarin and stop acting so Tibetan. That way you can reap the benefits of China's economic growth." That may be a personally strategic course of action, but you shouldn't have to do that just to live a decent life or be treated with dignity. Otherwise, you deny the validity of the minority community's way of life.

Just my off the cuff reaction.

逆光 Against the Light

Three former officers in the Taiwanese military were arrested today for acts of treason. (From the WSJ: "Taiwan Arrests 3 for Spying for China") I've jotted down my reaction to this enormous betrayal; for to betray Taiwan is no ordinary crime, but one that sentences a dream to die.

Against the Light

I cry because you are selling out a democratic island—a bastion of freedom and tolerance holding strong amidst the swelling waves. You seek to tear down this radiant lighthouse, a resolute beacon in a sea of oppression. You shatter the dream that might yet be; a world of liberty and love that shines so brightly it pierces then dispels the enveloping gray fog.

For the sake of greed and material gain, you have betrayed our fiercely beloved: the caring society that birthed and raised you, that touches you still. This green land, of diverse views, utter kindness and open hearts. It is the land of your children and of your children's children. How can their freedom mean nothing?

Intolerable treason! You say that nothing we hold dear should stand sacred; that the impulse of money and the lure of power overcome faith and comity and trust. We reject this. We pity you, and we disdain your twisted ways.
 

Where is it written that liberty must inevitably be slain by economics? That ideals must surrender to avarice? No, it is the daily killing—the subtle knife of complacency, of nonchalance, of corruption—that leads to its death, not some foregone historical pronouncement.

You have destroyed conscience for personal gain. How can you sacrifice so many? Your only mission in life is to fight tyranny in all its forms, and in so doing, express your love for country and for all humanity. This betrayal cuts to the core, for you would that people be deprived of their freedom—freedom to think, to speak to, to be. You sentence not only we who are of your homeland, la patria, but the multitudes who yet live under the yoke, or may one day be born captive.

Can the hopes and aspirations of so many be worth so little? Be a thief, but do not murder the dream that is to be lived.