Falling

The Marching Arts

I have a strong premonition that most of the people that read this blog know me personally. I have also not made an insignificant number of posts dealing with the subject of the trumpet. I am taking the assumption that either knowing me in person or having seen those posts on this blog are sufficient conditions for knowing that I am a band person.

I think that there is a great misconception about the label of someone in "band". Compared to orchestra, for example, band instruments play a great diversity of styles. Someone's experience as part of a wind choir is going to be infinitely different from someone's experience being in a jazz combo. I am personally very involved with a specific style of "band", which is the marching ensemble. The tragedy is that these ensembles are currently being threatened by the deforestation of fine arts defunding. Programs across the nation are either being directly cut or are otherwise suffering the effects of such cuts.

The value of education has long been monetized. I don't think that there is any debate about that. What I revile is that it is increasingly privatized. Monetization alone is simply a way of quantifying something's value. For somethings this is appropriate. Like a bushel of apples. For other things it is not. Like a human life. My intention is not to argue whether or not education ought to be monetized. My argument intends to rest on the assumption that so long as the things that valued properly, their benefit can be accurately assessed. I believe that the problem arises when unknown detriments are incurred once the value of fine arts programs are overlooked. One quick thing: there is a strong cognitive bias when I say the word "education", especially in the context of a discussion about schools, to think of the traditional fundaments of literature, english, mathematics, and sciences. What I intend to address is education in the strictest sense, but of a different sort. I also want to make it clear that I here have no intention to espouse the benefits of a musical education. I frankly don't understand how this matter can be so conclusively proven and yet so contested.

Certain aspects of schooling have become outright privatized. For instance, the majority of schools themselves never provide lunch for their students. They get a private company to do that. Most schools have contracts with textbook manufacturers instead of generating their own material. This itself may and or may not be a bad thing. The problem is that a schools are beginning to change their model into one that prioritizes getting the most for their money. Like any investments, it's natural for the overlords of these institutions to want to invest the most in the area that they see the most returns. For instance, since scrutiny of the academic competitiveness of primary and secondary schools has recently skyrocketed, many institutions are prioritizing this. The resources for the school such as the school's budget, facilities, staff, and administrative capacity have been directed towards the furthering of this goal. This is paralleled by the demand of these institutions on their students to likewise invest their time and energy. This is not simply a pull force. It is also a push force. The effect is that fine arts programs, particularly in music, are being reduced, redacted, and made redundant.

Why is this? Well there are several realities to contend with. The first is that a music program always includes a premium. Instruments are expensive. Their cost is not only a one-time investment, there is the continual cost of their maintenance and the cost to replace them when they inevitably become unusable. There is also the fact that the learning curve on musical instruments can often seem as barren as the Atacama Desert. It takes many more years to develop anything that would be commonly lauded for its musical merit than a typical student spends at a single school. An average American high school is four years. An average middle school is three. An exceptional music program typically doesn't include elementary schools children for more than three years. It is glaringly apparent to anyone who has tried that this is nowhere near enough time to "get good". Additionally, music by nature is noncompetitive. Of course people make competitions out of it, but that is a superstructure. It's not like a school basketball team where performance can be gauged against another school, as a way for justifying the cost of the program. Music is subjective. So imagine an elementary school program that normally begins students in 3rd grade. The superintendent decides to cancel this program on the basis of its expenses and the fact that the end of year concert for 5th graders still sounds like a flock of Canadian geese and bull elephant calls. Suddenly, instead of getting students with three years of experience, the middle school program has to dedicate its first year to teaching which fingers to press and how to read music. Suddenly, the quality of their ensembles takes a nosedive, and one can imagine how this buck gets passed around. Then at the high school level, the superintendent tells the director to think of ways to improve the quality of the band, when really the only thing that can really be done is for the superintendent himself to go yell at the district budget committee on behalf of the elementary school not to cut its program. Obviously this rarely ever happens.

This situation is even more aggravated in marching ensembles because their membership exists on a recursive trend of increasing exclusivity. Despite being multi-disciplinary (requiring for example a high level of both athleticism as well as musicianship), the near comprehensive majority of people that join a marching ensemble come from a band background. This group of people is a subset of so many sets that there are really quite few people (percentage wise) that find themselves in a position to be successful in the activity.

We are a dying breed. Those of us that run and play, those of us that know to count our steps and stay in line. Those of us that can look sideways without turning or head, and point our toes to the sky. There used to be many but now there are few, of those that can twist their hips and slide. The details, the beats, the turf, the seats. We are indeed a dying breed.

Into the Dark

It was a wonder to behold. It’s bezeled edges caught the light as he held it in his hands. In it was more computational capacity than man used to reach the moon. Its ability to access the silent waves of telecommunications enabled any knowledge, true or false, to be summoned to its lighted screen in a mere matter of seconds. It was without a doubt, the paragon of human technology. This slab of steel, glass, and copper, this handheld torch into the unknown of darkness, loneliness, and ignorance. When in need of knowledge, when in need of distraction, when seeking after a love or a lust, there need be nowhere else to turn but to this device.

It’ll be obsolete in a year or two, and he, like most people, will be inclined to buy a new one. To trade the fruit of many hours of life in return for that connection, that distraction, that outlet for availability again. Society as a whole had decided that that was what they wanted. They wanted to feel close to the light in their hands, and far from the darkness outside. They wanted to see the pictures of their loved ones, and hear songs that made them feel a certain way. They wanted to know that at least a little bit of who they were, could somehow, somehow, somewhere, make a difference in someone’s life, or at least what they professed it to be.

He placed it gently on the table, and turned it off. It used to never be turned off, and it would light and buzz day and night, alerting him to people that did things in places for reasons. And he felt informed. He felt safe, he felt warm, he felt happy. But his happiness did not lead to joy. The smiles of profiles and the shenanigans of cats did not cause any jubilation to become his own. Happiness was not what it once was. It was thin, and light, and constantly attended to. It needed to be recharged, it needed to be squirreled away in pockets and purses to always be pulled out and always be touched, but protected, for its fragility mandated that it be so treated.

He stared at it for a while. He knew part of him wanted to pick it back up and be with it. As the last flickers died from the screen, he closed his eyes and breathed. His world felt a little more silent without the noise, the waves of interference. The hunger for more- the pictures, the knowledge, the understanding, the exposure, the sensation, the enthralling captivity, it all cried out as he turned and walked away. With every step he felt lighter, with every breath he felt fuller as the atoms of air in his lungs filled his chest and crept into his body, pushing out the exhale that it was exchanged for. He felt his muscles relax, muscles that he didn’t know were tense. As he walked through his house, turning off the lights in each room, his brow settled into a gently curving line, free of tension. His arms fell to his sides, with nothing to hold, and nothing to protect, he swung them as he walked. After going from room to room unplugging alarm clocks, televisions, computers, stereos, he came upon his kitchen. He unplugged the toaster oven and the microwave, letting the cords drop like hungry serpents from his hands onto the linoleum tile, where they lay coiled.

The faucet groaned and sighed as he filled a cup with water and brought it to his lips. He held the cup with both hands, feeling the ceramic warm from his skin and cool from the water. The water tasted the way water does, for all intents and purposes tasteless, but never perfectly so. He felt it run down his throat into the cavernous mechanism that would process and utilize it in a perfected biological clockwork. He set the cup on the counter with a gentle clink, and turned to look at the window. The night was warm and inviting.

The moonlight called to him with its unattainable allure, its pale beckoning, nestled in the brotherhood of stars. The trees swayed their branches as a warm summer breeze pushing through the skies and clouds, rusling every blade of grass and leaf in gentle caress.

He opened the door and set one foot outside, suddenly paused. It wasn’t fear, it wasn’t anxiety, it wasn’t obligation that stayed his body across the threshold, it was a simple desire. It was a want to mark this moment, to take it in as soon as it passed, to hold tightly and never let go of this moment with the world in front of him, and the world behind him. He stepped into the night and the moon and stars twinkling looked upon his figure fading quickly into the night.

Race to the Finish

Before I begin talking about this topic, I think I need to first establish a disclaimer: anything I talk about here, or really ever on this blog, unless otherwise indicated, is almost always a matter of my personal opinion and based on my experience. My interpretation, while functionally irrefutable, is also highly subjective. I ask that any reader realize such, and judge accordingly.

When discrimination is brought up, I immediately think of the history of the American south, the Rwandan genocide, or the indian caste system. These are all prime examples, I think, of discrimination. So compared to this, people talk about discrimination in America, my first reaction is that I have no idea what they're talking about. Well, The truth is, I discriminate. Against most people I run into. A lot. However, I don't discriminate on the basis of race. I don't think anything could be so errant and idiotic. I discriminate based on things like intelligence and mannerism. The truth is, time and energy are limited resources, and I like to hedge my bets on the people that I think both mean the most to me, and that I mean the most to. However, just because I internally discriminate in this way against a rude fast food employee who speaks to me with aggressive flippancy and shoves my change at me, the extent of my discrimination goes no further than a mental note that in the event of a zombie apocalypse, I wouldn't want him or her on my team. I still try to say thank you, make eye contact, and conduct myself in a generally amiable and proper manner. I don't think that, while "discriminate" is an ugly word, people object to this particular form of it. No, racial discrimination has a different flavor entirely. But the matter still remains that when people say they've discriminated against, they hardly ever mean that they were denied the right to vote, or that they were denied service in a store or restaurant, or even that someone spat at them or cursed at them, or stopped their child from playing with theirs on account of their race. Now, I'm sure that there are still instances of this going on, and the recent trend of reports of police brutality certainly prove this to be the point. But where I happen to be now, on a college campus in an affluent corner of the american northeast, so far as I am concerned, there is no racial discrimination of this type. However, people that I've talked to have said that there is discrimination here amongst the happy pretty stone buildings of this campus, and though, as a minority, I personally haven't felt much if any discrimination against myself, these people whom I've talked to, so far as I can tell, are reasonable, well meaning, intelligent, honest people. That leads me to wonder why it is that their conclusion is so startling different from mine. I see no one's civil rights or liberties being infringed on, I see no segregated bathrooms or drinking fountains, a great number of people that I run into on a daily basis are minorities, and they seem to be doing well enough. This leads me to conclude that the claim that racist discrimination is still a problem is invalid, at least for this place and this time.

I don't want to do that, because while it would be easy for me to dismiss their claims as the byproducts of narcissistic acrimonious pedantry, I do respect them as people and friends, and I very much want to respect their views; I think that that alone is enough premise to warrant a little more consideration. So in an effort to understand their claim, I decided to really look at the kind of actions that they find themselves subject to, that they label racial discrimination. And I found that what they mostly referred to was a very real phenomenon not of anything like denial of rights, but rather a separation between people of different backgrounds. When I say different backgrounds, I mean, of course, race, but also things like socioeconomic status, as well as customs, traditions, and upbringings. As diverse as this can sound, I think it's well recognized that there is a correlation between race and these other things. And while it certainly bears to mention that these other issues warrant address and solving on their own, the one I will continue to pursue here is the matter of race. The separations caused by race are a real issue, because if a person observes that everyone of their skin color or physical appearance is isolating themselves from the larger collective, they are more likely to do so. Once they do so, they are likely to be expected to do so, which leads to them being encouraged to do so. Given America's history of not being so nice to certain minorities, for instance, African Americans, it is no small wonder that this separation is perceived to be vestigial of that time and mode of thinking. Especially if a child grows up in such an environment, these minorities are in effect socially conditioned to accept this as a fact, a status quo that they are expected to follow and fear the repercussions of deviating from. This expectation leads to adherence, and adherences perpetuates the separation. Separation is a problem, because in many ways, self-segregation is no better than segregation. When a group of people share such an identity as a common minority race, it's difficult for people outside that race to see past that and very easy for them to dismiss them for it. While individually, these people may be recognized in conversation to be the fine, upstanding human beings that they actually are, when they are seen together, the are slapped with the label of racial identity. Once this happens often enough and for long enough, this sense of being labeled transcends the social behavior from whence it came, and people are often seen as only their race, and thus are still treated as isolated even when they're not actively isolating themselves. This is the racial discrimination that people are facing today. It's not being condemned to sit at the back of the bus anymore, it's being condemned to sit alone. And that is a real problem.

To combat this, one must first distinguish the fundamental differences between these types of discrimination. Whereas the first kind, let's call institutional discrimination, is perpetuated by social creed and often by governments (officially or unofficially), who if not out right support it, enable it by turning a blind eye to the issue. Institutional discrimination often takes the form of concrete denial of rights, different treatments and opportunities for the groups involved, and dismissal of human integrity on the count of race. The discrimination I described earlier, the discrimination of today, let's call implicit discrimination. This is often takes the form of social norms, perpetuation by figures of authority, such as teachers and administration (by the turning of a blind eye to these issues), different opportunities for the parties involved, and a dismissal of a person's human qualities on account of their race. Seems similar doesn't it? Startlingly so. However I have found that the biggest difference is this: institutional racial discrimination is a product of hatred, and implicit racial discrimination is a product of fear. There is no stronger human impulse than the urge to fear things that are different from what you're comfortable with, and more so different from yourself. It's no small wonder, then that in this day and age, when so much emphasis is put by nearly every society on clothing, and hairstyle, and general matters of appearance, that that's all we often end up seeing. After all, skin is only skin deep. The matter here is not to try to overcome this racial divide and shallow perception by combating hatred. In many a judicial case, crimes perpetuated by racism are often classified as a "hate crime". Judicial rulings, laws, prosecutions, and in general the judicial and legislative systems of government are effective ways of dealing with hatred. That's not to say that they can stop anyone from feeling hate. One of the side effects of living in a country with freedoms is that anyone has the right to be a bigoted racist if they want. The laws, however, can prosecute and ensure that no bodily or civic harm manifests from that. But like hatred, everyone is free to fear, and there's no authoritative figure that can really influence that to an effective degree. I believe that the way to combat this fear is through fostering personal relations between people from which we have nothing to fear from except fear itself, i.e. people simply different from us. If we want to solve the problem of implicit racism, we need to create a society that doesn't value how someone's hair looks, what clothes they wear, how big their biceps or how slender their legs are. There needs to be a society that sees people as first and foremost human. These qualities of physical appearance should not be understood to be diminishing of human worth, but rather additive to it. Nothing about how a person looks, speaks, lives, eats should change the fact that they are fundamentally human, and while they may not make the short list for your zombie survival team, they should make the long list of brothers and sisters in humanity.

Family

When someone is asked who are the people they love, family members will almost always be named. Most commonly a parent, but quite often a sibling, uncle, aunt, or grandparent will appear too. From my limited exposure to the world, this seems to be the case regardless of culture and creed. Everywhere you go, there is not only this understanding of more or less what a family is, but also that you should love them. I don't believe that anyone is explicitly taught that they should have a family and love them.

A family, typialy, contains an ableistic and temporal hierarchy between a "parent" generation and an "offspring" generation. At the beginning of their lives, the members of the offspring generation are entirely dependent, more often than not on the parent generation. Throughout their upbringing, the parents provide the offspring with more than just care and materialistic provision, but rather with characteristics that differ from parental unit to parental unit. Things like moralistic values, personality traits, arguably even sense of humor. Regardless of genetic predisposition, most commonly aided by the nature of the biological parenthood, these qualities and characteristics are undeniably exposed to and often imbued in the offspring. In this way, the keeping and raising of a family can seem entirely narcissistic, i.e. you only care for others under the condition that they are very much like you, and that their preservation is in essence tantamount to yours. Many a scientific mind would probably explain why so many animals across so many branches of the phylogenetic tree exhibit familial behavior. However, I speak here not of the lions, the wildebeests, and the swans. I speak of humankind. We, with our artificial shells of concrete and bureaucracy have in many ways transcended the need for simple food and shelter, and yet the family is still as integral a part of our civilization as ever. In a the pseudo-welfare state of this country at least, there are many places where one can find the means of physical provision. However, that is not enough. The need for family is more than the needs for physical things.

I firmly believe that within each human being, there are two impulses- an impulse to good and an impulse to evil (a yetzer hatov and yetzer hara, if you will). The impulse to evil thrives in differences and isolation. Consider the atrocities that have been committed when people are divided into "us" and "them", or blended into the camouflage of anonymity. When looking at the differences between another human and you, it's easy to disregard their humanity, and thus easier to no longer treat them the way you otherwise would. Conversely, the impulse to good dwells in seeking those common bonds between all mankind, to realize the fears and loves in tumultuous conflict inside each beating heart. Seeing this is what can make us kind and loving, human and humane. There in the family, is one of the deepest manifestations of this phenomenon. Because the people in our family are often so like us and we are in a position to fully realize that, our impulse to good is obstinately prodded. To look at a family member and their similarities to you is to not only acknowledge their mutual humanity, but to see your humanity in them. What they are, who they are, their dreams and desires, are undeniably commensurate to your own. How then, could you not want to be the best you can possibly be to them? How could you not want to be excellent? How could you not love them? Our families are more than arbitrary groups of people boxed in by societal utilitarianism and expectation. They are the the greatest testament to the human capacity of love that we can possibly find. The love that we want to be offered and offer ourselves is exactly the love that we have a chance to give to those who are the closest to us.

Drip

There’s a special hour in the dying of each day, when the sun pauses in its saundering stride to the horizon, and turns around to look back on the world it’s leaving, as if to promise its return. That’s the quietly magic moment where the trees are framed in gold and the clouds break into their last song as notes of color streak the sky before the impending night. It’s in that hour, that moment of sunset, that instant when the day is done but not finished, that time freezes. The steady ticking, though sometimes a trickle and sometimes a roaring rush, is in that moment, completely in your hands. You can hold your breath, and with every bit that leaks out, feel a drop go by. But the plasticity of time is not a uniform layer. It’s sometimes thick and heavy, like winter wool on the whitest of days. Other times, it’s as light as summer dew and seems to disappear before your eyes. Those who are old are blanketed with time, carrying the weight of their world on their bent backs and heavy hearts, the wrinkles of age filled with their memories of love and loss. The infants, on the other hand, fight time with all their strength. They flail and kick their legs and scream their pink faces, but in the end find themselves tempered by its swaddling. They grow up under the weight of all these layers pressing down, grounding them to a world they were not always bound, what we call reality. Time is measured by the ticking of clocks and the slow pulses of waves, but it is not kept by these contraptions and devices. They simply mark its passing. No, time is only kept by us, those who hold our breaths at the close of each day, and feel the drip. Drip. Drip. 

Seraphinoff Trumpet Making Workshop

This past week I've had the opportunity to attend a trumpet making workshop in Bloomington, Indiana. The class is centered around using Baroque period techniques to make a period instrument. 

To begin, everyone started with a few sheets of brass that had been cut to a template.

The first thing we made was the tubing. This is done by taking a rectangular sheet of metal and annealing it, then bending it over a steel rod and working it with a wooden mallet until the edges come together. In this picture, the camera decided to focus on my shoe instead of the tubing. 

Then it's soldered together with a torch and silver solder. We made a total of 4 Lengths of tubing this way. 

After soldering, the tubes are burnished on the steel rod to make it hard. They are also forced through a drawplate to finalize the outside diameter. 

Heating the raw brass to such a high temperature oxidizes it, so after the initial annealing and subsequent soldering, the lengths came out rather ugly and needed to be polished.

However, a poorly soldered seam is a poorly soldered seam, which no amount of polishing can fix. 

The bell section came next, and it too was bent over the metal rod. However, the section of the bell that flared was first feathered, then teeth were cut into it to form an interlocking seam which would be much stronger than the butt joints we used on the tubing.  

This was also silver soldered.

The bell then needed to be worked into shape, which was done mostly on the anvil and mandrel. Here's a picture of Bob looking skeptically at our handiwork. 

For the bell to flare out to where it should be, it needed to be pounded on the horn of the anvil. While very ductile, doing this to brass hardens it to where it's unworkable so it needed to be re-annealed every few passes. 

The shape of the bell largely came from burnishing it against a steel mandrel, which really gave it its shape. this is done by sliding the bell onto the mandrel and with a large, heavy, steel rod, just rubbing the living daylights out of it. 

At this stage, the seam has been pounded flat to be the same thickness as the rest of the bell, but the toothed seam is still visible. 

The rule with this is to burnish until you think you're done, then burnish some more. 

Eventually, the bell conforms to the shape of the mandrel, and needs to be polished up. The hammering leaves marks that are very difficult to remove.

The next piece we made was the garland. It reinforces the bell and holds the bead. It begins as a sheet of brass like this. 

And can often end up quite ornate. Here's one that Bob engraved. 

This also needs to take the shape of the bell. So after being soldered closed,  it is burnished on the mandrel. In this case, with great violence by Michael and Rick. 

Here's a dry fit of how the bead and the garland, bead, and ball go on the bell. I decided to file grooves along the radius of my bead, which both took forever and looked awesome.  

The ball is another period decoration that we made. According to Rick, no one knows what function it serves, but every instrument from that era had one, I decided to make mine a little more unique, so after soldering it I filed little facets into it instead of polishing it smooth. 

The garland, bead, and ball are all really more decorative than strictly functional, and at this point I was far enough ahead on my work to have a lot of spare time to work on my garland. I decided to do a sheetmetal working technique called chasing repousse, which is done by raising material in certain places and "chasing" it in to define the desired shape. I decided to do a music staff going around the bell. Here's a roughed out treble clef. 

Around this time, I realized how long it would actually take me to complete this, and the instructors were kind enough to let me borrow the tools I needed to finish in my hotel room. After about 8 cumulative hours, I finally finished.

I really need to mention here my gratitude at Michael's expertise of instrument making. Given the nature of the piece, this garland couldn't be fitted to the bell like the others were. however, he made it work. 

Over time, troughs in the design darkened and the notes and the staff really started to stand out.

The garland is crimped down around the rim of the bell.

Some of the tubes that we made needed to be bent to form the crooks, and that is done by filling it with Wood's metal, an alloy with a melting point lower than water's boiling tempreture, and bending on this jig, then burnished for hardness and final shape.   

And with that, all that was left to do was the cut the tubing to length, make end joints, and start putting them together. 

Once assembled, the tubes are bound with vivacious cordage around a block of wood, and the trumpet is completed. 

I found it ironic that we had gone through all this trouble of doing everything by hand, including polishing literally every bit of the trumpet with a 10 inch polishing wheel sitting on a table where we worked, but then decide use synthetic cordage.

  

I had gotten to the end and on the last day, realized that I hadn't put my maker's mark anywhere on the trumpet. This is unacceptable. Anyone could mistake it for theirs! I thought about doing it as an engraving on the bell, but decided against it, with the relief of the repousse, it wouldn't stand out as much as I would have liked. I decided to do another repousse piece to fit on the bell. A friend of mine in the class wanted one for his bell to, so I obliged. They were soldered on.

   

Thank you to the instructors Richard Seraphinoff, Robert Barclay, and Michael Münkwitz, as well as everyone in the class who made it as splendid an experience as it was.