The Jazz Ear

Been reading this lately… and have been thoroughly enjoying it.  The author Ben Ratliff, a writer for the NYTimes, set up a bunch of interviews with some of the best jazz musicians/composers/arrangers of the past, present, and those of the future.  The premise is simple: sit down with a handful of masters, listen to some music they pick out, and just talk.  I like that.  Sounds like something I would do with friends.

But of course, the power of music is that it opens up subjective avenues.  There is a sort of common bond established as sounds weave in and around the room.  This was strategically genius of the author to do.  Of course you’ll get to witness the excitement that bubbles as one master of a craft aurally participates with another.  Of course you’ll get a privileged glimpse into the struggles that threads the life and music of a master.  And of course, you’ll pause after each chapter and reminisce on the insights you’ve just gained not necessarily of music, but of life.

Now all that said, this book isn’t groundbreaking or anything.  And it may not even be all that exciting to any of you.  But to me, it’s a privileged glimpse into the process of how masters think.  I call them “masters” specifically because they were able to formulate their own distinct voices in the midst of the genre that has a lot of noise… and a popular culture that has a lot of static.  And they are masters cause the way they talk about art… is the way they speak about life.

And finally a note on the form of the book: while reading it, I realized that it reminded me of listening to a jazz soloist.  Because it’s an interview centered around listening to music, the conversations aren’t necessarily focused.  The artist kinda churns out random thoughts as something happens in the music.  It’s like capturing a stream of consciousness through written form.  Wonderfully similar to a jazz solo.  In short, improvisation is the centerpiece to the text.  In my opinion, that’s how one approaches this… and how one responds to it.

This isn’t James Joyce or anything.  But it’s an insight into how one opens up consciousness.  After all, jazz isn’t just music… it’s a way of life.

Prayer.

My parents pray.  A lot.  Each morning at 4am, usually when I’m coming home from hanging with friends, I hear the shower and I see the lights creeping out from under my parents’ door.  They’re up at 4 because by 5… they’re at church, on their knees, and praying fervently.  It’s the sort of the discipline and dependence that I have yet to learn.  Or rather, it is a humility that I do not yet know how to fully grasp.

They pray because they are weak.  They pray because they cannot do it on their own.  They pray because they need peace, love, joy.  They pray because they could not raise my brother and I alone.  They pray because they seek life, seek truth.  They pray because they need to know they are loved in order to love.  They pray because because they need to.

For a long time, I resented the way most people prayed.  Most prayers tend to be lists much akin to christmas wishes… requests lifted up to a God who resembled a vending machine.  I thought, unfortunately in self-righteous ways, that prayers ought to be a time where you focus your soul on the beloved.  That it is a space where time slows down… and you just let yourself be.  I figured that in a society where people more resemble animals crawling from point a to b to c… prayer should be something that makes us feel more human, more divine.  That perhaps we are beings that feel, cry, create, and live.  But again, I am not one to talk.  I still don’t know how to pray.  My prayers still resemble wish lists.

My most favorite times at home are when my family sits at the dinner table.  The sweet, spicy aroma of the food generally hijacks my sensual attention.  But that is not (well not always) what captures my imagination.  It is the prayers that are lifted up aloud.

They are honest prayers.  Sometimes beautiful, sometimes frustrated… yet always reverent.

I often wonder where my love for poetry stems from.  I almost always prefer a book of poetry over a novel.  If I think deeply enough about it, it’s probably because of the way my parents prayed.  The word choices, the delivery, the pauses in between phrases, the tonality… pure, honest poetry.  The form is usually the same: thanksgiving, the plight, the request, and acknowledgement of trust and hope.  But the delivery… the authenticity of the context… creates something new each time.

If I examine my creative outpourings as of late, there is a common thread: improvisation.  Jazz, writing, community organizing, vibing… all these things stem from learning how to focus as deeply as possible on the present.  By learning how to focus your entire being on the present, to have your complete sensual/emotional/intellectual focus channeled onto one thing… that is the space from which spontaneous creation happens.  And if I’m honest about it… I was shown how to do that by the way my parents prayed.  If you think freestyle emcees are good, try feeling my parents’ prayers.  I have yet to feel greater love than that.

This makes me wonder what a prayer is.  Is a prayer only something that is done on one’s knees, hands folded, eyes closed, and head bowed?  Is a prayer only to be done at church, at a dinner table?  Is a prayer restricted to words?  Or is prayer about the outpourings of a person grateful for the moment that is given?

The present is a gift.  We have no claim on tomorrow, the next hour, the next minute.  We have no control over what is to come nor over what has already happened.  We only have right now.  We only have this very moment.

It is in this moment… that we ought to learn how to pray.  We ought to discipline ourselves to sit deep in the present.  And from this wondrous, beautiful place… we must pour out.  We must channel these things called hope, love, joy, peace.  It is not just that the world needs it… or that our neighbors need it.  But it’s that we need it.  I need it.

…and God wants to give it.

You hear me?  You feel me?

Please… learn how to pray.  And teach me, show me how to do it better.

So I’m in a Music Video…

Shot back in June with Wong Fu.
The artist is my long-time friend, music collaborator and brother.
Check out some of his stuff:
myspace.com/geunjin
youtube.com/geunjinmusic

In One, Find All?

About a week ago, I was featured on iamkoreanamerican.com.  It’s a cool project that features various korean-americans that submit a mini-profile from all over the country (and a number of those overseas).  In writing my little blurb, I was reminded of a few things I experienced while living in Chicago, the Austin neighborhood of the west side.  According to those wonderfully horrid urban planning fact sheets, it was a predominantly black, low-income community where most were on some form of state welfare.  Stereotypes, now enter.  Negative images of black folks, on.  Not trying to point the finger though.  I mean, you should’ve seen my face when I first moved into my neighborhood.

On an honest note, the neighborhood was aesthetically discouraging.  Broken glass on sidewalks, park fields… trash left on the streets… and unhealthy amounts of noise.  The toughest thing to stomach was thinking about the kids who had to grow up in such circumstances.  But you know, ponder a step deeper and you start to ask those peculiar questions.  Broken glass, why are folks drinking so much?  Trash, why hasn’t the city’s garbage trucks rolled through yet?  Noise, what are people really trying to say?

An old pastor of mine once said to me, asking questions gets in the way of faith.  What a tragic thing to say.  But I guess that’s what makes heaven so appealing… you don’t have to consciously walk through hell on Central Avenue.  Life is cool when you cruise on by.  You just glance, and drive on.

I walked into church one morning.  There was a seminar of some sort.  Black man sitting on his piano bench, shoulders rested, hands fluid.  He sang, he sang, he sang.  Thrusts from the throat, diaphragmic vibrations, vocal trills.  Take a step back.  Praises, cries, wails, yearnings… silence.  Perhaps it was a step deeper.

“Did you feel that?”

Nods, all at their own tempos.

“What you feel… is the struggle.”

Never got to play music much growing up.  We were one of those families struck with the immigrant dream, yet flailed with its american backhand.  Call it bad economic timing, poor planning, lack of ingenuity… But I’ll call it the woes of unrestrained capitalism.  When you look at those U.S. income level sheets, we were what society would call “poor”.  It’s unfortunate, that same society should also have a subjective happiness meter, we would be what you call “fuck this game, we know joy”.

Mama loved to sing.  She had a song for each situation I was in.  When happy, when sad, when frustrated… and my favorite, “mommy sohn-eun yahk-sohn” for when my stomach hurt.  Even though she could only sleep two, maybe three hours… she sang.  She sang because she needed to, we needed her to.  You should’ve been there.  They say music most closely resembles spirit because sound is merely compressed air.  It quite literally passes through you.  And after it does, it dissipates.  My home was a sanctuary.  Saturated, drenched.  My dad may have been the priest, and a powerful, soulful one at that.  But my mom was the curator.

The green line train runs from downtown Chicago to the west suburb, Oak Park.  My stop, Central Avenue, is about 2 stops before that.  In other words, I lived in one of the most heavily policed areas of the chi.  The barbed fence of handcuffs, batons and flashing lights, I like to call it.  One day, as I was spending extra time riding the trains so to avoid swimming in the humidity, I looked out and saw something … something ecstatic.

Children dancing.
Meat grilling.
Elders sitting.

I got off and walked over.  Before I knew it, I was pelted with water balloons.  Better drenched in cold water then humidity i guess.   What was really beautiful was that an urban geyser had been created.  Folks had shoved a wood board up on a fire hydrant, held it there by wrapping an old tire around it, and cranked it full blast.  In my mind, it was as if God had sent a special cloud full of water and showered the street corner.

Three cars parked, all amping the same radio station.  And yes, we were dancing in the streets.

.

I am korean-american.  But I figured that out while dancing on Central Avenue.  I realized why my mom needed to sing, why my neighbors had to dance, why that black man sat at the piano.

I discovered something profound, or perhaps peculiar.  The more I was myself… the more I owned up to my own narrative, my family’s history, my parents struggles, my community’s well-being… the more I was able to relate to those Central Avenue dancers.  The more I had reason to dance.

In essence: the more particular I am, the more universally human I become.

So you know what… fuck this whole conceding who you are because others don’t want to be uncomfortable.  Be who you are.  And make others respect that.

Dance, so others may dance.
Sing, so others might sing.
Feel, so others can feel.

Defamiliarizing the Familiar.

The Cipher.

The cipher is a circle.  The circle signifies continuity, motion and infinity.  A point on the borders of the  circle only makes sense in relation to the others that are in flow with each other.  A circle contains and frames something that is within.  In other words, a cipher creates another world.

The act of creation seems to be popularly viewed as something that arrives out of nothing.  Something that just drops down from heaven into the hands of a lowly recipient.  Perhaps this is true.  But if there’s anything that a picture can teach us, it’s that a photo merely places a frame around that which already is.  Thus creation is an act of bringing order to chaos.  However, when borders are loose enough to allow fluctuation and movement… when the form is dynamic enough to evolve along with that which is contained… you create a world within a world.  It’s almost as if you’re capturing air in a balloon, but the air keeps getting hotter, causing the balloon to expand.  It explodes.  More balloons must then be formed.

The cipher contains voice.  It enhances the poetic spewings of an ordinary subject.  The voice travels, bounces within the circle.  And the beautiful thing is… all are on rhythm.  The circle is constantly in movement.  Power is contained, bounced around and re-versed for the uplift of the whole.

The Familiar.

Some friends were in town for the weekend.  Did our whole going-out, drinking thing.  And unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for us, we were stuck outside the bar since all Boston joints must close at 2am.  Drunk people of all colors standing around.  Some are organizing folks for house parties, others waving down cabs, many spewing forth their dinner.  And us, mentally silent.

Defamiliarize.

Any stillness is an opportunity for explosion.  A friend drops a beat.  T.Vu spits a rhyme.  A circle forms.  Just like that, people are vibing, dancing, feeling.  Random folks are jumping in.  People coming and going.  The cipher disperses.

We walk down the street.  T-Vu feels like Moses, John like Aaron…  She parts the oncoming pedestrians like the red sea… the people heed her poetic rhymes.  The march down Harvard Ave stops for a moment.  The following forms another circle, half of which bleeds out onto the intersection.  New people join the flock.  Cars irritatingly curve around.  Cops drive by glaring.

The beauty of such a scene is not what is said, nor the visual.  It is what is felt.  For a moment, we were agents… grabbing the world we saw, rearranging it and displaying what it ought to be.  We created a world by means not of nationality, ethnicity, class, gender… but of community.  We were family for that moment.

The loving hugs.  The affirming words.  The grateful looks.

We were family.  We created home.

Home was whatever ground we stood upon.
The movement of poetic nomads, that is what we were for that moment.

Vierundzwanzig.

Upright bass.
Two hostess cupcakes with 2 candles lit.
Cuban cigars on the rooftop.
Facebook explosion.
Mother nagging (lovingly) that i need a girlfriend at this age.
Father telling me not to drink too much.
Brother’s “hyung!!” text.
Running on the charles river.
Biggest bottle of grey goose that i’ve ever seen.
2 slices of mushroom pizza.
Black dude interrogating white dude for the crimes of white supremicism.
Drinks, thanks eddie.
Dancing.
White homeless dude cursing the world with a 40 in his hand.
Drinks, thanks q.
Dancing.
Throwing up (just kidding).
Special can of chinese tea from dave’s mom.
Salted fish, chicken fried rice.
Salt and pepper beef.
Garlic snow pea leaves.
Scallion pancake.
Seafood/mushroom fried tofu.
Ciphering up the avenue of the masses.
The epic ode to chuck, thanks dave.
The rooftop.
Sleep.
Dreams.
Why.
Is.
Life.
So.
Dope.
Sometimes?

The Embodied Will.

A few days ago, archeologists announced that they have found a flute in a German cave.  This flute is approximately 35,000 years old.  The significance of such a find is that it is from the prehistoric era.  It blows my mind that in a time where basic survival was the daily goal, people found a reason to create things that would aid in expression.  Or in other words, people sought to create an aesthetic means in order to reach the sublime.  Now of course, art (as we understand and experience it today) and language weren’t as dichotomized back then.  Art was not seen as “art” but rather an expression of what is.  People drew in order to record their stories/histories, not because they wanted to hang it in some gallery.

The profundity, then, of this archeological find is that it hints at something I’ve been feeling for a while.  That art, or creative expression, is just as necessary as the basic necessities of survival: food, water, etc.  I can imagine the guy/girl who made that flute going off to gather some food, maybe hunt down a swine.  Then come back, roast it and eat with fellow tribesman.  After they’re all full and merry, I imagine some dancing to happen, some percussive instruments laying down a groove, and this guy to get up and just play.  Maybe he’ll express something happy, maybe something sad.  I mean, just take a listen to the clip of someone playing a reconstructed model of the flute.  It sounds beautiful and sophisticated.  I was nearly brought to tears just listening to it.

The point is: we humans aren’t just about survival, we are about creation.

To see this early in the archeological record suggests it might be a fundamental aspect of human nature… It does at least hint that music lies close to our foundation of common humanity.

What is it about this incessant need we have to express?  And what is it about our insatiable drive to constantly create new means that enable us to do so?

Now I’ll be honest with you… the fact that it’s a flute excites me.  I’m a musician, so the bias is obvious.  Personally, music profoundly embodies the human will more so than other art forms.  My reasoning you ask?  Sound most resembles spirit.  After all, sound is nothing more than compressed air.  When it is projected at you, it quite literally passes through you.  And perhaps the most amazing thing of all, it dissipates thereafter.  It comes and it goes.  It is felt, but also invisible.

So to realize that music was and still is that powerful, even to a prehistoric man, elates me.  Actually, it’s sublime.  Luckily enough, I read a beautiful passage from Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy that helped contextualize this whole discovery for me.  Hope you enjoy:

Music, therefore, if regarded as an expression of the world, is in the highest degree a universal language, which is related indeed to the universality of concepts, much as these are related to the particular things.  Its universality, however, is by no means the empty universality of abstraction, but is of quite a different kind, and is united with thorough and distinct definiteness.  In this respect it resembles geometrical figures and numbers, which are the universal forms of all possible objects of experience and applicable to them all a priori, and yet are not abstract but perceptible and thoroughly determinate.  All possible efforts, excitements and manifestations of will, all that goes on in the heart of man and that reason includes in the wide, negative concept of feeling, may be expressed by the infinite number of possible melodies, but always in the universality of mere form, without the material; always according to the thing-in-itself, not the phenomenon – of which melodies reproduce the very soul and essence as it were, without the body.

This deep relation which music bears to the true nature of all things also explains the fact that suitable music played to any event or surrounding seems to disclose to us its most secret meaning and appears as the most accurate and distinct commentary upon it; as also the fact that whoever gives himself up entirely to the impression of a symphony seems to see all the possible events of life and the world take place in himself.

. . . .

We might, therefore, just as well call the world embodied music as embodied will: and this is the reason why music makes every picture, and indeed every scene of real life and the of the world, at once appear with higher significance; all the more so, to be sure, in proportion as its melody is analagous to the inner spirit of the given phenomenon.  It rests upon this that we are able to set a poem to music as a song, or a perceptible representation as a pantomime, or both as an opera.

. . . .

Music . . . gives the inmost kernel which precedes all forms, or the heart of things.

-Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

Learn How to Laugh!

Lift up your hearts, my fellows, higher and higher!
And the legs – you mustn’t forget those!
Lift up your legs too, accomplished dancers;
or, to top it all, stand on your heads!

This crown of the man who knows laughter,
this rose-chaplet crown: I have placed it on my head,
I have consecrated laughter.
But not a single soul have I found strong enough to join me.

Zarathustra the dancer, the fleet Zarathustra,
waving his wings, beckoning with his wings to all birds around him,
poised for flight, casual and cavalier-

Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the laughing truthsayer,
never out of sorts, never insisting, lover of leaps and tangents:
I myself have put on this crown!

This crown of the laughter-loving, this rose-chaplet crown:
to you, my fellows, do I fling this crown!  Laughter I declare to be blessed;
you who aspire to greatness, learn how to laugh!

Zarathustra
Part IV, “Of Greater Men”

Spring… finally.

Detroit.