A bit of fantasia

I saw the best pianist in the world Tuesday night.

Well, maybe not THE best, but one of the premier performing pianists in the world beat the shit out of some under-qualified grand at the local concert hall and did it unlike anyone I have or will ever see.

Concert pianists may be less popular than Arcade Fire, but they are better at making music. (Not necessarily making music up.) Play the following video, if you would:

This is a great pianist playing a great piece greatly. You don't need to watch (he looks like a dead person anyway), but listen for the intricacies and the emotions.

That's where it starts: emotion. That's why we invented music. We needed to get some emotions out so we started yelling, then we started making our yells sound good, chanting, making songs, and developing the invention that was music.

Emotion is why we seek out music. It fulfills the need for emotion in a very enjoyable way. It's why emo and metal and reggae are popular niche genres. And why my mom thinks all rappers are angry. Anyone talking that fast and loud must be mad at someone.

Anyway, music isn't only heard, it's also seen. Not literally, mind you, but you never listen to music without seeing things. Whether you're walking to class and a song comes on that perfectly aids your strut and puts all those mindless drones walking to class around you in their place, or it's a music video that gives the song a more concrete context, music and images were meant to accompany each other. That's why movies have songs and songs have videos.

As I sat in the second row of the Foellinger Concert Hall, all I saw was a piano. A grand, a big grand, but an old one that didn't have the sleek sports car look to it that you would expect for a piano player as prestigious as Mr. Andsnes. Mr. who? Oh, Leif Ove Andsnes is the name of the guy I saw. Anyway, this piano was respectable but certainly no sports car. It was pretty much all that was in front of me. A boring display, provided I couldn't see his hands.

When Mr. Andsnes came out, he looked for a second like the crowd made him nervous, then he remembered that he was about to wow the shit out of them, and his face turned to a look of disappointment, because he knew this place should be packed. Because he remembered how damn good he was.

He sat down at the bench, greeting the piano, took a breath and a moment, placed his hands on the keys, ready to begin. No, he wasn't ready. Not ready enough. He took them back down and took a couple more moments and thought whatever a pianist of his stature thinks before attacking. (That, or he couldn't remember how his piece started.) Then he begins.

Whoa. He makes the piano bend to his every whim, not only controlling what notes resound, but for how long, at what volume, and maybe this was just me, but carrying whichever message he so desired.

He started with some Beethoven. Let me take a second here. Beethoven is the fucking man. There's bad weed, there's good weed, and there's whatever KiD CuDi smokes (Maui Wowie is it?) that gets you high and shows you the secrets to life. Beethoven will get you high and show you the secrets to life. All of this according to my brother, because, uh, I don't listen to classical music (yet!).

Anyway, as he was playing this, I couldn't see his fingers, which I wanted to. After amusing myself by admiring his intense facial expressions, I did what Walt Disney has programmed me to do. I Fantasia'd. I closed my eyes, imagining the notes as events, lines, shapes, whatever. They sprung around, not necessarily to life, but nonetheless in a lively manner. This worked great for Beethoven. On his second piece, some Brahms ballades, I Fantasia'd too hard and began to dream a bit. I woke up as the piece was ending, but in my defense, I had been up for 14 hours on six hours sleep. Actually when I write that out it doesn't look that unreasonable. Damn. Anyway, at intermission I slugged a Coke and headed to the front row at a different position where I could see his hands.

He played some modern piece. Modern, uh, "classical" music? Sucks. It's awful and sounds like fleem-floom-fleh. Literally sing that aloud and you will hear what it sounds like. But, Andsnes poured everything he had into making those fleems and flehs into emotional expressions, and by golly he pulled it off. It's a stressful listen, one where you really hope the next note is a logical good-sounding transition from the last, most always to no avail. But I guess that's the point. My favorite moment of the concert occurred during this song.

He hits a chord with his hands, yanks them back to his sides, clenches his right hand into a fist (presumably his left as well) and lurches his upper torso forward and shoots the piano a look, as if he just found a piece of paper in the guts of the piano that reads "it's not actually your baby." (No, not a relieved look, he wanted the kid in this case.) Then, after a pause measured in heartbeats, he resumes playing.

The final piece, again Beethoven, was the most technically impressive of the four. His fingers went apeshit. It was awesome. The show wasn't over however, we did the whole "he's leaving, keep clapping, he's back, keep clapping, he's leaving, keep clapping, he's back, keep clapping, he's sitting down, shut up he's playing" thing and he played a modest encore, then we did the aforementioned clap routine again and he came out for a second encore and played us something to go home on. It is my mission (still in progress) to find out what the second one was. I don't know. Also there's no YouTube video because apparently that shit ain't allowed so I can't ask someone.

Anyway, I was amazed. He played the crap out of the piano. And, Hopefully you've been listening to Mr. Rubinstein. He's pretty damn good. Still not sold on the "classical music evokes emotion" thing yet? Good. Rubinstein's a chode. He's good, but he's got nothing on my boy Leif Ove Andsnes. Proof? Of course. Enjoy.

He, and his orchestra, play this song better. Way better (in God's opinion) than Mr. Rubinstein. Piano performance goes beyond hitting notes (what I thought it was in like third grade) and into unchartable realms of emotional expression. Andsnes speaks better through ivory keys than he does through his English, as he is from Norway (REPPIN'!).

After this concert, my roommate invited me to Piano Man, which has been brought up in this blog before. I decided that after seeing the best pianist I would ever see in my life, it wasn't in my best interests to watch some drunk guy hammer out approximated Lady Gaga while I frantically downed Long Island Iced Teas to catch up to my friends' lack of sobriety.

I've never appreciated classical music as much as I should, I mean, my mom took me to the symphony when I was like seven. I was so borrrrred. Only when they played, like, In the Hall of the Mountain King, could I get into it. But now I've grown up, and with half my family being classical musician fans (and the other half being stupid) (just kidding, guys) I can really appreciate why NPR plays that stuff to death. Its emotional ups and downs mirror the plight of life itself. Whoa.

--Eliot Sill

Dead Poets' Society Blues

Not my English class

by Brendan Cavanagh



Well I'm in college now. Free to choose my own classes, and those that I have a particular interest in, mind you. I'm about to cast off the constricting shackles of an "Exploratory" major in favor of that of "English Education." This semester I've chosen to sign up for more classes that revolve around literature, language and teaching and fewer "core," or general, classes. For the first time since I've come to Butler, I'm genuinely excited to go to my classes because I take personal stock in most of them, and I rather enjoy the material, which consists of much lengthier reading assignments (Hot dog!). Finally I can stop slacking and instead heighten my attention and focus in class! Right?

Oh noes. I can't help but transfer my focus on the novel and discussion at hand to the multitudes of characters in my classes. Don't get me wrong- I'm still attentive of the discussed themes and of my homework, but today for instance, in my Introduction to English class, I set aside Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis and the class notes it had once inspired and instead began jotting down into my planner notes about the numerous eccentricities of people in my class.

As I walk into the classroom at 9:30 every Tuesday and Thursday, I engage in a well-rehearsed pastime of finding the prettiest, albeit approachable girl in the class and positioning myself beside her. Unfortunately, it appears that other English majors are more anxious than I am to arrive early to class, so my options for seating are limited. Both times I arrived this week, there remained a solitary seat in the front of the room, beside the Know-It-All of course. O, but how I yearn to someday get to class early enough to find an empty seat next to Cute Indie Girl. She always seems to be obscured at first or else out-of-reach, on a far side of the classroom with a barrier of boys and girls surrounding her. I met her during the first group activity of Welcome Week last semester. She seemed shy and exhibited sure traits of a hipster, so I casually (but entirely randomly) proclaimed that I would guess her musical tastes based on the shoes she wore at the time, a pair of small white Vans. And how about this? She liked all the same "indie" or "contemporary" or "alternative" or "hipster" music I like: MGMT, Phoenix, Black Keys, basically anyone who played at Lollapalooza 2010, which we both happened to attend. Today in class I made a sort of joke, thought it wasn't intended to be one, and she gave me a fleeting look and a smile, which I think either meant she thought I was funny (like a clown) or pathetic. Either way, my five-month goal of someday getting to know her again has not been discarded. Ooh, how I'd like to sit down and have a discussion about Faulkner with her sometime.

Yet I'm afraid my identity will only be melted and consolidated into the entity I can only describe as the Three-Headed Brendan. You see, in case I'm absent from class some day in the future, there are two other Brendans to fill in for me. It was bad enough in preschool when I was so callously referred to by my teachers and peers as Brendan C. (as opposed to Brendan P.), or in high school when there were two other Brendans in my grade, and a few others scattered about the grades above and below me. Thanks God one of the Brendans in my English class goes by Alex, but that leaves the goofy one in my three-person discussion group. He's cool, but I'm pretty sure he, like me, is unwilling to give himself a nickname and be relegated to an identity that is not distinctly his, which is going to cause some serious knee-slappers during roll call.

The three-person group today was made even more incredibly awkward because the girl of the group (the inevitable secretary) just so happens to look exactly like one of my friends from home. I'm not kidding. It's uncanny. I honestly think the only thing that distinguishes this girl from my friend is that she has slightly more pronounced incisors, and she favors Uggs over boots from, like, T.J. Maxx or something. All during the discussion I kept losing my train of thought and ending my points prematurely because I couldn't get past her appearance. I'm not one of those guys who will immediately tell someone that they look like some one else ("Dude! Dude! Has anyone ever told you you look exactly like Cormac McClaggen from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? The resemblance is riddikulus!"), but finally, I had to explain to her why I might suddenly or subconsciously throw her glowing looks of endearment. Fortunately, she was understanding and thought the whole thing was rather amusing, but I couldn't help but wear a pained smile every time we conversed thereafter, for fear that I might laugh more than I should or hug her when it came time to leave class.

As much as I love to be given a chance to contribute my humble opinions about the themes of Kafka's Metamorphosis to the class, thereby making a good impression upon my teacher and sounding somewhat intelligent in front of my peers, I would much rather be interrupted by the officious, self-indulgent, brown-nosing know-it-all in the center of the front row (incidentally right next to me). Clearly, whenever everyone in your vicinity smirks or chuckles after you nervously but loudly interject in the middle of a discussion to regurgitate what you read on Sparknotes last night, your frequent opinions are well-received. You're providing a double service- not only do you save the blow-offs in the back row from the pressure of answering a question they don't know how to answer because they didn't read the text, but also you save people like me, who really only want to prove they did their homework and contain a genuine passion for literature and novel-based discussion, from wasting precious breath which we could thankfully! instead use in order to exhale loudly so as to display discontent with your offerings. We all really believe you're smart because you spit out information faster than it probably took you to skim Google for .org- domain websites featuring study guides on the Metamorphosis. And I can't say I didn't breathe a sigh of relief when you jaunted into Spanish class late, telling the teacher, "Lo siento, Senora, pero..." That sigh of relief soon turned into an impressed exhalation at your Spanish-speaking skills. You are what aggravates me beyond belief in class, but if it wasn't for you I would never get heated enough to spark a much-needed, in-depth discussion about major themes of a story. Thanks?

And then there are those students that are apparently English majors, but don't seem to be book-readers at all. I admit, this is entirely a shallow judgment on my part, but I'm learning that there are different types of people in this world (who knew?) and that more specifically, there are different types of English majors at Butler. But this one guy in my class, who I know as "Jalapeño" Jack from Orientation last semester (he knows me as "Beatbox" Brendan, another blog post entirely), just doesn't immediately strike me as an English major right away, for no reason at all. It's probably because he's one of those guys that seems real shifty and nervous, but every once in a while makes a loud, awkward joke in class in order to be the intelligent, intuitive class clown who can humorously tie literature to pop culture, but mostly to keep people from thinking he's an introverted spaz. For example, today as we discussed Gregor Samsa's relationship with his father, Jalapeño explained to us that Herr Samsa, in a fit of fury, started "whipping apples at his son ... [wait an untimed beat-and-a-half] ... like Nolan Ryan."

?

This, the class found funny, only ensuring that my double and triple entendres during Shakespeare's Tempest will be met with silent pity.

On the topic of my infrequent contributions in class, I just want to point out how much I hate being cut off while I explain my interpretation of various themes in English class. This is a travesty that I have been a part of since early high school, when I discovered that it requires much explanation for me to accurately get my point across. Today our teacher asked us to point out and explain symbols in Gregor's bedroom. I had been itching for three days to offer my interpretation of the handmade, gilded frame containing a picture of a woman in furs on Gregor's wall, but I only got as far as, "The gilded frame-" before my teacher thanked me, agreed, and asked for more symbols. At this point, Miss Know-It-All chimed in with her fast-paced, extraordinarily vivid animalistic viewpoint of the fur-clad woman, which brought our discussion to industrialist and dehumanizing themes in the Metamophosis. All I wanted to say was that anytime something in literature is gilded, it usually represents something ugly being obscured by a superficial shine! Agghhhh. But I'm not mad at my teacher. I quite like her. She's chic and intelligent and funny and reminds me a lot of Helena Bonham-Carter (the last few Harry Potters, Sweeny Todd, Fight Club, etc.). I feel like we have this attachment because I visited her once last semester in order to inquire about the operations of the English department and its according majors. She had plenty of posters up in her office, one in particular featuring Bob Dylan, circa 1965 during the Highway 61 Revisited recordings. Despite this unspoken bond I feel is present, I get the feeling she doesn't remember me, so now I have to once again prove my worth by performing well on various essays throughout the semester, as there's no way she's going to extract much value from my classroom contributions.

It's amazing how pretentious some of these students are. All these students throwing out interpretations faster than I can come up with one. I know I frequently fall short of staying modest, and I'm sure this post was like a bad acid trip in a public library, but I feel slightly overwhelmed in class. I'm simultaneously thrilled to be in such a literature-based course and disgusted by my peers who all seem to be scrambling for attention and competing for appreciation, like pups vying for a first taste test of Mom's teats. How about that analogy? But maybe I'm learning that there are other people like me. Maybe there are (gasp!) smarter students than I in my English class who legitimately like literature like I do. Maybe- just maybe- I'm slowly sliding off my pedestal in the clouds, falling down to earth so that I don't hold myself in higher esteem than my classmates. I take this ominous threat only as a challenge. I'm stepping up my game this semester. Sure, I had fun last semester, taking core classes in order to get my most basic college credits, goofing off and doing the little homework assigned, knowing I could still pull off a good grade. But now I'm (almost) an English/Education major. The time has come to focus on my studies and excel, so that when I'm teaching English one day in the future, I can successfully tell the pretentious Know-It-All in my class to shut the hell up and get out.

Sociology: Characters Welcome

by Brendan Cavanagh

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 9:35 a.m. to 10:50 a.m. I participate in an incredibly aggravating, albeit highly entertaining, sociological experiment: Sociology 200. Ha, what a coincidence- NOT IRONY.

Anyway, for several weeks I would spend the entire class period scribbling notes as quick as possible, always with at least one eye on the clock, counting down the minutes til: 1. My next class; 2. Lunch; 3. My third class; and 4. My nap. 'Cause everybody who knows me understands that I love a good nap. Sometimes it's the only thing getting me out of bed in the morning.

But I digress. A couple weeks ago, I became increasingly interested in the numerous characters in my class. Their traits that used to annoy me the most were now the subject of my intense focus and pleasure. Don't get me wrong, I'm still performing quite adequately in the class, but my sole concentration now belongs to my peers. I now relish the mere two and a half hours I have in Sociology each week. As a result of my gripping ethnographic studies, by which I have played myself off as just your average Butler student in your average sociology class, I have compiled a hefty collection of notes (mostly mental) on the teacher and the students, all of whom belong on the USA network ("Characters Welcome"). Here is a sample collection of the information I have amassed thus far:

Most prominent in the class is my professor, who happens to be African-American. This is noteworthy because I've never had a black teacher before, save for my friend's mom who used to stop by my Kindergarten class every now and then to show us a thick portfolio of copies of famous works of art. The Professor is pretty darn prolix in my opinion. For instance, he's always asking us to look at the tables in his Powerpoint presentations and see what we can "glean" from them. Or he'll unintentionally speak a long-winded and informative sentence that is practically bursting at the seams with alliteration or assonance, which blows my mind every time, being as interested in language as I am. He's also got this funny way of diverting answering a question that he has to think of the answer to for a minute- he will precede his answer with a highly-inflected "UUUUMMMMMMM" before he inevitably is able to reach a conclusion.

On my right, down a couple seats sits the "Accomplished Woman." She happens to have a very pronounced opinion about everything because she's "been there," you know. Often, her "intelligence" and heated responses causes her to come off as a total bitch (side note: she actually is a total bitch). If I told her this, she would probably, predictably, reply, "Um...I DISAGREE." One day we were discussing Karl Marx's theory of socialization in the education system, and how school's, by "tracking" students in various difficulties of classes are effectively "ranking" students, thereby creating conflict between students. The Professor asked the class if this was common in anyone's schools in the past. Most kids raised their hands and proceeded to tell stories about how they were all in the "gifted" track because they were so bloody brilliant. However, no one so brazenly and irritatingly informed us of their superior, almost god-like intelligence and prodigious feats in school as the Accomplished Woman. "Um...I was in the GIFTED track because I was smarter than everyone else, and people in the lower tracks were jealous of my intelligence, and this created class conflict in school." Guess what, ? I DON'T CARE. Funnily enough, Accomplished Woman is currently hooking up frequently with my buddy across the hallway. The other night I was playing on the computer late at night in the hallway so as not to disturb my roommates, and this girl comes out of my buddy's room. We utilized the never-failing icebreaker ("Hey, you're in my [insert course, in this case Sociology] class!") before proceeding to formally introduce ourselves. She informed me that I was literally one of the FIVE people in the class she actually liked and believed to have intelligent comments. Fancy that! I played it off bashfully, making sure never to reciprocate the compliment so I don't have to be a liar. After she left, I let out a chuckle and filled in another friend of the humorous irony (not coincidence) of the situation.

Next to her is one of the few attractive girls in the class. She happens to be very good-looking, if you want to know the truth. As it happens, she too was practically deemed to be a prodigy as a young student so she's allowed to have an opinion about everything. Fortunately though, for once in my life, her attractiveness does not preclude my disagreement with anything she says. I just wanted to point that out.

Speaking of hot girls, on my left we have Specious Hot Girl. Specious Hot Girl seemed really nice and somewhat intelligent in my limited dealings with her before a couple of classes. As a result, when I saw her at a party a few weeks ago, I once again used my favorite icebreaker, "Hey! You're in my Sociology class!" three times before she finally heard me. Her response was, "Yeah." And then she walked away. Well that's okay, I didn't really have much self-confidence anyway.

Behind Accomplished Woman is the ringleader of the characters of our class, that guy who was pigeonholed as "That Guy" from Day One. That Guy not only acts ridiculously, but also his unkempt and jet-black, prominent, unshaven visage, thick glasses and unchanging outfit perfectly match his oddball comments.

Here is a picture I drew in class one day

On Day One, he decided to answer a number of questions with the fact that he went to Ivy Tech last year (down the road apiece), and was treated like an insignificant student and received no help from the teachers and faculty there. He was like a Vietnam veteran, telling us horror stories about being in The Shit and all. It was only by the saving grace that his girlfriend (who today he began referring to as his "partner" ?) came here this year that he was able to make a somewhat easy transition into our culture and academics. As a result of "being there," That Guy has the right to have the know-all, say-all answer to everything and to place himself in higher esteem than his inferior class mates. And yes, he was in the gifted track in the past, too. Incidentally, he's informed us that he is an Atheist, which we probably don't understand because we haven't received as much education as him. Oh yeah, and he had a crummy childhood, absent of "concerted cultivation," which means his parents didn't actively try to cultivate his identity and give him constructive things to learn and do, so he's pretty much a self-made man. Lastly, if the teacher hasn't come in, and the lights are off, leaving the classroom lit only by the faint sunlight gleaming in from the windows, the class likes to experience the calming effect of a dark room and leave the lights off. Not That Guy. He doesn't mind flipping the switch upon his arrival because once he's there, it's go time, folks.

And way over in the corner is G.I. Joe Schmoe. He's a little older than the rest of us because he served some time in the Army and has now returned to college to obtain his degree. He, too, has "been there" and likes to bring about some more thought-provoking questions that more often than not involve economics or politics. You know, so he can have a little adult conversation with The Professor while the rest of us sit silently and with blank stares. No big deal, he's just using our time and money, whatever. Also, he's over twenty one, so he can drink. That's cool. I like that whenever you give us examples to illustrate your inquisitive questions that persistently deal with a group of guys who spend money on beer. Neat. Not only did we just learn again that you can drink beer, but also you treated us to a little lesson in economics. I'm so glad I signed up for your class.

Thankfully, on my right, exposed to all of these characters is my buddy from another class. We've formed a friendship based on our short-lived Tuesday Starbucks trips, whereby we would discuss our mutual distaste for the more brazen and irritating class mates in both of our shared classes. It's nice to have someone to look at and share a knowing smirk with during Sociology who, too, is drowning in a pool of antipathy. However, it gets kind of old watching him text on his phone or surf Facebook for the entire duration of class, only to look up in order to copy someone's notes or look at me with an audible, exasperated sigh. Who can you be texting at 9:30 in the morning? What do you talk about? Incidentally, today in class as I was pondering the aforementioned queries, his laptop belted out, "You've got MAIL!" which made me smile. Sweet, sweet retribution. It's also interesting to watch as his self-grooming becomes increasingly spare, and his appearance becomes shaggier and more pajama-oriented. It seems like college is just a bore for him, and his interest in it appears to wane at the same rate as his interest in his appearance.

Similarly, my friend The Cross Country Runner, if he shows up, displays a distaste for classes in general. He sits a couple rows in front of Specious Hot Girl. Usually one can find him sleeping or agitatedly slumping over his desk with his face on his fist. You see, he has cross country practice at 6:00 in the morning, so by 9:35 he's pretty exhausted. He's a nice guy, but he's just so apathetic. On some of the days that he actually shows up to class, he's informed me that he'll fill his ever-present opaque Gatorade bottle with a mixture of hard liquor and beer- "Whatever gets me through class haha."

And then behind him we have Spoon River. I call this girl Spoon River because every single time she opens her mouth, it's like listening to a recitation of Spoon River Anthology. Whenever she answers a question, which is quite often because she, too, was in the "gifted" track in years past, she relates to us several detailed stories involving the lives of her parents, grandparents, cousins, store clerks, grain farmers, soda jerks, movie theater ushers and charismatic musically-inclined con men that have passed through her small town to illustrate her point. I don't mind her answering questions often-sometimes I need some time to think of what I'll say- but the countless stories of her small town bore me to death.

It's interesting what this type of class does to bring out the character in all of us. For instance, because it's a rather populated (populated for a Butler classroom, probably twenty five students) morning class, hardly anyone but the accomplished women have the courage or the warmed-up vocal cords to speak as naturally as the would in conversation outside of class, or at least in a class later in the day. Therefore, everyone sounds eerily similar to D-Day in Animal House when they muster up the gumption to shyly pose a decent answer to The Professor's question. I myself am guilty of this- I always have been for some inexplicable reason. But that's about the extent of my outstanding individuality in that class. No, I don't think I am just oblivious to my own distinct traits or simply self-righteous (to an extent). I mean, if it's especially interesting that I consistently offer somewhat insightful, fact-based answers, then yeah, I guess I'm a character, too. At the very least, I'm the only one in the class with a pair of low-top red cons.