Civility

JWise Photo of the Day

Three middle aged men so frustrated with life they must show their disdain for the public at large with their display of incivility

Over the years I have been blogging here I have stayed away from complaining, I have avoided writing about the deviancy that has been moving into the mainstream, and I have made it a point not to rely upon profane language. Civility though is quickly becoming a one-way street where the meek shall disinherit a world full of rage. In our time we have grown to accept the foul, the vulgar, and the obscene as a normal part of our daily routine. What was once the domain of teen angst has become the new ordinary and is now simply common.

I find myself frustrated that respect, grace, and courtesy are replaced with cruelty, disinterest, and acceptance. Maybe you are not cruel but are you disinterested? Or have you accepted that this is just the way things are? Funny, because we used to wonder out loud how the German population of the 1930s was able to sit by feigning ignorance that all around them people were being rounded up and disappearing. Even many of the Jewish victims themselves wouldn’t believe what was occurring all around them and discounted that what was affecting others could somehow impact them.

Aren’t we kind of like this today? We watch people acting in impossibly weird ways with behaviors that have no place in our daily lives, but we move to become more like those scripted displays of “normal” behaviors. TV reality shows, while at first spectacles, soon become our hobby. Our language is subsumed by the popular vernacular made the norm by characters with names like Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero so we can exclaim in our best New York Italian dialect to fahgettaboudit.

Well, I don’t want to forget about it, I want to ring the alarm that all around you a shared insanity is becoming your version of normal. No wonder these three men above feel the need to place a wall of crass threat between themselves and everyone else – everyone else is a potential criminal, murderer, child abductor, deviant, welfare recipient, illegal alien, gangster, drug dealer, etc. Every day the broadcast media is telling you that Bad is all around you. Every night, reality shows, sitcoms, and dramas fill your head and vocabulary with notions of a newfound wealth wrapped in courage to win with an improved bust line atop six-pack abs backed up with an acid tongue of barbed one-liners that are able to convey your ultra-hipness. Is it really entertainment or is it as they called it in the 1970s, programming?

The TV is you and you have become the TV. Your outrage, your happiness, your cooking and dance lessons, even your travels, are all from TV land. You watch men catch crabs in Alaska, tune in a rerun of an episode of CSI, you diagnose your friends with wisdom gleaned from Dr. Phil, and dispense judgment with all the skill of Judge Alex. Someone you liked two weeks ago gets voted off your show but you don’t mind since you stopped liking him now because no one else likes this person either. The TV is cheap, it exploits you, it shapes your dialogue, dresses you, feeds you, reinforces who you are. And you can’t live without it, no fucking way. Civility was canceled long ago, its ratings couldn’t compete with Survivor.

Purple and Green Beans

JWise Food, Photo of the Day

Purple and green beans from John Wise's plot at Tonopah Rob's Vegetable Farm in Tonopah, Arizona

I’ve been busy out at Tonopah Rob’s farm lately, first with my garlic coming in two weeks ago and now the first harvest of beans which I picked just today. It was only 1.3 pounds but there are a ton of tiny beans just waiting to grow up. It struck me today that I don’t often write about my time volunteering on the farm, well a lot of that has to do with the fact that I find myself blogging about it on Rob’s website. If you are interested in my ghostwriting techniques and would like to see some of my other vegetable photography, head on over to Tonopahrob.com – you might even get a laugh from time to time.

Huun Huur Tu & Carmen Rizzo

JWise Photo of the Day

Huun Huur Tu on stage at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona

It’s 7:30 and from stage right, the door opens. Five men walk out, four of them are Tuvan the other American. The four Tuvans make up the throat singing group Huun Huur Tu. The American is Carmen Rizzo, he represents a whole new dimension to the more traditional and possibly ancient style of music. As a backdrop, a large screen flickers to life with looping abstract video images and a slow rhythmic beat from electronic instruments begins to pulse. The strings of the doshpuluur and the igil start to resonate.

Huun Huur Tu performing at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona

Then the voices begin their drone and whistle. The overtones of Tuvan throat singing bring goosebumps to this magical moment. We feel lucky to be able to witness a live performance of a type of music that stems from such a tiny place far, far away. This style of singing appears to have begun with shepherds in the area of Mongolia but can be heard in different styles from native peoples as close as the Inuit of northern Canada. Our previous encounter with throat singing was a performance of Tibetan monks years ago in Scottsdale.

Huun Huur Tu with Carmen Rizzo performing at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona

Tonight’s set was nearly evenly divided between the more traditional acoustic performances of the four members of Huun Huur Tu with and without the accompaniment of Carmen Rizzo. Both sides of the show were perfect; Carmen Rizzo took up his place behind the masters adding an epic soundtrack feel to the already dramatic sounds of this wonderful performance. A million thanks to the Musical Instrument Museum for bringing another great concert to Phoenix during a time of year that could typically be called “entertainment light”. Click here to watch and listen to Huun Huur Tu performing with Carmen Rizzo.

Thanks again to Jimmy C. Carrauthers of Great Leap Productions for his kind permission to use his photographs to accompany my blog entry.

The MIM

JWise Photo of the Day

Musical instrument display from Bolivia featured at The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona

Two days after our first concert at The Musical Instrument Museum we took the better part of a Sunday afternoon to explore the museum itself. For $15 each we were soon outfitted with a headset, encouraged to take photos (without flash, of course), and to enjoy our visit. Your visit starts in a special exhibit before riding the escalator to the second floor where the grand self-guided tour begins. On our right, an entryway takes us to the musical heritage of Africa and the Middle East. It is up here that the headset becomes indispensable. As one moves toward the displays of regional instruments and video screens playing films of local musicians, the headset picks up the sounds. This is obviously going to take some time.

Boat Lutes on display at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona

Next up Asia, across the hall Europe, next door to that, the Americas. Not all of the displays are finished, some are yet to begin. There is obviously some video still being prepared. The museum is a work in progress. A staff member tells us that the displays will change from time to time as they are in possession of more instruments than can be displayed. We try to go slow and look at each region, each country, each instrument, but it is soon apparent that we will not be able to take this all in over the course of one visit. The openness of the displays is amazing, nothing is behind glass; we are offered the chance to closely inspect what in some instances are quite well-worn and old musical instruments. Stopping at the Burmese display to learn about the instruments whose music has become familiar to us is fascinating. The size of the Gamelan instruments from Indonesia is unbelievable; we look forward to the return visit when the displays from India are more complete.

Costume on display at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona

The videos help round out and explain musically what we are seeing. In some instances, clothing or tools are featured to lend atmosphere and a better sense of the context in which this instrument is used or how it came about. I especially enjoyed the exotic nature of the many instruments that are foreign to my eyes although not always a stranger to my ears.

Caroline holding a Burmese Harp at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona

The Musical Instrument Museum features a cafe with a nice selection of world-inspired dishes as you rest your feet between exhibit halls. Also on the ground floor is a hands-on try it, bang it, pluck it, yourself room where Caroline picked up this Burmese harp to sample what sounds emanated from its workings. I waited patiently for the kids to finish with the giant gong so I could have a whack and with a tap moved my ear close to enjoy the resonating sound. The MIM is open seven days a week and from what we understood, the displays should be complete within the next couple of months. Highly recommended.

Old Blind Dogs at The MIM

JWise Photo of the Day

Three of the members of Old Blind Dogs who play traditional Scottish folk and Celtic music.

Good thing I was listening to NPR while a sponsor message came on, telling of a night of traditional Scottish folk music to be performed at the newest museum in the Phoenix area: The MIM. The band Old Blind Dogs were to take the stage on Friday night at the Musical Instrument Museum and so I finally headed over to the MIM’s website to look for tickets. WOW! Old Blind Dogs wasn’t the only act of interest to me but they were the first show I bought tickets for. Besides the occasional performer from India and the Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed performance a year ago, there has been little in the way of world or experimental music to be heard here in Arizona during the last three or four years. That is all about to change.

First off, Old Blind Dogs. They opened with Terror Time which may have been appropriate as we were their first audience on their U.S. tour. The drummer wasn’t on stage, he wasn’t even in America as he was tending to a medical emergency, but that didn’t distract from the performance. The truly great thing about this concert was that it took Caroline and me back to Europe where we would often stop to listen to buskers – ah, the good old days. The guys played just shy of two hours with a fifteen-minute intermission between the sets. The simplicity of the music and the expert musicianship made for a great night out, I would wish for more nights in the desert like this.

Luckily, I won’t have to wish too hard anymore. The Musical Instrument Museum on the corner of Tatum and Mayo Blvd just opened in late April, so I thought I had plenty of time before the museum got up to speed and started featuring artists or special exhibitions, but I was wrong. From over two dozen performances scheduled between now and the end of August, we chose six shows to attend; Tuvan throat singers Huun Huur Tu performing with electronic musician Carmen Rizzo, Japanese taiko drummers On Ensemble who are mixing traditional drumming with hip-hop rhythms, and a turntablist, we’ll stop in to see Etran Finatawa from Niger performing a kind of Nomad’s blues, kora musician Toumani Diabate performs in August, and the last show of the series for us will be oud master Rahim Alhaj. Click the links to watch a video of each act on YouTube.

There is a strict no photography and no cell phone or text messaging rule at the MIM but the house photographer Jimmy C. Carrauthers of Great Leap Productions was kind enough to send me the three photos above. I couldn’t choose one, so I posted them all. Thank you, Jimmy.

My Garlic

JWise Photo of the Day

After nearly nine and a half months or the equivalent of the human gestation period the garlic I planted on Tonopah Rob’s farm back on September 21st was finally ready for picking. Seven and a half pounds of the Italian rose is coming home with me to dry outside for about a week before I bag it up and hang it on the back of our closet door so it can stay in a cool dark place. The trick will be to eat 54 heads of garlic before even one spoils, good thing we love garlic.