music: John Coltrane- Blue Train
I spent the past two days on an island off the coast of Maine. I didn’t really plan on going, nor did I plan for going, and up until Friday afternoon I wasn’t too sure if I was going to go or not. But I ended up throwing some gear in the back of my car and making the drive into Maine. I left in a somewhat grumpy mood, having spent a day at school tying up loose ends and beginning to think about some closure (finally!) to this school year. I left so much undone, so much waiting for me back here. I left in the rain and fog. I left in Friday rush-hour traffic. I left with the inkling that I would meet up with tmo, Peet, and others at a rendezvous point that we’d never directly agreed upon. It was all very uncharacteristic of one of my trips-so unstructured, so unplanned, so open-ended and so loose. From my point of view, at least. JZ had done some forward work and we drove right into a pre-reserved campsite around 11pm on Friday night. Done, and done. I was in Maine, and things crept towards positive from then on out.
I spent saturday with JZ and Peet popping about the island. We did some rock-hopping on the coast, hiked halfway up a mountain, and lounged about at campsite. It took me a little bit of time to get used to the lifestyle, but once I allowed myself to be satisfied with no plan and no need to accomplish anything, I had a great, relaxing time. Today was more of the same: sleeping late, waking up in my tent, driving into town for a diner breakfast and ice cream, then a slow and leisurely drive down the Maine coast on Route 1. I drove back by myself today, as everyone else opted to stay for an extra day and I have plenty to take care of. But just two days out there did the trick. I have spent so much of this year engaged in very strenuous goal-directed tasks that I think I almost forgot how enjoy wandering.
One of the reasons why I decided to head back earlier than everyone else is that I know that very, very soon, I will be doing this sort of wandering for two straight months, and I can’t wait. My summer road trip starts three weeks from today, which is close enough to start getting very, very excited about the prospect of jumping in my car and wandering about the expanses of the United States of America. This weekend was wonderful, but I felt myself shutting off prematurely. I need to keep my head about me for at least another two weeks: do some final grading, do some planning for next fall, move my stuff, and make some preparations for the road trip itself. But my freedom is within reach, and given a little taste from this past weekend, I am more than ready than to embrace a summertime lifestyle consisting of camping, playing music, and moving from new place to new place.
I also realized this weekend that it is one year since I returned from my last extended journey: my two weeks in Northwestern Colorado and Utah. I reviewed some of the things I wrote while out there and was glad that I could celebrate the one-year anniversary of that trip out in the wilderness. It was a bit cold this weekend at times, a bit windy too, and I came out of it with some nicks, scrapes, and cuts, but only appropriately so. It reminded me a good deal of my time in Colorado and what I took from that experience. I wrote that that trip was in many ways “the guided tour,” and I look forward to being my own cruise director this summer. All I’ve learned will help me on the road.
This weekend was a short one, sure, but a potent one. I am sliding quickly into the vagabond’s state of mind, and once again growing comfortable with the idea of a stretch of unstructured time where nothing has to be accomplished. Soon enough I will be spending the vast majority of my time out-of-doors. Soon enough I will not have to meet any sort of deadline. Soon enough I will set up camp in a different place every night. Such a drastic change from the strain and pressure of grad school and teaching, but a welcome change. Soon enough that weekend-camper lifestyle I enjoyed this past weekend will be a daily thing, and I can’t wait.
music: Phish- 8/2/03, IT Tower set
Word came in today: Phish will break up for good at the end of the summer. From Trey Anastasio himself:
Last Friday night, I got together with Mike, Page and Fish to talk openly about the strong feelings I’ve been having that Phish has run its course and that we should end it now while it’s still on a high note. Once we started talking, it quickly became apparent that the other guys’ feelings, while not all the same as mine, were similar in many ways — most importantly, that we all love and respect Phish and the Phish audience far too much to stand by and allow it to drag on beyond the point of vibrancy and health. We don’t want to become caricatures of ourselves, or worse yet, a nostalgia act. By the end of the meeting, we realized that after almost twenty-one years together we were faced with the opportunity to graciously step away in unison, as a group, united in our friendship and our feelings of gratitude.So Coventry will be the final Phish show. We are proud and thrilled that it will be in our home state of Vermont. We’re also excited for the June and August shows, our last tour together. For the sake of clarity, I should say that this is not like the hiatus, which was our last attempt to revitalize ourselves. We’re done. It’s been an amazing and incredible journey. We thank you all for the love and support that you’ve shown us.
My knee-jerk reaction, as could be expected, was one of pain. Phish as an institution has played a significant part in my life’s path over the past eight years, and to know that it will no longer exist is something of a blow to my memories about growing up. Phish has provided a very constant, stable refuge; a Phish show is as much a known quantity as it is a musical adventure. When the lights go down and the music starts, I am in completely familiar territory. Same as it was two years ago, same as it was at my first Phish show in 1996. It was a point to rally reunions around, a destination for cross-country drives, a reason to go forth and seek adventure. Says Andy Bernstein of the Pharmer’s Almanac: “A Phish fan is someone who can honestly say their life was touched by the music—that is a truly enduring legacy,” Bernstein says. “I always say, if you can create one friendship between two people you have done something great—-Phish created millions.” Now, after so many years, this unifying force from which I have benefitted so much will no longer exist. And while I am considered to be a serious Phish fan, some are in far worse shape.
But upon further reflection, I came to the decision that not only was Phish’s decision to disband an appropriate one, it came about three-and-a-half years too late. I tried to think about it from their perspective: four college buddies in a band turned rockstars and celebrities sounds pretty nice, but for people who only wanted to make music, the “perks” that came with their success might have become their undoing. Phish has effectively created a Frankenstein’s Monster out of the community that supports the band. They are in many ways separate and detached from those people who consume the music they make. While they may have celebrity and material wealth because of their efforts, they no longer have that which sustains humans on a more meaningful level: a community to which they can relate and in which they can participate.
And from my point of view, the music has suffered. Now that we are able to look at the body of the band’s work from a historical perspective, I would argue that the pinnacle of their playing, the point towards which all their momentum was thrust, was New Year’s Eve 2000, Big Cypress. The music that followed Big Cypress had its moments, but the intensity of the Phish narrative was diminished. The band had already achieved and passed through its own climax. They attempted to dabble in revitalizing Phish since Big Cypress, but it was not to be. There was no creative drive the way there was in the years previous to Big Cypress. I think that Phish has recognized this about themselves and has made the mature decision to quit while they are ahead. While they could easily tour four weeks out of the year and release an album every three years from now until forever, they have had the foresight to not allow themselves to fizzle out. After all, as four college buddies whose only goal was to make music, what more does Phish have to prove?
Phish’s decision to end while things are still good for them is an application of one of the most important lessons I learned in Norris Field at camp: stop the game while it’s still fun, and you’ll always remember it as good. Sometimes a memory of fondness and even wistfulness is much more precious than continued attempts to achieve that peak experience you had once long ago. Sometimes remembering something fondly is preferable to the diminishing potential of experiencing something equally as great. In ending now, Phish is cementing a legacy in the annals of 20th century music. Perhaps more importantly, though, in bowing out gracefully, Phish is making way for a new generation of music to emerge and blossom. It should be exciting to see (and hear).
I am sad it’s over, but more than that, I am glad it happened. My experiences that relate to Phish’s music have been overwhelmingly positive ones and I will treasure them until the end of my days. But before I say goodbye for good, I will indulge in one last run of shows. One at SPAC, two at Alpine Valley. I also bought a ticket to Coventry, today, Phish’s farewell festival that will take place this August 14-15. (I actually don’t think I’ll go, but I thought I’d leave myself the option.) I suppose that if Phish is assoicated with my travels, adventures, and connections that led into adulthood, it is only fitting that my favorite band would decide to retire as I am on the cusp of entering a very new phase of my own life. I will always have memories, and recordings. For now, though, I can celebrate what was, give thanks for all that I have gained, and prepare to jump cleanly and freely into the future. As can Trey, Mike, Page, and Jon. This has all been wonderful, but now I’m on my way…no more need to wait for that time. And even if I try to find a way to, there’s nothing I can say to make it stop…
music: DJ Krush- Kakusei
I try to ride my bike to work every week, and when the weather allows I do so. This week was somehow given the honor of being the “official” Ride Your Bike to Work Week, which is great. More bikes are out now that the weather has turned nice and the commute is a great deal more pleasant. I had no idea that this was the official week that everyone is encouraged to ride their bikes to work (why not make every week equally as official?) but I found out on my ride. I was flagged down by a guy with a little sign right around the Salvo and the fire station on Mass Ave near MIT on the way to school: “FREE BREAKFAST FOR BIKERS!”
Positive.
I pulled over and threw down two croissants and a banana, declined on the cups of coffee, and chatted with a few other people gathered there at quarter to eight in the morning. One guy had a blue mountainsmith day pack. Of course he did. I even got some pro-bike propaganda, some bumper stickers, some magnets, and was off. They are setting up shop in different places all week to give out free breakfast to bikers-tomorrow is a pancake breakfast at the Broadway Bike Shop, the best bike shop in the city. I will have to miss it unfortunately as I am due at school to proctor the MCAS. No matter; I’ve gotten my Random Act of Bike-ness this week.
Funny, then, that on the way home I should be summoned to the curb by a Cambridge Police officer for violating a city bike citation: running a red light on a bicycle. I was following the pedestrian signals when I rolled past the Cambridge City Hall at about 5:30pm, and Officer Ortiz blocked the bike lane and motioned for me to pull over. I couldn’t believe it when he pulled out the ticket book. It turned out to be just a warning. Officer Ortiz was standing on the street because of the crowd gathered to support/protest gay marriages (which I happen to think is way positive-a huge step in the direction of equality and acceptance in this country), as today was the first day ever that gay marriages were legally performed in the United States. News vans from all over the country were in front of City Hall, so the officers had to look like they were on top of stuff more than they wanted to give a ticket to a schoolteacher biking home from work. The whole thing was funny; I didn’t know quite how to react. I think I said something incredulous like “this is for real?” Officer Ortiz was chill, though. I told him about how it was Ride Your Bike to Work Week and how I got a free breakfast this morning. He got a kick out of that. I think I might just send a dollar and a letter of inquiry to Cambridge City Hall thanking Officer Ortiz for being the man and asking what exactly would happen if I didn’t pay a bike citation. They couldn’t take away the license I don’t have…
All in all, a successful first day of Ride Your Bike to Work Week in Boston. I think I’ll do it again tomorrow.
music: Phish- 4/5/98, Providence, RI
“I can’t possibly accomplish all that I want to achieve…”
That is how the final piece to my TEP portfolio started. It speaks volumes, and on many levels: I want to do it all, but I know that if I’m both lucky and good, I still won’t come close to doing it all. But I will still try. I wrote the above line in reference to my becoming a teacher, but it could very well apply to most things in my life, including this weblog, but for the past couple of days I have been considering the notion with relation to the ideas generated and the training I received in beoming a teacher. I have finished my graduate program; I am now for all intents and purposes a ‘Master of Education’ and a ‘Harvard graduate.’ Both seem fairly meaningless from where I stand right now, but whatever social capital they carry will most likely become useful one day in accomplishing my goals. On that most shallow of levels, I hope I can be considered by the world-at-large properly credentialed to know what I am talking about. To some extent.
This has been a very intense and emotional week. I have been confronted with numerous goodbyes to people whose presence I have taken for granted this past year and who I do treasure immesurably. This week has been more about expressing my appreciation for these people and achieving some sort of closure with them than synthesizing what I have learned in class and in practicum. About 10 of us went out to Walden Pond today after a game of football on Cambridge Common, and in that trip, I was confronted with one of those essential facts of life: what is important is the people you meet. We have done a good job of celebrating each other this week with multiple nights out, a talent show last night, and extended nights out. It is tough to think that I am saying goodbye to so many of these people, but it is heartening to know that we are to spread out and do some of the most important work our society has.
This has been a week riddled with ritual and ceremony. I liken this entire voyage to my LTIII summer at camp, a position of training, yet one of incredible responsibility. I can not easily pin down a list of things that I have learned this year, but I can say that I am quite different now than when I started. I shared my thoughts regarding education, and urban education in particular to members of my cohort this past week, and in doing so reinforced my own beliefs and rededicated myself to the goals and values I have set for myself. It was, in many ways, like taking an academic rag. The formal year ended with some degree of ceremony, both at HGSE and at my school site, and we, apparently, are now set on our ways to live out what we have learned. I have refocused and distilled my vision for education’s role in society over the past couple weeks and while I have something to show for that work, I don’t think that it is complete. I think I have a blog entry about my vision of the Revolution in the making and will let things simmer a little longer before i dive into that.
Perhaps I am too close to the event still. Perhaps I have not made the mental break with grad school and student teaching because I will continue to teach until the end of the school year and still have to plan lessons and grade homework. Perhaps I am presently too tired to really dig into what this past year’s training and learning meant for me. Perhaps all three, and then some. Whatever the case may be, I have completed this mini-journey, and in the final analysis am better for it. I can not possibly hope to accomplish all that I want to achieve, but I can push towards it hard enough to make some sort of positive impact.
I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
“It is futile,” I said,
“You can never” -
“YOU LIE!” he cried,
and ran on.
-Stephen Crane
music: Peter Gabriel- Secret World Live d.1
Today was the final day of the HGSE teacher education program. It was quite emotional, moreso than I originally thought it would be. It’s been quite a long day and I have to teach tomorrow at 8 AM. More on the matter later, when I have some time. And have gotten some sleep.
music: none
I am usually about done putting down a Buffalo Dog and a Texas Ranger from Spike’s about this time every week. I am usually saying this phrase about this time every week: “It’s a little past ten-o’clock on a Tuesday night, and you are tuned into Live Live, the radio show that brings you all the best in live music every single week…” This is the first week in over two years that I’m not saying it. Live Live the radio program is no longer. While I have my Tuesday nights free again, I also am experiencing a large gaping hole in my life. Live Live has been a fixture almost as long as I’ve lived in Boston; this is the first Tuesday without it since January of 2002. I am sad.
Things wrapped up last week quite uneventfully. I came to the station and found the place empty and in various states of being moved to its new location on Brighton Ave. My co-host Andrew had said his goodbyes the week before and it was left to me to close things out for myself. I made a last minute decision to open things up with a live version of Pink Floyd’s The Show Must Go On and commenced to work my way through the motions one last time. I began a personal tradition when I was a camp counselor of playing Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water” to open the final vseper of the session and subsequently chose to follow with that as a sort of invocation. Tim stopped by around 10:30 to pay his last respects (Live Live, after all, is half his creation) and went on-air for the first time since March of 2002. We played music. We talked a bit between some songs. Tim took off around 11:30 and left me to close out my little project. I was pretty choked up at the end of it all. I managed to squeak out some thanks, some final thoughts, and signed off around midnight leaving Michael Franti and Spearhead’s acoustic version of Yes I Will to close out Live Live’s tenure on the radio dial. After that faded out, I threw on the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” a song I played very loudly once all my kids left at the end of each session and a song I now will only put on after I have finished something momentus. The complete playlists are posted on www.livelive.org, but that’s not the story that is to be told here Like so many concerts, the setlists tell you what happened, but not what it was like.
Live Live began as a social endeavour and an exercise in free speech. No, that’s not really true. Live Live actually began as a way for an unemployed and scraping David to support his music habit. I figured that if I were part of the media, then I would have access to media passes and wouldn’t have to pay to get into concerts. It worked fairly well, even better after I got a website up and running and printed off some letterhead. I also started receiving cds, about 2-4 new ones every week. It was a great way to familiarize myself with bands I wouldn’t know about otherwise, and to get such bands up, out, and into the homes and ears of Boston’s residents. Here, then, was the exercise in community. In helping the unsigned, independent, and local musicians get some airtime, I met some really interesting and colorful people. I value some of these people as good friends now. This, above all else made the project worthwhile.
The other aspect to Live Live that I really enjoyed was that in being broadcast on A-B Free it was an effort to open up the airwaves to underrepresented voices. I used the music industry as my playing field, but the principle applies (and is probably more important) in other of society’s venues. The FCC regulations that deal with who is and is not allowed to broadcast their voice using radio favors those with money and power. Radio, above all other media, is one that is readily available and sufficiently inexpensive to people from all parts of society. That is, radio has the best shot at levelling the playing field, and it is also one of the most regulated and corpoately controlled media in our society. Allston Brighton Free Radio’s fight, when seen from this perspective, is an enormously important one. It is David fighting against Goliath. It is the lone X-wing navigating the surface of the Death Star. It is struggling against all odds to make a scratch in the juggernaut media conglomerates that control the radio dial, and therefore control what sort of information is available to people.
The big problem is that Allston-Brighton Free Radio also was fighting itself. The station has an autoimmune disease that I would call selfishness and apathy. The biggest reason why I left the station is because I was no longer willing to fight against factions within the station, considering how little the station was impacting its surrounding community. Our broadcast was full of static, went in and out according to the weather, had big dead spots, stretched about a mile on a good day, and was located way, way, way up on the AM dial. In effect, nobody was listening. Andrew and I were talking to ourselves most weeks. The website, a separate medium of communication, made things more accessible and legitimate, and I came to realize that this had very little to do with any sort of radio broadcast that I may or may not be doing.
I think the final straw was that I realized I was not so invested in this so-called community that exists around live music as I once was. AJM is equally as fascinated by this community, but has chosen the academic approach as a way to sustain links to it. I chose the grassroots community organizer approach and burnt out on it. Starting to teach urban teenagers had a lot to do with it, I think. Since beginning my teaching, I have taken up a new cause that is much higher stakes: the fight to give poor urban (often minority) kids some power in this world. Celebrating the live music community, which is predominantly composed of middle-class (predominantly white) college-age students doesn’t seem as important, even though that is more or less where I socially locate myself.
So today, in many ways, is The Day The Music Died for me. The circle is broken. Live Live was never meant to be something permanent, nor was it meant to be the culminating role in music. I am turning now back to my guitar and drum kit, thinking more about creating my own music than anything else. And that gets me excited. Live Live is in the process of shifting and morphing into something different and new, still with ties to the music community, but I am no longer its lone captian, forging ahead just to see if I can, working with a group that hurts itself more than it progresses, pitching my voice into the continual electromagnetic bombardment. I stopped it while it was still fun; I accomplished everything I set out to do and then some. I can walk away, then, knowing that my work, in this venue at least, is done.