Coming Up for Air and Tired Old Phrases

I’ve had to neglect blogging for much of this month, because I’ve been working very hard. It’s hopefully going to work out in the end, but this is one of those times where I have to keep intoning that mantra “It’s Only Temporary.” So, while today was one of those picture-perfect days we in Vancouver get in the spring and summer, I must confess that I only saw it via the occasional peek at a the KatKam webcam from my windowless office. I might as well have been underground, instead out in the place that has once again been named by Mercer Consulting, Number 4 of the ‘Top 5 quality of living ranking for cities worldwide‘. While I am proud of the fact that my home is once again up there with Vienna, Zurich, Geneva and Auckland as one of the best places to live, I have to admit that for us personally, for a variety of reasons,  it’s been a very tough past couple months. However, I’m looking forward to beautiful sunny days with cool breezes, local strawberries and asparagus, walks along the False Creek seawall and the return of the Farmer’s Markets on the weekends. The fountain in the park across the street is flowing again, and the tulips are out in full force. I just have to be sure to get out and enjoy all of those things. After all, they are all only temporary as well.

Heard Often. Way Too Often

To keep an eye on our former country, Pam and I have tried to catch one of the network news channels from the US each evening over dinner, so we keep switching between TiVO recordings of Brian (Williams), Katie (Couric) and Charlie (pronounced the way Sarah Palin did in the puff-piece interviews he did her, as the sharp, twangy CHAR-ly, Gibson). I’ve been noticing an annoying tendency by both the reporters as well as the public (and politicians) for using the same phrases over and over again. Here are a few that I’ve just about had enough of:

Come Together
What does that phrase mean? Aside from the sexual double-entendre, as far as I can tell, it means to have a public meeting where  problems like gang violence, racial strife and poverty are all magically overcome by an aura of good fellowship. Sorry, I’m not buying it. It’s an empty phrase uttered over and over again in front of TV cameras by people who have no idea what they are saying.

Bipartisan
Until recently ‘bipartisan’ used to mean something. I think it meant that both of the big, iconic US political parties support something, as opposed to its more common opposite, ‘partisan’ (which now that I think of it, could have been Monopartisan). Now,’ bipartisan’ is uttered by politicians meaning (depending on which side they are on)  ‘Something I wanted but never got’ or ‘Something we should all look like we are trying for even though we really don’t want it anyway’.  Like Lite and Fat-Free or Sustainable, it’s an now a meaningless word held aloft like a flag of victory or rag of defeat.

Wall Street always followed by Main Street
It used to be that you could say ‘Wall Street’ and everybody knew that it referred to the New York Stock Exchange, as well as the other business and organizations in that general geographic area of Manhattan. Now, like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum or Flotsam and Jetsam, it has become a stupid shorthand for the hostility between the rich and connected in the Financial Services Sector vs. Middle America. Like two squabbling children, we are supposed to make sure both are taken care of, but not to let the other get jealous or sulky. I hope they break up the idiom before it becomes another ‘prim and proper’ or ‘tooth and nail’.

Bailout
‘Bailout’ originally meant ‘an act of loaning or giving capital to a failing company in order to save it from bankruptcy, insolvency, or total liquidation and ruin’. (Wikipedia). Now it’s almost become a joke phrase, meaning  Free Money.  Enough, already. It’s never funny.

…and the word or phrase that I’ve found the both the most ubiquitous and annoyingly imprecise on the news these past months:

Transparent
I’ve heard this word used so many times, I’ve started doing the old Pee-Wee’s Playhouse shtick (well, not screaming real loud, but saying ‘ding!’) every time it is uttered.  I think it was to suggest that like a glass house, the operations and decisions of an organization (such as the Federal Government) were to be easily apprehended by the public, typically by using a Web Site or some other publicly accessible medium. Wasn’t that what C-SPAN was supposed to do? (except of course, nobody but the wonks and fanatics bothered to watch it). Again, like ‘Come Together’, Transparent is another word or phrase overused to the point of meaninglessness.

There are others, but these are the ones that come to mind today. I’m sure that in a few weeks I’ll be sick of ‘Torture Memo’ and ‘Pandemic’, because they’ll have been made just as meaningless through repetition by that time.

Louis Andriessen and Passover Seders

Louis Andriessen at 70

Years ago I discovered a stunning and monumental work for Chorus and Orchestra called De Staat (which translates to The State or in this case, ‘The Republic’ based on Plato’s Republic).  If you haven’t heard it (and I strongly recommend checking out a recording), it’s kind of like Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, but with the volume, heart-pounding repetitions and unisonic craggy lines of force taken to 11 (as Spinal Tap would put it). It made a big impression on me, even though I only heard it on recordings, and I even remember using a bit of it in a lecture I gave about the tools and techniques that a composer can use to manipulate the subjective perception of time.  The Dutch composer Louis Andriessen wrote it, and in some ways it has become, like Stravinsky’s Rite,  one of those big, iconic pieces in music history where audiences got to feel not so much a tide turning as a tidal wave crashing upon them. To give you an idea of some of the power of this work, listen to this bit near the beginning where sections of the orchestra pound away until (in a style not unlike contemporary cinema) they get spliced right on to a vista that opens up:

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Now imagine a piece for large orchestra and chorus that does this kind of thing for over a half hour with no break. Sections build, crash, and coalesce, like tectonic plates crunching. It’s huge, exhausting, and I would imagine, shattering. As you’d expect, De Staat doesn’t get played very often, but I hope some day to hear it live.

Big orchestra or not, I was thrilled that last week, Andriessen was here, in Vancouver, as part of a world tour, celebrating his 70th Birthday and as part of the Music on Main series. The Turning Point Ensemble, one of Vancouver’s few New Music ensembles, played at Heritage Hall, a distinctive old building on Main. Andriessen’s Zilver, which he wrote in 1994 was last on the program, set up by a series of works by other composers, some of them present in the hall (and a piece by Andriessen’s father, Hendrik, which was a charming, if somewhat out-of-place 19th century-sounding Intermezzo for flute and harp).  Of all the works leading up to Zilver, I liked best David Lang’s Sweet Air, dedicated to Andriessen on his 60th Birthday. Lang won a Pulitzer last year for his Little Match Girl Passion, a setting of Hans Christian Anderson’s story set as a work for singers and orchestra (like Bach’s St. Matthew Passion). It is indeed sweet, and floats along, spinning out endless variations on this opening set of repeating patterns:

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While I don’t have a recording of Zilver (and have never heard it), it was a lot of fun, and full of all sorts of interruptions and collisions of one layer of instruments with another. We also had the treat of Andriessen telling a few funny stories before the performance, alikening the organ’s pedal parts in Bach’s Chorale Preludes to little duets between birds being interrupted by a cow mooing, and how he once performed in a ‘Left-Wing’ Ensemble called ‘Perseverance’ that made the unfortunate choice of setting up their free outdoor concert near the flight path of planes coming in for a landing at a nearby airport, where the interruptions here were a lot bigger than a mooing cow. He was wearing a fedora and raincoat, and seemed to be having as much fun as the rest of us were.  I hope we’ll get 30 more years, at least, of music and stories from this merry agitator from the Netherlands.

Seders in Vancouver, Detroit and Washington D.C.

Last night we hosted a small (3-person) Seder for Pam, her friend Heather, and me, technically on the second night of Passover. I cooked the some of the usual fare: the mortar-symbolic Charoset, which is sort of chutney of chopped apples, mixed nuts, a little honey, cinnamon and red wine, and tzimmes (lots of variation here, but basically it’s sweet carrots with some prunes, and other items – sometimes even with meat). The centrepiece of the meal was a small leg of lamb (or was it the leg of a small lamb?). I roasted it with some rosemary and it came out OK, but I’m still not satisfied with how I cook lamb and need to work on getting a foolproof technique that doesn’t produce meat that’s either rubbery or dried out and greasy.

I found out that the night before (in addition to my parents and other relatives having their Seder in Detroit), there was a Seder at the White House. I was frankly surprised and pleased that Obama would do such a thing, especially as he is the first President to ever host a Seder. The holiday celebrates the end of a period of slavery in the Old Testament, so the parallels between the the Emancipation of American Slaves and the Exodus of Jewish Slaves from Egypt was something that I hope was not lost on the people around the table. Having extended the hand of friendship toward the Muslim world last week in Turkey and preparing to participate in the typical Christian activities this weekend (Attending Church Services on Sunday, the Easter Egg hunt on the White House Lawn, etc.), the Obamas were a class act to include the Jewish holiday as well.

Vancouver’s New Convention Centre

Pam and I had a little free time this weekend, so on Saturday, we headed over to the waterfront, and were among the first couple of thousand people who walked around the new Convention Centre. The project, which has been underway as long as we can remember (and probably was officially started before we even arrived here in 2005), has come in horribly over budget, and I do remember stories of some of the metal used in the building being stolen. However it is done, and in time for the Olympics, as well as a few year’s worth of convention bookings in the space from 2010 onward.

Pam and I both liked the architecture of the building, especially the impressive wood walls and green roof. It’s definitely as much an ecological statement as it is a building; there are even resident beehives and a beekeeper for maintaining them. I understand that this wasn’t the first time that some of the general public had seen the inside, as friend and blogger Tiny Bites covered the 2009 BC Restaurant Hall of Fame gala at the same venue a few days ago.

The space is large, but several places get the great view of the Burrard Inlet and the mountains. For this opening day, they had several acrobats and other performers on hand, and I got some video of them. Here’s a tour, including a performance from a group who’s dressing room said ‘Cirque’. I’ve looked and not found anything that said it was Cirque du Soleil, but I’m thinking it certainly looked like them:

Here are some other stills, if you are not keen on watching video of some of the same:

Want more? Here’s a slideshow on Flickr that has these plus a few more:
Slideshow: Opening Day at the Vancouver Convention Centre

The Massive Technology Show, Fourth Time Around

As I’ve written in earlier postings, I have soft spot in my heart for the annual Massive Tech Expo. I remember learning about it first in Boston, before I moved to Vancouver, and then deciding to have our first exploratory visit to the city coincide with it, back in 2005. Readers of this blog know that it was through this show that I eventually got my first job here, and also met the owner of the condo that we ended up buying. That first Massive was good to us.

This year, I have the somewhat less urgent needs in terms of employment (am working now, even if it is a little sporadic to begin with), and housing (we are still in the same place we got via that first show). The first time I attended it, the conference and show floor occupied the Telus Science World ‘golf ball’ (geodesic dome) at eastern end of False Creek. In the years after that, it grew to take up part of one of the show halls in Canada Place (the big building with white ‘sails’ on the the roof, looking out on the Burrard Inlet), the show’s largest footprint. This year, ‘Massive’ was noticeably less massive, and housed in less fancy digs (partly due to ongoing construction), the UBC Robson Centre, an underground downtown campus that sits smack in the middle of the city, across from the Vancouver Art Gallery, which I’d say is the city’s heart, as well as its living room, pillow-fight/flash mob site, party room and Olympic Count-down clock mantel. Has it shrunk because of the current economy? I’d say that’s a good bet.

I was pleased to run into some friends there: Jonathan Narvey, who covered it well for TechVibes, as well as Jenn Lowther, Kris Krug and Tris Hussey. I also chatted with Chris Breikss at the 6S Marketing booth, and had a photo taken of me with my face turning crimson (I wish I didn’t blush so easily) as I held up my free T-Shirt (for tweeting the fact that I was visiting the 6S Marketing Booth, of course) flanked by 2 pretty girls, with the slogan ‘Show us your tweets!’ on it.

The afternoon (I had to do a work thing in the morning, and hence, didn’t get to the show until around 2), was mainly spent chatting with vendors, exploring the possibilities of some referral programs and potential business opportunities for my company, but it was actually pretty low-key and friendly.  The most stressful moments were when I was interviewed live on the Internet (streaming video) by the folks at Media2o, a video/multimedia production company (the company Tris works for, who produce the local tech TV show “ConnectedLife“). I don’t think I blushed for that, but I can’t be sure, as I didn’t see the feed.

If my usual good luck that involves the Massive show applies, I’ll bet that one of the people I met or talked to or deals I explored will result in something good down the road. It’s only a matter of time.