Love...

...is so easy to understand in the context of one's child. One doesn't need words.

I was with V today; saw her after 10 years. She has grandkids now and was talking about them fondly. I got teary eyed as she spoke because I suddenly realized how much I had missed A, who has been away from me for almost a week, she'll be back in three days. It was a short separation as she graced her grandparents' home for Spring Break week. But I have missed her so much in just this one week.

I see her everywhere, placing all her stuffed toys in comfortable sleeping positions all over the house and then covering them up in blankets. I see her drawings on the refrigerator, the painting of hers that I hung up on my office wall...she draws so well...this painting has a giraffe, a deer and dog prancing around in green, lily covered fields and her caption reads, "Beu -te- ful Mother Nature". All eyes are drawn to it instantly, that's the first thing my visitors see.

Today I hung up another one of her works...this one has two dogs, two cats, two people and pawprints and footprints everywhere in the background. The blurb here reads, "Love comes in twos." Where does she come up with these! Every drawing is rich in colors with smooth lines, the effect is not childish, but very clear and distinct.

I told her once that I had never been able to draw animals well to which she responded,"Don't worry Mommy, I'll teach you."

Then of course I keep thinking of the times I tell her, "I love you" and she is quick to respond, "I love you more" and then I say, "I love you more than that" and she says, "I love you even more than that plus infinity plus another infinity plus two thousand plus two hundred and forty eight..." and she can keep going, I am the one who needs to tell her she wins.

Most family times are at dinner tables, ours have switched to the basement gym where I am usually on the treadmill or the elliptical machine for an hour, little A hanging on the various arms of the nautilus like a little monkey and big A lifting weights until the role playing begins and the little one becomes Miss A the teacher and big A is given the role of Little Joey. She then proceeds to coach Little Joey in first grade Math, English and last but not least - the hula hoop!

Little Joey is especially bad at the hula hoop, he just can't get it right despite Miss A's excellent teaching technique.

Those are the best moments.

She left me a message today, her tone as clear as a church bells...or something else...the notes so rich...she tells me, "Mommy remember when you said we would do some planting and gardening together in the spring and summer? Remember you said we'd go buy seeds and saplings? Well, you don't have to worry Mommy, I found seeds here, now we can get started on it soon as I come home. I have put them aside with a little note saying, 'Please don't touch'. It'll be so much fun!"

I am not deleting that message ever, it sounds so good to me! I want to find a way to make it a .wav file and save it forever, replay it for her when it stops becoming obvious to me, ten or twelve years down the line, that she loves me infinity times two plus two thousand...

For now I understand love when I think of her, I recognize the warm glow of happiness at thoughts of her, the feeling of standing tall, at one with the universe and everything else as the smiling sun she's so fond of drawing glints off her shiny hair and gentle face.

On Irrationality

Maybe a post is warranted just to add a marker for the times we live in. This one is about being brought to ones knees after soaring. The first time it hit me hard, or rather the second time (who can forget Orenthal J. Simpson) was when I saw Marion Jones’s tear stained face at a press conference where she admitted she had used performance enhancing drugs during all her Olympic appearances and wins. She lost all her medals, got six months in prison and is bankrupt. I was saddened to hear of her fate. She had reached the highest heights as athlete extraordinaire. The saddest thing is that people believe she would have done equally well without these drugs.

Now there’s Eliot Spitzer, his fall from grace is stunning. His conduct appeared to be exemplary as he brought several corrupt individuals and corporations to their knees as New York’s Attorney General. He leveraged that success to become New York State’s governor. No one could have imagined that his fall from grace would be so sudden and so stunning when he got caught in a federal investigation that linked him to a prostitution ring and a 22 year old prostitute. Last week he was seen apologizing for having violated the trust of his family, as his wife stood next to him (it’s always fascinating to see the wives standing by looking supportive, what’s really going through their minds?). What struck me as ironic is that he apologized for having let his family down – how could such an intelligent man have forgotten that his actions would result in him letting his family down, while he was indulging in them? He must have thought about it, but it just wasn’t enough to override the power of the self-destruct button. The button we all seem to cherish. The button, the imp that tells us to take anything as far as we can, see how much we can get away with before things really start going south. Now radio and TV stations are discussing his behavior in surprise, in “What was he thinking?” terms. Someone said it was to do with the corruption that power brings. I tend to doubt that explanation. I don’t think Spitzer went through a thought stream, at the peak of power that went somewhat like this: “I am so powerful now, I could go out and pay for sex and no one would be the wiser”. I very much doubt that. The absolute corruption that ostensibly comes from power is nothing more than a cliché.

And now there’s Bear Stearns, and 85 year old company that had survived so many recessions, so many economic cycles only to be wiped out last week from having made questionable investments in subprime loans. They were just bought by JP Morgan, as if at a garage sale, for $2 per share. It is a company that employed financial geniuses from institutions with stellar reputations and yet the long term decisions they made brought them to this sad turn of events.

We know nothing lasts forever, not power, not success, not fame, not youth - it doesn’t take too many years of living to realize that it’s all ephemeral and that our actions have inevitable consequences. If we don’t have sub par IQs we should be aware of the consequences of every one of our actions. But this is perhaps a lesson that we all choose to ignore.

I have often said that comfort and security is not what we seek as humans. We are programmed for chaos. As an economics major the idea of seeking equilibrium was always reinforced in our studies. Every chapter in every textbook required us to learn and master the ways in which equilibrium was attained. The other underlying statement that laced all this learning was that of rationality; how a rational person would behave.

This has come under closer scrutiny since the Nobel Prize was awarded to Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith in 2002; they challenged this key assumption and incorporated insights from psychology into economics. An entire discipline now comes into question because the idea of a “rational person” ceases to exist.

The state of equilibrium was supposed to come about through rational behavior from rational human beings. If we would rather behave irrationally, it goes without saying that we never reach equilibrium and chaos rules; as it has over thousands of years; it’s obvious in every one of our actions, collective and individual. At the risk of sounding terribly repetitive - we are programmed for self-destruction.

If underlying irrationality is assumed then new theories can be constructed in an attempt to predict what’s rendered unpredictable, or can it? That works very well with another thing I often say about expectations – “Expectations Be Gone!” We build expectations when we assume things will behave rationally- A will happen, followed by B etc. But it doesn’t work that way. Things don’t happen as we think they will; we have no gauge for irrationality or for what seems irrational from our perspective.

Should all of us be writing macros that incorporate irrational behavior into outcomes that would affect our lives and our relationships with others?

Structure and Routine

About the only exciting thing in my life right now is how well I seem to be progressing in my musical training.

I couldn’t contain my childish excitement when the song I had been practicing for over a week “Aura Lee”, never recognizing what I was playing, suddenly took shape and revealed itself to me, and it was Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender”! I never knew Elvis’ version was an adaptation from something else. Just like I didn’t know about “O Sole Mio” and “It’s Now or Never” until I heard the former being played over the sound system of an Italian restaurant. How many more of these did Elvis adapt? I am too ignorant to know, but I do know my Elvis, and it is exciting to see it coming out of my violin!

So I was thrilled when I was able to play it in class, accompanying my teacher on the piano. That meant that the rhythm, the tempo, the sound, everything was just right, it felt awesome! The teacher also gave me a swollen head by saying that the sound was so sweet that it could make people wonder if my cheapo violin was actually an expensive and rare one. That was the highlight of my week. Too bad I am the only one celebrating.

The other good thing about the violin class is the people I get to meet, parents of the other kids who are learning violin with Anoushka. Her class commences right after mine ends, so I get to chit-chat with the other waiting parents and a grandparent. I especially look forward to my chats with Jack’s Grandpa. He calls himself a fiddler, not a classical violinist, and has been fiddling for several years now. We heard about the “Hindu Hillbilly” from him. Apparently there is a person of Indian origins who sounds as authentic a performer of folk music as if he was an old Appalachian soul. Jack’s Grandpa says this is the name he has given himself in jest, would love to see him perform sometime. J’s Grandpa also appears to be a musical encyclopedia and if you know me, you’ll know how much I enjoy living, breathing encyclopedias. I couldn’t believe I was sitting there talking about the Nyckelharpa , also known as the hurdy-gurdy and the Hardanger Fiddle from Norway. The latter is such an exquisite looking instrument with the ivory inlays and underlying strings, there for sympathetic vibrations. By the time our class was over I was ready to invest in some Scandinavian tunes!

Indian classical is also going well, even though G M D N (E F A B) still proves somewhat elusive in isolation. I never thought that Indian classical music, something that’s a part of my origins/culture would have more degrees of difficulty for me than western violin. Strange!

My days are spent working and my nights are spent practicing music and working out. It’s usually half past ten by the time I feel tired enough to go to bed and there’s never any time for anything else. But guess what, I like it this way. The “anything else” was probably not what I should have been spending my time on anyway. I like experimenting with a ‘structured” existence these days, choosing an Apollonian approach rather than a Dionysian one.

Over the next few days if I can steal a moment of reflection or if anything strikes me as something to write home about (it’s quite possible, with Spring around the corner and the long walk to my bus terminal through many New York streets and avenues, where my muse often lurks) I’ll place it here, on this blog, for preservation, if not, I suppose people who stop by here once in a blue moon will just need to wait for the next blue moon to check for updates.

Excellent Writing

When one is in the mood for EXCELLENT writing, Jeremy Denk's wit and humor never disappoints. I simply can't get enough of his deconstruction of the Apollonian versus Dionysian approach to arts.

Miscellaneous jottings about music classes etc.

I was pleased that I could keep up with my teacher's playing in my violin class, of course she must have been playing in a way that made it easier for me to keep up, I do realize that, but to my own ears I didn't sound half bad. I am starting to make little changes or corrections in how I hold the bow, I practice often and I practice in front of a mirror. I was overjoyed at being able to play The Ode to Joy...I never could have imagined, a year ago, that I would be playing a bit of Beethoven! I am astounded.

On the Indian classical vocals front things are going well for the most part. Have been learning Raag Yaman for about a month but I never thought I would find this training so formidable. I finally realize how much of an approximation singing along with a radio is. One may have a good voice and a good ear but formal training elevates one to stratospheric levels where it literally is difficult to breathe! Take the longer taans for instance, one needs to sing these in taal and stopping to take a breath makes one miss the beat! I don't know how the classical greats and my teacher do it! Or I do know, she told me...she practices three hours a day with no distractions.

I am getting the sense that unless I put in similarly rigorous hours of practice I would never emerge from a state of awe.

And what about not being able to identify individual pitches in isolation? I can only identify the Re and the Ga in relation to the Sa. When will I be able to hear a standalone Ga (Me) and know that's what it is? In the taans I am learning I simply cannot remember the one that starts as follows:

G M D N S N D P M G R S -- the G M D N bit always makes me stumble -- even if I practice it on the keyboard repeatedly, or sing it repeatedly. The next time I try it I stumble all over again! What is it about G?

It must be something to do with losing any "perfect pitch" abilities by age six if one isn't trained early. However I have heard that most people can be trained to hear relative pitch. So if it always has to be relative then would I always have to mumble S R before getting to an audible G, or will I ever be able to reach the G without the S R steps? I am hoping practice will get me there.

I never imagined how challenging this training at this age would be!

Can a brain as old as mine be trained in the finer aspects of music? I am hoping I'll have the resolve to continue.

My struggles underscore how much of an approximist I have always been. If something was good enough it was always good enough for me but it just doesn't work that way with anything, not life, not work, not music. "Good enough" is really...well...BAD.

Although it seems there is something to be said for approximation. Researchers have found that in math the human brain is only hard wired to be exact in calculations that involve 3-4 numbers, everything else is learned and forced....trying to make a weak sort of case here...or telling myself that if I am not learning disabled or if I am tenacious enough maybe I'll be satisfied with my musical progress.

I have also changed the way I listen to music, any music. It used to just wash over me before, now I am making it stick by trying to listen for every instrument in the orchestra, especially the drums, the tabla, the way each instrument makes its entrance into the piece being performed.

I am determined to go about this quest in the right way, the goal is to learn about music and to derive some enjoyment from the learning process...no ambition, no grandiose plans.