efficiency cycles

It happens every couple of weeks: my ability to do work sinks downward, until I’m convinced that I’m the least productive human being, ever. Then, suddenly, I kick into efficiency hyperdrive, finishing weeks of work in the span of two or three super-focused days. I alternate between thinking: 1. If I were this productive all the time, I could single-handedly change the world, solving seemingly intractable problems such as world hunger and Rush Limbaugh. 2. On the other hand, if I were this productive all the time, I wouldn’t have time to keep up my serious alcoholism.

At which point, I usually head out for a drink.

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a tip for jazz musicians

Trumpeter Eddie ‘Tiger’ Lewis sent out an email today about a ‘free jazz’ workshop he attended last week. I owe him a big thanks, as it was Eddie who first hipped me to the value of integrating free playing into daily practice. Frankly, I don’t really like to listen to free jazz. For my senior paper at Yale, I investigated current research on the neurobiology of music, and found, in short, that music ‘sounds good’ in large part because it caters to the preferences of a number of the brain’s pattern-finding modules. Free jazz doesn’t, and consequently usually sounds like a bunch of noise. Emotionally expressive noise, perhaps, but noise none the less.

Still, while I don’t listen to much free playing, recently I’ve been doing quite a bit. Here’s why: a jazz solo, essentially, is a spontaneously composed melodic line – temporally horizontal by nature. Traditional techniques for jazz practice, however, are largely vertical – studying a chart one chord change at a time, then slowly building up patterns through groupings of those chord changes.

Practicing free is a return to the horizontal, a taste of the effortless feeling of blowing through a line that seems to speak for itself, and a chance to explore the relationships built between notes over time. A few months practicing free has brought a melodic fluency into my fingers that seems to transfer over when I return to bebop forms, with their constrainingly complex chordal structures.

So, jazz musicians: try five or ten minutes of playing free each day for a month; you’ll be shocked at the improvement. And non jazz musicians: come hear me play this evening at Opal (10:00p, 53rd and 2nd). Sure I’m going to suck. But just imagine how bad I was before.

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bahamas flashback

Don’t you agree, she asks, in a southern accent. I narrow my eyes slightly, focus on her face. It’s burned turned to tan, a small patch peeling halfway up her slightly upturned, sorority-girl-from-a-big-10-school nose. I study that patch for a moment. Definitely. Whatever she was saying, I agree.

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very bad things

Upgrading to Movable Type 2.0, I managed to blow up this site entirely. I’m rebuilding it as we speak, but don’t be surprised if things aren’t working quite right for the next 24 hours. Yes, I am a moron.

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my brother’s keeper

My little brother David is in from Denver for the weekend – he had flown in to Boston last weekend with a group of friends, then road-tripped down to New York on Wednesday. Since my return from the tropics Thursday evening, he’s been taking up residence on my couch and quickly consuming the contents of my refrigerator.

Last night, the two of us headed to Madison Square Garden to watch the Rangers get slaughtered by the Atlanta Thrashers. It was a sad day for Rangers fans

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are you happy now?

To Shibani Mukerji and Amy Basile, who have been giving me a hard time about their lack of mention on this site: See, now you’ve been mentioned. Let me know when you’re ready to leave your boyfriends so we can run off to Utah and form a little polygamous commune.

ps. Yes, Shib, I will add you to the People Glossary.

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the tropical recap

While I had intended to pull together a travelogue for my trip to the Bahamas, I returned to work this morning to find more than 1200 emails waiting for me. Therefore, I’m instead falling back on these dozen short observations, which I jotted down on yesterday’s flight back to JFK:

1. Kalik, the Bahamian local beer, tastes like a bitter, watered down version of Bud Light. The can proclaims it’s “export quality” – perhaps I’m just shopping at the wrong liquor stores, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen that exported Kalik here in New York City.

2. The bikini is, without a doubt, one of the 20th century’s great inventions.

3. Diving with groups of first time scuba-divers is absolutely hysterical. Everywhere you turn, one is floating up towards the surface, dragging along the bottom, or swimming off into the blue. Divemasters are apparently exceedingly grateful for any assistance in corralling such divers.

4. Getting cornrows is a big thing for tourists in the Bahamas. Girls everywhere had dropped $100 to have their hair tightly braided by old, fat Bahamian women on the beach. Note to future visitors: White girls in cornrows bespeak a world of missing teeth and trailer parks that is probably best avoided.

5. I went on the Booze Cruise, and I’m willing to admit it.

6. Crystal Palace, the Bahamas’ largest casino, while tanner and less geriatric than much of Vegas, wouldn’t even hold its own a few blocks off the strip. The place is less than a fifth the size of Foxwoods.

7. Watching spring-breakers from a Texas sorority interact with spring-breakers from an Ohio sorority is oddly fascinating. I felt sort of like Jane Goodall watching two tribes of gorillas squaring off over territory and mating rights.

Note to guys looking for vacation destinations: female-to-male ratio on Nassau’s Cable Beach was approximately 2-to-1.

8. Adrienne, if you’re reading this, I really will call you.

9. Conch chowder is mm-mm good.

10. Other than that, the food blew and was vastly overpriced. It was, however, served rather quickly, seemingly at odds with the otherwise blissfully slow pace of Bahamian life.

11. Masculinity be damned. I like pina coladas.

12. Our hotel didn’t have a hot tub, necessitating frequent trips to the next-door Marriott for the crucial tropical vacation cycle: beach – ocean – pool – hot tub – drink – repeat.

Nassau, in short: Without a doubt, worth the trip, but probably not the repeat trip. My heart is with the Pacific, and Hawaii is where I’d rather be.

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