Breathing into alternative measures of life

What if we used breathing like a measure of time?

"It'll take you about 4 good breaths before you'll feel settled in."

"After three breaths, turn right at the next corner."

Beyond & Back to the Sense of Wonder

I'll perform two West African (Guinean) drum pieces tomorrow on sangban (a medium-sized drum) and cowbell with the West African Drum Ensemble at UM-Dearborn [side-note: we're a pretty tight ensemble, woodchips fly off of the drumsticks every time we play, and in the spirit of "MORE COWBELL!" I broke a cowbell, as did another ensemble mate as we rehearsed.  I'm pleased to report that the replacement cowbells are bigger {thus fulfilling the request for more cowbell} and sturdier].

Tangentially related image:
Ameyaw Kofi of Ghana performing on djembe
at the River Folk Music Festival in
Manchester, MI in 2010.  He has almost no
relation to the West African Drum Ensemble of UM-Dearborn,
but the instrument and the opening rhythms
he played are similar.

The first (called Wurende), I learned to my delight, is a harvest rhythm.  Sometimes a motion makes things click.  Our instructor, Dr. Vera Flaig, explained that the rhythms are played as farmers worked the field to gather the end of the year's harvest, and also performed at the beginning of a season for planting.  What really caught my memory was that she made a simple reaping motion, which instantly reminded me about railroad songs, and drum beats for rowing.

I believe the arts are most substantial for their ability to evoke authentic curiosity and appreciation for the world around us (see "the reality aesthetic" for my writings on that).  This "sense of wonder" (as environmental author Rachel Carson would describe this sensational sort of inquiry) opens the door to deeper inquiry and learning, but beneath that, the tangible and practical nuances of the arts also go undetected in our lives on a regular basis.  I think the social nuances of music are frequently lost in media and a fair amount of society.  For many, it's a challenge to explain how the arts are a valuable part of culture and society beyond giving an argument about "art for art's sake".  I suspect it's because we're exposed to it as background noise through a machine (radios, computers, other media players), encounter what seems like insubstantial music, or more likely, we're unaware of the content or context of the music.  Yet many people in the U.S. still value musicians enough to devote large portions of their wedding ceremonies.   Think about it in a Judeo-Christian ceremony--aside from words spoken by the priest and bride/groom, people spend a lot of time in a church wedding ceremony listening to a musician.  Stranger still, I suspect most of them hire musicians whom they might never have met before.  Meanwhile, while the military no longer give buglers the responsibilities they once had, it still uses music (think running cadences) for purposes of morale, and I suspect singing while running also adds to endurance as well.  Wurende, the Guinean harvest rhythm mentioned above, is a powerful reminder of music in a similar context.

Dr. Wayman investigates the title of the Boccherini, expresses
his enthusiasm for the composer, and adds his thumbs up.
Photograph courtesy of UM-Dearborn's
institutional advancement photographer.

Today, I played a Bocherrini piece at an event that celebrated international diplomacy and the United Nations.  I received a vivid complement from a UM-Dearborn Political Science professor Dr. Frank Wayman who focuses on war in his research and teaching.  The beginning of one of his trademark courses, "Peace and War" (link goes to a very rich and educational syllabus), actually focused a great deal on defining war and scaling conflicts, and very little on giving explicit focus to the elements that create a vibrant example of a nation in peace.  In that class (and in most international dialogue), "peacekeeping" forces, would actually be better defined as "drastic-security-keeping" forces since they are usually deployed to stem, minimize, or quell violent conflicts in drastic circumstances.

Aside: According to the statistical data he presented in both the class and today's special "Two Cheers for the United Nations" (a reference to a book titled "Two Cheers for Democracy"--the two cheers [out of three] implying that substantial work remains to be done--presentation on the United Nations, "peacekeeping" forces are at least successful in reducing the number of casualties in wars despite the frequency of wars.

I found it ironic that a professor who focused so much on the characteristics of war (in part defined by the number of direct conflict-related deaths, non-combatant civilian casualties weren't included) and genocide really enjoyed hearing music Boccherini (he's a huge fan of the Boccherini cello concerto).

I wonder what that means?  Surely we can find something to speak about our sense of humanity in that...

Armchair Ethnomusicology: Turkish music and West African ties?

I just heard this Turkish piece:

http://youtu.be/cJvULtRWlzE

And realized the lead plucked instrument plays flourishing scales in a very similar manner to those heard in Senegalese Kora (a West African harp) music. Aside from liking Turkish and Balkan music, I don't know much about it and their history, but I wonder if there's a stronger connection? Turkey is certainly a nexus between many places (it's been deemed a crossroads for orient and occident), so it's a plausible surmise for me.

Djele Lankandia Cissoko playing a few Senegalese tunes, listen for flourishing scale runs:
http://youtu.be/JNl8kIwj1_k

I've been trying to re-create some of the sounds of kora music for a long time. I recall waking up to hearing magical music in middle school or high school and have been searching for the tune ever since.

This one's nice though, you can hear how Mr. Suso masterfully mutes the strings with his palms--it happens now and then with guitarists, but this is one of the best employments of the technique I've heard yet: http://youtu.be/zdqe27-qKe4

Existentialism in Marketing

[Note:  I keep starting things that make me think I'm supposed to cover all of my thoughts about whatever I write.  Since I stopped using wordpress, I have no idea how long these posts run and have yet to check the word count.  I might expand this post later as it ties into essays and research I've worked on before, apologies in advance if it ends abruptly.]

I'm integrating many facets of what I do into one place.  In my quest for examples of interesting people who do a disparate array of things and had personal websites that brought them all together, I wound up finding the following phrase "sell and experience, not a product".  The concept was probably coined by someone famous or at least famous within marketing circles--I'll let others point to the source for now.  The idea however is interesting--even marketers (presumably good marketers), some of the greatest product pushers of all-time, look for truth and meaning in what they purvey.  I don't think I'm off-mark to say "selling an experience" plugs into the essence of existentialism.  Experience is irreplaceable and particular to one's perception and circumstances (which are subjective enough to present real challenges to anyone attempting to replicate them).  Yet the bigger question for me is this: how much can one intrinsically and extrinsically integrate into what they do?

Here's where outreach and marketing overlap in my opinion--and why I believe outreach is the superior concept to marketing, though with all due respect to marketers, I believe both are still important and useful.  Both operate on transdisciplinary principles of design--particularly through communication.

{continued after the jump}

Glass, class, consumption ethics and cash

Among things I never imagined doing, making jewelry in college ranks high on the list.

The course was actually a natural science class that's open to the community as a workshop too. We learned about the chemistry and physics that go into near-alchemy glass phenomena. In addition to the physics and chemical reactions behind glass working, I learned fundamental techniques for crafting glass beads last semester. By the end of the endeavor, I realized I was working with serious materials that could place me alongside competent and professional jewelers (indeed, at least one of the people in the lab, Katherine*[spelling?], is a full-time artist and jeweler).

Many of our glass rods came from exotic and esteemed places like the Murano district of Italy and China (perhaps exotic for those not numbed by globalization). Our instructor taught workshops at the University of Toledo's glass museum, and I worked with 22 karat gold leaf, sterling silver, and stainless steel.

The glass gets its color based on its chemical contents, and sold as glass rods. Heavy metals (things you don't want to ingest a lot of like lead, etc.) are frequently used as opacifiers (to make the glass less transparent). History holds that some antique yellow glass vases would glow in the dark because of the uranium in them (I hear from other classes and conferences that uranium ore is yellow too). When we work with a "cobalt blue" rod, it appears cobalt blue especially because the rod of glass contains a fair amount of cobalt silicate or cobalt (II) aluminate. I'm guessing that it's a radioactively stable isotope of cobalt. For beads with lead content, I now tend to seal beads with clear glass in case any potential health concerns do manifest.

The blue striping on the beads/pendant
is "cobalt blue" (contains cobalt). The
pendant is suspended with sterling
silver, the crimps for the clasps 
are sterling silver as well, and
the beads are threaded with
stainless steel cable. 

Enough back story: At the end of the semester, I came to enjoy working with glass, made some nice things (turtles!), was required to make a necklace for the final project, was left with a bundle of glass rods, and invited to join the summer workshop and Southeast Michigan Glass Bead Maker's Guild.

As much as I enjoy glasswork, a few concerns arise.

1) As a class, we use about 5 tanks of acetylene (a natural gas) in one semester for our torches.

2) Globally, gold contributes to over 90% of mine production, and I suspect the precious metals and steel we used were not from recycled.
(Here's the No Dirty Gold report I sourced that statistic from)

3) I definitely won't use a lot of the glass for myself, but if it's worth it for someone I'm very glad to make it. However, I refuse to craft kitsch.

Disclaimer: In some ways, I dislike getting into classical conservation issues like recycling and the accelerated anthropocentric climate crisis. They tend to boil down to basic education and responsibility, and people get pigeonholed as a very different kind of person known as an "environmentalist". Recycling and climate change tend to miss a bigger picture in the scheme of life: we all have responsibilities that cannot be delegated to specialists. You don't delegate your day-to-day responsibilities to a professional ethicist. Likewise, there are basic things that everyone can/should do that are not to be left for someone else to clean up after. Responsible environmental actions are a necessity in everyone's life, the difference comes from the degree of insight, scale, and influence we knowingly interact with. You can go to an environmental scientist for insight, but don't forget about the learned perspectives of everyone else in society.

1) Back to point 1 about natural gas consumption:

The first point probably has a stereotypical and common set of reasons for an environmental science major to be worried. Anthropocentric greenhouse gas combustion, natural gas consumption, which ties back to extraction (increased demand for fuel can add to impetus for fracking in the Great Lakes region [I'll acknowledge natural gas as an enticing transition fuel, but when we get to the science of risk, impacts, and industry response, it's very challenging to justify considering the proximity of these operations to our local drinking water supply]).

2) The second point really makes it meaningful for me--I've met people face to face, shook hands and embraced people who underwent (some continue to undergo) environmental injustices in Appalachia due to mountain top removal coal mining. Contrary to what most people would assume, they were still potentially willing to mine coal in other ways even at the risk of black lung disease. They weren't willing to see their fruits and neighbors die from toxic water or silicosis.

3) Furthermore, people can only wear so much jewelry at a time, assuming that they'd even want to (I for one, barely wear a watch, and do so for practical purposes). Again, I refuse to craft kitsch--it's frequently devoid of substance and rarely authentically communicates one's intentional assertions of self-agency.

I find beauty through intrinsic and extrinsic circumstance of an event or entity--when both are there, it's magic. Simple, complex, mysterious all at once. Glass as a medium captures this. The art is visual and for the creator, kinesthetic as well. I recall a [paraphrased] quote from a master Murano glass maker (sorry, I don't recall his name, he's in an early video about the history of glass making in 1960s): 

 "glass is the only medium I know that can be hard, yet fragile and malleable all at the same time". 

I'd take it further and apply it as a fair symbol of the human spirit too. It's origins are inorganic (in a chemistry sense) yet natural and artificial (in that it is frequently created with human intention) too.

A process such as glass work on a small scale is intricate, introspective, and takes more time and effort than the finished outcome may suggest (realizing a cat's eye marble is probably made by hand still surprises me). But as a process, it is fleeting and enrichment is particular only to the individual engaged in its creation. If I'm dissatisfied with the intrinsic nature of what I've made, I'm presented with a few challenges. Can I imbue substantial extrinsic meaning into what I've done? This then becomes a tenuous endeavor akin to marketing what we don't really need. At the same time, I'm looking to pay off tuition and attain more stable living conditions.

Curious to know the context of glass bead making among fine jewelers, I started looking around. I found several jewelers pricing two-bead earrings around $60-$80 a pair, and that necklaces can easily reach $800 or more. Considering the potential time, effort, energy and materials it takes to make glass, this actually makes sense.

That's right, we (you the reader and I) now enter the domain of "what's it really worth" we now ponder if a balance can ever exist between the priceless value of experiences and stories, the worth of the intrinsic materials, and whether the experience modifies the value of a material item. Indeed, there exist companies which drive so much into developing a "culture" and identity around their products, that their value is appreciated for the story.  Surely the existence of an active customer fan-forum can be considered a milestone of success in enterprise. In the bead industry, see trollbeads.  For parallels in consumer technology, I'll merely mention "apple"; video games: "halo".

Perhaps the greater creation behind these individual trinkets comes from the creation of a dynamic, living entity: the "community" which sustains meaning through the extrinsic discussion, exhibition, criticism, and occasional exaltation for particular items, artifacts, and ideas.  The strength of any community belongs to the domain of invaluable relationships.

While capitalism and money may be myriad topics fraught with issue for deeply contemplative and compassionate comprehension, I'm convinced that the lifeblood of these systems amounts to a beguilingly simple notion: trust.  I suspect most economists consider the value of our currencies, even an individual or institution's faith in a good, service, or market resilience rely upon trust for arbitrary interest rates and belief in economic dogma.  Yet the injustices inherent to both of these systems tend to violate the very basis of my conjecture for money and capitalism!

We must be looking at a wicked problem in its most worthy sense...  [A wicked problem is a special kind of problem for complex systems thinkers.  The link goes to previous posts that discuss or at least tangentially mention wicked problems with useful external links for more specific characterizations of wicked problems.]