Lament of the Virtues

How frequently do we contemplate what we find sacred among each other? Does the notion of "sacred" need to be reserved to a religious deity? At what point do we treat events in our lives and gatherings with one another as sacred encounters?

Considering life as an ongoing process, I imagine the life and death of an individual or community alike are sacred. One can find sublime mystery in the reality of our existence, if we look or perhaps listen carefully enough. In this photo, I played a then-incomplete tune of mine called "Lament of the Virtues" for the 2007 Virginia Tech Vigil (photo credit to the Dearborn Press and Guide). I used this photo as my profile picture on September 11th too because to me, they categorically reflect the same kind of problem: Some of the perpetrators who caused harm did so with fervor probably because they believed they had good reason to do so and a sense of greater purpose. But by acting in isolation or with people of similarly narrow interests, did they really know what they were doing?

Lament of The Virtues is a sacred piece. It's a call for sustained ethical action that starts and ends in the silence beyond the music:

Traumatic and tragic events can consume our reality, but if you're fortunate to survive, there's more to life than crisis—as far as I can tell, do your best to mindfully acknowledge their significance and keep moving.
There comes a point when one grapples with conflicting virtues. Strive to be good and righteous, but what happens when all your choices for ethical action compromise other ethical values of equal significance—which value inflicts the least harm? We’re forced to triage. These proximal problems yield no completely satisfying resolve. Complex as they are, hot-button political issues in the media like war, abortion, euthanasia, and almost anything else I can think of that leads to vehement entrenchment are proximal problems on a societal scale. Murders and massacres perpetrated by individuals reflect proximal problems on an individual level.

I believe these problems are a symptom of something bigger. Complex systems scientists might refer to them as part of a “wicked problem”—they’re integral to a system that’s challenging to define, and the system changes in ways that escape definition and perception as you interact with it.

The best solution to them emerges through prevention. At the least, reliable crisis prevention necessitates thoughtfully informed, authentically understood, creative, compassionate, and constructive vision and action. I suspect glimpses of love and joy emerge from an environment of this sort--it's a fleeting visionary ideal for living in a way that embraces the spectre of death and defies terrorism. In any event, to make that happen with some measurable impact, you must bring your best to every day and act upon the opportunities that matter. Somewhere between your individual actions and those of other people through community cognizance, making that vision a more tangible reality is possible. That's the quiet pause between each pulse: it's the silence between the music.

[Edit August 2013: I've linked to a guide I created for embracing/navigating complex systems and wicked problems based on my research on complex systems and risk governance between 2012 to early 2013.]

Dombira Hero

http://youtu.be/iH-pzyqjAhM

I imagine this guy is a lot like the equivalent to someone like Micheal Angelo Batio (but not ambidextrous and with better melodic capacity).

I learned about the dombira through a Kazakh classmate many years ago and just now got a hankering for hearing it again...

Inspiring opinions: Willie's Wisdom

There exists a fountain of inspiration and encouragement at the UM-Dearborn Wellness Center:  Willie, the clerk.  Before I get to quoting him, it's worth noting that Willie is a virtuoso artist.  In four swift pen strokes he can create a horse, in about five he can sketch an anatomically correct human skull.  What's even more remarkable to me is that his knowledge about what he draws (he says he mostly paints but I've only been able to witness him sketching) is integral to his life and interests.  He'll tell you what muscles, tendons, and ligaments are attached to what part of which bone, and can probably tell you when the bone(s) start to fuse together.  He's almost always seen sketching or expounding upon powerful learned nuances of life.

In some ways, he's one of the first personal mentors I've ever known.  The first time he found out I played an instrument, he signed me up to play the National Anthem for the University's basketball games.  When I mentioned the song "Tequila" inspired me to choose the saxophone as one of my primary instruments, he let me borrow a tape (yes, cassette tape) by Wes Montgomery.  Almost half a decade later I ran into him at the wellness center again

Below are rushed and somewhat paraphrased quotes from a conversation inspired by watching him teach Aerie(? a fellow student stopping in to exercise, not sure how to spell his name) the anatomy of the forearm, wrist, and hand based on a freshly completed ballpoint pen-on-printing paper sketch.

"They teach you to memorize what the bones are called, but they should really teach you so to appreciate them as part of your life."

"Maybe that's how they are, but it doesn't mean that's how they can be."

[the second time I've heard him say this]  "Slavery exists today...

[from a different discussion circa __ 2012]:  There's painting, called the School of Athens--man, that's what College should be like!  Everybody's engaged and discussing.

[today: building on it]

"When a kid goes to class, he should look forward to it every time--it's like going to class to get gas in the tank and see where he can go from there.  No one should ever go to a class, feel like they left on empty, and wonder if they'd be learning more at their job."

On the world's finest engineers:

"Remember this when the Woodward Dream Cruise comes up:  there are so many masters out there who know their cars and would love to teach somebody about what they can do.  Meanwhile, there are kids out there who could be the greatest engineers jacking peoples' cars.  Why not catch them and say 'Hey, you're pretty good!  Let's see you put a car back together'"

Lessons learned in performance and the "entertainment industry"

Lessons learned from an interview and performance on international television/radio; some of these are actually reminders, but they were very clear themes from my most recent performance:

- Even if you’re not ready, be prepared: Opportunities, and life itself, are a one shot operation - When the point lead isn’t there to represent the team's interests, the organizational structure is unclear, and you're part of the team, don’t hesitate to purposefully step up, take the reins, and do what matters
- Sometimes, whispers are more important to listen for than the rest of the din
- I’ve entered an arena where small talk, superficial relationships, and aimless banter are prevalent if not the norm. Even if someone has lots of experience as a TV show host, if they're asking questions to fill time, bring up what I need to say when my gut tells me I’ve got something far better to convey.

I played with Elemental Meaning at the Middle East American cultural festival in Warren, Michigan. Our band was scheduled to perform for a talent show sometime around 5:00/5:30, but (unbeknownst to us) due to changes in the broadcast schedule we were asked to play on stage sometime after 6:00pm instead. We requested to play later in the lineup in hopes that our drummer, David Watson could make it from work. As we waited, we went about separate ways to rest and pre-game.

Fifteen minutes before we were needed on stage one of the people coordinating it asked me "are you ready to be on international television?" Even though I saw a few cameras and some kind of banner that said "MEAtv" earlier in the day, I didn't realize it was going to be on television--according to him, to 40 states and 160 countries.  That scale of broadcasting still doesn't really register in my mind.  I've been to a big conference where 11,000 people attended.  I've been to "The Big House" AKA Michigan Stadium where 100,000 people attended to see the President.  I could see real people there.  This however, was a glaring disjoint.  There were few people in the physical audience nearby (people sat at peripheral picnic tables), just a single camera on the lawn in front of the stage.

To add to the surrealness of the event, the event was sponsored by the CIA. Even though it makes sense [someone's got to update the world factbook about what's happening elsewhere in the world], it still amazes me.

1. I had no idea there were federal agencies that can afford to sponsor events nowadays!

2. I commend whoever it was that came up with the idea of asking them, and actually followed through with asking them, for sponsorship.

3. It was so strange to perform rock music in front of a giant screen displaying a federal agency's seal.

Meanwhile, they asked where our band leader, Markita went (and so did Phelan and I). Markita was straightening out logistics with David as she was told our performance time would be later than it turned out to be as one of the other talent show contestants did not appear, and we were bumped up and asked to get on stage right away. To fill time, one of the hosts interviewed Phelan and I with what I like to refer to as the "superficial small-talk tone". She actually asked fair questions, but if you're not on your game because your mind is elsewhere, rising up to represent something simple like what the band name "Elemental Meaning" stands for and taking the opportunity to do your thing (in this case, make a brief speech) can be a challenge when you're not sure what's going on around you. Taking care of the semi-mundane (I try to believe that they should be treated as very eventful actually) things like sleeping, eating, and exercising properly so that there's no room to wonder what else could have happened comes to mind, and not taking care of oneself runs far from any reasonable explanation of events.

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

Life as a one-shot operation

Industry does not behoove humanity in matters of personal care. In retrospect, I should have prefaced the "unveiling" of my website with an "under construction" or "work in progress" disclaimer.

I was thrilled to bring together many disparate facets of what I do together, enough that I figured I'd share it with some friends, and post it elsewhere online.  I thought there'd be a small handful of people who'd check it out and did not anticipate so many page views within four days, some of which come from countries where I don't personally know anyone (i.e. the Netherlands and Austria).  Thank you for your curiosity!

I missed a tremendous opportunity to introduce some ideas I really care about and live for to a lot of people with a bang. Lesson learned. For anyone interested, I updated the about section with my take on sustainability as an ethos and substantiating the claims in my tagline (ongoing work in progress but I assure you there's reason for their presence), it's in live-first draft form right now.

Among other topics, I researched the concept of "wicked problems" this winter (you can see the powerpoint I made for a presentation on Leading Sustainability in Higher Education which briefly touches on "wicked problems").

The best description for a "wicked problem" I've found recently is this:

A wicked problem is one for which each attempt to create a solution changes the understanding of the problem. Wicked problems cannot be solved in a traditional linear fashion, because the problem definition evolves as new possible solutions are considered and/or implemented. The term was originally coined byHorst Rittel.
Wicked problems always occur in a social context -- the wickedness of the problem reflects the diversity among the stakeholders in the problem. ( source and other interesting stuff here: http://www.cognexus.org/id42.htm )

I wrote a bit about them and used some of Rittel's papers in my capstone research paper too:

“Wicked problems” are a special kind of problem that is dynamic (always changing and continuously happening) and unusually complicated, though they can be common and pervasive. Wicked problems frequently relate to real-life/death issues that have so many moving parts to them that even defining the problem is a serious challenge. The “wicked problems” concept was originally introduced in organizational behavior theory and characterized with ten conditions by Rittel and Weber of MIT (1967), and refined by Rittel in 1973:

1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem (defining wicked problems is itself a wicked problem).
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but better or worse.
4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a "one-shot operation"; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial and error, every attempt counts significantly.
6. Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.
7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
8. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem.
9. The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem's resolution.
10. The planner has no right to be wrong (planners are liable for the consequences of the actions they generate).

Rittel sums up wicked problems as a "class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing." 

Life is a lot like this too. So long as we live, the things that constitute and define our presence don't really stop, and the consequences of our actions continue to influence others even after we're gone.  The challenge is to recognize your intentions, actions, consequences, and how consequences from other events and peoples' actions might shape your own intentions.  This is a fundamental process of design ( see Ben Eli's semi-powerpoint/paper thing on design at the Buckminster Fuller Institute, I use terms garnered from an ethics class, but the concepts are fundamentally alike).

In this case, the site was originally intended to serve as a comprehensive portfolio (which is a barebones portal to existing social media sites that keep things I made).  I threw it together in haste (over the weekend following example from facebook's hack-together for prompt delivery development story) so that the Ann Arbor Artisan's market would have something better to link to.

I realized I ought to present the pithier and more distinctive bits about my life and want to make it worth other peoples' time.  I hope and believe that many of the things I appreciate, create, learn, and do can help and inspire others to do good things in the world.  If you visit or already have, I hope there's something useful or inspiring for you there now or sometime soon.

Additional Resources:

Wikipedia actually helped me a lot when I was trying to grasp what a "wicked problem was".  The source papers, one is about design theory from the MIT press, are cited in the wikipedia description too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

You can read a book about wicked problems online for free:
https://www.wickedproblems.com/

Column--homage to Donald Judd, 2006

The installation piece below was submitted and published in the Lyceum (The University of Michigan-Dearborn's Literary Fine Arts Journal) as a collection of documentation and observations. 

Column-homage to Donald Judd
To see the placard: http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~idtran/Column_IanTran.pdf 

Column "re-constructed"at approximately 18:30
after an eventful day.  Photographed by Ian Tran

A fond memory from my freshman year of college at University of Michigan-Dearborn, this piece was as much a prank as it was a tongue-in-cheek nod to contemporary arts, minimalism, and call to action spurred by the lack of fine arts activity on the University of Michigan-Dearborn campus. It was up for approximately six hours and viewers/other artists (unknown) had rearranged the tables in interesting ways as the day progressed.

Inspired by very minimalistic (and almost non-functional) and unusually hip tables that populated student study spaces on the third and fourth floors of the UM-Dearborn College of Arts, Sciences and Letters building, and a bit of frustration that the Dearborn campus community was fairly deficient in the arts (no performing or applied arts majors offered, and almost no fine arts initiatives from the student body).  There's a fantastic story that goes along with the construction and conception of the piece, but you'll have to hear it live sometime as I won't fit all of its details here.  On December 6th, 2006 I improvised a descriptive art placard and affixed it to the side of the column minutes before an accomplice (Sean Clyne, a Count Ant) and I started gathering the tables from student study areas on the 3rd and 4th floor of the building.  It read:

Exhibit #1 of the Constructive Energy exposition

Column-homage to Donald Judd, 2006

This interference of the vertical space is a paradox between the literal and scientific. The medium (readymade tables ¾ utilized without the consent of the University of Michigan Dearborn department of Humanities and ¼ utilized without the consent of the University of Michigan Dearborn department of the Behavioral Sciences) in its original state has a high potential to further or enhance the learning experience of the student. At the same time, the tables (in their default dispersal) are a demonstration of high entropy. This stacked arrangement reduces the entropy, thereby raising its potential energy. Though it reduces the potential for conventional student learning, it is the artist’s hope that it will bring fine and performing arts to the attention of the public (especially the student body). To those impassive of the piece, it is merely a troublesome object imbued with capricious and mildly plausible meaning by a troublesome set of students.

For those curious about  Donald Judd and why I made this an homage:  Donald Judd is a famous minimalist artist who has one of his installation pieces (a stack of blocks adhered to the wall) on display at the Detroit Institute of the Arts.

Column mid-day; also pictured: Professor Lee Brooks
of English Composition
Photo credit to Brandon Segrest

Column circa 16:26
Photographed by Ian Tran

What's minimalism to me? Here's my take--be concise, communicate an idea with simplicity. You'll hear the maxim of simplicity in minimalist music as well, though repetition may be more prevalent over conciseness . I think the "stack" sculpture of his on the wall of the Detroit Institute of the Arts is a pretty good example of that.