Junipero Serra as Saint?

It is bad enough that we celebrate Columbus Day here in the United States.  Columbus, while praising and thanking God for the bounty of human cargo, was responsible for the complete and total genocide of the Arawak people on the island of Haiti (and Dominican Republic).  Women and children were raped and murdered while the men were taken as slaves if not murdered and tortured. 

Likewise, His Holiness Pope Francis plans to declare Junipero Serra a Saint.  The Pope has indicated that he "Values Human Life" yet the indigenous people who were dominated by Serra were considered collateral damage by the Church. The canonization of Junipero Serra will glorify and support post Inquisition Doctrine of Discovery; a very dark, and brutal time in the history of the Roman Catholic Church and Civilization.

The domination and genocide of Indigenous Californians from the brutal Mission system does not support this canonization.  Rather than make this man a saint it would be better to recognize the inhumane treatment of the indigenous people of California by openly abandoning the canonization of Junipero Serra.

Pope Francis is coming to Washington, D.C., to canonize Junipero Serra as a Saint and it is imperative he is enlightened to understand that Father Serra was responsible for the deception, exploitation, oppression, enslavement and genocide of thousands of indigenous Californians, ultimately resulting in the largest ethnic cleansing in North America.

The reality of the California Mission system has yet to be accurately taught in California schools or recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. Elementary school children tour mission grounds and are taught that native people were "docile and child-like savage pagans, saved by the kind and benevolent padres."  In reality, the human remains of thousands of indigenous people are scattered beneath the grounds of the Missions that were built by Native American slaves as garrisons for the church and Spanish crown. Indigenous people died of rape, beatings and diseases introduced by the Spanish conquistadors in California. Spanish Priests did little to recognize indigenous people as humans and did not come to their rescue when women and children were raped by soldiers and settlers. With an over 90% indigenous mortality rate, Serra hardly "saved many souls."  This is another great shame of the Roman Catholic Church beneath the banner of Christianity.

Urge the Pope to vacate this plan by writing to him.  Pope Francis does not have a direct mailing address but you can contact the Vatican's press office at av@pccs.va  Alternately you can mail to the pope via usual mail at this address:

His Holiness, Pope Francis
Apostolic Palace
00120 Vatican City  

(Vatican City is its own country so you don't need anything more than that.  While procuring postage, if your postal worker insists you that you need a country or begins to write "Italy" on the envelope, stop him and ask him to look it up)

The Pope's Twitter handle is:
@pontifex

To gleam some ancillary insight into what happened, If you have not yet seen the movie THE MISSION (1986), do so.

How Dangerous is Marijuana?

Here is a compilation of annual causes of death according to the CDC:
Homicides: 16,121 (11,208 involved firearms (many were domestic abuse))
Alcohol-impaired driving crashes: 10,322 (1,168 were children 0-14 years old)
Heart disease: 611,105
Cancer: 584,881
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 149,205
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 130,557
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,978
Alzheimer's disease: 84,767
Diabetes: 75,578
Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,979
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 47,112
Intentional self-harm (suicide): 41,149
Marijuana: 0, no recorded cases of overdose deaths from cannabis have been found

Why is it illegal?  It can't be taxed other than by collecting money from arrests, tickets, court fees, fines and incarceration.  It is in the interest of the pharmaceutical industry, tobacco and alcohol industry, lumber industry and prison industry to keep it illegal.

For further reading, take a look at the LaGuardia Report on Marijuana:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/lag/lagmenu.htm

Drive Your Own Car

My father taught me to drive when I was about thirteen.  Yeah, I know, it was illegal.  What are you going to do, arrest him?  There were kids younger than I driving mini bikes, snowmobiles, horses and farm equipment on the same roads.  He taught me many valuable lessons, one of which was to "drive your own car."   That is to say, don't necessarily be nice, don't yield your right of way and never wave another vehicle to move when they don't have the right of way.  You can leave a hole but never wave someone on.

The drivers around you have an expectation that you are going to operate your vehicle in an orderly and predictable fashion which maintains the natural flow of traffic.  Any time you yield your right of way, you not only introduce an unknown factor into the mix - the other driver who doesn't have the right of way, but your expected action deviates from the natural flow and another driver who may not be paying attention can get caught off guard resulting in an accident.

My father also taught me to never follow a driver who has damage to the rear end of his vehicle for, chances are he performs erratic and unexpected behaviors which can cause accidents with drivers behind him. 

There is an old joke about an elderly driver who gets pulled over for doing 35 in a 55.  She tells the officer that she has never had an accident in her life but a lot of drivers behind her have.  That joke demonstrates that a driver who is driving in an unexpected fashion can interrupt the natural and expected flow of traffic.

Here is a short video demonstrating the dangers of being nice or, as my father put it, "driving someone elses car."

http://youtu.be/yM0M8Q6ObIo

You can see me driving down the road while there is a line of stopped traffic on my left.  A grey van is looking to get out of a parking lot and the driver of a black SUV decides to be nice and most likely waves him out - not taking into account that I am coming from the other direction.  The driver in the grey van takes the word of the black SUV that it is safe to cut across when, it wasn't.  You can see that she cuts right in front of me.  Luckily I wasn't texting, eating, changing my clothes, putting on make up, talking on the phone or rifling through the glove box as I see so many other drivers do.  Because I was paying attention I was able to brake in time.  You can see that I also began to veer off the road a bit in anticipation of a crash.

Further analysis of the video will reveal that if the black SUV waited, there were not many vehicles behind them and the grey van could have navigated themselves out of the parking lot all by themselves in their own time. 

The lessons here are (1) never tell someone else how to drive their car with a wave for, chances are you can't see what they see and you are only focused on being nice, not the ancillary drivers who don't know what you are doing with someone else's car.   (2) Never take the word of a nice driver that it is safe for you to move because they can only yield their right of way, not that of ancillary drivers. 

If someone waves for you to pull out and another car hits you, whose fault is it?  The guy who hit you?  You for cutting in front of them?  Or the guy who told you it was safe to pull out? 

Nice is different than good.  Be a good driver, not a nice one. 

Singing Tips

While watching the battle rounds of THE VOICE with some friends, we were sometimes at a disagreement over which singer was superior.  I always won but that doesn't mean I was always right.  Listening is in the ear of the beholder.   In these reality competitions, sometimes the eye.

I was listening for dynamics, enunciation, good phrasing and singing off the page.  Some people would call it soul, or tone and the judges often called it "in the pocket."  Randy Jackson used to call it "the 'It' factor."   I'll break it down on my personal technical level.

Singing with dynamics is easy to comprehend.  The singer gets louder and softer while singing phrases.  It adds a contour to the phrase or even the entire song.  In this instance I was listening for more inner dynamics.  More than within a phrase but, including within a word.  If they were singing a vowel on a whole note or a note held for a while, I was listening if they did anything with that note.  If they held note at the same volume, I was bored.  If they got loud or soft on it, they piqued my interest.  One of them evolved the diphthong and that was cool.  A diphthong is a vowel which has two vowel sounds such as in the word "eye."  A trained singer would sing it sort of like "ahhye" or maybe "ahhhh."  "E" is a harsh sound and can cause a singer to lower their soft palate and raise the tongue.  What is bad about that is it diminishes a clear, full and open tone.  An untrained or maybe a country singer would sing, "ah-eee."  Try it yourself.  Sing the letter "i" and notice how quickly you want to sing an "ee" and raise the tongue.  That's a diphthong.

A second dynamic I listen for is what they do with repeated words.  Let's say you fell and broke your leg.  You would yell for help.  If no one answers, you yell a little louder.  No answer?  You yell LOUDER.  Try it (but softly in case someone hears you).  The same thing would happen as you lose hope.  You yell "HELP!"  Then maybe "help . . . " then "hel . . . "  So when one of the singers sang "I love you, I really do love you, yes, I love you." each repetition about love needed to be different every time.

Poor enunciation is, well, singing without consonants.  A singer can't be understood and what is the purpose for singing if it is not to share words?  In other words, wi  ou  onso an  ,  ou  an'  e un erstoo.  I zone out on singers who make me work to understand them.  If they mumble their lyrics, clearly they are not important to them, why should I listen then?

Phrasing is when a singer takes a breath.  It is the commas of the musical line.  Some singers can be artistic with this such as Adam Lambert who while competing on American Idol would sing long phrases without taking a breath.  I loved that.  Others, take lots, of breaths, all over, the, place.  For me the worse sin-(breath)-gers are the ones who take breaths in the mid-(breath)-dle of words.  Those of you who go to church, listen the next time a soloist sings the song "Ave Maria."  Many soloists will sing "A (breath) ve, Mareeee (breath) eee (breath) ya."  Cracks me up every time.

Singing off the page is a simple concept.  It is nice when a singer adds a run but often, the run is just ornamentation and has nothing to do with the lyric.  Too much meaningless ornamentation can be tiresome.  I prefer singers who throw in bent notes.  These are also known as crushes, scoops, gliss or blues notes.  They are notes that are just slightly off pitch but resolve to the correct pitch.  It is very satisfying.

Another factor is something called entasis where the singer is just slightly off the beat.  This isn't the same as dragging because they only do it on a few beats every few bars.  It is a way of accenting words and saying to the listener that these words are important so I am giving them a little more time.  Jazz pianist great Erroll Garner was a master at playing off the beat and he would often do it for a whole song.   Our brains crave the unpredictability of entasis.  Just listen to any MIDI file where the notes are quantized perfectly on the beats and you'll hear how boring perfectly-on-the-beat music can be.

A great performance is often filled with purposeful uncertainty.  Those musicians who can do that are called artists.  With music, as with all things, your mileage may vary.  How perfect is that? 

Entropy Happens.

Someone asked me if I missed the holidays of my childhood.  Sure, who doesn't remember those halcyon days with melancholy and joy.   The house was decorated, there was a lot of cooking in the days leading up to the holiday and for days after, the smell of home cooking lingered in the air. 

At the time, I didn't enjoy those gatherings very much because the house was packed with about thirty friends and relatives, some I didn't know.  They got in the way (and in my stuff) of my routine, practice and work.  It was difficult for me to take a day off back in those days so holidays were almost traumatic for me, a workaholic.

What I do miss is the joy and care my mother put into the holidays with the decorations and all that cooking.  Both my sisters were married with four kids each and all those people meant more food, more noise, more chaos and long hours.  That was something my mother thrived on.

After my two sisters became Jehovah's Witnesses and my brother married and moved away, it was just my mother and me on those holy days.  At this point she was very ill with COPD.  On her last Thanksgiving, she cooked up a feast as always and it was just my mom and me.  I took the dog for a walk after the meal and clean up and we walked down by the lake and past a neighbor's house where I saw in the window that there were about 20 people inside and it reminded me what our holidays were like.  I wasn't sad that I wasn't embroiled in a sea of relatives but, sad that my mother and all she loved was fading away. 

As I walked around the lake I remembered how when I was about ten, the older kids ruled the lake, the dyke, the dam, the docks and I looked up to them in awe, respect and fear.  Then when I was an older teen, I realized that I along with my friends ruled the lake.  I recently met someone who now lives on the lake and I realized that other young people now rule the lake, maybe.  I have heard that the lake association closed all the swimming holes by dumping rocks on the beaches, putting up barricades so no one can park on the side of the street and fencing off the dyke.  This wondrous place for a kid to grow up is now off limits but I guess that is okay.  Kids today have Facebook and the internet to explore their worlds and interact with people. 

Nothing is so good it lasts eternally.  Perfect situations must go wrong.    There are some facts about life which no one can escape; That life is short and almost always ends messily; that no one thinks as well of you as you do yourself; that in one or two generations from now you will be forgotten entirely and that the world will go on as if you had never existed.  Another fact is that to survive and prosper in this world, you have to do so at someone else's expense or do things that are not pleasant to face. 

One of these gifts that we enjoy is freedom but it comes at the cost of the innocents murdered in the aerial bombing of Europe and the final bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And not just the bombings. It's also an unpleasant fact that we are alive and well because the generation before us killed people with bullets, shells, bayonets, or knives, if not in Germany, Italy, or Japan, then Korea or Vietnam. Our politicians have connived at murder and war, and we enjoy the freedom for it today.  The truth is that if we get what we want, it turns out not to be the thing we wanted, or at least at the cost.

I hope we remember that.

Stage Fright

I recently auditioned several singers for a cantor position at my church and most of the singers either admitted to being nervous or displayed attributes of nervousness.   There was absolutely no reason to be nervous because the people in the pews were not passing judgment on them.  Those people were there to worship God or accept any mental, emotional or physical healing they could gleam from the liturgy.  Fr. Bill was going to make the ultimate decision but I suspect he was basing most of his criteria on the phone interview. 

Musically, there were many things I was listening for such as tone, diction, pitch and rhythm but, there were other factors which stood out for me more so.  I took note during the rehearsal if they were marking or doing an all out performance.  If they performed, was the actual singing of the music during the Mass a carbon copy or newly alive in the moment?  Was there a synaesthesis between us?  More on that later.

One singer who impressed me greatly was a woman who looked out at the people quite often and had a genuine smile on her face.  Not the fake kind that voice teachers teach.  Just as you can hear a real smile over the phone, you can hear a forced smile or masked smile on a singer, too.  This is why some mediocre folk singers can touch us more than a trained singer can.  The music comes from someplace deeper.

This woman, as she sang the line "Here, a million wounded souls, are yearning just to touch you and be healed." she fixed her gaze up and out over the heads of the people.  That caught my attention.  Then on the line "See the face of Christ revealed on every person standing by your side." she made a sincere perusal of the congregation.  It wasn't something choreographed.  I could see her look at individual people, too.  To quote Yoda, "The force is strong with this one."  So, what is this "force?"

When I accompany a musician on the piano, I can feel them in my hands.   Mozart once said that the hands and fingers must never play together.  Chords must never be struck in perfect timing.  The notes should be misaligned in time, that they are desynchronous.  One of my teachers taught me that a melodic line must not be played in perfect metronomic slavishness.  That you steal micro-beats from one note but make it up in another.  This is called entasis meaning "tensioning."  Any speech or song which is metronomically perfect can lull our audience members' brains to shutdown.  This can happen immediately from the first few notes or words.  Our ears and brain crave micro irregularity of timing to remain alert and attentive.

I *try* to do this in my playing and, when I encounter another musician doing this, we gel together, like puzzle pieces fitting into one another.  Entasis is what I connect to synaesthesis.  It is a paradox when the voices or instruments are truly independent and seem complex but to the listener and performer it is simple to feel, listen to and follow.  My friend Byron and I have this when we perform together.  I don't know if it is him or me but, I can feel his performing and phrasing in my hands as I accompany him and without even looking at him, I know when he is going to breath.  I don't get that often with many singers.  They seem to sing without regard to me and I just follow them.  It is quite dull for me as an accompanist.

What does this have to do with stage fright?  It is actually what musicians need to strive for in order to overcome fear.  Some teachers will say that you have to know your music so well or memorized that you won't be nervous or, your preparation will overcome the nervousness.  Some say that practice makes perfect but we all know that in reality PERFECT practice makes perfect.  If you practice mistakes, no matter how much you practice you will always make those mistakes.  Even with perfect practice, being nervous can undo much of our preparation.  Natural entasis and synaesthesis comes from a place deep within which can not be touched by the "Id" or nerves.

So, what are nerves?  They are of our own creation.  In the movie "Forbidden Planet," The Krell were a race so advanced, that they created a machine which made their mere thoughts into reality.   It was the ultimate achievement in creation until one of them thought the entire race out of existence, and so it was.  Stage fright is the same thing, if we give it power, it will take total control over us.  As the saying goes, give an inch - takes a foot.

So how do we control it?  Of course, preparation, perfect practice, being physically warm, diet and rest; these things can ameliorate nerves.  Then there is avoiding the pitfalls of the Krell; not to give power to nervousness in the first place.  If one were to sing Amazing Grace at the bed side of a dying parent, would they be nervous about their performance?  Most likely not.  For, their offering comes from the heart, from pain, from love, from com+passion (with+suffering), and sacrifice.   It will naturally be filled with entasis because their guard will be down.  It is within those thin spaces that entasis and synaesthesis exist.  You can't force it or train for it.  It has to be there and it comes from embracing the you you hide.

When that cantor looked out at the congregation while singing those two lines, was it choreographed?  Did she make a mental or written notation to "look out here?"  My synaesthesis told me no.   Of course, any musician or stage performer who tries to force this entasis and synaesthesis between performer and audience runs the risk of self grandeur and that is not the same thing.

A performer needs to first realize that they perform what the page reveals and they reveal what their spirit possesses and what they are desirous to share.  They are the conduit between page, instrument and spirit.  Spirit and sharing are both a gift and only require that we accept them and give them freely.  Anything else will result in stage fright or metronomic performances.

When we seek self grandeur, applause, perfection or don't know why we do what we are doing, we run the risk of the Krellian fate or the self fulfilling prophecy of nervousness for, the performance is then not about them, it becomes about us and that scares us.  Ask any battlefield hero or fireman who runs into a burning building to save someone if they were nervous and they will probably say no.  They did what they had to do to save a life.  If what we do on stage is to share, to teach, to inspire, to heal, to save or to comfort, we won't fail either.  Every singer should first feel their text for if they don't know what they are singing about or feel the place where the text comes from, the audience will know it.  Then, entasis won't exist.  Synaesthesis won't exist.  The audience will get bored.  The singer will sense this and nerves will creep in.  It's then too late. 

CPE Bach, in his Essay on the "True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments," suggested that one should "endeavor to avoid everything mechanical and slavish. Play from the soul, not like a trained bird."

Breathing for Life: From the Diaphragm

No preamble.  Let's just jump into it.

Get on the floor or on your bed.  Lie on your back with your knees bent. 
Take a couple of deep breaths.
Notice that you are breathing from your stomach area.
Make several high pitched fire engine siren imitations, each time going higher and louder.
Notice that you are breathing and pushing from the stomach area.
Notice that your shoulders are not going up.
Notice that your chest may not be going up.
If your chest did go up, good.  Keep it there.
Keep it there as if you were in the Army and your drill sergeant barked at you (from his diaphragm) "STICK OUT YOUR CHEST!  SUCK IN THAT GUT."
Now cough.
Notice it came from the stomach area, or diaphragm.
Yell "NO.  BAD." as if your dog is about to void on your new white carpet.
Notice it came from your diaphragm.
Yell "FIRE."
Yell (quietly-in case someone hears you) "help."
Whisper "Awwwww . . ." while thinking about a new born baby.
Where did you feel it?
Notice that in order to project both loudly and quietly, it came from your diaphragm.

These are all great exercises to awaken you on how to breath properly.  Now for the hard part.  Stand up and try it.  You may succeed a few times but as the day goes on, you will most likely lapse into shallow upper chest breathing again.  That's okay.  Perfect practice makes perfect.  Get back on the floor and keep in mind your drill sergeant's instruction: Stick out the chest (to make room for air) and suck in the gut (to push the air out).  What goes in must also come out, so, in order to breath again, your diaphragm or stomach must expand.   Breathing while on your back is how the machine of your body is designed to operate.  Maintaining that mechanism while standing takes a little bit of work.  The stomach expands to let air into the lungs so the stomach must pull in to push the air out.

The summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil are not until 2016 but this summer, if there are swimming competitions on TV, watch them.  Professional athletes are not only trained to breath from the diaphragm but by nature and physical demand, they do so naturally.  Watch the swimmers when they get out of the pool.  Look at their stomachs.  Most will be breathing from there.  Sure, a few shoulders may rise and a few chests may collapse but keep an eye on the stomach.  That is where all the work is being done.

Professional singers are not always good to watch because many do not breath properly.  Isn't it ironic.  Some of them think they know what they are doing but don't, while others are more concerned with how they look and won't expand their stomachs.  Another hindrance is that their clothing may hide the true action of the diaphragm.  That is why shirtless athletes are easy to learn from.

Many teachers who teach singing from the diaphragm fail because they either don't truly know what they are doing or are too afraid to look at or touch their students out of fear of a sexual harassment charge.  You will often see singers touching their own stomachs to assert or verify they are breathing properly but that isn't necessary for, if you are breathing properly, you feel it in your voice, head and whole being. 

When you blow up a balloon, it doesn't fill up just on one side but, the entire balloon fills up.  Your whole upper body must do the same.  Someone looking at you from behind should be able to see your whole upper body expand from the back, sides and front.  When you take a breath, imagine your whole body is a balloon and you are filling it.  Your ribs are designed to expand, let them.

Breathing should be effortless.  To take a breath, we need only to relax the diaphragm and the air should fall into our lungs effortlessly.  To exhale, or yell help or fire or bad or hey, that takes pushing or pulling in.  If we find taking the breath requires effort, that is because we are trying to breath in and push out at the same time.  You can't inhale and exhale at the same time.  If a singer runs out of breath on simple phrases, chances are they are trying to take in more air before they used up or pushed out what is already inside them.  You can't fill what is already full.  You need to empty first, completley.  Get back on the bed for more practice.

Mark Wahlberg does a great job demonstrating proper breathing in the movie "Rock Star" where he spends most of his on stage scenes shirtless and you can see him breath properly.   Even though many pop stars and rappers run around the stage shirtless, I advise not watching them for, many of them are breathing from their chest and shoulders.  Anyone who runs out of breath, cracks or wavers is doing it wrong.  Don't try to learn from them.  Well, learn what not to do.

Breathing properly is good for oxygenating the blood.  Oxygenated blood gives you energy, promotes healing, helps with clearer thinking and is beneficial for overall health.  You can't heal or lose weight or think clearly if you are not breathing properly.  If you ever develop breathing issues from smoking or some disorder such as COPD, you'll be glad that you took the time to learn how to breath fully.

So everybody, for your homework, go to bed.