A Musical "Lost Weekend"

Near the end of the four-week jazz class I teach in the U's lifetime learning program, a woman asked me, "So are you saying that rock is inferior to jazz?"

The question caught me off guard, because at the time, as near as I can remember, I hadn't been saying anything about rock specifically. Perhaps I'd been describing how the jazz fusion movement of the mid-1970s often degenerated into long, noodly solos and primitive rock rhythms.

"Inferior?" I replied. "I'm not saying that at all. That would imply that musical experiences exist on a straight line, like SAT scores, with some being superior to others. No. It isn't like that. Brahms' Requiem and "Shall We Gather By the River" differ radically in scale and complexity, but one isn't inferior to the other. They appeal to the heart in different ways."

I don't know if she was satisfied with that answer, but a little later I brought up the question of which single rock artist would be most likely to endure in cultural memory a hundred years from now, and she quipped, "The Rolling Stones will still be touring a hundred years from now."

I was thinking about that exchange this morning as I reviewed the unusual range of musical experiences Hilary and I had over the weekend.

It all started with a Friday morning concert of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.  The program consisted of a brief Donizetti sinfonia followed by a woodwind octet by Mozart, meatier yet still fresh and bright enough for the morning occasion, played with exemplary musicianship as usual. The final piece, the third of Beethoven's Razumovsky quartets, arranged for string orchestra, seemed a little over-heated and moody in comparison. The program notes refer to "a slow and despairing introduction," a "somber" mood in the second movement, and a "whirlwind fugue" in the finale. But Beethoven quartets, in my view, are best listened to at home, late at night, when the bizarre frustrations, disjuncts, and meandering asides that characterize his work can be fully relished, and even groveled in, preferably in front of a fire. In a huge suburban church at noon, I couldn't quite get my head around it all, and kept thinking about the gaggle of young priests, wearing floor-length black robes and white collars, who were sitting in the balcony to our left, looking down.

That evening we attended a performance by the Oratorio Society at the Basilica of St. Mary in downtown Minneapolis devoted to French sacred music from the romantic era: Frank, Fauré, and Honegger, followed after intermission by Duruflé's Requiem. The harmonies were rich and shifty in the best French manner, and the sentiments, though familiar, approached the sublime.   

Saturday was on off-day. Removing leaves from the gutter. Yet music intruded once again when we took a break from yard work to visit the offices of Coffee House Press, where some hand set broadsides were being offered for sale as part of a larger craft fair being held in the building's atrium. 

As we stepped inside, we were greeted by a quaint half-shouting tune by The Talking Heads that was wafting from a speaker somewhere nearby. That naturally brought to mind associations with Blondie, Television, and other CBGB heroes of the Blank Generation, with whose music I have a passing acquaintance dating from my Bookmen days.

The broadsides themselves had been wrapped in plastic sleeves and spread out across several old-fashioned linoleum-topped tables. In case you wanted to examine one of them closely, white cotton gloves had been placed here and there in pairs. Many of the broadsides were signed, though the only authors I remember now are W. S. Merwin ($65) and William Burroughs ($260).  

A publisher's office is a hallowed place, don't you think? Anyone who admires authors and loves books ought to be fascinated by this locus of artistic and intellectual activity—just a bunch of desks, really—where great things take shape, and later get marketed, though nothing much is actually produced, stored, or sold here. In the Coffee House offices one or two small platen presses are sitting on tables, and a number of antique typewriters have been arranged in a row on top of some file cabinets.

Before we left I bought a book dating back to the days of Toothpaste Press, a precursor to Coffee House. It's a collection of poems by a Finn named Pentti Saarikoski, translated by Anselm Hollo and published in 1983. It was hand-set in what looks like 11-point Centaur, which reminds me of a piece of advice David Godine once gave me: "Never use Centaur under 14 points." But the pages are handsome and easy enough to read. I guess in this case Godine was wrong.

Life was given to man

for him to consider

in which position

he wants to be dead:

gray skies float by,

star-meadows hang

and the earth

comes into your mouth

like bread

Our next musical event, on Sunday afternoon, was a fluke: a few days earlier, while waiting for a friend at the Turtle Bakery, I started thumbing through a neighborhood newspaper, the Longfellow Nokomis Messenger, and came upon a notice from the Mount Olive Lutheran Church announcing a free, 4 p.m. concert by Ensemble Me La Amargates Tu. The group was described in the notice as one of the world's leading Sephardic music ensembles. I found that hard to believe, but the price was right, and the late afternoon start time was also appealing. 

The performance turned out to be top-notch. The drummer and the guitarist were from Mexico, the singer from Argentina, the woman playing recorders from Greece, and the cellist from Venezuela, though he seemed to know quite a few people in the audience. (I later learned he teaches in Eau Claire.) I gather than they've been playing together for quite a while, but pursue independent careers, meeting a few times a year wherever it's convenient to rehearse and perform.

The folk songs they shared with us were from Turkey, Greece, the Balkans, and Morocco. Good stuff. The lyrics were in Ladino, a Sephardic dialect peculiar to those areas. The printed text looked simpler and more straightforward than modern Spanish, in the same way the Occitan looks less tricky than French. (Well, what do I know about languages?)

Though "early music" concerts can sometimes be underwhelming and even dreary, this one was enlivened repeatedly by the expressive voice and dramatic delivery of tenor Esteban Manzano. And the lyrics, which ranged from lengthy medieval ballads to enigmatic love songs, were worth following in the program.

If the sea was of milk,

and the boats of cinnamon,

I would stain myself,

to save my flag.

If the sea was of milk,

I would become a fisherman;

I would fish for my sorrows

with small words of love.

If the sea was of milk

I would become a merchant,

walking and wondering

where does love begin.

Here's the original, so you can brush up on your Ladino.

Si la mar era de leche,

los barquitos de canela,

yo me mancharfa entera

por salvar la mi bandera.

Si la mar era de leche,

yo me haria un pexcador,

pexcaria las mis dolores

con palabricas de amor.

Si la mar era de leche,

yo me harfa un vendedor,

caminando y preguntando

donde s'empieza el amor.

During the intermission I noticed a gentleman in the reception area opening about 20 bottles of Charles Shaw merlot. That would come out to roughly half a bottle per person. We might have lingered after the concert to sip some of that wine and learn a little more about Ladino but we'd booked some seats for the evening show at the Dakota, ten minutes away downtown.

 The Jeremy Walker/Clara Osowsky Quartet: it's all in the name—a jazz/art song mashup. Well, Walker's piano style tends toward the melancholy, while Osowsky's vocal style tends toward the rich and haunting. The two obviously enjoy working together, and the result ended up somewhere between the summer Source Song festival and the winter Song Slam at the Ice House. Jeremy and his trio also played some Ellington tunes with extended bass solos by Anthony Cox. 

Clara delivered well on a number of Jeremy's original compositions and also sang a heartfelt rendition of Billy Stayhorn's "A Flower is a Lovesome Thing." It was a long, leisurely set punctuated by a brief intermission. Osowsky isn't a "jazz" singer but she has a lot of humor and sass, and her voice is genuinely compelling. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, and so were we.

Setting these performance styles side by side—German/classical, French/liturgical, New Wave electrical, Renaissance/Ladino, and jazz/lieder—which can be said to be inferior to which?

Love of Leeks

I sometimes rise before six, make the coffee (grinding the beans as quietly as I can) and sit in the Poang chair by the front window watching light come into the sky. A few mornings ago, as I sat at my pre-dawn post, the word "strata" came to mind. Why? Rummaging through my grab bag of associations, I quickly rejected the opera singer Teresa Stratas and the Fellini film La Strada from consideration.

When the word "stirato" drifted into view I knew I was getting warm. Stirato bread, as you probably know, is like an Italian baguette, and there was a glass container of bread, sliced into small cubes, sitting on the kitchen counter. I'd seen it there while making the coffee.

But the word "strata," I seemed to recall, referred to a breakfast dish consisting mostly of bread and cheese. Should I make some such thing?

These idle thoughts stood to attention when it occurred to me that there was a leek lying on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. A leek strata! Such a thing might not exist, but it was suddenly clear I had to make one.

It didn't take long to find a long string of recipes for strata online. I chose one from a website called Pioneer Woman—because it offered four or five variations and made the process of  assembly otherwise very casual. I converted the text to a Word document and printed it out.

Five eggs, 2 cups of milk, four cups of hand-torn day-old bread, some cheese, and whatever else you have available. The recipe called for 8 strips of bacon (!) and 1/3 cup of shallots. I made do with my single precious leek, which I sliced lengthwise down the middle as quietly as I could, and then into quarters in the same direction, finally cutting it crossways into 1/4 inch pieces. I sautéed the little pieces in butter for a while and also got a bag of parsley out of the freezer and tossed a generous handful of surprisingly green and aromatic leaves into the mix.

Next, I fetched two stubby pieces of hard white cheese from the cheese drawer, both with rind attached. One was Gruyere, I'm pretty sure. The other, who knows? A dash of salt, a big dash of dry mustard, then into a lightly greased  8 x 8 pan. You're supposed to let it chill in the refrigerator for six hours, but that wasn't going to happen. I slipped it into the oven at 350 degrees to bake for 50 minutes. A few minutes later, when Hilary came around the corner, a variety of pleasant aromas were emanating from the kitchen.

The results (if I do say so myself) were outstanding, and the effect was heightened by the spontaneous nature of the event. The day-old bread (actually three days old) was from Rustica, the city's premier bakery, which helped, but it was the subtle elegance of the leek, I think, that put the dish over the top.

Can a vegetable be elegant? I hope you know what I mean. Yes, a leek is just a glorified onion ... but I have long since grown suspicious of this usage of the word "just." Most of the good things in life are "just" better versions of the crummy things in life. 

It's true that leeks cost more than onions, but a single leek from Trader Joe's costs no more than a fancy apple or vine-ripened tomato. So what? And at mid-summer farmers markets you can get a bundle of three long, tender stalks for $2.

Leeks have been held in high regard since ancient times. They appear in Egyptian tomb hieroglyphics and figure prominently in Apicius's famous Roman cookbook. Yet no one has been able to put their unique flavor into words precisely. Waverly Root describes them as "less fine but more robust than asparagus," a remark that seems very odd to me. The Oxford Companion to Food refers to their "mild, sweet flavor."

Off the top of my head, I'd say they taste like ethereal onions infused with a hint of thyme. But words aren't worth much in a situation like this. You just have to try them. 

The Weil Conjectures

Joint biographies are not uncommon: we have Gelhorn and Hemingway, Custer and Crazy Horse, Hannibal and Scipio Africanus, for example. Now Karen Olsson has written a joint biography of Simone Weil and her brother, André . Simone will be familiar to many readers, André  to relatively few, I suspect. She was a writer, a religious thinker, and some say, a saint, who was driven to seek out the most painful and laborious undertakings, her chronic ill health notwithstanding. He was a distinguished mathematician whose famous "conjectures" still occupy the attention of learned scholars today.

Do these two exotic spirits have anything much in common, other than the fact that they're siblings? Olsson thinks they might. In any case, she makes use of their letters, writings, and biographies to tell their stories, shuffling back and forth from one to the other, and along the way she also takes time to explore the nether regions of both spirituality and mathematics. 

In the midst of these free-floating segments Olsson also tells us quite a bit about her own experience as a undergrad in the math department at Harvard, where she made it a few rungs up the ladder but soon realized she was not one of those wunderkinds for whom everything came easy—and in the world of math, they're the only ones who matter. She dropped the subject and became a writer, without entirely losing her interest in math's mysterious and often incomprehensible worlds of correspondence, transmutation, speculation, and evident paradox. She compares her efforts to share her interest with readers to that of describing a Beethoven symphony to a deaf person. Often she admits that she doesn't really understand what she's talking about either.

I know nothing about higher math. We didn't even have a calculus class in the small-town high school I attended. I was good at algebra and geometry, and I once sent a note to Martin Gardner offering my proof of the Three-Color-Map problem, which had stumped the experts for centuries. (He sent me a kind postcard explaining that my "proof" was not convincing.  Someday, I will be vindicated.)

My "declared" major as a college freshman was math, but I dropped that pursuit after taking my first freshman history class at the U. History was messier, but much more full of life. Olsson has pursued the subject far enough to offer us a splendid smorgasbord of mathematical fields, problems, and personalities, without expecting us to decipher a single complex formula. She displays a knack for evoking the abstract worlds that numbers, shapes, fields, and theorems describe, and sometimes create for themselves, without confusing us with the details. For example, at one point she describes the work of the nineteenth-century Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie as follows:

"Leaving aside the details here, the gist of the matter is that Lie, by expanding a theory in algebra, namely the study of groups, found a way to shed light on an entirely separate area of math—or one that had seemed to be entirely separate, namely differential equations. It's as though he had located a wormhole from one mathematical realm to another." 

This is the kind of math that André  Weil's sister Simone was suspicious off. It didn't refer to anything real. It was as if mathematicians were working up half of a structure out of whole cloth, and then attempting to "prove" what the other half would have to look like. Though Simone was good at math herself, up to a point, she was attracted to the physical—factory work, for example—seemingly less out of personal masochism than out of a desire to fell the suffering that those around her often felt.

Olsson admits that in college she owned a copy of The Simone Weil Reader, but can't remember if she ever did more than skim through it. (I have the same book, and I feel the same way about it. I should take a closer look.) And she presents little in the way of quotations to confirm the view of T.S. Eliot, Susan Sontag, and many others, that Simone was an extraordinary thinker, writer, and human being. But the letters Simone exchanged with her brother, to take one example, form an important part of the book. And in the end, along with other details, they expose a fascinating community of personalities rather than a litany of solitary and heroic geniuses.

In one longish passage Ollson refers explicitly to the social aspect of a mathematician's world:    

"The seeming fixedness of mathematics is surely one of the reasons I’ve felt drawn back to it, given our present-day world’s particular instabilities and alternative facts, but an­other reason, a stronger reason, is that my son likes math, which is not to say that I need to relearn abstract algebra for his sake but rather that his excitement has reminded me of my own old excitement, has made me want to blow on the embers—has made me realize there are embers. And as I do, what strikes me are the dialogues, the exchanges, whether it's me talking with my son about numbers or Benedict Gross’s [online] performance of algebra. Even as mathematics presents itself from afar as an austere architecture dreamed up by singular geniuses, up close it’s a torrent of transmissions, teachers lec­turing, college kids trying to solve problems together, col­leagues at conferences, André  writing to his sister. For every solitary discovery there are massive systems of relationships, which I begin to think of as a kind of giant math ant colony, or math hive, and I even begin to wonder whether (or con­jecture that) the desire for mathematical revelation, the wish to dwell in a perfect, abstract world, is secretly, unconsciously twinned by another desire for communion. One the negative imprint of the other. Abstraction the flip side of love."

At this point Olsson adds a remark by Simone. "Nothing which exists is absolutely worthy of love. We must therefore love that which does not exist.” 

No aspect of the tale interests Olsson more the obscure mental process by which mathematicians make their discoveries. Often enlightenment coming only after months or even years of unproductive "head-banging," as she calls it. An insight may come in a dream as a visual image, or during a feverish, sleepless night. She also notes that some mathematicians, including André  Weil, took special pleasure during that phrase when it was clear that some new discovery was "on the tip of one's tongue" but had not yet been fully grasped.

"The cruelty in all this is that the head-banging hardly guarantees the revelation, that to be an ambitious mathe­matician is to spend much if not most of one’s time being stuck... "

André  Weil, in one of his letters to his sister describing the process through which he arrived at the solution to a sticky problem, admitted that “the pleasure comes from the illusion and the far from clear meaning; once the illusion is dissipated, and knowledge obtained, one becomes indifferent at the same time.” Olsson concludes that "the flicker of a parallel, the suspicion of a connection, excited him, more so than nailing it down, working out the details. As though knowledge itself were a bit of a letdown: it’s being on the cusp that brings the greater thrill."

The Weil Conjectures has the twin virtues of being short and also so loosely organized that the reader could almost pick it up at any point and start reading. But better to begin at the beginning. Its protagonists reappear again and again—not only André and Simone but also historical personages like Fermat, Gauss, Archimedes, Hadamard, and Poincaré.     

The layering of personalities, events, and points of view allows Olsson to raise all kinds of conjectures without arriving at any conclusions about either the "reality" of various fields of math or their possible connections with spiritual enlightenment. We're left with a tantalizing, tingling sense of awe, as if we, too, were on the cusp of some important discovery, not about math, but about the universe, or ourselves.