Words Without Music
Page 42
OPENINGS AND CLOSINGS, BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS. Everything in between passes as quickly as the blink of an eye. An eternity precedes the opening and another, if not the same, follows the closing. Somehow everything that lies in between seems for a moment more vivid. What is real to us becomes forgotten, and what we don’t understand will be forgotten, too.
In my first year at the University of Chicago, the question I asked myself was “Where does music come from?” The attempt to answer that question led to the composition of my first piece of music.
More than a dozen years later, still pondering the same question, I asked Ravi Shankar where music comes from. His reply was to bow toward a photo of his guru and say, “Through his grace, the power of his music has come through him into me.”
Over time, for me, the question has evolved into another question: “What is music?”
For a while, the answer I found was that music is a place. By that, I mean a place as real as Chicago, or any other place you want to think of, that has all the attributes of reality—depth, smell, memory. I’m using the word “place” poetically in a certain sense, and yet what I want to convey is the solidity of the idea. A place is a way of outlining a particular view of reality. You can mark a particular view and call it a place, and you can go back to it. When I say music is a place as real as Chicago, what I mean to say is that in our minds it exists in very much the same way. I can take the plane to Chicago, and I can also imagine Chicago, but either way, I know Chicago is a place for me. In the same way, that same place can exist in a painting, in a dance, in a poem, or in a piece of music.
Place is both abstract and organic. It’s completely organic when it is something we can see as connected to ourselves—as an extension of an organic being in an inorganic world. But at the same time, place also has the quality of being abstract, in that it has the fluidity of scale and movement. One of the things that we learn to do is how to return to that place, which is at least as real as anything else you can imagine, including yourself.
Recently I’ve been thinking about music in yet another way, less allegorical and more in terms of what really happens. Now when I’m writing music, I’m not thinking of structure; I’m not thinking of harmony; I’m not thinking of counterpoint. I’m not thinking of any of the things I have learned.
I’m not thinking about music, I’m thinking music. My brain thinks music. It doesn’t think words. If I were thinking words, then I would try to find music to fit the words. But I’m not doing that, either. In working with mixed media, I have to find music to go with the dance; I have to find music to go with the play; I have to find music to go with the image or music to go with the words. And I have to find the music from music itself.
The only way to do that, I eventually learned, was that, instead of trying to do it from the outside, I would have to work from the inside. I would have to hear the music in the place. In other words, when I’m looking for what that music would be, I find the music by looking at the subject itself.
When someone says “How do you write music for a film?” I say to them very truthfully, “I look at the film and I write down the music.” I don’t make music to go with the film, I write the music that is the film.
As for the pieces I’m composing now, I wouldn’t have been able to write them ten years ago. Not that I didn’t have the musical means—I didn’t have the ability to hear music in that way.
In an opera I recently composed based on Franz Kafka’s The Trial, the main character, Joseph K. is in the office of his lawyer. He is waiting to meet the lawyer, and also in the office is a man named Block, another client.
K. says to Block, “What’s your name?”
“Block, I’m a businessman,” the man replies.
“Is that your real name?” K. asks.
“Yes, why wouldn’t it be?” Block answers.
That’s a wonderful response: “Why wouldn’t it be?”
In the same way, now when I’m writing music for a theater scene, film, or dance event, I can truly say “Why wouldn’t it be this?” One can only say that from a place of understanding or even of knowledge about one’s relation to that particular theater scene, film, or dance event. This alignment is made through a conscious, nonverbal, contemplative activity. Once the alignment between oneself and the dramatic material is established, a link is made on a deep, nonconceptual level between the material and one’s inner musical voice. That link is the key, and when it is achieved, it is no longer necessary to make the music fit the scene, because the scene will fit the music automatically. In other words, the specifics of the scene will naturally accommodate themselves to the music because the music is already there.
From this point of view, the brain is the prism through which the music appears. When I say “I’m not thinking about music, I’m thinking music,” the music is the thought. The modality in which the brain is operating is music.
Tomo Geshe Rimpoche told me once that there is not just one universe, there are three thousand universes.
Right away I asked him, “Is one of them music?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Could I go there someday?”
“Hopefully,” he replied.
When he told me that, fifteen years ago, I thought that he meant “in some future reincarnation.” But perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps he was thinking that in this very life I would be in that world. And now I’m thinking that is what he thought, and I feel that I’m closer to the realization of that than I’ve ever been before.
OPENINGS AND CLOSINGS, BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS. Everything in between passes as quickly as the blink of an eye. An eternity precedes the opening and another, if not the same, follows the closing. Somehow everything that lies in between seems for a moment more vivid. What is real to us becomes forgotten, and what we don’t understand will be forgotten, too.
It is 1943 in Baltimore, a summer Saturday afternoon. My sister, Sheppie, is eight years old, and I am six. We’ve left our house on Brookfield Avenue and we walk down the sidewalk to North Avenue with my mother, Ida, and my big brother, Marty. We cross North Avenue and take a right toward Linden Boulevard. The #22 streetcar stops there, heading downtown on its iron rails. I will come to know it better because it is the same #22 that will take me to Mount Vernon Place and the Peabody Conservatory, where I will take my music lessons. But that is two years away and still unimaginable.
Halfway up the block we come to the barbershop. It’s like all the barbershops in every town in America, with the red, white, and blue striped pole spiraling downward. Inside we take our seats. The barber, a little fellow with a thin mustache, grins at us. This will be his show, he seems to say. And we know it, too. Sheppie takes her seat in the barber’s chair. There’s a little seat for her that fits into the big seat. Otherwise the barber wouldn’t be able to reach down to cut her hair. Marty and I watch intently. The barber dips his comb in a bowl of water and begins to comb her hair straight down. And slowly, slowly, her hair gets shorter. We know it’s a trick. He must be cutting her hair at the same time with the scissors in his other hand. But, try as we might, we can’t catch him doing it. So the haircut becomes an act of magic. He pretends the watery comb is shrinking her hair. It’s marvelous and we love it but, at the same time, we want to catch him tricking us.
Now, another Saturday six years later, Marty and I are downtown working in Ben’s record store. I’m twelve and he’s thirteen. Because it’s Saturday, the bank is closed. That means the money collected from radio repairs and records from the end of the week can’t be deposited that day. There is, though, a night deposit box, and if you have a business on Howard Street or Lexington Avenue, you may not want to leave cash in your store over the weekend. Really only Sunday, but still. . . . So what you have to do is make out a deposit slip and put it in an envelope with the cash and slip it down the opening of the night deposit box. Ben will get it all ready. He does that part in the back of the shop where John, the radio repairman, is fixing radios. Ben c
an fix radios, too, and he will start to teach Marty and me how to do it later when we’re a little older.
Now he does an absolutely astonishing thing. He fills out the deposit slip, stuffs it into the envelope with the cash (all bills), puts it in a brown paper bag, and hands it to Marty and tells us to take it to the bank. I ask Marty, but in a whisper, how much money is there. I’m sure he doesn’t know but he pretends to.
“Two hundred and seventy-five,” he says.
I’m terrified. But Marty has it all figured out.
We’re outside the store now. Marty gives me the paper bag (so nobody can see the official bank envelope and know we have cash). I walk ahead of him maybe three or four feet. My job is to not look nervous and just walk straight to the bank. This is the plan, this is how we always do it. He tells me not to worry, he will be watching me and will make sure nobody tries to rob me. I walk west on Lexington Avenue. Marty is right behind me. At Eutaw I take a right, and cross the street. The bank is now only half a block away. When we get there, Marty takes the bag from me and puts the bank envelope through the slot.
We breathe easy again. We both feel great and hurry back to the store. A little later Ben will take us to the deli near the corner of South Howard and Lexington for corned beef sandwiches and a root beer. He drinks seltzer.
Now it’s winter and Sheppie, Marty, and I are downstairs in the basement at Brookfield Avenue. We, all three, are standing in two concrete tubs. Usually this is where our clothes are washed. But it’s also where we get our baths. Maud is there, taking care of us. She helps Mom while Ben is away, serving as a private in the Marine Corps. It’s the war years and I must be five, Marty six, and Sheppie seven. Mom is upstairs making oatmeal for breakfast. The water in the tub is a little cold but it feels good.
And then, I’m sitting with Mom at my grandparents’ house. It’s only a few doors away from our house at 2020 Brookfield Avenue. We sit at a big table in the dining room. The house seems dark to me and, like my grandparents, very old. They are talking together, but not in English. Later I learn that it is Yiddish. If I pay attention I can easily understand them. But it’s just talk about work and relatives and a little about the war. That’s when they stop talking for a few minutes, just looking down at the table.
One weekend Ben is home from the Marine Corps. He doesn’t like to wear his uniform on leave and is wearing his regular clothes and no coat, just a jacket. We’re walking up to Druid Hill Park. It’s not too far from our house. Marty and Sheppie are back with Mom at home. Ben and I walk on up to the reservoir. There is a cinder-stone track all around it, and kids and parents go there to ride their bikes. I see some families nearby trying to get a kite in the air. Ben rents a kid’s bike for me. It doesn’t have training wheels, so he has to push it to get it going, and then, for a few seconds, it feels like I’m really riding it all by myself. He runs after me and we do it again, him pushing and running, me with my feet looking for the ground, and sometimes touching the pedals.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Philip. Baltimore, Maryland, 1938.
[READ’S PHOTOGRAPHY]
Ben Glass. Private in the Marine Corps, 1943.
Michel Zeltzman. 1983.
[NOELLE ZELTZMAN]
Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass composing Passages together. Santa Monica, California, 1989.
[ALAN KOZLOWSKI]
Philip Glass and JoAnne Akalaitis on the beach in Mojácar, Spain. Summer 1965.
[JOANNE AKALAITIS]
World-renowned teacher and conductor Nadia Boulanger (1887–1979) at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, February 27, 1963.
[PHOTOGRAPH BY ERICH AUERBACH / HULTON ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES]
Philip Glass and the score of “Piece In the Shape of a Square” set up for the performance at the Cinematheque in New York. May 1968.
[PHOTO BY PETER MOORE © BARBARA MOORE / LICENSED BY VAGA, NEW YORK, NY]
Dorothy Pixley-Rothschild performing “Strung Out” at the Cinematheque in New York. May 1968.
[PHOTO BY PETER MOORE © BARBARA MOORE / LICENSED BY VAGA, NEW YORK, NY]
Philip Glass Sunday afternoon solo loft concert at 10 Elizabeth Street. New York, early 1970s.
[RANDALL LABRY]
Richard Serra and Philip Glass. New York, early 1970s.
[© RICHARD LANDRY 1975]
Richard Serra and Philip Glass installing Splash Piece: Casting, 1969-70 at Jasper Johns’s studio. New York, 1969.
[COURTESY OF RICHARD SERRA]
Juliet, Philip, Zack, and JoAnne. Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, summer 1973.
[PHILIP GLASS]
John Dan MacPherson, patriarch of the MacPherson family and close friend of the Glass and Wurlitzer families.
[PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN]
Rudy Wurlitzer and Philip Glass. Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, summer 2000.
[LYNN DAVIS]
Philip Glass with Zack and Juliet in Venice, Italy, on the first tour of Einstein on the Beach. Summer 1976.
[© ROBERTO MASOTTI]
Sheryl Sutton and Lucinda Childs in “Knee Play 2,” Einstein on the Beach, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. New York, 1984.
[PHOTOGRAPH © PAULA COURT]
Einstein on the Beach, Act 4, scene 3: “Spaceship.” The 2012 revival produced by Pomegranate Arts.
[© LUCIE JANSCH]
Satyagraha, Act 1, scene 1: “The Kuru Field of Justice,” with Douglas Perry singing the part of Gandhi. Directed by David Pountney. Designed by Robert Israel. Netherlands Opera, 1980.
[TOM CARAVAGLIA © 2008]
Philip Glass and Godfrey Reggio. Production meeting for Godfrey’s film Visitors. Opticnerve Studio, Red Hook, Brooklyn, 2013.
[© MIKE DEBBIE]
Still from Koyaanisqatsi, 1982. Directed by Godfrey Reggio. Cinematography by Ron Fricke.
Candy Jernigan. East Village, New York, 1986.
[PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN]
Philip Glass and Doris Lessing at the English National Opera for The Making of the Representative for Planet 8. London, November 1988.
[DAVID SCHEINMANN]
Foday Musa Suso and Ashley MacIsaac performing In Orion. Odeon of Herod Atticus, the Acropolis, Athens, Greece, 2004.
[YIORGOS MAVROPOULOS]
Dracula, directed by Tod Browning with original score by Philip Glass. Performed live with the film by the Kronos Quartet, Philip Glass, and Michael Riesman, conductor and performer.
[PHOTOGRAPH © DIDIER DORVAL. STILL FROM DRACULA COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL STUDIOS LICENSING LLC]
Michael Riesman. Rehearsal during the Philip on Film tour, 2001.
[PHOTOGRAPH © PAULA COURT]
Leonard Cohen and Philip Glass during rehearsals for Book of Longing, a musical theater work based on the poetry of Leonard Cohen, 2007.
[LORCA COHEN]
Dennis Russell Davies and Philip Glass. Rehearsal of the opera The Lost with the Bruckner Orchester Linz. Linz, Austria, 2013.
[ANDREAS H. BITESNICH]
The Philip Glass Ensemble performing Music in Twelve Parts at the Park Avenue Armory. Lighting design by Jennifer Tipton. New York, 2012.
[JAMES EWING / OTTO]
Jene Highstein walking near his summer home in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, 2010.
[KITTY HIGHSTEIN]
Father Stanley MacDonald. Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, 2011.
[REBECCA LITMAN]
Marty Glass, Sheppie Glass Abramowitz, and Philip Glass at the Metropolitan Opera performance of Satyagraha. New York, 2008.
[PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN]
Lucinda Childs and Philip Glass at a rehearsal of the 2012 revival of Einstein on the Beach. Barysh-nikov Arts Center, New York, 2011.
[PAVEL ANTONOV]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There were two people, both with extensive experience, who provided critical help in the task of writing this book.
First I owe a special thanks to Stokes Howell, who lent his highly developed literary skills by helping to organize and shape the actual written material that I
composed. This allowed the book to achieve its final narrative form.
Second, I owe my deep gratitude to Bob Weil—my main connection to the W. W. Norton and Liveright book companies. He combined a sharp, critical overview with a steady flow of encouragement, which was essential in crystallizing my growing writing skills.
I would also like to offer a special thanks to the following people:
Sheppie Glass Abramowitz, Mort Abramowitz, Marty Glass, Cevia Highstein, Norman Highstein, Beverly Gural
Jim Keller, Rebecca Litman, Charlotte Sheedy
Joanne Akalaitis, Kyra Borre, Linda Brumbach, Don Christensen, Richard Guerin, Kaleb Kilkenny, Claire Lampen, Katy O’Donnell, Tim O’Donnell, Alisa Regas, Carla Sacks, Drew Smith, Jim Woodard
Trent Duffy, Elisabeth Kerr, Phil Marino, Drake McFeely, William Menaker, Peter Miller, Anna Oler, Don Rifkin, Bill Rusin, Albert Tang
Marcus Raskin, Gelek Rimpoche, Mr. Sarup, Phintso and Pema Thonden, Bob and Nena Thurman, and Saori Tsukada
The map of India on page 166 by Saori Tsukada and Philip Glass
INDEX
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.