“Cell” Break

I am going to declare that I dislike June. Let me explain. I dislike it because it was in June 70 years ago that a scourge was unleashed. Over the years it would affect five billion people around the globe. It is the ubiquitous aberration called the cell phone. And an engineer by the name of Martin Cooper has to take all the blame.

I do have an iPhone, but I hasten to declare that I did not buy it; it was imposed on me by the family. I have strict instructions to carry it around whenever I venture out of the house. This is to keep track of me, I am told, in case I wander around and get lost. Not unlike the electronic ankle bracelets that convicts on parole have to wear.

My frustration with the gadget is that in spite of rigorous instruction by a variety of specialists, I don’t know how to use it or take advantage of the numerous ‘apps’ that the instrument comes with. I am told that I can listen to my favorite music. Why do I need a phone for that when I can listen to all the music I want in the comfort of my armchair? Ah, you see, you can find the time of any place anywhere in the world, I am told. But why should I want to know the time in Timbuktu, especially now that I have no intention of going there?  In three seconds flat, I can find the address of the Chinese restaurant closest to my house. But, although I love Chinese food, I prefer my good old chicken curry, I argued.

But I digress.

But what is incomprehensible to me is when the urge to use the cell phones strikes people. While driving, for instance, something that everyone agrees is a hazardous enterprise.  The exception may be His Worship the Mayor of Toronto who does not care or does not understand, possibly the latter. Or while on public transit. Or horror of horrors, in the elevator.

Or in the grocery store.  People come with long shopping lists but many people need to be in constant communication with someone at headquarters because of decision paralysis.  Sometimes the chatter is continued even when the user reaches the checkout counter.

The other day, I had to join the regular line because I had 9 items, and you can have only 8 to use the fast counter. The person ahead of me had picked up a lot of things and so I knew it was going to take a while. I was watching with a great deal of interest the products pouring out from this person’s cart, when I heard from the recesses of her jacket a muffled sound that resembled the opening bars of Die Fleidermaus.  The owner promptly retrieved something that looked like a travelling alarm clock, proceeded to flip the hinged doors and presto! I was looking at a cell phone.   What, possibly, could this urgent call be about?

I was reminded of the chorus in Henry V who at one point said, “Now expectation sits in the air”.

The mystery was solved somewhat because we came to know that the party at the other end did not or could not make a sandwich. From what we could hear, the speaker was berating the listener and the speech went on something like this: I told you last night that I will not have time to make your sandwiches. So if you can’t make one, you can go hungry, I don’t care (anger). Don’t bother me anymore (more anger).

Now let us examine this carefully. Was that a kid who could not find the peanut butter and jam? Or was it some helpless man like me who does not how to create a half decent lunch for himself? The mystery will never be solved.

As I said we have to throw the blame on Martin Cooper for all this. In 1954, Cooper, an Engineer, applied for a job with Motorola and in the application he identified himself as an ‘inventor’. “Ok, go ahead and invent whatever you like”, said his boss. “But Motorola would own the rights and you will get one dollar for your invention.”

In 1973 he called his boss on the first cell phone ever, and told him what he had accomplished. In an interview last week with the BBC, Cooper said that his boss did not believe him and dismissed the call with an expletive! The cell phone would not be produced commercially for 10 years or so.

We know that the cell phone is useful for communication, information gathering, entertainment and such. But according to Cooper, it appears that we are on the threshold of a medical revolution.  For instance, it will soon be possible to measure the vital signs of the body every thirty seconds using a cell phone. During the interview Cooper produced two patches—one white and oval shaped and the other brown and round.

The first one attached to the chest warns the wearer of a potential congestive heart failure. If there is any indication that the heart is unable to provide sufficient pump action, the patch will communicate this information to the cell phone and a call is immediately initiated to the doctor.  The brown patch is a calorie counter. It alerts the wearer if, during a meal, he/she has reached the recommended level. And if the wearer is tempted to go for a calorie laden dessert, the patch will talk to the cell phone, which will beep. Of course, we all know the kinds of ring tones available in a cell phone!

I wonder if I can program mine to play chopsticks.

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Beginning in July, Broadway will no longer require audiences to mask up. Actors and theatre workers are not loving the idea.

Last month, in a much-celebrated moment of public disciplining during a talk back with the cast of “Company,” a woman in the audience who was told to please put her mask back on refused and then, mocking the directive, waved it in the air and placed it over her eyes. Up onstage, the incomparable Patti LuPone was not having it and told her to get out. This person was immune to the ire of Patti LuPone. Yelling back defiantly, she proclaimed, “I pay your salary.” A member of the theater’s COVID safety staff proceeded to escort her out of the building.

If you want to hear LuPone sing “Ladies Who Lunch”from Company, click below. It is about 6 minutes and absolutely, 100% worth it…

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NUMBERS

6.7 million. The number of Ukrainians who are refugees in other countries. Of this 3.6 million are in Poland. 8 million people are displaced within the country.

20 million. The number of AK 15 assault rifles in the US. Yet they had to import baby formula from Europe and Latin America.

213. The number of pages of Justice Alito’s opinion on Roe vs Wade. That is almost half the size of a packet of printing paper since the document is printed on one side only.  I assume the pundits and others who have opinions on the judgment have actually read it from cover to cover! That is it an abomination goes without saying…

Five People You Meet in Heaven

I am sorry I am having to recycle yet another old blog, this one originally published almost 18 years ago, July 2, 2004 to be exact. Needless to say, the idea of death has been something that has been haunting my mind and I suspect it will continue for a while. I am sending recycled articles so that I don’t lose contact with you.

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If you are in the habit of keeping track of the bestsellers, you would have noticed that in the fiction section, for the past 53 weeks, occupying the number one slot, is a tome called The Da Vinci Code by one Dan Brown.  But also keeping its place in the top ten for the last 25 weeks is The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom.

Albom had been mentioned in one of my columns some two years ago in reference to his very sad, touching book called Tuesdays With Morrie.  Tuesdays is about Maurice Schwartz, Albom’s Brandeis University professor who died of some kind of sclerosis. It remained on the best seller list for four years and went on to sell more than 6 million copies in hard cover alone. In it, the author wonders if “funeral services” as we know it, should not be done when the person is alive so that he can hear the good things that the preacher and eulogists say!  It was made into a movie for TV, in which Jack Lemmon gave one of the most poignant performances of his career.  I believe it was his last performance too.

While ‘Morrie’ was about understanding life, ‘Five Men’ is about accepting the fact that true understanding is not a lot of the living. “Everybody walks around with a bunch of questions that aren’t answered,” Albom says, sounding genuinely upset about it. “And they never get the answers.  They just go right through to the end of their life and never get them.”

Part melodrama and part parable, the book weaves together three stories, all about the same man– 83-year-old Eddie– the head maintenance man at Ruby Point Amusement Park, somewhere on the west coast. As the novel opens, we are told that Eddie, unsuspecting, is only minutes away from death as he goes about his typical business at the park.  Albom then traces Eddie’s world through his final tragic moments, his funeral, and the ensuing days as friends clean up his apartment and adjust to life without him.  In alternating sections, Albom flashes back to Eddie’s birthdays, telling his life story as a kind of progress report over candles and cake each year.  And in the third and last thread of the novel, Albom follows Eddie into heaven where the maintenance man sequentially encounters five pivotal figures from his life.  Each person has been waiting for him in heaven, and as Albom reveals, each life (and death) was woven into Eddie’s own ways he never suspected.  Each soul has a story to tell, a secret to reveal, and a lesson to share. Through them, Eddie understands the meaning of his own life even as his arrival brings closure to theirs.

Eddie finds out how his life affected other lives, even ones he barely even came in contact with.  That is something we all can think about….make a list of people we have helped, people whose life we have destroyed for whatever reason, people who have made a dent in our life, people who have helped shape our lives.

The reviews have been, understandably flattering.

Samples:

1. “This is a fable you will devour when you fall in love. This is the tale you will keep by your side when you are lost.  This is the story you will return to again and again, because it possesses the rare magic to let you see yourself and the world anew.”

2. “Deep, profound, superbly imaginative, written with the quiet eloquence of a story teller who dares to leap into the most magical of places.”

It is a good read.  Regard it, if you want, as what might happen to some of us after we are dead.   This book is a gift to the soul.

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I got the following “Differences Between You and Your Boss” in my email.  The source or the author was not divulged. But I could easily relate it to my own experiences with bosses of all stripes, in four continents!

When you take a long time, you are slow; when your boss takes a long time, they are thorough.

When you don’t do it, you’re lazy; when your boss doesn’t do it, they are too busy.

When you make a mistake, you are an idiot; when your boss makes a mistake, they are only human.

When doing something without being told, you are overstepping your authority; but when your boss does the same, it is initiative.

When you take a stand, you are being bull-headed; but when your boss does it, they are being firm.

When you overlooked a rule of etiquette, you are being rude; when your boss skips a few rules, they are being original.

When you please your boss, you are apple polishing; when your boss pleases their boss, they are being cooperative.

When you are out of office, you are wandering around; when your boss is out of office, they are on business.

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A&E Section

Does Sad Music Make Us Happy?

Still not quite ready to sit down and write folks…this is an interesting topic I explored in a blog in 2014 that I am sharing again…

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In 1972, a member of the English faculty of the College in which I was working chose to move out of the province, and while downsizing prior to his departure he sold me his turntable and record collection. I still have some of the records—now collectors’ items. One of them was a performance by a musician by name Michael Rubin, an American violinist who is considered one of the greatest violinists of the 20^th century. He died in 1971 at the age of 35, and as such the release was hardly a year old. One of the tracks in the l.p. was a short piece called Meditation: from Thaïs. It is written for solo violin and orchestra.

I had to admit that I had never heard such a sad piece before in my life.

The Meditation is a symphonic entr’acte performed between the scenes of Act II in the opera Thaïs written by French composer Jules Massenet, and the piece is approximately five minutes long. The story is about Athanaël, a Cenobite monk, who confronts Thais, a beautiful Hedonistic courtesan and devotee of Venus and attempts to persuade her to leave her life of luxury and pleasure and find salvation through God. It is the time of reflection following the encounter that Meditation is played. The choice for Thaïs is painful because she is in love with the monk.

I have brought this up because quite recently I happened to read results of independent studies done in Tokyo and England. Their findings posit that sad music makes a person happy. Kazuma Mori and Makota Iwanga of the Hiroshima University in Japan, who have published the results of their research in Frontiers in Psychology, claim that perceiving sadness in music can actually induce pleasant feelings in the listener.

The feelings evoked by works of art aren’t direct, real world emotions but aesthetic ones. There is a difference between emotions perceived and those actually felt. In other words the listener does not actually experience the conflict going through the mind of Thaïs and instead enjoys it vicariously. We all feel ‘good’ watching a sad movie, reading a sad novel or watching a sad play because we are in a safe place while indulging in the emotion.

In a study at the universities of Kent in England and Limerick in Ireland, done approximately at the same time, researchers found pretty much the same thing as their Japanese counterparts. Their findings were published in the journal Psychology of Music. According to them one motive for listening to sad songs was due to the music’s being perceived as ‘beautiful’. Researchers found that the “beautiful” music offered a direct correlation to mood enhancement.

Music generally impacts our emotional state, which is why it is extensively used by therapists to help clients improve their health is several domains, such as cognitive functioning, emotional development, and social skills. Moving to music is a very popular component in the therapy protocol. I have used music extensively in drama to help develop character and portray emotions.

I am not very familiar with the whole repertoire of western music and so I was curious to find if there are many pieces like Meditation and I found several. I mention one in particular, Schubert’s String Quintet in C. It is “lyrical, plaintive, nostalgic….” What is important are the circumstances under which he wrote the piece. His health was sinking, and the piece which possesses ‘bottomless pathos’ reflects the pain and the mental turbulence he was going through. He did not live to hear the piece performed. He died when he was only 31.

However, among the 10 best classical ‘tear- jerkers’ I prefer Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. One critic wrote, “It is full of pathos and cathartic passion, it rarely leaves a dry eye.”

I am sure many of the readers have heard Meditation at one time or another. However, I am strongly suggesting that you listen to (and watch) the performance of Hungarian musician Katica Illenyi. You could not be blamed if you thought that Katica was actually playing the role of Thaïs while playing the violin. Please click on the video below:

Coming back to the question raised by the title. I believe that the terms ‘sad’ and ‘happy’ need to be clarified. People who watch operas and some of the Bollywood movies would have noticed how the hero or heroine burst into song while portraying an agonizing scene. While the character is in pain, the audience is not. The listener is just sympathizing, feeling it vicariously through the artist’s experience. Though we might tear up and reach for Kleenex, we are not ‘hurt’ as the character is. In The Sound of Music when Maria sings “These are a few of my favorite things”, the song leaves us in a ‘happy’ state even though our own list of favorite things might be different.

NUMBERS

2.

The age of a Florida boy who on the 6^th of June fatally shot his father in the back. This makes the boy the youngest murderer in the world.  His mother, Marie Ayala,28, has been charged with manslaughter.

20 million.  The number of AK 15 assault rifles in the US. Yet they had to import baby formula from Europe and Mexico.

6.7 million. The number of Ukrainians who are refugees in other countries. Of this 3.6 million are in Poland.

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Entertainment time. Don’t miss the following short video sent by my daughter Radha. Astonishing!

Theatre As Social Conscience

(I am having to, yet again, repost one of my old articles. The following blog was published in January 2006.)

I take you back to December 10, 1896.  All the leading critics and members of the literary demimonde of Paris had assembled at Theatre Nouveau, to see a new play called Ubu Roi by the well-known playwright Alfred Jarry. The curtain opened and the first word spoken was ‘merde’. I seek the indulgence of French speakers and so for the uninitiated, the word means ‘shit’.  The word was said for the first time ever; and once said in public could not be withdrawn or obliterated. Theatre has never been the same again.

Until then, Victorian prudery, which influenced all European languages, and perhaps other languages as well, had set unwritten rules about language usage, and writers were very reluctant and afraid to use what now would be called “unparliamentary language”.  I don’t mean some of the unruly associations of lawmakers in some countries, but ‘parliament’ as an institution which demanded respectability.  This kind of restriction was evident in most books and plays, even those trying to tackle social issues. But still, some playwrights dared. One recalls Ibsen’s Ghosts (first staged in 1882), where he dramatized the topic of syphilis but didn’t use the actual word once in the play. Bernard Shaw followed suit.

Ultimately, the theatre turned out to be the better vehicle for raising awareness of social issues because of the instant impact on a large population, on a congregation.  Books had impact, no doubt, but they were isolated, and the novelist was in no position to harness public reaction as easily as the playwright through the threatre.

After Ibsen, the Avant Garde movement started in the late 1800s and it was only then that playwrights felt that their shackles had truly been broken and that they could say anything they wished.  This is the most significant result of Ubu Roi.

Even then, it was not until the late 20^th century that social issues like homosexuality were first dealt with on the stage.  As far as I know, La Cage Aux Folles was the first play explicitly on this theme to be produced anywhere.  The Broadway opening was a milestone, and set the trend for other productions which dealt with other social issues which were considered taboo on the stage. Philadelphia became a landmark production.  The trilogy Earth, Fire and Water shook up the fundamentalist Hindu factions in India. Some of the social issues are so entrenched in culture that fanatics are not tolerant in accepting the works of art that deal with controversial issues.

Performing arts as a commentary on socio-political issues has a long history.  In fact, it goes as far back as the Greeks.  Antigone is a case in point. Though Antigone was the niece of the king, she protested against one of his edicts.  She was an individual, not connected to any political group, and yet she was seen as representing factions that protest against authoritarian regimes. She was promptly killed by the king. It is said that Hitler refused permission for any company in Germany to mount the show.

After WWII, authors from around the world wrote on the cruelty and the uselessness of war. These authors and their work spawned movements that further promoted these essential concerns. One such movement was called The Theatre of the Absurd. The works are not absurd at all, though the common denotation of the word would suggest it.  Basically, they are a reflection of the uselessness of the human condition.  We say that destruction of life and property is “inhumane”. And yet, humans are causing this destruction (we offer “thoughts and prayers” and then essentially accept it and move on). And this destruction comes from ideology that is mostly socio-politically driven (I include religion here; religious differences are both social and political in nature).  This is why the so-called fight on terrorism is bound to fail, since one cannot wage war against an idea.  It is a strange fact that though religion is generally a much more sensitive issue than some socio-political problems, artists and authors have been critics of religious fanaticism longer than any effort to comment on socio-political issues.  St Joan, The Crucible etc were written much earlier than any play belonging to the Theatre of the Absurd.

Whether plays and books and movies change the attitude of people is difficult to judge.  Trevor Nunn, the famous British director of stage and screen was once asked why people go to the theatre.  His answer was: “Because people want to be changed.” If he is right that theatre can change, there is a validity to plays on socio-political reform.  By exposing the ravages of war, by educating people about HIV/AIDS, by exposing the profound wrong-headedness of homophobia, by decrying the fanaticism of religio-political philosophies that destroy the fabric of society and world peace, these artists have indeed attempted to change the audience.  The impact might not be measurable. But the constant and relentless exposure of the masses to such works is like constant drops of water; eventually, they may be able to reduce granite to sand.

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Numbers

230. The number of mass murders in the US as of June 2. This includes a disgruntled patient who was unhappy with the back surgery he had some time ago. Meanwhile on Friday shootings continued at a church and a funeral in Oklahoma.

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To conclude, a few pictures to make you feel good. The images are of The Hanging Gardens of Haifa, a temple of those who are of the Bahai faith. It is a breathtakingly manicured garden.