Spin Workout - Izanami

Here's another recent spin workout. Three sets of four one-minute sprints. 90% max effort, 90 second recovery, repeated four times. Then take a three minute break and start the next set. Stole this from a recent Chris Carmichael column in Bicycling Magazine.

• Sunday (Moby) - Warm up
• Forever Yellow Skies (The Cranberries) - Nice fast tune. I guess they all are with this playlist
• Gum (Cornelius) - Biting rhythm guitar with portions of nonsensical syllabary. Cornelius is a Japanese genius. Long live Cornelius. Lots of experimental work.
• Ooh La La (Goldfrapp) - Reminds me of Morning Becomes Eclectic on KCRW
• Womanizer (Britney Spears) - Most of my class members are women. Just because I choose the song, doesn't mean I'm a womanizer. It's just a song. Deal with it.
• Get On Your Boots (U2) - Nice tune for a high-cadence workout
• My Life Would Suck Without You (Kelly Clarkson) - Very pop-ish. Very. Wouldn't normally own this, but it's a good tune for spinning.
• What You Waiting For? (Gwen Stefani) - Also pop-ish, but I've always liked it for its 日本語 snippets and 原宿 references
• All The Small Things (Blink 182) - Golden Oldie. Reminds me of editing the Anderson Days video with Yoko Nakao and Howard Ouyang in April of 2001. Good times!
• She (Green Day) - Not my favorite Green Day tune, but good for a workout.
• Barracuda (Moby) - From his rave days. I don't play too much techno in my spin classes. Staying a healthy distance from the cliche, but this one is too good to pass up.
• One Fine Day (David Byrne and Brian Eno) - Refreshing cool down. The message of this song always reminds me of Jeff. It's my responsibility to find wonder and beauty in the mundane. Every day is a gift.

I didn't do a very good job of matching the songs to the sets and the recovery, but it works if you pedal through the breaks and accept a fast pace during a recovery period. Next up, Inari -- a sprint workout where you go 85% - 90% for two minutes and then one minute at 95% - 100%. Then back to 85%. Repeat three times for one set. Three sets. Stay tuned for the music.

The last of the rock stars

The Guardian reports that a recent poll discovered 20% of British workers would prefer being a rock star to their current career.

What? Only 20%? I like my job, but would I rather be wealthy for being able to express myself musically? Of course I would!

Bands most interested in joining: U2 (of course), Radiohead, Beck
Bands least interested in joining: Menudo, Poison, Kiss, WASP, GWAR, Musical Youth, Milli Vanilli

How about YOU?

Shine a Light

Went to see the new Stones Imax film, Shine a Light, with my dad today. Great flick. Really well done. Check it out!

For these are the days, and these are the days my friend

This was a great concert. They trimmed a few key sections (the beginning of Knee 5 and the "Mr. Bojangles" speech, for example) but it was extremely enjoyable.

Lucinda Childs was back for her female spoken-word part. It is hard to imagine anyone else in this part. Her voice is perfect for the part and it was a pleasure to watch her mannerisms.

The violinist (Tim Fein?) performed very well but had a bit of an elitist/inside joke smirk during his entrance that was rather disaffecting.

It was fun to see Melvin Van Peeples as the Judge/Bus Driver. I prefer Mr. Johnson from the original and the Nonesuch recording, but I suppose it is quite normal to become attached to the performance you're most used to hearing. Anyway, Mr. Van Peeples had his own intonations and interpretation and there's nothing wrong with that.

Philip Glass turns 71 next month but he looked just like he did when I first saw him in 1995. There were several moments during the evening when he looked rather pleased.

My seat was ideally located (row seven) and I was right next to a gentleman from Ottawa who had traveled to New York to see the show. Impressive, though not misplaced devotion to this music. After the show we agreed that our time and money was well spent.

Thanks for the birthday present Janean!

Would it get some wind for the sailboat. And it could get for it is.

I'm going to New York on Thursday (12/6) to see the Philip Glass Ensemble play the music from Einstein on the Beach in Carnegie Hall. I'm really excited for this. I wish it were the entire opera, but the music on its own will only last three hours. The opera in its entirety is closer to five.

My first serious exposure to Glass's music was at an upper floor of Tower Records in Shibuya, Tokyo. It was 1995 and I was interning for Sony at the time. I heard that he would be speaking and signing autographs at Tower before a performance that week. My interest was piqued, but I almost didn't go to the event. It was on Sunday and I didn't feel like a record store was a good place for me to be on a Sunday evening. There was probably some church meeting I could have gone to instead. I went to the record store and it changed my life.

As Glass was signing autographs, the record store was playing excerpts from his repertoire and one piece in particular amazed me. I had never heard anything like it. It was a musical paradigm shift for me; an opening of possibilities of what music could be. I would later learn the piece was the final section from Einstein, a section Glass referred to as "Knee Play 5."

I purchased a copy of this piece soon thereafter and listened to it over and over. I am easily affected by certain sounds, stories and aural images and in Knee 5 I found music that, at that time at least, was perfectly in line with my personal resonant frequency. I have struggled to explain this attraction to Janean (when she asks in dismay "why do you like this?") The closest I can come to making verbal sense of it is that I have an appreciation, even an affinity, for subtlety and patience. I'm also a bit of a romantic (yes, it's true.) I'm not the most subtle, patient or romantic person -- far from it. But I admire these qualities when I observe them. Glass's music, especially Knee 5, is all about subtlety and gradual progression. The voices underneath the counting are haunting and mysterious. What is the code to this text? Is there a code? There’s definitely a romantic bit at the end.

There's a line in The Departed that comes to mind. The Matt Damon character says, "I'm Irish, I'll deal with something being wrong for the rest of my life." I sometimes indentify with this sentiment of endurance, but in my case I'm more likely to pursue marginal, incremental progress than deal with it being wrong for the rest of my life. Like the six year ordeal of convincing Janean to marry me or the nine years it took for me to find a job I really enjoy. I'm often satisfied, even enthralled, with nearly imperceptible progress in matters where endurance is a virtue. There's some of that in much of Glass's music. He is a master of starting with "A" and taking twenty minutes to get to "B" through a most gradual evolution. Perhaps my appreciation for this has been fueled by an exposure to Zen Buddhism.

So I'm off to New York on Thursday. I’m flying solo. Again. When I came back from Japan in 1995, I was so eager to share Knee 5 with Janean. We were dating at the time and I played it for her one evening. She married me anyway. I have since seen Philip Glass perform live (by myself) in Portland, Los Angeles and Austin. To her credit, she did come to one performance in Austin, but I had already attended four others that week by myself. I'm about to add New York City to the list. She has eBay and I have Philip Glass. Diverse interests, but we are still like “two lovers [sitting] on a park bench with their bodies touching each other, holding hands in the moonlight.”