I’ll confess it up front. This post will bore most people to the point of unconsciousness, because it’s about music at a pretty technical level. Those who are not bored will, I think, have one of two immediate responses—either “What a cool idea!” or “What a load of BS!”

Ever since I wrote the “Lenny” post, I’ve been thinking about how it is that classical musicians and jazz musicians, even when they play the same instruments, have trouble talking to each other about music and for the most part just don’t “get” each other. My own orientation is toward jazz, even though I haven’t thought of myself as a jazz player for decades.

When I was in high school, three of my friends and I put together a jazz quartet. I played alto sax. We all had connections with working jazz musicians in the area and were happily absorbing their view of and orientation to music. Jazz (except for so-called “free jazz” which I don’t don’t enjoy and spend no time thinking about) is organized around chord progressions. There are lots of conventions about how this organization happens, and even a few more or less set-in-stone rules. Except for big bands which work from carefully written arrangements, most jazz bands use what are called “lead sheets.” Here’s a picture of part of a typical lead sheet that might be given to the keyboard player.

It’s a simple thing and looks pretty much like the music folk guitarists work from, except that it’s likely to contain chords that folk musicians don’t play. It contains the melody and symbols that represent the chords that are supposed to accompany the melody, and it’s a pretty good conceptual representation of a jazz tune. Of course, there’s a huge store of shared knowledge that underlies the use of lead sheets.

Lead sheets are almost always written in the treble clef. In the example here, the single flat in the key signature suggests that the tune is written in the key of either F major or D minor. The first chord (G minor) might be used in either key, but the song move to the the C7 chord and then to F major. There’s the key, “one down,” i.e., one flat—F major.

How the keyboard player actually plays the chords is left to that player’s discretion, so long as the rules and conventions are obeyed. The G minor chord is G-B♭-D. As the chord is used in the example lead sheet, jazz conventions would permit (almost insist) that the the so-called seventh of the chord (F) be added. Its also possible that the ninth of the chord (A) would be added as a “color tone.”

In a jazz piano style more or less created by Bud Powell something like 60 years ago, for example, the chord would be played as F-A-B♭-D, with no G in it at all! The bass player would probably pick up the G, and whatever instrument is playing the melody has the G covered anyway.

Anyway, a lead sheet is a pretty good conceptual representation of a jazz tune because, like a jazz tune, it “hangs” from the melody. The actual bass line doesn’t appear. Lead sheets were my musical orientation when I arrived at the University of Connecticut to major in music as a bassoonist and was first introduced to what is called “figured bass.”

Figured bass notation is very old, and it looks like the sample shown below. There is also a huge store of shard knowledge involved here, but it’s almost completely different from the the knowledge underlying a lead sheet.

Conceptually, figured bass is pretty much the opposite of a lead sheet. For one thing, it’s written in bass clef. It specifies the exact notes to be played in the the bass line, and it describes the chords, without naming them, through the numbers written below the notes. In the sample here, the key signature is two flats, and the first note is G. The numbers 5-3 below the note specify that the chord is in so-called “root” position, so that the notation describes a G chord.

The bottom note is G, the second note is a third higher (but flatted because of the key signature). The third note of the chord is a fifth higher than the first. This yields G-B♭-D, the same notes as in the Gm chord at the beginning of the sample lead sheet.

For the second chord, we find the note B♭ with the number 6 beneath it. This is shorthand that a “continuo” player would be expected to decipher. It means that the top note in the chord is a sixth higher than the bass note, a G. So, the second chord in the piece is also a Gm chord, but it is to be played in the note order B♭-D-G.

For the third chord, the note is D. The numbers below describe what is called a 7th chord in root position. The ♯ symbol is another bit of shorthand and indicates that the second note of the chord is to be raised a half-step. In its entirety, the chord is realized as D-F♯-A-C. The lead sheet would describe this as D7, and Bud Powell might have played F♯-B-C-E, a D7 with no D in it anywhere!

In a nutshell, figured bass notation sits on the bassline, and the melody doesn’t appear at all. This reflects a mindset so alien to the jazz sensibility that it should be no surprise that classical musicians and jazz players really, really don’t speak the same language.

Today I am 62. This is the age my father was when he retired. He basically sat around the house and drank endless cups of coffee while playing solitaire. I’ve followed his lead in many things (no one is more surprised about that than I am) but not here. For one thing, it is impossible for me to think of myself as “retired” (see any number of my previous posts).

I have, however, put my feet up today. I’ve spent a lot of time with friends, I took a lovely nap, and I haven’t crossed one damn thing off the “to do” list. This evening I’ll rehearse with the a cappella group I belong to, but now I find myself so paralyzed with sloth that I can’t even write a decent length blog post…

I would never have called myself a Carlin fan, but I was surprisingly affected by today’s news that he is dead. His classic “Seven Dirty Words” routine was a cultural contact point that worked across the last two or three generations.

I admire Carlin because he apparently never considered anything like retirement. He was up on stage “tellin’ it like it is” right to the end.

Some of his material seemed a bit obvious to me, but it had a way of speaking truth to power, as the saying goes. That made it important even when it was a little silly. Carlin had a kind of perpetual hippie sensibility that I never shared, but his name is one that I’ve known for 40 years. And now it isn’t attached to anyone living.

There is also the fact that Carlin was only 71. That’s right, I just said “only” 71. Sure, that’s past the Biblical three score and ten, and I’ll admit that until quite recently 70-anything sounded old to me. The thing is, I turn 62 tomorrow. Carlin was something like 9½ years older than I am right now. It’s hard for me to jam the old man hat on Carlin’s head if I’m not ready to wear it myself.

And I’m not ready.

The joke a few years ago was that “60 is the new 40.” Utter nonsense, of course. Nonetheless, 60 isn’t old any more. And if that’s the case, 70 isn’t all that old any more. So the world has lost a very funny, not-all-that-old man.

We’ll miss you, George, but they can’t censor you now.

The next generation comes surely on,
Their nonchalance baffles my intelligence.
…
Life is stranger than any of us expected,
There is a somber, imponderable fate.
Enigma rules, and the heart has no certainty.

—Richard Eberhart

We’ve come to the end of another graduation season. Colleges refer to graduation as “commencement,” perhaps as a way to stress the sunny beginning that awaits the graduates as they step (finally) into adulthood. By any name, however, a graduation feels more like an end than a beginning. When the ceremony is over, it is time to get in the car and drive away. In that moment, everything about life as a student may seem trivial in the extreme. A simple illustration makes the point:

Student question: How can I get all this reading done by tomorrow?
Newly minted adult question: What do I do with myself for the next 60 years?

It’s no wonder the young almost always face the future with nonchalance. The chief alternatives—arrogance, despair, and whatever combination of these is currently in vogue—don’t get much traction in the world of adults. New grads are not slow in figuring this out.

Even so, there is no way to understand or even to anticipate the strangeness of life. Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people.

Or not.

We keep looking for unifying patterns, keep believing we’ve found unifying patterns. But so often the patterns vanish like movement you think you have seen in the corner of your eye.

In No Exit, Sartre has a character say that Hell is other people. But Heaven is also other people. It’s a good thing to keep in mind when enigma rules and the heart has no certainty.

…What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support;
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert th’ Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men.
—John Milton, Paradise Lost

…And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think…
—A.E. Housman

Imagine poor Milton. It’s the 17th century. He is alone, blind and sleepless in the dead of night, composing the perfect blank verse that in the morning he will dictate from memory to his amanuensis. He is at war within himself. On one side are his unforgiving Puritanism and his learning in literature, history, philosophy, theology and the Classics. On the other side are the actual facts of his life: the deaths of children and wives, his blindness, and the terrible price he has paid for his anti-royalist politics.

It’s an unfair match-up. No wonder Satan gets all the best lines in Paradise Lost (”Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n.”). Lining up “I ought to be joyful” against “I’m miserable” is always tough, at least for me.

Nearer to our own time, Housman takes a different approach to essentially the same problem. Feeling blue? Hoist a few pints and cheer up, he says. Repeat as necessary.

Right. The opportunities for a personal train wreck there are pretty obvious. Better, I think, to find the people who love you and let them help you through “the embittered hour.” No bargaining with God required. No hangover either.

I’ll admit it. Leonard Pitts had the tears running down my face this morning as I read the paper and ate my breakfast. The column was about his daughter’s high school graduation. My own daughter’s high school graduation was 10 years ago, and at that time I followed precisely the emotional trajectory that Pitts describes so well. Reading the column brought it all back. The tears were about the sweetness of it all.

Nothing else in our corner of the world is like high school graduation—the only ceremony in which children march in and a short while later almost-adults march out. Parents burst with pride, even as something catches in the back of the throat. Pitts calls that something “the beginning of goodbye.”

Ten years ago, the goodbye that began on graduation day loomed larger through the following summer and struck with full force on the day Elizabeth left for college. It’s hard to explain how I felt because I never wanted to hold her back. Instead, I wanted something impossible. I wanted time to pass more slowly for me. My own childhood lasted forever, but Elizabeth’s flew by in an afternoon. I wanted it to last longer.

As an adult, Elizabeth likes to spend time with me and seems to value what I have to say. I enjoy her company, and she has become one of the best friends I have ever had. She is grateful and appreciative of the support and assistance I can offer, but, to the extent that I have done a decent job as a parent, she doesn’t need me for anything. Sometimes I miss that.

Years ago I attended what I thought was billed as an “International Music Festival.” Somehow I missed the word “Country” in the title. What the show turned out to be was American-style country music, played by bands mostly from Asia. The only song title I remember from the show is “Just a Singapore Cowboy,” but that should give you an idea of the flavor of the thing.

I thought the show was moderately entertaining and filed the memory of it under “Amusing Anomalies.” I mean, what could be more unlikely than Asian dudes in cowboy hats?

So, my jaw dropped when I opened this month’s issue of The Atlantic and saw this article entitled Thai Noon. Please check out the photo that accompanies the article. Thais, it seems, love the whole idea of the American Wild West, along with country music. They do their best to talk the talk and strut the strut.

Then I realized that Thais trying to sound like cowboys is only marginally odder than Mainers trying it. Cowboy hats and country music are huge here in Maine. Mainers can look the part, but the game is over when we open our mouths.

The International Dialects of English archive offers this sound clip of a traditional Downeast Maine accent. Shows ya kinda the way we talk around heah, chummy.

The Apostle Peter may have known a lot about spirituality and the teachings of Jesus, but he didn’t know jack about booze. If you’ve ever been close to an active alcoholic (yourself or someone you love) you may share my view that the Pentecost story contains one of the most hilarious statements in the entire Bible.

You know the story. A “mighty wind” comes upon a group of the faithful, and suddenly they’re rolling on the ground, speaking in tongues. A cold-eyed observer suggests that they’re drunk. Peter is shocked by this impiety and says, “[T]hese are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.”

How’s that again? Rolling around on the ground isn’t something you’d do because you had two drinks in you. It would take more than most people ever drink at any one time in their lives.

So trust me here. If you were a serious drinker in those days, the kind who would drink enough to end up rolling on the ground, you wouldn’t let some joker with sandals and a sundial tell you whether you could have a drink. That is to say, for an active alcoholic the time of day is pretty much irrelevant because it is always five o’clock somewhere.

It also occurs to me that there are at least two routes to drunkenness at 9:00 AM: the frat boy’s still-partying-from-the-night-before and the real drunk’s vodka “breakfast of champions.”

Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying the Pentecost gang was drunk. I’m just saying that if they weren’t drunk it probably had nothing to do with the time of day.

When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,
For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil, and all the pain.

—Algernon Swinburne, from Atalanta in Calydon

One day when she had nothing to do,
Sing rickety-tickety-tin,
One day when she had nothing to do,
She cut her baby brother in two,
And served him up as an Irish stew,
And invited the neighbors in, -bors in,
Invited the neighbors in.

—Tom Lehrer, from Irish Ballad

So, where the hell are the hounds? Today was a nice day, but the forecast calls for drizzle again in the next few days. Something about it made me think of poor, boozy Swinburne, or perhaps it was only my own “hang-dog” look when I realized I was going to have to spend hours at the computer today doing a mindless, numbingly repetitive task.

Whatever the cause, Swinburne fits my mood this evening. I’ve always enjoyed the way he forces high and low sentiments upon one simultaneously. In these few lines, for example, his suggestion that the procession of the seasons is rather like a fox hunt (”Tally ho, old chap…”) leads straight into his recollection of King Tereus of Thrace.

For those who slept through mythology class, Tereus, husband of Procne, ravishes her sister Philomela and then cuts out her tongue to keep her quiet. Philomela, clever girl, manages to tell her story in needlework. In revenge the sisters murder Itylus, Tereus’s son by Procne, and serve him up for Tereus to eat. The gods, appalled by this savagery, turn Philomela into a nightingale and Procne into a swallow.

Well.

You just can’t beat Greek mythology for the down and dirty. But the business of cooking and eating poor Itylus has left me with Tom Lehrer’s Irish Ballad on the brain. Probably the thing to do is to eat the carrot cake I’ve just been offered and try to forget about myths and Irish ballads.

One of the things that was supposed to happen to me as a result of going to law school was an irreversible change in my way of thinking.

It’s entirely possible that I was never happy as a lawyer because my way of thinking in fact did not change.

The legal system, for those of you who have never wrestled with it, is a parallel reality. It is governed by one sort of logic (the need to end disputes) while speaking exclusively in terms of a different logic (the search for justice and fairness).

My experience as a lawyer, however, was unvarying: I never had a client who really wanted justice. Every single one of them wanted victory. If victory were to be called justice, that was even better, but the actual goal was always victory.

My headline is a take on what is called “pleading in the alternative.” The principle is neatly illustrated by a hypothetical claim for damages. You claim that I borrowed your pail and that when I returned it to you it leaked. Pleading in the alternative, I answer you as follows: a) you don’t own a pail; and b) if you do, I never borrowed it; and c) if I did, it didn’t leak when I returned it; and d) if it did, then it already leaked when I borrowed it.

The example is amusing, if you’re in the mood for logic so twisted it will give you a headache. The social implications of a system that runs this way, however, are sometimes horrific.

National Public Radio reported yesterday that in the Dallas area, where evidence in criminal cases is preserved indefinitely, DNA testing by modern means is turning up something like a 40% wrongful conviction rate in rape and murder cases. Forty percent. One man who was interviewed had been freed after 27 years in prison.

In every single one of those cases, the court ended the dispute, and the State “won.” Those victories, however, have appallingly little connection to justice.

This may be a problem peculiar to Texas, but I doubt it. I do have one question for Texans about this, however: With a 40% error rate in convictions, do you still think the death penalty is a good idea?