One of this year’s Field Metal winners– a Nobel Prize equivalent bestowed upon scientists under 40– worked within the second law of thermodynamics to create a new equation for calculating exactly how fast entropy occurs.  It was an impressive accomplishment considering that the definition of the word “entropy”  alone befuddles the non-science minded.  Even the Wikipedia entry is dizzying.

The basic idea behind the 2^nd law of thermodynamics is that left to its own devices, shit falls apart.  It occurs on the macro-level, like when the ecosystem of the planet earth is in decay, or on the micro, like when the fridge you bought six years ago stops freezing ice cubes and sopping your socks on your way to get your morning o.j., or when the relationship with your in-laws turns from tolerance to an interpersonal war zone.

Scientifically, entropy is the rate or tendency at which this eventual plunge into disorder occurs on a molecular level.  Entropy as a “tendency”– one that brings various forces (heat, motion, the frequency of your erections) from its highest to its lowest potential.

The sticky wicket here is that different things fall apart at different rates. The rate at which an ice-cube melts in room temperature central coast Sauvignon Blanc is one example of entropy.  Another is how long it would take for a healthy Maple tree to fall, die, rot, grow hallucinogenic mushrooms all over it, and eventually end up as the soil in which a new sapling can sprout.

Entropy is the measurement of energy each of those variegated systems releases as it flat-lines towards its’ least potential.  Entropy is the great leveler.  Drop some Blue Curacao into a glass of vodka and it will disperse itself evenly throughout regardless of your mixological intervention.  The fact that some guy under 40 figured out a quantitative method for how this works is another discussion, but his name is Cédric Villani, and yes, the Ascot is real.

In nature, as in all closed systems, the tendency is always toward dissipation.  As a system’s entropic tendencies increase, its total energy becomes less and less useful.  The Big Bang was massive and hot.  But as it continues to expand outward, the space between objects in motion (planets) increases and cools: this is the leveling energy of entropy on a cosmic scale.  According to the First Law of Thermodynamics, this will inevitably lead to the “heat death of the universe.”  One can’t help but wonder what that will be like, and if a standard HMO will ever cover it.

Put into a social context, however, entropy makes perfect sense.  How we go from large, loving groups of friends with boundless energy in high school and college, to a handful of friends who obligatorily put up with your bullshit by the time you’re 35, to maybe one true friend who hasn’t dumped you out of pure pity by the time your 50, to a cat who sticks around cause you feed it, can be easily attributed to the dissipating, fall-apart-ness quality of social entropy.  When you’re young, the energy is bursting.  Everything is new.  God forbid you miss out.

But as tempest fugits, so does the energy to maintain all these relationships.  Energy gets siphoned into raising kids, making money, trying not to get fired, having affairs, and avoiding people you really never liked in the first place. It was Bukowski who said, “It’s not that I hate people. I just feel better when they’re not around.”  One begins to wonder, though, just where does all the energy go when it levels?  We know from physics that is doesn’t just disappear, but transforms. But into what?

It’s safe to hypothesize that social energy levels off into various projects that end up as dark matter in much the same way as celestial bodies do.  In high school, there are all kinds of Big Bangs: atomic groups of friends eagerly interacting, exchanging, bursting with first love, first sex, first drugs and rock and roll.

The social supernova grows bigger and brighter in college. Friendships are forged for what seems to be a lifetime. But graduation comes, and the first dissemination of energy occurs. Friends move to distant metropolitan centers.  Others drop out and teach skiing in Boulder, Colorado.  Others get married and pump out little ones, the ultimate energy suck.  The loss of the ego occurs here. Between answering to yelping mouths and a spouse, there is barely time to service anything else, including vital Facebook updates.  No one has the god damn  energy.

Eventually, the great leveler will bring this fractalized energy back together temporarily: for funerals.  Like a sun shining brighter before burning out, the funeral reignites the energy for one last spark-flying expenditure.  It’s a courtesy mother nature offers us, while entropy silently awaits.

But a new generation arises soon enough with fresh batteries to power them through the cycles earlier generations enjoyed.  There is nothing more energizing than to bathe in the wake of new aspirations.  They too will face their own entropy, and the cycle will repeat for a certain period of time.  But entropy will eventually prevail, and the heat will slowly fade, and all the music, and literature, and movies, and art and scientific achievements, and great sex will end up as space dust, sharing history and timelessness, like the rest of the universe’s innumerable millions of ever cooling galaxies.  

So many friends have children at this point that things are starting to get awkward.  I find I’m not as able to relate to them as I once was, or them to me, as it were, and it’s upsetting how out-of-the-loop I am.  To narrow the gap, I’ve started a pro-active plan to help me better empathize with what my friends are experiencing: the only way to understand is to go through it yourself.

To start, I’ve brought in a Malaysian nanny three days a week.  She helps around the condo with various errands, and some hands on things too.  I’ve asked let her to burp me after eating, for example.  I want to know not only what the parents are going through, but also the kids.  I weigh a bit more, so we have to contend with that when I’m over her shoulder, and once, the burping led to intercourse, which is something I’ve heard happens with new dads and nannies.  I already understand better how this happens when you have kids.

Last weekend, I went to a child rental facility where they let you lease by the hour– sort of like Zip Car for infants– and I got to take a tike out as if it was mine.  All the gadgets like the stroller and milk bottle are not included, so it’s a bit of a racket, but you obviously need it, and when you chalk it all up, it’s worth it for the true experience.  With kids, it’s never just one thing you have to pay for.  if they want to go to the park, it’s going to entail a number of maneuvers that require you to pull out your wallet.

I pushed the little guy around Central Park for a bit and ended up at the Carousel.  It’s fascinating how easily people will talk to you when you have a munchkin in tow.  It opens the door immediately.  I haven’t done the research quite yet, by my guess is that serial killers don’t procreate that much.

Unfortunately, I didn’t meet any other parents there, which was disappointing because that was reason I was doing this.  But odds are if you’re living in Manhattan with a kid or two, you’re both working full -time because it’s so stupid-ass expensive.  Did my friend tell me pre-school was $28,000 a year?

In the park, I was lucky to meet several young nannies and eventually have sex with them.  One was from Jamaica and I have never had sex with a Jamaican before, so that was a real bonus.  One of my goals before I marry is to have sleep with someone from all seven continents.  Islands kind of open it up to an infinite number, but I’ve started a small side project there…

The two nannies from Sweden were the best, though.  Apparently, if you’re any kind of Scandinavian, you’re not a nanny but an “au pair”, which is actually a French term.  They kiss in the French style as well, which I noted at the time, and found it interesting how little hang-ups they have about group sex.  America could really take a page from them in general.

Either way, it was a great day out.  I forgot the kid at the Park at one point, which was hilarious.  I had met this very young woman from Ecuador who was actually soliciting nanny work from me.  I asked to interview her, I can’t just hire anyone to care for my kid, and we strolled a bit, and then I just kissed her.

Latin women like that type of aggressive move, I’ve found.  We were about to walk into one of those newly cleaned public bathrooms, thanks to Bloomberg, when she was like, “Hey, what about your son?”  And I was like, shit!  You are really good.  I was mad at myself for losing the little guy.  I mean, try getting a security deposit back when all you show up with is the stroller.

She was sharp, this one, and it was a window into how serious child-care is for parents, and where their minds must be most of the time.  For the rest of the day I was checking every ten minutes: cell phone, wallet, keys, kid.  I told the Latin nanny I would hire her, and I meant it… when I have kids, that is.  A woman like this would be thoughtful and protective and nurturing.  She certainly was with me, when we met later that week.  And her body was about as definition perfect as you can find on a 21-year-old.

After relating these anecdotes to a few college-pals-turned-dads, I realized I was not having as much luck relating to my friends with kids as I had hoped.  I was told that I should get out of the city and head up to the suburbs where things are much, much different.

I attended an Easter egg hunt with my friend and his 4-year-old daughter.  I was really looking forward to seeing her run around and find the colored treats.  I have such great memories of doing it myself.  But what I discovered was far bleaker.

In Westchester, child rearing is a competitive sport. Your child’s success is a reflection of your own, so something as mundane as an Easter egg hunt becomes a life or death struggle to maintain social dominance or even climb a wrung or two above the competition.

I was disappointed to learn that Kyla, my friends precocious four-year old, was using GPS.  It’s just not the same as the free styling fun we had in our youth, when you had to actually search, get lost, spin around, run to wherever someone else found an egg and hope there were others.  But now, with modern technology, most of that old fun is long gone.

Aware of this advantage, other parents had purchased military scramblers to send Kyla off in the wrong direction.  But my friend had invested in the very best GPS, Israeli designed, and it could operate on a frequency they were not able to scramble, so the kid cleaned fucking house.  There were almost no eggs left for any of the other kids.  My friend was beaming in his Lexus Hybrid on the way home, a trunk full of milk-chocolate weighting down the car, as Kyla napped peacefully in back.

I started to get the picture of how it really is raising a kid in today’s world.  I’m pretty sure I’m ready to do it.  I did, however, run into my buddy’s kid sister at the Easter egg hunt.  She was babysitting for him and his wife while they were away for the weekend at their modest 8000 foot pied-à-terre in South Hampton.  And she had bloomed into quite the young woman.

I told her I was thinking about having kids but hadn’t yet because I was still practicing a lot.  She didn’t quite understand, so I offered to drop by after the little ones were asleep and give her a better idea of what I meant.

It’s always easier to understand something when you get some hands on experience.

I mean, stacked against all four walls.  On the floor.  Hanging from the rafters, literally.  They were of all shapes and sizes.  And I wondered, to myself, cause who else could I really wonder to, alone, at night, watching a movie…. when exactly did this dude paint so much?

I know he was a dedicated womanizer, and that takes time too.  He must have either been getting up early, or had some kind of a personal manager to keep him on schedule because, as I said, and you can see for yourself, they man really had a butt load of paintings.

Sketches too.  Drawings.  Etchings.  Wish I could etch.  I think he did some sculpting in there somewhere in bronze or clay or whatever these guys sculpt in.  I can’t sculpt, but something about the layout of the consonants in word give me pleasure.

I wondered if he cooked.  You would think if he could sort out all those colors and the images that sprung from his head, that he could probably cook too. And being from Spain, I bet he probably had a few cubist variations on paella.

I would never want to eat anything cubist, however.  I don’t like pointy food and never have.  If it were fish he were making me, or chicken, lamb, say, I would want the eyes and mouth to be pretty much distinguishable, instead of all askew and awkward.

Say he was broiling me a flounder or red snapper, I would hope the presentation would be traditional, as opposed to some angular elbow want sticking out of its gills because that would be gross.  I probably wouldn’t want to have eaten any of his cooking from the blue period, because all of that depression would seep into the food, and make it taste bland no doubt

Either way, Picasso was prolific, and that was his own fault.  One can feel bad for those people who are too obsessive to do anything but one thing, or one can do one’s best be better than that, to rise above, and to try and help them expand their horizons. I like what Picasso painted, for the most part. But what if he had spent a little time on the golf course, for example? Or if he had looked into knitting? Or epidemiology? Would we not have all kinds of inspiration from those fields of discipline?

I believe, in general, to be mediocre, or even bad at many different types of things is what is best in this world.  As someone like Milton Spitzel proves.  Milton is a friend of mine I keep around because he can’t do anything well at all, and it makes me feel much better about myself. You should meet sometime.  I’ll set it up when he has time.

In the last ten years, we’ve authored wars, shaken the worlds economic foundation, backed out of global environmental commitments, and led in environmental disasters.   Everyone loves to see a champion fall.

In the case of the fall of the mighty United States, it’s especially fascinating viewing.

As American superpowerdom wanes, snarky Europe prepares to celebrate.  They’ve been through it before; the Greeks had their Gods renamed by the Romans and credit stolen for flat pita bread covered with tomato and cheese, olive oil and oregano.

The French fell to the Germans after centuries of fending off the Gauls.  They were on a role with Napoleon there for a while.  How they became the Continents’ great capitulators is a mystery sometimes attribute to de Gaulle’s close cropped moustache. even on the soccer field, no one takes a dive like the French.

The Brits were betrayed by the US after raising them from infancy. Instead of a thank you, we drank coffee instead of tea, and turned cricket into baseball.  India and Africa followed our revolt.  So sorry, ole chap.

They’re all snickering at our demise now.  They claim they knew it wouldn’t last all the while we were kicking their asses.  But on Father time marches, and the passing of the torch will be no different this time.

Or maybe it will.

Maybe for once, the fallen empire will have the last laugh.  Not from any re-emergence to power, but simply because the next champion will be so intensely awful, the world will wish that the last ass were back in driver’s seat.  It is a possibility when China’s behind the wheel.

You think things were bad when WE were in charge?  That we were hubristic and greedy and deaf?  What will kowtowing in Mardarin be like?  Or eating eel for breakfast?  I’ve heard they monitor you for internet porn.  And how exactly does one use military force against  the Buddhists?

I’m sorry was I proselytizing?  No matter.  We’ll all be doing their laundry soon enough, if we’re lucky… Others will be laying railroad track across their western frontier, just as they did on ours. It’s a land with innumerable demands.

Europe and the rest of the world will be missing that good old American hegemony then, you can bet.  The one that lied and bilked and disseminated unrelentingly bad big budget movies, many of them in 3-D.

But was it so bad?

One wonders what kind of place America will be when it’s no longer number one.  Will we start drinking as much as the Russians have?  Or become scrambling, wheeling and dealing like present day Italy?  maybe we morph into some mix breed of over achieving, hyper active capitalistic intellectuals like you’d find on an ecstasy binge in present day East Berlin?

I can only guess.  But those of you that have great grandchildren may see it come into fruition.  Hope they like eel for breakfast, those little ones…

]]> http://alexlyras.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/well-just-see-about-that-wont-we/feed/ 0 alexlyras scolding 1 flag images-1 1277227565 111 queen-elizabeth-ii_467 chairman mao art.stadium.officer.afp http://alexlyras.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/the%c2%a0great%c2%a0indoors/ http://alexlyras.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/the%c2%a0great%c2%a0indoors/#comments Sun, 01 Aug 2010 23:35:02 +0000 alexlyras http://alexlyras.wordpress.com/?p=761 ]]>

According to a recent Pew Research Poll, the average American spends only 72 minutes outdoors a day.  It is a stunning factoid when you consider two things: there are 1440 minutes in a day, and for the average suburban New Yorker, at lest 30 of that 72 is pissed away waiting for the train at 7:30 am.  The rest of those precious seconds are spent behind environmentally unfriendly drywall and under asbestos ceilings.

A more intriguing fact is that only 2 percent of the United States is paved.  It feels like 80 percent of New York is black asphalt, and without the foresight of Fredrick Olmsted, it would be.  He designed the only oasis one can escape to on the island of Manhattan: Central Park.  Where else can you throw a frisbee, smoke blunts, meet cute European backpackers and exaggerate about your success for a date later that very evening.

What’s tough to swallow is the following deduction: most Americans spend roughly 1368 minutes a day indoors, in approximately 2 percent of the country (buildings and roads going hand in hand).

What’s worse still is that of the rest of the country that isn’t paved, only 2 percent is protected as wilderness.  To my knowledge, nothing that’s paved is protected, because if it were, Disney would not have bought 42nd street and turned it into a mall of shit made in China.

To continue the statistical trip, it’s been said that 75 percent of Americans use billboards as their primary source of information.  Don’t ask me my source on that, but it’s been said.

I think a drive though Kansas and you’ll get a better idea of what this information consist of, but for a small hint, open a page of the new testament, stab a paragraph, and read it as if it were written in capital letters.

Guestimate: in a country of 300,000 million, at least a third of us are reliably stupid.

Finally, I read that the average number of people murdered in US offices each week is 20, bringing us right back to our first statistic: people spend too much time indoors.

One must conclude that if we spent less time in cubicles, and more time naked in a lake, for example, we would most likely be alive a lot longer.

There’s a temptation among the enlightened.  The one where you throw caution to the wind, move your life off the grid and read Ayn Rand again.  Google Earth the island of Manhattan, and you can’t believe the true “grid” it is.  Without the Park, the layouts looks like graph paper.

There’s an intellectual allure to attempting a zero carbon footprint life. Undiluted freedom: existence sans mortgages and news cycles.  Hand made fires to cook on and heirloom tomatoes you’ve grown from seeds.

The obstacles to dropping out would seem titanic at first.  At this stage, how is anyone supposed to live without detergent or shampoo?  Without succumbing?

The biggest adjustment would be what to do with the time.  You could transvalue all values, as Nietzsche did when he dropped out.  Or you may just want to read and garden and raise chickens.

Either way, you’re concerns become a lot more basic.  Once you’re living off the grid, and the sun goes down, power is limited to what you were able to store.

Without power tools, for example, 3 hours of work becomes 12.  Laundry is back to hand scrubbing every sock.  Can we somehow make it into a ritual, instead of a routine?  Could the joy comes from from the time it takes?  Could the longer the better?

Does the transition seem seismic?  It always does when you’re entrenched.  But imagine the plus side of living free from it all.  A drastic drop the cost of living for starters: it’s cheaper to conserve than produce.

How would we get their as a nation, one wonders?

I say we elect an Amish minister President of the United States.

There is no better immersion into the vast canon of classical music than an al fresco, starlit night at the Hollywood Bowl.  It is a testament to Los Angeles’ often derided cultural capital that such a treasure not only exists amidst the swirl of celebrity tinsel-itis, but flourishes three months out of every year and has done so since 1922.

Having seen live music far and wide, I nominate the Bowl for Best Overall.  It’s California’s most mellifluous socio-cultural gem, and would rank high in the country as a whole.

When aliens touch down and The Committee to Bore Them With Banalities is formed, I will petition against a night at the Celebrity Scientology Center, and for a Cabernet and classical at the Bowl.

The myth of venue’s creation mirrors the origin of theater in ancient Greece.  Both traditions evolved from exclusive spiritual gatherings held in the woods, into secular entertainment open to the public.

In the Archaic period, it was the worshipers of Dionysus giving libations to Mother Nature while drinking and chanting and dancing and occasionally ripping a fellow celebrant limb from limb.  The metamorphosis into proper theater took centuries to complete, but the potential carnage is the unconscious reason most of us go.

The Mysteries were a celebration of the vegetative cycle: birth, growth (the ordeal of life), death, and rebirth.  The Cult’s primary ambition was to escape the artifices of society and celebrate uninhibited loss of self in nature.

The primal dithyrambs they performed to achieve “oneness” included trance-chants, repetitive drumbeats, and head-flailing.  Oh, and the wine.  In copious quantities.

Outsiders called the rituals hedonism.  But even then, the Cult would have it as a compliment.  Madness was precisely what was lacking in Athens.  Too many philosophers dissecting life. Embracing the chaos was far healthier than suppressing it.

The more convoluted city life became, the more the Cult sought the remedy of escape from it.

Maenads dominated the early rituals: enculturation repressed them even more than men.  But soon all marginals– slaves, foreigners, the disabled– were welcomed.  Costumes, masks, and sets intensified the experience.  To lose the masks society imposed, artificial masks were worn.

Over the centuries, free-form deistic channeling grew into formalized art.  Both endeavor to transcend civilization and its discontents.

During Pericles rule, the ritual culminated in Athens at a three-day festival, complete with award ceremony, and after parties. (See Plato’s Symposium)

The word entertainment is used now, but the essence of attending a movie or concert or play, is still in “escaping into oneness”.  The Hero’s journey is universal, be it Odysseus or Bourne.

The Hollywood Bowl has it’s own fun in the woods history.  It was The United Lodge of Theosophists, a group of religious philosophers (some say, a cult) deep into Brahmanism, who decided to stage a location specific production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.  The year was 1916.

The group did not want a traditional staging.  Or audience.  They were aiming for something more enlightened and the necessity of having to trek deep into unlit  wilderness weeded out all but the most committed adventurous.

The production was was set along the hillsides and thickets of Beachwood Canyon.  It was an underground success that inspired another production the following year: a religious pageant called Light of Asia, chronicling the life and labors of the Siddhartha.

Word of the show’s ethereal subject matter and mystical presentation spread like a fire, as did the interest in building a permanent theater outdoors.

As in Ancient Greece, dilettantes championed the cause.  The heiress Christine Stevenson, one of Light of Asia’s producers, formed the non-profit Theatre Arts Alliance and purchased the entirety of The Daisy Dell, located in Bolton Canyon, now the Hollywood Bowl.

With the help of Charles Toberman, a developer whose trophies included The Roosevelt and Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the deal was sealed for under fifty thousand dollars.  Toberman then donated surrounding lands in hopes of insuring the bucolic setting’s protection from future developers.  He also spearheaded the thwarting of Mulholland Drive’s preferred route, which threatened to pass right through the dell in the early 1950’s.

The Bowl became an immediate destination for Angelenos, drawing thousands in its maiden season.  But the venue was not without it’s deficiencies.  As the largest natural amphitheater in the US, seating nearly 18,000, (the Odeon at the base of the Acropolis seats 14,000), the Bowl’s acoustics failed to satisfy conductors and audiophiles.  Much has been spent over the decades to improve the sound quality of the band shell.

In 1927, architect Lloyd Wright, Frank’s least traumatized son, lent a Modern design to the shell, with unornamented concentric rings.  Beautiful as it was, the curvilinear shape was far from acoustically ideal.  As crowds grew and sat further up the hill the need for amplification became a necessity.

Frank Gehry tok a swing at the design in 1970 and had new issues to contend with, like ambient noise from the expanding Hollywood freeway, and the slowencroachment of residential development left unprotected by Toberman.

Collaborating with an acoustician, Gehry added “sonotubes” to the wings of the shell in hopes of bouncing the waves out.  But the tubes prove ineffective and alter the shell’s trademark look.  A decade later, after more money is raised, Gehry crafts another design, this time hanging fiberglass spheres in mathematically precise locations.  It is an improvement, but doesn’t completely mitigate the problem.

In 1996, a proposition appears on the state ballot asking for voter funding to overhaul the shell once and for all.  The proposition passes, but the Hollywood Historical Society, preferring form over function, sues to stop renovations. “It’s a dangerous set of precedents…”  Says the Society’s president.  “The door has been left open for the bulldozers.”

Fortunately, the Society loses the trial and is denied appeal by a music loving, wine drinking three-judge panel.  It’s all for naught as new designers Hodgetts + Fung vastly improve the shell’s acoustical capacities while preserving, some say streamlining its look.  The new sound system is praised the LA Times by and endorsed by the L.A. Philharmonic.

Every summer starting in June, Tuesday’s and Thursday’s are set aside for classical music ranging from High Baroque and Romantic to Modern and Contemporary.  Entrance can be gained for as little as $8, and wine and picnics are encouraged.  So eat and drink your face off.

Some interesting moments unfold.  Be ready to take in more than the music.  Once during a Wagner overture, two traffic helicopters passed overhead.  Had the conductor secretly coordinated a sly reference to Robert Duvall blasting Ride of The Valkeries in Apocalypse Now?  Or was that shit just chance?

Listening to the symphonies in these circumstances is vacation.  The only thing better would be time travel back to the 17^th century for an authentic Grand Tour.

Grand Tours, as they was known in the 17^th Century, are responsible for inspiring may of our most famous composers.  The idea is believed to have originated in England.  After an elite education at “Oxbridge” (either Oxford or Cambridge), graduates would journey through Europe with a tutor-like guide in search of the highest art and culture.  The Renaissance had awakened not only a refinement in the appreciation of classical antiquity, but also an awareness of a burgeoning European cultural legacy.

Depending on how full the coffers were, a “tour” could last anywhere from a few months to a few years.  With deep pockets, a blue-blooded social network, and not the slightest concern for getting back to work, patricians toured as many cities as they could get to, commissioning every genre of art (paintings, operas and symphonies), polishing their language and etiquette skills, and exchanging ideas with the Continent’s fashionable upper crust.

Paris was a mandatory destination, but equally vital were Florence, Venice, Rome, Geneva, The Lucerne, Athens, Berlin, Dresden and Vienna. It was the epitome of finishing school for any young man or woman, and a near guarantor of certified social prestige.  Historian E.P. Thompson wrote, “ruling-class control in the 18th century was located primarily in a cultural hegemony…” Grand Tours were the most direct way to enter that culture.

Value structures have shifted today, but there’s still some cultural capital gained in knowing the cannon of classical music.  Using the Hollywood Bowl as a campus for learning is both expedient and fulfilling.  Studying the symphonies before hearing them deepens the experience, and the Hollywood Bowl website does an expert job of preparing you for the music you are about to see.  In many instances, the tumult these composers were entrenched in at the time of creating their work is as engaging as the composition itself, especially for the archetypically eccentric geniuses. Or less euphemistically, madmen.

A common denominator linking the originators of ancient Greek theater, the Hollywood Bowl and the master composers whose works live on in its beautifully mottled canyon, is a voluntary immersion into creative insanity.  The brief chronological survey of composers that follows reveals lives filled with wildly idiosyncratic behavior, life threatening heath issues, financial destitution, political persecution, profound underappreciation, and spurts of inspired luminosity.

Vivaldi (1678-1741) was a fascinating paradox: master musician and composer… and ordained priest.  His claim that - prevented him from standing long enough for mass was challenged by the Bishop of Venice’s observation that he had no trouble on his feet when a violin was in his hands, or while he was conducting his appallingly secular operas.

That Antonio was notorious for touring with a retinue of indecent young women (actresses, dancers and singers, oh my) might have helped to season the church’s rancor.  His reputation was scandalous enough for the Bishop of Parma to ban him from playing anywhere in the city, which of course, increased his popularity every where else.

Vivaldi commanded ludicrous quotes for live performances, but in proper madman fashion, he was equally profligate with his savings.  He inevitably fell out of favor in his God-fearing homeland and immigrated to Vienna to claim a post from the fabulously wealthy Emperor Charles VI.

Unfortunately, the emperor dropped dead moments after Vivaldi’s arrival, leaving him with no source of income.  His globally popular, and now wedding-worn Four Seasons was virtually unknown in its original edition and Vivaldi like so many underappreciated genius composers died financially destitute and in extremely poor health.

Handel (1685-1759) showed acute musical acumen in his single digits on both harpsichord and pipe organ. But his father hammered the mantra into little George’s head that music was anything but a legitimate career.  He forced his son into law school, and like most obedient, financially dependent young men, George complied.

After his father’s death, Handel drove himself nuts with a prolonged identity crisis.  Many guilt wracked years passed, until he made the hard but error-free decision to quit the law and pursue his musical aspirations.

His career break came in composing Water Music for King George I– not the paragon of madness George III would be, but still well off his royal inbred rocker.  King George’s biggest thrill was to pack guests onto a Royal barge loaded with food and wine and women, and drift down the Thames listening to jaunty little tunes, played live.  His Majesty enjoyed Handel’s Water Music so much, he demanded it be played three times, even though it lasted an hour.  They were crazy nights on the river, but who better to float around with than the kingdom’s happy-go-lucky sovereign.

Handel suffered a paralyzing stroke that ended his performing career.  The brush with death left him in a deep depression, but it also inspired the legendary Messiah oratorio, written in 24 sleep deprived days, as well a catalogue of other compositions he was unable to create due to his demanding performance schedule.  Like many of his peers, he needed deep personal adversity to fire him up.  To get him writing. Unlike the majority of his peers, Handel died with a sizable estate, one greater than his father’s, or most lawyers in London, for that matter.  May they all rest in peace.

Haydn (1732-1809) was responsible for creating the string quartet and did a great deal to establish the symphony.  He also stands out as one of the luckier profiles with no major ailments and zero financial turmoil.  Unlike Vivaldi’s luck of the draw, when Joseph’s regal employer, Prince Paul Esterházy, died soon after his arrival, his more enlightened, far wealthier brother Nikolaus kept Haydn on for the next 30 years, inspiring him to compose music in every genre, and spreading his reputation worldwide.  His madness was fairly polite, according to peers.  It manifested itself in frequent practical jokes played on friends, as well as in his more personal compositions.  One example is the sudden loud chord in During the slowest movement of his Surprise symphony, No. 94, Haydn inserted a sudden loud chord just to see the audience jolted.  Other musical pranks include fake endings (quartets Op. 33 No. 2 and Op. 50 No. 3) and the bizarre rhythmic illusion that unfolds in the trio section of Op. 50 No. 1.

Prototypical bad boy prodigy Mozart (1756–1791), composed his first piano concerto at 4, after which his father took him a 3-year Grand Tour of Paris, London, The Hague, Zürich and Munich.

His reputation spread through the continent, but the complexity of his work confused performers and audiences alike, making for several lukewarm premiers.  Though he would eventually bow to standing ovations from Monarchs and their sycophants, Mozart could usually be found pawning valuables the following day to fund the journey to his next destination.  Insanity.  Having 6 children and a wife didn’t help his life long financial reckoning.  Not did his committed lifestyle of hard-drinking and philandering.  Most of the writings he left behind were desperate campaigns to fellow Freemasons for survival money.

The creation of his Requiem Mass is the paragon of brilliance and delusion.  In the summer of 1791, a messenger knocked on Wolfgang’s door with a commission.  Payment would come from an anonymous source under the condition that he never seek the identity of his Master.  The composer was so out of his mind ill, and destitute, he agreed unconditionally.

He wrote the darkly fatalistic work in a state of mad delirium, fueled by cheap wine, and convinced the commissioner was none other than Death himself.  He believed he was being administered a slow poison, in calculated measures, to time his own death with the exact moment of the Requiem’s completion.  He wrote a friend, “I am writing my own funeral music.  I must not leave it unfinished.”  He died at 35 with the work unfinished.  Fortunately for the planet earth, he had completed over 600 others.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) ranks just ahead of Mozart for wildly misbehaving hair.  It’s a self-conscious point of pride for many composers (and is till this day) to have the ability to conduct via hair whips and head flings, (see Gustavo Dudamel.)

Luddy was fortunate enough to study with Haydn during his Grand Tour of Eastern and Central Europe.   He and his hair settled in Berlin, one of Europe’s proudest musical centers– but was tortured by his inability to enjoy a single minute of it due to progressive deafness.  “I am living a wretched life; for two years I have avoided nearly all social gatherings because it is impossible for me to tell people – I am deaf! ”

In addition to hearing loss, Ludwig suffered perpetual intestinal pain, and an excruciating liver disorder due to lead poisoning that would eventually end his life.  Before that unfortunate day, however, he would compose the most inspired and demonic roller coaster rides of symphonic sound ever heard.

“Extraordinary” was the euphemism critics used for his conducting style.  What they really meant was– freak show.  Beethoven oscillated between a teetering, trance-like flow and sudden spastic jerks.  He would disappear from the orchestra under the conductor’s stand, kneeling almost as if trying to root himself and then snap into the air at the height of a forte, spreading his arms as if in seizure.  Sure ancient Greek Maenads would have recognized the moves.  During one sforzando, he flailed his arms with enough force to extinguish a candelabra, and on another occasion, accidentally backhanded a youngster off his size 4 feet after he had come close to watch the master’s hands on the piano.

Beethoven contemplated suicide several times, mostly while doting on his “Immortal Beloved.” His love was unrequited.  His friends described him as demanding, acerbic, temperamental and disrespectful of authority.  These were his friends.  He would storm off stage if an audience were anything but pin-drop silent and was loath to chitchat. He scandalized soirees regularly, offending high status guests.  But his Teutonic talent led Archduke Rudolph to proclaim the rules of court etiquette did not apply to him.  Not much in the ordinary world did. He was brilliant and batshit crazy.

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) meets the irrational genius criteria with flying colors.  His ego was almost as wide as his waste-line. He was a towering 5 feet tall, four feet wide, and struggled with obesity his entire life.  He suffered from high blood pressure, anemia, migraines, “giddiness” (your guess is as good as mine: giggling and weeping uncontrollably at the same time?) and exhaustion, and likely contracted syphilis in 1822.

For the record, lambskin prophylactics had been around since early Egyptian dynasties, and the modern “rubber” since 1855.  But syphilis is postulated as the source of insanity in so many brilliant minds of the past (philosophers included) that one wonders why it was not rolled on more often.

Schubert’s physician recommended he move far from Vienna where fresh air and open countryside abounded, but his underlying motivation was to keep Franz from the boozing, gorging, nighttime “extracurriculars” responsible for his degenerative state.

He spent his last days in a sweat-covered delirium, vehemently singing out of context, naked, and in brief periods of lucidity, correcting proofs, clothed.  Miraculously, during his last few weeks of life, Schubert was able to complete a series of his greatest masterpieces: the String Quintet in C, and the final three piano sonatas.  He was astoundingly prolific and completely dead at 31.

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) liked little girls.  He had “relations” with a 16-year-old student to whom he became engaged, but broke it off to pursue a more mature 15 year-old, Clara Wieck.  When her father got wind of their trysts he forbade her from further “lessons”.  Schumann was shattered and asked him for her hand, only to be flatly refused as a wicked pedophile.  He married her after the man’s death a few years later.

Schumann’s mental illness took root in auditory hallucinations and several other maladies indicative of going koo-koo for Coco-puffs, most likely brought on by syphilis.  Horrified by the prospect of prolonged infirmity, he attempted suicide by diving headlong into the icy Rhine, only to be rescued by a local fishermen.  At his own behest, he spent the rest of his life in a mental institution outside of Bonn, dying at the age of 46.

Franz Liszt (1811-1886) had an enormous natural technical facility on the piano and composed unabashed showpieces for himself.  Lauded by Emperors and peasants alike, he was the 19th century’s first virtuoso superstar.  Women fought over his handkerchiefs and ripped his gloves to shreds as souvenirs.  Franz loved the action, and became known for his victories in the boudoir as well as for his anti-Classical triumphs in the concert hall. Apparently, his talent was not the only enormous gift he was endowed with.

Adding to his mythic popularity was his enthusiasm for giving away proceeds to churches, hospitals, and schools.  He too was plagued with constant illness, severe religious doubts and the requisite Hungarian pessimism and bleak despair.

Fortunately he had an outlet, as he told a friend.  “I carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound.”  Right.

His tragic demise was nearly nonsensical.  He fell down the stairs in a hotel one night and was laid up for months.  The spill led to a rapid breakdown in health: cataracts, insomnia and heart disease.  Questions of medical malpractice loomed after his death.

Brahms (1833-1897) had a distinctly inverted form of wackiness: he played piano as a teenager in Hamburg’s waterfront pubs surrounded by prostitutes and dancing girls.  But the straight shooting, perhaps hormone-less Johannes was focused solely on his music, perhaps too much so.

Brahms had a debilitating respect for the history of music and his place in it.  Beethoven’s prolific accomplishments, for example, cast a daunting shadow over him.  He compared himself unfavorably to Luddy, and all too frequently.  It was a paralyzing self-criticism.  He was so pathological about revisions that he did not complete his first symphony until age 43.

Luckily, Schumann became his friend and benefactor, and began promoting the young talent.  Brahms reciprocated by falling in love with Schumann’s wife.  As his mentor’s mental illness set in, Brahms took to “consoling” his bride Clara.  “I am dying for love of you,” he wrote in lusty ink.  But Clara clung to her husband with unwavering loyalty.

Johannes nearly lost his mind over the rejection, but in proper genius fashion, he channeled the frustration and pain and sexlessness into the masterful Third Piano Quartet.  Being Brahms, he stuck it in a drawer for 20 years before completing revisions that would give us all goose bumps hearing it two hundred years later.

Interestingly enough, though Brahms never married, his legacy was secured as the first major composers to ever make a recording  In 1889, one of Thomas Edison’s representatives invited him to record his Hungarian dance on the piano. The recording, still remains.

Bizet (1836-1875) showed signs of musical genius at a wee 4 years old.  He was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris at 9, and had planned or projected 30 operas by 13, one of which was Carmen.  He won the coveted Priz de Rome at 17, but as his professional career began, he was plagued by indecision and insecurity: changing direction mid composition, dropping promising ideas, and devastated by negative criticism.  It was an early sign of his questionable sanity.  Verifying it came a few years later.  The Priz de Rome exempted him from all military service, but when the Franco-Prussian war broke out in 1870, Georges enlisted in the National Guard anyway.  Wackjob.

Carmen premiered in Paris in 1875 to a thoroughly unimpressed public.  Critics denounced the libretto as indecent and debauched.  Bizet died three months later from a heart attack at 36 years old.  In the following years, Carmen became one of the most phenomenally popular operas worldwide, receiving ferocious endorsements from Debussy and Tchaikovsky.  Brahms saw it performed over 20 times.  It was Freidrich Nietzsche’s favorite opera of all time.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was obsessed with death and dying, and vexed by every other aspect of his life from daily diet to lack of fitness to the mystical significance of numbers.  The end of humanity was also a favorite topic of conversation for the composer.

His first symphony took a protracted 15 years to complete and represented his internal chaos in its full spectrum.  Hushed, harmonic meanderings smashed into orchestral shrieks without warning.  It was said that only out of the wreckage of a total orchestral collapse did Mahler’s symphonies achieve any sort of resolution.

His anxieties were exacerbated before all big performances, often to the point of him trying to back out commitments.  On more than one occasion, Mahler insisted a performance be cancelled due to lack of preparation for musicians, sub par acoustics, or his own unworthy composing.  He referred to the dress rehearsal of his 8th symphony as a “catastrophic Barnum-and-Bailey performance.”  It was a smashing success.

He was also pathologically concerned with the fidelity of his much younger wife and successfully manifested the fear when she had an affair with a lanky architect.  Mahler visited Freud in Vienna in hopes of stemming the trauma.  In his notes, Freud hypothesized that the wife’s resentment found its origin in the composers “withdrawal of his libido” from her.  Mahler was saving his semen for his art.

He so feared dying after his 9th symphony, as his idol Beethoven had, that after his 8th was complete, he chose not to number it.  He never completed his 10th, therein realizing his premonition.

Gustav Holst (1874-1934) took on the universe in composing The Planets.  He did not consider the symphony his best work by a long shot, so of course it became an instant hit and the work with which he would forever be associated.  As many of us do with our free time, Holst taught himself Sanskrit and wrote several operas in Hindi.

Listening to Béla Bartok’s (1881-1945) First Piano Concerto, you would swear the man was substituting the ivories for a drum set.  Pounding rhythms and arresting measure progressions were interrupted by unexpectedly provocative calms.  It premiered in America in 1928, and was received with equal measures of perplexity and loathing.  Bartok wasn’t the slightest bit phased, though.  As far as he was concerned, America wasn’t very discerning when it came to classical music.  What it did offer that Europe did not, were avocados, which he fall in love with in Los Angeles.

His opera The Wonderful Mandarin achieved the type of scandal the Concerto lacked.  The plot unfolds around a prostitute who lures a Chinese man into a hotel room so her pimp daddies can rob him blind and asphyxiate him with the hotel bedding.  It premiered in Cologne, a city of churches and monasteries, and elicited such a repertoire of catcalls and foot stomping that the mayor signed an edict banning it citywide after a single performance.

Unruffled, Bartok waxed philosophical about the story to a reporter: “The Chinaman is a good catch, as it turns out.  The girl entertains him with her dance. [His] desire is aroused.  The thugs attack… rob him, smother him with pillows, stab him with a sword, all in vain, because the Mandarin continues watching the girl with eyes full of yearning… The girl complies with the Mandarin’s wish [for sexual consummation] whereupon he drops dead.”

Hector Berlioz’s (1803-1869) father sent him to Paris to study medicine, but the youngster simply could not resist the lure of the opera, and found himself there more often than the lab.  He attended a performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and instantly fell in love with the actress playing Ophelia.  He barely understood English, but returned to see her again in Romeo and Juliet.  Smitten, he asked to meet the thespian, Harriet Smithson, but she refused.  He was devastated, and referred to her in the proceeding heartbroken years as his Juliet.  He became engaged to another woman, but weeks before they wed, she jilted him for a life of guaranteed boredom with a piano manufacturer.

Berlioz finally broke through with his hypnotic Requiem, a work commissioned by French officials to mark King Louis-Philippe’s survival of an assassination attempt; an odd commission, but you take work where you can get it.  A paralyzing writer’s block halted all creativity on his next “great symphony”, but the arrival of his Juliet (Smithson) in Paris broke the spell.  They agreed to marry, and in a rush of optimism and productivity, Berlioz completed his psychedelic opus Symphonie Fantastique in a matter of weeks.  It was performed in the Great Hall of the Paris Conservatoire to bedazzled audience members including Victor Hugo, Niccolò Paganini, Alexandre Dumas, and Heinrich Heine.

Mendelssohn (1809-1847) was as impressive a child prodigy as Mozart, but he had the added benefit, (or deficit as some see it) of coming from a filthy rich, over educated family.  His grandpa Moses was a powerhouse philosopher who confabulated with intellectual gargantuan GWF Hegel.  Dinner table conversations lasted for months.

Felix’s father was one of Berlin’s most established bankers and funded his son’s four year Grand Tour.  The enculturation was invaluable as Mendelssohn successfully penned several of his masterpieces– the Octet and the Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture among them– as a mere teenager.  By 15, he had completed 12 symphonies, and two comic operas.

Felix’s ego matched his talent as he thought little of his contemporaries, Berlioz, Meyerbeer, and Liszt, and said so publicly.  When a pair of strokes silenced his genius at 42, Wagner, now married to Liszt’s daughter, Cosima, began a campaign in writing, (Das Judenthum in der Musik) to besmirch Mendelssohn as a hack whose music was mere Jewish sentimentalizing.

Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) wrote his famous Concerto for his teacher, the legendary pianist, Nicholas Rubinstein, hoping he would premiere the work.  They had collaborated several times in the past, so no one was more surprised than Pyotr when Rubinstein trashed his composition as “unplayable, broken, disconnected, and so unskillfully written that it can not even be improved.“  Fortunately for history, Tchaikovsky ignored his teacher outright, altering not a single note.

His death added to his already considerable mystique.  It was either a dose of cholera from a sip of contaminated water, or a Socratic suicide induced by the “scandal” of his uninhibited, socially unacceptable homosexuality.

Like most greats before him, Dvorak (1841-1904) didn’t have a pot to piss in his entire life.  He tripped into a decent survival job, however, as the growth of commercial music publishing took off in the mid 19th century.

As pianos became more common, so did the amateurs who played them, and with that, the demand for pieces to be played in living rooms.  Instruction books were in short supply and Dvorák was among those wise enough to rework some of his catalog for less capable performers.  Work begat work, as publisher Fritz Simrock, introduced him to Brahms who helped launch Antonin’s career.

Debussy (1862-1918) was a pioneer in the fame-used-for-getting-laid category.  As his star rose in Paris at the end of the 17th century, Claude had his choice of promising young women, among them painters, musicians, and writers.  Instead he married a super-model who impressed his friends, but irritated him to death with her devout superficiality and utter disinterest in music.  Having a good eye for character and a better sense of drama, Debussy left her for the mother of one of his students, a brilliant conversationalist, and accomplished singer.  The model attempted suicide with a pistol.  Claude fled to England with his now pregnant mistress until the scandals subsided and multiple lawsuits were settled.

Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) adds new hues to the Russian composer museum of oddities.  Like other nearly autistic musical prodigies, Sergei could hear a symphony and play it back the next day or year, or decade with terrifying accuracy.  His teacher would assign as demanding a piece as Brahms’ Variations and a day later the Segei would perform it with an artistic finish of the most thorough and dedicated study.

Rachmaninoff was a daredevil on the keyboard, speeding through impossible progressions at a hundred miles an hour, but the uncompromising complexity of his own work left audiences unsure of how to react.  Further confusing them was Rachmaninoff’s unsmiling, seemingly inimical bearing at the piano.  His slightly Mongoloid features, extremely large hands with inhuman finger stretch, protruding ears and 6’ 6’’ stature, did little to soften to his presence.

His list of ailments was equally impressive: debilitating arthritis, eye strain, fatigue, bruising of the fingertips, chronic back pain, pleurisy, bi-polar disorder, and depression.  He managed to spend his last years in Beverly Hills, of all places.  One can only wonder what he made of the borscht at Nate & Al’s.

Prokofiev (1891-1953) is the exemplar of persecuted artist and led a tragic existence for not capitulating with the Totalitarian leadership of his homeland.  In 1917, while Trotsky, Lenin and the rest of those rowdy Bolsheviks were preparing bloodless revolutions to topple the czarists from power and declare Russia the globe’s first socialist state, Sergei was composing at a fiendish pace.  That year alone he wrote the Classical Symphony, the steely Third and Fourth Piano Sonatas, the epigrammatic Visions fugitives for solo piano and the Violin Concerto.

The maiden voyage of the Concerto was scheduled for November of 1917, but the freshly toppled government was temporarily orchestra-less.   Like other Soviet intellectuals, Sergei used it as an excuse to flee to Paris for what he claimed would be “a brief concert tour”.  It lasts 15 years.  His admirers include the best of the Parisian avant-garde: Pablo Picasso, Alexander Benois, Anna Pavlova, Arthur Rubinstein, Joseph Szigeti, and Nadia Boulanger.

He returns to Russia in 1933 to score Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky, as well as collaborate with Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater.  Stalin is in the audience, hears an incidental exaltation of a rival, and is outraged.  Sergei’s best musicians are purged to frozen nether regions and his music is ironically labeled ‘anti-democratic’; coded words which strike enough fear in symphony administrators to stop programming any of it, and leaving the aging genius in dire financial straits.  Later, his wife Lina is arrested, charged with espionage, and banished to Siberia. For the remaining five years of his life, Prokofiev lives in terrified squalor often on the verge of starvation.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) brings the survey full circle with his genre shattering composition to the ballet The Rite of Spring, choreographed by Andre Nijinsky.  The ballet’s story, set in the wilderness, revolves around the ritual Pagan sacrifice of a virgin to God of spring.  The premier in Paris in 1913 was nothing short of Bacchanalian.

The score’s opening dissonant scale progressions, asymmetrical accents and fragmented melodies jarred the predominantly traditional audience.  Ballet dancers took the stage, but their barbaric stomping and overtly sexual rhythms depicting the fertility rites further alienated the crowd.  Arguments between conservative bourgeoisie audience members and an incipient, radical avant-garde degenerated into all out fisticuffs in the aisles.  Nijinski screamed over the melee from backstage in hopes of keeping the dancers in tempo, while the troupe’s stage manager cut the lights to calm the fray, all while the band played on.

The police arrived at intermission but chaos ruled the rest of the performance.  Stravinsky considered the presentation a catastrophe, and the critics, of course, agreed.  But they were both dead wrong.  The neoclassical (some said neo-primal) movement in music had been born.  Leonard Bernstein dedicated a portion of his Harvard lectures to the piece, claiming that its sophistication has never been topped since.  The piece continues to influence composers around the world.  It is one of the most reproduced compositions in all of music history.

Like his predecessors, Stravinsky suffered from all kinds of heart palpitating hypochondria.  He battled all kinds of anxieties, intense insomnia, and developed a near tangible terror of writing at night.  When the sun set, he put his work aside, and twiddled his creative thumbs till daylight.

Bugs Bunny (1940– ) is appropriate for concluding not only chronologically, but because he is the maddest of all great artists.  To date, no other composer, conductor, or musician, has been so animated.  Nor have any of the aforementioned composers conducted with their ears and feet, as Bugs did brilliantly at the Hollywood Bowl.  He chose Franz von Suppé’s Ein Morgen, ein Mittag und ein Abend in Wien, a challenging piece that was further complicated by the tiresome persistence of a fruit fly.  Bugs also gave devastating performances in Rossini’s Barber of Seville, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle, both co-starring Elmer Fudd, and cementing the refrain of “Kill the Wabbit” forever in the minds of several generations.

Bugs holds the most direct link to The Hollywood Bowl in the production of his major opus, Long-Haired Hair.   Mr. Bunny modestly adopted the pseudonym Leopold for the performance, but it is obvious to connoisseurs who is waving the baton.  It was during this opera, where Bugs’ relentless, demanding conducting style forced his tenor to hold a note so long that the entire band shell came crashing down around the performer.  The destruction, wildly applauded by the sold out audience, is an often forgotten chapter in the band shell’s long, colorful, controversial history.

Occasionally on this whirling carousel called life, things just seem to click: the deal closes, the plants flower, the opposite sex finds us irresistible and throws themselves at us without asking for a commitment before a kiss.

When the stars align, one must be grateful.  Most of the time existence is brutal and exhausting and intractably uncooperative.  Why we ever think it will be otherwise is a mystery.  My shrink claims that blind optimism is the unconscious use of selective memory employed as a survival tactic. I agree, because I pay her a goodly sum of money.

Recently, some hard work began paying off.  Checks were coming in, I had a good woman to share the wealth with, and my cholesterol came well under the you’re-about-to-die zone.  I was blessed, and thankful and not about to take a single second of it for granted it. 90 percent of my life couldn’t be better.

So why the twunt wasn’t my f*ing soccer team scoring? The sweet milk of life was flowing like never before, from metaphorical breasts large and small, and yet, the universe had to dump a shit-storm on my parade in the form of goal scoring drought the likes of which Noah had never seen.

A creeping nihilism began seeping through the cracks.  As a former player, I know first hand scoring ain’t easy.  And that was at the college level.  Get to the elite international level and there are a world of hurdles shutting you down. That’s why they call it the Premier League: games maybe be played throughout the island of England, but the skill level is global.  And goals are hard to come by.

Perhaps that’s why most soccer players rip their clothes off and run harder than they do most of the game when the do finally score.  It’s unbelievable even to them.

Why they push their teammates out of the way instead of celebrating with them, however, is a question I’d love to ask at the press conference.  It’s a disgusting occurrence that you almost never seen in older highlight footage.  When you see George Best, or Puskás score, they run right into a circle of celebration to share the joy.  But somewhere in the 80’s, probably around the time Michael Jackson became more white than black, things changed for the worse.

Cut to press conference:

“Yes, um, after you tapped the ball into the virtually empty net for your goal, you seemed to stiff arm your teammates when they came up to congradulate you.  Even the guy who leaped over a violent cleats-up slide tackle at midfield, deeked out the left halfback completely with a killer spin move, took two punches in the ribs from the Sweeper, and a jersey yank to the ground by the goalie, to leave the ball basically at the goal line for you… Um, why?”

Hopefully he’d answer with some shame that it’s so hard to tally a goal at this level, that the only one you want to touch when you do put the ball in the back of the net is the lord himself.

So many things are difficult.  Business deals take hours and hours of redrafting.  Birth is painful and prolonged and requires blood, sweat and tears that are anything but metaphoric.  Relationships take daily toil to make them right.  But these are things we can cope with and overcome with resilience.

When my soccer team is paying its striker the equivalent of 40 million dollars to score points, and he hasn’t for the last nine games, you just want to write him a little personal note saying, “Yo! 40 mil.  How about it?”

It’s not fair that everything can’t be all perfect at the same time, even for one damn weekend.  It really should be for me because I’m a great guy.  A lot of people say so.  That I deserve health, wealth, love, happiness, and a soccer team that doesn’t suck balls, is eminent.  But no, clearly it’s asking too much.

Instead, God has to test me.  He has to take one simple pleasure I have in my life and flip it.  Why?  To keep me honest?  To keep me humble?  I struggle with it all in the deepest trench of my soul.  With God.  With my soccer team.  With the very fabric of my fan loyalty.

There are times when I want to spite God.  When I want to go out and buy thousands of pounds worth of Manchester United gear, because they’re gonna to be either number one or number two in the standings for the next decade.  A simple switch of allegiance would grant me everything I want all at once.

But I don’t.  I root for the Totnam Hotspurs, because my friend got me into them early, and I am a man of integrity, and they are one of the few strong teams in the EPL that’s not a Russian money laundering operation.  Until they stop scoring completely and make watching their games it’s own kind of specialized torture.

Maybe it’s God telling me to get a new friend.  Or to “Irish kiss” the old one for not picking a stronger squad to root for.  I’m not sure.  And neither is my shrink, which makes me think about trading her.

If things don’t change soon, I don’t know what I’ll do.  Writing a note just doesn’t seem like enough.  And taking the slumping goal scorer out with a long-range rifle feels unethical.  I also don’t want to end it all, because there’s so much else in my life worth living for.

But something has to change soon or I don’t know what the hell I’ll do.  Or when and who I’ll do it to.  This isn’t a threat.  Just a simple fact of life.  Put that leather in the old onion bag, boys.  I know it’s not easy.  Nothing that’s worthwhile ever is.

She started it all, really; character monologues woven together to form a thematically linked theatrical performance.  She called them ‘monodramas’ and though many of them were comedic, odd regional accents and quirky behaviorisms eventually gave way to deeper observations about human psychology.  In addition to her dazzling, chameleon-like transformations, audiences were also getting a digestible dose of well-crafted social critique.

It’s disheartening how obscure her name remains today, even with experienced theater folk, as she pioneered an oeuvre that has increased in popularity over the last 100 years.  Without Ruth Draper, there probably wouldn’t be Nichols & May, or Lily Tomlin, or Whoopi Goldberg, or Eric Bogosian or Spalding Grey, to name a few.

George Bernard Shaw was a fan.  As was Lawrence Olivier and John Geilgud. Henry James was so fond of her he wrote her a monologue of his own.  Edith Wharton consoled her after the death of her boyfriend (she was never married).  Helen Keller attended several performances with Anne Sullivan diligently tapping the text out on her wrist. Studs Terkel interviewed her on his radio show several times.  “My God, how brilliant she was,” gushed Katherine Hepburn.

Not a bad legacy for a gal who began performing in her parent’s living room.

Ruth Draper was born in 1884 into a family of high pedigree.  Her father was a surgeon and her maternal grandfather was Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of War and later, editor of the New York Sun.  Her choice to pursue acting did not sit well with either.

The Industrial Revolution had pushed the classes further apart in New York and those in the upper class (and upper Manhattan) simply did not pursue careers in theater.  Touring was grueling, paid little, and prohibited proper relationships.  Most saw actors as a notch above prostitutes, which sometimes they were.  And if not, they were probably cavorting around with them, drinking late night in mixed company or philandering in the cheap seats just like they did in the galleys of Shakespeare’s Old Globe.  (It’s rumored there was more action in the stalls than on the stage.)

But the parlors and drawing rooms of estates were a different story.  The wealthy took pride in hosting cultural gatherings, and there was certainly room to do it: musicians and authors and poets were the mainstay of their soirees, and performing in a someone’s mansion was far from the pedestrian environment of a public theater, and significantly harder to get an invitation too.

This is where the young Ruth Draper cut her performing teeth.  It was a pianist friend of her parents, and a highly respected artist in the parlor circuit himself, that first noticed Ruth’s exceptional ear for mimicry and encouraged her parents to cultivate it.

It was only a matter of time before Ruth was captivating the salons of her peers, many of who were up and coming patrons of the arts.  She could imitate any class of character from the Teutonic German nanny who home schooled her, to the family’s language-butchering Yiddish tailor.  She had an especially acute ear for her own kind: the educated, privileged and superficial.

Her most famous monologue, The Italian Lesson, parodied a middle-aged socialite for gossiping more about how her Italian lessons made her erudite, than actually learning to speak a word of the language.  It was spot on.  And when heard today… alarmingly contemporary.

She also wielded a rather nasty, if not accurate, impression of her sister Dorothea.  Though she claimed not to base her characters on real people, one can only imagine the plethora of material she culled from her seven siblings.  In one of her monodramas, “Three Generations In a Court of Domestic Relations.”  She wow’d audiences by playing a feisty grandmother, a worn-out mother, and the ambitious 17 year old daughter all without leaving her seat. “Instead of leaving the stage to adjust the shawl, I just drop it from my head to my shoulders, and then for the young girl i just fling it off.  I think it’s the speed of the transformation that impresses them.”

Her peers couldn’t articulate what it was that made her so engrossing, but they lined up to see her perform.  She said of her creative process, “…If you’re completely given over to what you’re portraying, you will convince other people…”  She had not lost her youthful imagination or enthusiasm.  The popular Nietzsche aphorism (of whom she was no doubt aware) comes to mind: “Maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play.”  Ruth had “maturity” in spades.  She also depended on an enlightened audience.  ”The audience must work as well as I do.  Their imagination must be fired and supply all that is not there.”

Some critics thought she was a snob.  But it was never about social status with Draper.  It was about taste.  There were those that had a finely tuned aesthetic sense, and sought fulfillment from nuance, and then there were blockheads.  The Twenties unearthed a good bit of nonsense along with its literary highlights. And for Draper, the spectacles that passed for art were utter nonsense.  Her few visits to Hollywood left a bad impression of what “second-rate taste” looked like.

Ruth was at the height of her powers when New York entered its pre-crash golden age.  The twenties were roaring, and for every wanna-be Gatsby fighting for a seat at the Algonquin Round Table, there was a hidden gem like Ruth beginning to sparkle.  Her reputation spread quickly throughout the city and performances at parlors began to reach capacity weeks in advance.

At her busiest, she was doing forty bookings in five months, all without an agent or manager.  She would “wow” one gathering, and another would instantly materialize.  She went from one living room to the next, literally across the country.  Her hosts were a who’s who of recognizable names: Astor, Stuyvesant, Whitney, Roosevelt (yes, Eleanor).  They were epic evenings.

It didn’t take long for word to cross the pond.  Draper became a mainstay with the Royal families in Britain and Sweden.  Though not formally paid, she was sometimes bestowed with priceless jewelry.  It was a phenomenon that surprised even her.  “Another sold out night in Paris,” she would say with a sarcastic sigh.  But it was real

Though a petite 5’ 4’’, Draper knew how to command attention.  Her portrayals were bold and convincing.  And she never pandered.  Her characters were treated with the utmost respect no matter how ignorant or destitute they may have been underneath.  She inhabited them completely, and with dignity.  The spectators felt privileged just to watch.

She was generous with her fans; answering mail and cultivating friendships with admirers.  After a performance, one story goes, Ruth offered two sycophants a ride in her carriage during a thunderstorm.  The fans sang her praises, and then lamented they had never heard “The Italian Lesson” in all their years of seeing her.  Draper did it for them on the spot.

She had many close friends, but remained single for most of her life and struggled with it in her voluminous letters.  Her vocation might have intimidated many men, but Ruth claimed she would have given it up for Mr. Right.  No one believed her.  The more famous she became, the more her schedule (which at one point toured Africa, India and South America) prohibited her from maintaining a sustainable relationship.

One man capable of handling a girlfriend that was performed for heads of state and earning more money than he ever would, was Lauro De Bosis, an Italian poet twenty years her junior.  It was a passionate affair, but three years into their relationship, Lauro was killed while flying a small plane.  Draper would never replace him.

Interestingly, she did not perform in a theater proper until her late 30’s.  She eventually conquered Broadway, late in her career.  She was in her mid-fifties when Thornton Wilder nominated her for membership in the Institute of Arts & Letters.  Unfortunately (for the Institute, that is) the organization’s strict definition for playwright did not include monologues.

It was a double-edged sword, to be an artist’s artist.  One 1920’s critic commented that Martha Graham, like Ruth Draper, was “condemned by the uniqueness of her talent to appear only in works of her own creation.”

She threatened to retire several times, but they were idle.  At 70, Draper had an estimated 40 monologues at the ready, some of which were over half an hour long.

On December 29^th, 1956 after another sold out performance at the Playhouse Theatre, Ruth took a carriage uptown to dinner, and returned to her home to die peacefully in her asleep.  The funeral at Grace Church was standing room only.  Her coffin was shrouded in the many shawls she wore when bringing her irreplaceable repertoire of characters to life.