Songs without Words

Luuuucky 7’s! In commemoration of the 777th post on this blog, I present to you a six-page improv comic that I drew over the last two days. I am very, very pleased with how it turned out, because with all the artistic and organizational shortcomings of the improvisational format, I feel like I was able to convey important perceptions of reality that I’ve never been able to in the past.  It’s easy to explain an idea to someone else, but it is very difficult to explain a perceptual experience to someone who has never shared that perception of the world before.

All six pages are presented below the cut.  Please read left to right.

Continue reading ‘[777] Melinoe’s World!’ »

Life is, in simplest terms, a temporal string of choices.  At any given moment, the agent may act or not act; or, formulated differently, the agent may act offensively or defensively.

Imagine a game where there is one die, with each face painted a different color from the rainbow (indigo not included).  If the green face is up, then you are happy, and otherwise, you are unhappy.  A man asks you every hour whether he should roll the die or not, and you can reply “yes” or “no.”

The expected outcome of this simple game is that the idealized agent replies “yes” until the die turns green-side up, then replies “no” thereafter  This pattern of behavior not only represents political spectra, where rebellious youths turn into conservative adults, but also romance, economics, academic policy, sports games, and so on.

The nuances to the game enter when there are multiple people playing, who want different colors and who may also influence the man’s eventual action – to roll or not to roll.  Human behavior deviates in several cases (e.g. the rural poor, academic elite) because of additional layers of superimposed concepts.   For instance, we could imagine that another player convinces you that you desire another color than that which suits you, or that another player believes in a “global happiness” and thus seeks to maximize the happiness of the most people in the group, rather than for him or herself.

There is not much difference between the game that is played by all living creatures and the game played by humans, but humans have simply added so many rules and strategies that they often do not realize that they are still playing the same game.  The most intense dualities stem from this ebb and flow: desire and satisfaction, searching and finding, shifting and settling, working and resting.  The subtlety is that inaction is not a null in this game but a nearly equal force and choice as action itself.  There is an energy behind both action and inaction, and that is what creates the conflicts that characterize life.

People who live with their pasts can write memoirs and autobiographies. I only live with the present and the future, the past lingering as a volume of knowledge in the living moment. That’s why I think my equivalent of a memoir is more like a simple present introspection, although the difference is that the introspection is more ‘closed’ from outside characters.  When I hear the wash and noise of silence, or when I am sleeping, that is when this inner world is most apparent, and that is what I’m depicting here.  Since I am so young, this short and simple diary-style introspection should suffice.

This five-page illustrated diary entry sums up my life, which is on a cycle of obligation and fulfillment. During the obligation segment, a large clump of things I need to do but that I can’t seem to commit to build up, and during the frenzied fulfillment stage, I finish them one by one (or release the ones that have expired). While the obligation stage is full of stress and a looming shadow, it is also a period during which I flit from one thing to another, learning as much as I can. Fulfillment is made possible by the disjoint skills I hone while distracted by other things. It can take months or years for me to understand how something I’ve learned how to do is relevant to fulfilling my promises. But at some point, everything just comes together. I just have to have faith that my instinctive investments will culminate in a grander art in the end.

Zoomed in all the way, we are in the midst of an economic crisis.  But the financial turmoil is only a small part of a much bigger problem that has emerged on the large-scale.  That problem is that the world we’ve created has grown complex and potent enough that we cannot properly comprehend it if we continue using small-world thinking to navigate our way.  Talk of higher consciousnesses and meta-analyses is usually the esoteric coffee-table talk of intellectuals, but now more than ever, we need to reform our minds as a practical measure if we hope to make any of our stated goals come true.

Mind reform begins with simply recognizing the interconnections of the world, instead of imposing a reductionist map over reality.  How can we allow multi-billion dollar gleaming cancer centers to be built by workers breathing noxious dust and lacking the education or resources to quit smoking?  Why are people so smugly proud of themselves when they slip onto the T from the back door without paying, and then shouting in indignation when the fares climb yet again?  How can environmental campaigns to save energy manically poster large sheets of pristine white paper to advertise energy-saving tips, and campaigns to save trees promote the use of electronics for all transactions?  How can health centers, aghast at the obesity epidemic, especially among the less-well-to-do, then run their institutions by employing vast amounts of the lower-middle class to drive buses and sit at security desks all day?

We like to reduce our everyday tasks to two or three variables or considerations.  That may have been fine our decisions before impacted at most two or three people or resources, but it can’t work now.  Just like the banks and other large financial institutions, we have become invested in a tangle of thousands or millions of corporations and people, just from the things we buy, the way we move around, and the places we work.  We are likewise responsible for taking into account the impact of what we do: responsibly doing research is not only about getting grants, budgeting the grants, and then publishing papers – it is about thinking of the people who have paid, through taxes and philanthropy and fundraising and organizing walks, for those grants; and it is about thinking of ways to make the research matter.  Being conscious of the world means paying attention to those close to us and those far away from us, the people we work with and the people we work alongside and the people we don’t work with at all.

Like any shift of lifestyle, thinking bigger needs to be trained as a skill.  As a first exercise, simply imagine the nearest elevator – what is it doing right now?  People are going up and down.  Where are they coming from?  Where are they going?  What are they holding?  What are they thinking about?  Who do they most want to see right now?

In an era when everyone is rushing to hyper-specialize and fields get sub-divided and sub-divided again, it’s easy to get swallowed in the minutiae of one’s particular field of work.  But an architect can’t only think about the building structures and not the ones building it or the ones who will work with it or the ones who will see it from across the street.  A grocer can’t only think about local sales but also the conditions of farms and factories of origins and the end-waste that populates the landfills.  Leaving everything before and after you as a black box that will operate on its own is like being a pigeon, concerned only with where the next bread crumb will be.  For humanity to keep up with the consequences of its institutions and technology, it needs to always maintain responsibility for and vigilance over the machines it sets into play.

This paragraph just flung out of my mind, and although it sits oddly in the paper, I think I like it.

Metastasis is a daunting subject, probably because of its immense scope which requires the expertise of so many different branches of biology – and because despite valiant efforts, it is hard to conceive of a reasonable method of treating metastatic disease.  As horrific as classic warfare was, it was at least “winnable;” the latter half of the last century saw the rise of guerilla warfare and terrorism, blurring the lines between civilian and military and making millenia of military tactics and technological extravagance decidedly irrelevant.  The parallel between this new battlefield which knows neither boundaries nor conventional rules and the campaigns to halt and cure metastatic cancer is considerable.  In both cases, our capacity to destroy far outstrips our capacity to renew; given that curing metastasis through the death of the patient is highly unacceptable, it is clear that any solution must diplomatically engage both destruction and renewal, thus requiring the full knowledge of life as we do and do not understand it, from embryogenesis to apoptosis and necrosis.

Today as I was watching “Today in Class 5-2,” I was reminded of all the innocences and complexities and emotions of youth – and its wide-open honesty.  Five years ago, on New Year’s Day, before I was in a relationship, before I received notice that MIT would accept me after that heartbreaking deferral, before I had ever considered becoming a doctor . . . even back then, I had already unfurled the full expanse of my dreams and ideals.  Those fantasies warmed my heart even as my life leapt and plunged forward through rocky times, and they kept me alive through the imagined interactions that touched my heart in a profound way that maybe only artistic creation can achieve.  This particular short story (a diary-like entry which is best imagined as being spun patiently by a voiceover talent as the reel plays back the memory) is one that marked a turning point in my understanding of my heart’s deepest desires.  It was a time when I was untamed by the forces of adulthood and unafraid to write about a perfect world and a perfect life.  Love has since entered my life (two years and a month), a duration coincidentally approximately the same as the romance below.

You’re already there, a bundle of warmth in the forest glazed in snow and ice. The snowflakes are falling intermittently. I catch one on my tongue, relishing the brief sensation.

In a way, that crazy passion has already worn off, grown into the deeper, more subtle love that could last an eternity. I’m sure you feel the same way. It’s like how the trees seem to greet us now as if we’d been inhabitants here for all our lives – a tree’s romance, a faerie’s tale: a slow dance under many a moon, under the stars as they change like the sand dunes on the beach.

I’m wearing the little ring; I hope you notice! I still remember your cute whispers last year when you gave it to me. You tried to be confident and logical, but alas, even I, watching with my eyes, felt that overwhelming wave as the light leapt off the simple gold band. You were blabbering, and I loved every word of it.

I still remember our meeting two years past, when you had to keep your promise and tell me what you’d done when you slipped away that day we were shopping in our mother land. And oh, how I knew before you even showed it to me that I’d forgive you for keeping a secret! I still finger the necklace every day when I wake up to dawn’s radiant shouts. I can imagine the words of some future construction worker who should dig up my coffin by mistake and find the necklace still there – “Aw, she loved him all her life!” And I should hope that they’d say the same about you!

Oh, you’re already there, a bundle of warmth in the forest glazed in snow and ice. I approach your huddled figure, sitting down on the rock beside you. There isn’t enough room and I have to press against your side lightly to prevent myself from sliding off. I hope you don’t mind.

This year it’s my turn – I got you something special this year. I hope it can be a memento worthy of our four years of friendship. Carefully, I hand it to you; it’s in a wide, flat box to protect it from the snow. Delicately, you open it.

It’s a painting of this very spot, but in our place are two young trees in full bloom. I say that I couldn’t paint you well enough, so I had to think up something else to represent you. You say I’m just being modest. I just blush and remember the other painting I have stashed away in my room; I tried! but sometimes things don’t turn out how you’d like. That’s life, too.

I love the way you squeal in delight like a little child on the swings for the first time. Oh, squeal more; it makes me smile. Gratitude is best expressed in those little cartwheels of the voice.

To protect the painting from the snow, you close the box, getting your fingers caught in between the top and the sides. We both laugh but I don’t let you fix the box because I suddenly have you in a tight embrace, our heads side-by-side so that we can hear each other’s ears doing whatever ears do on cold days. I don’t giggle like this very often, and it feels so good. The wind is blowing against my short hair and my crimson cheeks. Don’t you wish it felt like this every day?

Shyly as always, we move about our faces until our lips brush against each other. The kiss is gentle and pacific like the air around us. ‘I love you,’ I think as I close my eyes. I love you I love you I love you. We don’t have to wish for it to feel like this every day; it already does.

On to another great year of our lives!

Yes, the original creator of some work or technology should be protected from other people trying to profit from non-collaborative, unapproved use of that creator’s work. But that being said, I think that the extremes of so-called “intellectual property” in the modern Western society are bizarre and inappropriate.

Unlike my frying pan, which I rightfully own through the trade of money and which represents a tool and not some link to society or the greater human consciousness, my ideas – my songs, drawings, whatever – are not simply purchased through my earnings in work or service. I would not be much of a composer had I not studied Bach and Brahms and Schoenberg. I would not be much of a cartoonist without being exposed to the work of Kiyohiku Azuma or Rumiko Takahashi.

It is arrogant to think that ideas, which stem from the amalgamation and then fusion and recombination of thought and inspiration from past and present, are so easily demarcated and tangible that they may be analogous to a frying pan. This is as absurd as the idea that a human can “own” a cat. Ideas and living things – and they are largely the same thing – owe their existence to a phenomenal amount of sources. In an ideal situation, they belong to everybody.

It is because there are thieves in this world who seek to counterfeit, people who did not contribute to the idea at all, that we have to have laws about copyright and patents. That is all well and good – I certainly would not want someone selling my music under his or her name for his or her profit. But nothing should be so absolute so as to hamper the progression of knowledge and its applications to human benefit, especially with regards to technology that were not all that innovative in the first place.

As an example of this grotesque culture of greed, in which people who have no intellect to think that there might exist a metaphysical significance to objects attempt to levy ownership over what was never theirs in the first place, I’ll give the example of the Bristol-Myers Squibb taxol fiasco. BMS opposed strongly the entrance of generics into the taxol market. Broadly speaking, taxol was discovered by the US government and belongs to the US people. BMS attempt to patent taxol as delivered with castor oil as an injection. Then, it sued a Canadian generic company (after the 5 year exclusivity period) with a patent it never had and never will have.

All of this for a compound that was never created from human intellect. It is absurd to think of paying the yew trees for it, but if that’s so, then it’s even more absurd to pay humans for the idea (paying for the object is of course reasonable, as it costs money to extract and/or to produce). If anyone owns a patent on taxol, it’s God or Gaia or Mother Earth.

Claiming that taxol is your “intellectual property” is tantamount to the Europeans landing in America and claiming that all the land belonged to them.

Art is the same way, and I intended a long time ago to write about derivative works (fanart, doujinshi, etc.) but I never got around to finishing that entry. An art is generally speaking passed down, directly or indirectly, from some master to some apprentice. There is no artist that I know of who can create works without (a) having things around to look at, (b) training through class or self-teaching, or usually both. Both of these are acts of absorbing outside influence.

Human creation comes from two stages: first, the acquisition of source data, then second, inspiration and transformation of those sources into a final product. No creation and no genius exists without precedent. Here are two cases to underline my point:

1. Takashi Murakami of “superflat” fame created the petal-y design for Louis Vuitton (which I happen to like a lot), but he is hardly the first to use four-petal motifs in art design. Louis Vuitton is foolish to sue artist Nadia Plesner over her not-for-profit fundraising t-shirt logo, which neither promotes counterfeiting (no moreso than Evangelion’s famous “Eila” in place of “Fila”) nor is any more alike to the LV design than Takashi Murakami’s own art draws on Doraemon and Ghibli.

2. Bach was astounding, but he had Palestrina before him, and polyphony dates back centuries farther, back in the days when all harmony was chant in parallel fifths. That Mendelssohn could freely quote Handel and that “a theme by Paganini” became a virtuoso piece for piano, of all ironies – that is a testament to the importance of what amounts to “fanfiction” in the musical world. These days, it is the absurd vogue that you can quote dead people’s music but not live ones’. Quoting anyone straight up is just unintelligent, no matter how you look at it. But the worst is when people claim sole copyright on works that include quotes. The notes belong to no one, and a computer given sufficient time could permute notes to produce the melodies of all songs every written with the twelve Western tones and certainly not own all exclusive rights to their use. Heck, I could do that, too, and technically copyright all non-previously-used melodies. And lawsuits based on copying chord progressions – well, I’m not even going to go there.
All in all, I think that the whole concept of IP and copyright as it stands is outdated and needs to be re-examined. They belong to an era of obsessive possession that runs contrary to the modern themes of inclusivity, cultural awareness, and the trading of ideas. Sites such as Wikipedia have taken an important step by championing the person who contributes work without needing to bask in the glory of one-man/-woman heroism.

The 21st century is about global civilization and the power of multidisciplinary collaboration. It is about time to change our conception of the very nature of ideas to catch up to the post-Imperialist, post-world dominance, post-megacorporation society.

So at a dinner conversation at a med school, I was talking to some people and at some point we ended up on the topic of why I didn’t particularly like drinking heavily.  What I said was that getting drunk was never much of a prerequisite for me to enjoy myself – that I am not very inhibited as a person and at some point at night, I act like I’m drunk anyway.

If being drunk means being spontaneous and uninhibited and relaxed and willing to say or try anything with honest intention, then I’m always drunk.  I told the girl across from me that I hardly needed to drink to be willing to karaoke, not to mention singing right there in the restaurant … on an improvised tune.  She told me promptly to make up a baroque melody, and I did, and I sang it without hesitation.

Alcohol or drug-induced euphoria or transcendentalism is an overarching state-of-being that exists on its own, independent of the specific cause.  For people who have forgotten that, when they were kids, they basically acted high all the time (saying stupid things, shouting inappropriately, breaking rules, etc.), I guess they try to reclaim that lost trait through drugs, since drugs are the more mature excuse for acting dumb than just plain acting dumb.  Kids don’t know any better; adults need to consume substances to excuse themselves for not knowing any better.
A recent study showed that college students who were given fake-out drinks (dry) still acted drunk and silly after they thought they had consumed enough alcohol to be drunk.  That says a lot about societal learned behaviors.  The point is, they acted silly ’cause they thought they had an excuse outside of themselves to be silly.  But they were already silly deep down.

John Coltrane used to have a heroin habit, among other things.  At one point, he gave up drugs altogether, stopped participating in grungy clubs.  And then he created some of the most entrancing, hypontizing music I’ve ever heard.  I listen to his late creations and I am instantly transported, I am instantly liberated and transfixed, my whole body participating in the intoxicating music.

Transcendentalism and neo-childhood can be accessed through substances, but there are plenty of other ways to reach them without damaging brain cells, getting hangovers, or accidentally procreating.  People shouldn’t need an external excuse to experience emotional liberation.

At one point today, a graduate student from next door dropped by and handed a silver coin into James’s palm.

“A quarter?” I asked.

“No, a nickel.”

“You asked her to pay you back a nickel?!” I cried, incredulous.

But indeed, he had not.  It seemed all foolishness at first, but then I realized how much she reminded me of myself.  It is not the amount that matters at all – $10 or a five cents, all the same.  There is the unselfish component of desiring justice and to be trustworthy to friends.  But there is also a selfish component, the need to rid oneself of the dirtiness of indebtedness, the need to be independent and free.  It’s something that’s very hard to explain, but I feel that it is analogous to philosophical independence: the thinker who is unbridled by the tugging ropes of borrowed thought.  There is a certain type of thinker who wishes to sit cross-legged in the wilderness and arrive at conclusions through that kind of outward introspection, rather than reading book upon book on the subject or learning from this master or that.  Even if he or she arrives at the same conclusion as everyone else, nevertheless the independence of thought makes all the difference.

I think that when you meet me, you probably don’t feel that I am a very independent person at all.   But from within me, the hardest lesson has been to try to learn to be dependent on others.  Even then, I find myself taking on many roles and participating in many clubs and hobbies because I want to be able to do it myself, to matter as an individual and to have the freedom to feel all of these things firsthand, rather than relying on others to do the job for me.

Sometimes, you unexpectedly meet someone who changes your life forever, though you will never see that person again, and it’s in the most unexpected of places with that person under the guise of a perfectly ordinary passerby. And then you start talking, and something begins to resonate beautifully – you begin to see the person’s dreams and every word makes up a melody where formerly you could barely understand a word that person was saying.

Today, my last shift at my old volunteering job, it happened, just in the space of forty minutes. The building’s traffic was winding down, with not many new patients around, so I sat down for the second time with the voluble Ecuadorian immigrant I had spoken to – or mostly, listened to – a few weeks back. Evidently, she remembered me as vividly as I remembered her.

She began with a lament as last time, with the witty summary: “It’s expensive to live, and it’s expensive to die.” Sixty dollars for a bottle of eye drops that turned out to be the same size as a sample that her doctor gave her; $240 for four pills (a month’s worth) to treat osteoporosis. And as last time, she reiterated her homesickness and desire to return home, where she had not visited for 20 years. But her legs – and now her eye – might be keeping her here.

It was at this point that the conversation began to change. I had never known why exactly she wished to go back to Ecuador, and finally she began to talk at length about it. She told me how there were so many poor people in her home town, and how there were so many old people who couldn’t get from place to place anymore.

She told me about how the rich are always going on vacation to this country and that, all for fun and leisure, seemingly ignorant of the tragedies befalling so many people. “If only they could give me a sewing machine … I could sew overcoats for the women and work shirts for the men.” And she went on to tell me about her grand dream of heading up a new church with a big bell on top, that would cook meals and give free juice during ceremonies and have a space for weddings; that would care for orphans and transport the elderly who lost their means of going to church. There would be a rotation of movies played as well in LSC style, with one comedy for the kids and one serious movie for the adults, but only once a month since it’d probably cost money, and people don’t have that much money to spend on leisure. She even talked about bringing warm meals to the inmates at jails, along with sending prayers, so that perhaps the warmth might bring back the misguided people to goodness.

And she talked about community, too: how, in the United States, neighbors are so distant, sometimes complete strangers. How no one goes next door to ask, “Hey, how are you doing?” on a regular basis, how no younger ones come to stay and take care of the elderly. How she only asked one favor out of her neighbor – to bring her a bottle of milk – and the neighbor forgot. She reminisced on the closeness of family and community in her childhood, and smiled at the thought of having people over and such if she ever could find a new home.

All this generosity and goodwill … coming from a woman whose savings have been plundered by those she trusted, and who still must work despite her obvious old age and frail health because of repeated taxing (esp. by the Reagan administration, she noted, if ironically). From a woman who is not some rich entrepreneur looking for something fun to invest in and make her name famous for. She said she didn’t want her name associated with any of it – just the church – for she feared for her own safety if others thought she was rich.

But the contrary, she is not rich at all. When she finally stated how much money she had to her name, I almost froze. The possessions in my room alone total to a greater sum. And yet she never once mentioned something she wanted to buy for herself, except a home with a big kitchen – and even then, that would be for cooking meals for others. She never once said she hated those who had cheated her out of her money – the Lord would take care of that.

But I nearly cried when I heard all of this, because there was a twinge of “Death of a Salesman” in the whole dream … because it might never come true. Because poor health and dwindling savings eaten away by huge medical costs and a terrible insurance plan might prevent her from even stepping on the plane. Because maybe the rent money supposedly saved up by her niece might have all been spent already. And it was really then that it hit me, how much is left to do in this world that may seem to some to be already perfect and quite a nice place to live in. I realized that kindness is not just taking your family on a trip or giving a birthday gift to a friend, it’s also seeing the bigger picture, of never giving up on the possibility of bringing happiness to people you don’t even know, and maybe even people who have wronged you.

If an elderly woman with damaged knees, osteoporosis, and an infected eye, who finds cell phones and air conditioning to be luxuries, can still believe in the dream of building and giving happiness to those who need it most, I sure as heck better believe, too. Her accent was thick, her English broken … but every word that she uttered was crystal clear to my ears.