Category Archives: slice of NYC life

They Had A Vision

I dragged myself to the workshop in a state of exhaustion this afternoon, half blind with fatigue for reasons too tedious to detail.  I arrived first, five minutes before the session was supposed to start.  Tim got there a few minutes later.  Luckily, the kids didn’t arrive until five minutes after they were scheduled to arrive.  It was an odd day, slight underwater feeling, everybody sort of floating around jellyfish-like.  I don’t think more than 20 frames were shot all session, the usual number is two or three hundred frames.

I called two kids over, gave them headphones and the three of us began making a soundtrack. I couldn’t get the wonderful new Audiobus interface to work, but I gave them a taste of the cool sounds and after a few minutes of futility, apologized for not having had time to learn it well enough before the session.  I shut it down and switched to garageband, which I know well, and which neither of these kids had used.

Within moments Lily was moving her hands purposefully on the touch-screen.  They recorded an adorable track of childish bickering, but neither of them liked it much.  I deleted it as they watched and they did it again, less contentious and still adorable.  They still didn’t like it.   I told them to leave it, we could mute it.  Lily dragged a drum loop they chose into the track.  I told them to listen to the beat and play along.  I urged them to play only a bit, since they could always add more on the next track, and it was impossible to subtract if they otherwise liked the track.   They pulled up another mic and began pounding the table in time with the drums.   They played a piano together.  I took my headphones off and walked over to see what the animators were up to, after muting the piano at their request.

When I got back I saw they’d deleted their adorable vocal track, along with the piano.  I was dismayed, and told them so.   They were too busy to pay much attention to my dismay, another girl was with them now, drumming on the table.  I put a pair of headphones on her and walked away to start cleaning up, as Lily’s twin brother laughed, headphones on, pounding the table.

As we were leaving I said to Tim, “that’s what happens when you let the inmates have complete control of the asylum, you get no input into the output.”   Tim commented that kids always find their own voices weird and distasteful when they first hear them played back, and that’s probably why they’d wiped out the adorable tracks.

I walked a good way with the heavy pack on my back, and a duffel bag hanging at the end of my arm.  I was actually too tired to stop walking, and as the temperature began to drop I paused to pull my hood over my head.  I sat on a bench.  I ate a slice of pizza and took Excedrin.  I eventually got on the subway and listened to Bill Moyers when I was not nodding out, and when I was.

Made it up to my apartment, took my clothes off and got under the covers.  Charging the iPad I decided to listen to the track, see what they’d wound up with.  I’ll be damned, they had a vision.  They weren’t going for adorable, it was the percussion they were after.   Two tracks of poly-rhythmic table banging, along with the drum track.  They had an idea they were going for.  I was impressed.  They hadn’t opted for any of the fancy gimmicks they’d tried in garageband, they were going for the real thing.   Playing the only instrument they had, the table, they jammed, creating a convincing jungle of percussion.

Mike Gets It

One of the after school programs where we do the workshop provides a helper, a counselor, a guy we’ll call Mike (since that’s his name).  Mike came in the first time with a drill sergeant demeanor, herding the kids, telling them sternly to stay in their seats and be quiet.

This was not really the vibe we need in the workshop, the first rule is move around to where you’re comfortable, keep moving if you like.  The second is to talk about what you’re planning to do.  

There was a minor clash that first time, the second time was a little easier.  By the third session Mike felt no need to discipline the kids, since they were all busy and involved with what they were doing.  Last week I pointed something out to Mike.

“Damn…” he said, and I nodded.  Four kids were animating at the animation stand by themselves, two moving the things on the animation stand, two photographing.  

“And in the full two-hour workshop another couple of kids would be at the computer editing and working on the soundtrack while the other kids were animating,” I pointed out.   He was impressed.

This week Mike was animating.  Sitting by ten year-old Jacob, the two of them enthralled by a Muybridge sequence I’d shown them,  Mike said “I’ll help you,” and was soon diligently working on a sequence of a running man.

By the end of the session Mike was as giddy as many of the kids sometimes get after a session of animation.

“Lily,” I called out to the girl who was trying to get her book back from Mike, who was holding it just out of her reach, “leave Mike alone.”

And Mike, rather than barking at the kids to stay in their seats, threw his head back and laughed.

Music Sweet Music

At the end of a hectic animation session on too little sleep Thursday, ignoring a couple of the fathers, who were waiting to pick up their kids after the workshop, I assembled the wild little animators around me on the carpet to do the soundtrack.   Loopy, a wonderful multi-track looper app was open on the iPad, a five-way headphone splitter plugged in.   Four kids and I put on the headphones.

I pointed to the clock, it was 4:55.  Not enough time, I noted, we really needed the 25 minutes I was trying to get while they were ignoring my attempts to get the room cleaned up and ready, but anyway…

I had them listen to the beat, which Amza had tapped in to set the tempo for the metronome.  My only instruction:  do something along with the beat when I point at you.  I realized quickly it was best to give each a track of their own, to be able to fade things in and out and get rid of any noise, while preserving anything that might be great on its own track.  It also kept the rest of them quiet and allowed the one making the track to hear him or herself think.  It is crucial to be able to hear yourself when making music with others.

“When I point to you, say how old you are” and I pointed to Amza who rapped out, “I am eight eight eight eight”, and then to Natalie who sang “I am Te-ehn!” and around the circle it went, Kazu, who deadpanned “I am ten” then Auden, “I am eight eight eight eight” and so forth.  Amza then sang a ditty right out of the history of Afghanistan, where his mother is from.  Natalie sang a wild and melodic loop that sounded like “Magical Purpose” sung three times, but which I realized, after 1,000 listenings during overdubs, was probably “Magical Puppies.”  The others all kicked in manic parts, I said goodbye, and they were off.   I stayed behind to finish cleaning up and then took my assistant for a burger.

When I got home and began mixing it down I was struck by the variety, the creativity, the fact that they were all singing in the same key, and none of them did anything that conflicted with the beat.  I was amazed as I began to dub a bass track and some more percussion to go with the metronome that was on the track.  I added an electric piano playing a simple pop chord change.  It was rocking.

Then the devil got into me.  I couldn’t stop.  There’s a piano playing the theme, then a bluesy riff that goes against the beat and the bass line.  It was impossible to resist adding a guitar part, inspired by Stochelo Rosenberg by way of Eric Clapton, then another, then a tenor ukulele.  Every time I listened to the finished track I thought of something else that needed to be added.  And I went back and added it.

Played back against the already frenetic animation, it’s useless as a soundtrack.  Very good to listen to while walking a few miles, as I intend to do presently, but relentlessly hectic, preventing the mind from focusing on what it is watching, turning the animation into a nightmare of over-amped wildness, instead of a cool melange of new and groovy ideas.

Oh, well.  The technique works beautifully, and augurs well going forward, even if not the hopped up use I put this first experiment to.  As I told a kid, who sounded truly shocked to hear it, we learn the most by trying something and failing– and then trying it again.

I know whereof I speak.

Saving A Life

I was running late for the children’s animation workshop today.  The weather service had put the area on tornado watch, I heard on the radio.  We have tornadoes now in NYC.  One ripped through here a couple of years ago, tore hundreds of trees out by the roots.  There was talk of drenching rain.  I had a call, talked for a few minutes, looked at the clock, realized I just had time to make it, if I ran, and if I also got lucky.  I jumped into the shower when I should have already been on the train.

As the water began to hit the tub I saw a spider down near the drain trying to scurry away, but she couldn’t get any traction with the droplets gathering on the side of the tub.  I shut the water, with the thought that I was crazy, I was already late.  Reached for a piece of toilet paper, coaxed the spider on to it, put the spider and toilet paper on the sink.  Showered.  When I got out the spider was walking on the sink, kind of shaking the water off its legs.  I smiled, jumped into my clothes, put on the heavy back pack and ran down to the subway which I caught with 5 seconds to spare.

Rushing to the workshop, and arriving, dripping with sweat, four minutes before I had to start it, I didn’t stop to think that the ahimsa bit wouldn’t have worked out so well for me and my little friend if the critter at the bottom of the tub had been a cockroach.

What We’re Doing Here

It’s a mystery, why we don’t greet each day as the unequivocal blessing that it is.  My mother, her internal organs riddled with a million tiny cancerous tumors, was given a few months to live back in 1992; she lived another 23 years.   It is unfair to single her out, but outside of loving opera, and laughing when something was funny, and seeing the dark humor in things sometimes, she did not greet every new day as a blessing.  Unfair indeed to single my poor, dead mother out, because she was by no means alone in this.  I am trying to think of someone who greets every day as a blessing, and I’m not coming up with anyone that I know.

But, look at it seriously.   Everyone has reasons to complain, feel bitter, cheated, to hold on to anger about many things that are truly aggravating.   All this is true, work often sucks, people are often thoughtless, or worse, the world is increasingly distracted, run by greedy, sometimes evil bastards, and it’s hard to get a thoughtful grunt most of the time out of most people, even those closest to us.  Everyone has their list of grievances.  But look at it seriously.  A hundred blessings every day.  Seriously.  

As a young man, delivering envelopes and packages on a bike so as not to take part in a corrupt and hateful materialistic society, I found myself in an elevator that wasn’t moving.  I was paid per delivery and this had been a day of endless delays.  I wasn’t paid for waiting, unless I waited more than twenty minutes.  I’d waited nineteen times for nineteen minutes that day and I was doing a slow burn in the dingy service elevator that sat, doors closed.  The corrugated metal cell smelled of sweat and urine.   I grumbled to an older woman that it wasn’t my day.   She was quick to correct me, “Don’t say it’s not your day.  If you’re alive, it’s your day!”  I nodded, gave her something between a grimace and a smile and eventually the elevator began its slow climb to the floor where I dropped off the important envelope and got a signature on my ticket so I could get paid.

The other night I was sitting outside the 24 hour laundromat as my clothes enjoyed the amusement park inside, spinning wildly in the dryers.  It was a cool night, a delightful night, really.  It had been muggy, but now there was a mild breeze that was the perfect temperature.  I sat in a chair enjoying it.  A woman walked up, somewhat painfully, put her bags down, sat heavily and looked over at me about to complain.  “I was going to start complaining that my feet hurt,” she said and I smiled.   I immediately thought of that old woman on the elevator thirty something years ago.   I told her she decided not to complain when she felt how good that breeze felt, and she smiled, and agreed.   I told her about what the woman in the elevator said to me, she nodded and looked relieved.

I told her the outline of the story of Wavy Gravy’s life, as told in Saint Misbehavin’.  He’d been a poet, extrovert and a trouble maker and had been beaten by cops at several civil rights rallies.  He had his back broken by cops twice.  The second time was really bad, he was laid up for months, the operation hadn’t seemed to have fixed his back, he was in a lot of pain, couldn’t get out of bed, became very depressed.  A friend convinced him to visit a nearby hospital for kids with cancer and to stop feeling sorry for himself, go help some kids with real problems.   He passed a costume shop and bought a clown nose.  He went to the cancer ward and began performing for the kids.  He said a light went on in the world for him interacting with those kids.  He went every day, rehabilitated his back, soon was walking without a cane.  Went on, with a doctor friend, to found an organization that has restored the sight to countless poor people in Asia, Africa, everywhere.   He learned that going to demonstrations dressed as a clown no cop would ever beat on him again.   What cop wants to be on TV beating the crap out of a clown?

“That’s right,” said the woman two chairs over, and asked me the name of the movie again.  I told her and mentioned how much it had inspired me, and then excused myself to see how my clothes were doing.  They were doing very well.

A Walk in the Park

After six hours or so in the chair reading advice on marketing, watching videos on social media, networking, what makes a video viral (most often celebrities tweeting about them, surprisingly enough), fundraising, and getting updates from a friend who was putting in a hard day’s mostly futile research on behalf of my nonprofit, I took a walk.  

Balmy day, the nearby park was green and lovely, dotted with people out enjoying the summer afternoon.  As I came over the hill to the tidal basin by Spuyten Duyvil I saw that it was low tide.   The open metal sphere, a work of public art built in the middle of that usually watery expanse, was sitting on mud.   There was mud in every direction for a few hundred feet.   I made my way to the end of the little island that looks west, over the treacherous stretch of river the Dutch named “Spouting Devil”, to the cliffs across the Hudson.

I saw on the mud, each a few hundred feet from the water in the channel, two young women in bathing suits on landlocked water motorcycles, large jet ski type vehicles intended for slicing through water.  In the channel two men were in the water.   The tide had apparently gone out quickly, the boats had become stuck on wet, sticky land, and the men had somehow made it into the water while the women stayed on the large padded seats.

The men hailed some passing jet skis plowing through the channel and these bison-sized one passenger boats approached the shore, but were careful not to get too close.  “We have a rope!” called one of the men in the water.   He thought it was a great plan.   The jet skis backed up, like skittish horses, it was not hard to see their reasoning.   It was like watching a scene by the watering hole on the nature channel, the drinking animals lifting their heads in unison, the one in the water already doomed.

When I left the park an hour later I could see, from another angle, that the jet skis were still firmly on the mud, while others were skittering in the water nearby, but not getting too close.

Nobody likes getting stuck on the mud in low tide, I’ve noticed.

Fan Mail from A Troll

(Pardon the formatting, wordpress is having some fun with me)
Got this email about a month back:
I saw  your site and was filled with wonder. Do you need an event planner and fundraiser? As I am both I also have experience with volunteers. I currently work with homeless families as well as homeless individuals suffering with the HIV virus.

I would love to work with you as your are doing amazing things with small ones!

Sincerely,

Ed Snowden

Although I felt like somebody might be sadistically playing with me, sending exactly the kind of email I’ve been waiting for, signed with a famous and controversial name, I wrote:
Thanks for your kind words.  We could certainly use an event planner and fundraiser.  Where are you located, Ed? 
Then these two: 
On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 1:59 PM, Ed Snowden  wrote:
Hi  I am in NYC.
Thanks for getting back to me.
All the best,
Ed Snowden
On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Ed Snowden wrote:
Hi I am in NYC.

Thanks for getting back to me.

All the best,

Ed Snowden

A few days later I took another step into the troll’s trap:
The coincidence of your name being the same as the young man’s who revealed the NSA data-harvesting and surveillance program has given some at our organization pause.  I’ve been told this coincidence has to be some kind of prank by a friend, a misguided attempt to poke a little fun at an organization with a successful program that is currently hanging on by a thread.

 
I prefer to think that you are experienced in event planning and fundraising and have some kind of links you can send showing some of your work.  If you send me some samples of your work I will be glad to have a look at them.
Troll:
 
Never mind. This has been my name for eons I am named for my dad and grand dad  and the fact that it bothers you means I should keep looking for work, I am an excellent fund raiser and event planner but I have no time for what my grandmum would call “foolishness” I wish you well.  
Still acting with characteristic (and foolish) good faith, I wrote:
No offense intended, Ed, though clearly it seems to have been taken.  I didn’t say the coincidence of your name bothered me, in fact, I think the other ES did a brave and important thing.  I merely passed on a concern and asked you for some examples of your work.  If you read the second paragraph you will see my hope, and good faith, expressed quite clearly.  
To which the troll replied:
Thank you for your response. I am not offended merely annoyed. 
I think your program sounds amazing but I think I should keep looking for an organization that will allow me to make a difference as that is what is most important to me!
 NYC is a big town with oodles of places that need skilled volunteer and event managers so I shall keep looking.    Again thank you for your kind reply.

(Ms.) Ed Snowden 

As I am out of kind replies, and the (Ms.) before its name would make me hesitate to offer a well-intended bitch slap, I leave this up here, for whatever grotesque value it may have to someone.

Heat Wave in NYC

It’s humid as hell during a heat wave in NYC.   Sekhnet does not sleep enough, even under ideal circumstances.   This morning she had to be up at 6:00 a.m., to water her garden before heading off to Katonah for a work assignment.   At 1 a.m. she was still doing something.  I urged her to go to sleep and she eventually fell asleep on the couch.  It was around 80 degrees downstairs and moist.

When I went upstairs an hour later, where it was several degrees hotter, she’d crept up there somehow.   She was on the bed, splayed out like a star fish, with both tower fans pointed at her.   There was little point trying to squeeze on the small bed with her so I let her sleep and went into the other room to pound at the keys of this computer.  

By 4:00 I was ready for sleep, pointed one of the fans slightly northward and went horizontal on a northerly sliver of bed.  She stirred, made some ridiculous remarks, only half awake, and then fell back asleep.   It was too hot to sleep, but she flopped an arm affectionately over me.  A few minutes later I slipped out of bed for a cool drink.   Could not shut my mind off.  Read a bit.  At 4:45 or so I tried again.  Then it was light outside and birds began sending out their tweets.  Sekhnet’s friend “Pietro” was back, imitating a dozen other calls and then singing his manic, signature “Pietro, Pietro, Pietro!!!”

“My father always liked Pietro,” she told me once.  Her father named him Pietro.  I knew she’d be glad he was back.  She was.

Weird babble began, her odd comments, my amused answers, her soft, slightly mad chortles.  The bed was hot, and she was still mostly asleep.  Soon the radio alarm went off, it was probably about 5:30.  Sekhnet likes to hit snooze as many times as possible before she gets up, but this time she was too wiped out to reach for the snooze bar.  I was almost asleep when her other alarm, a weird, electronic chiming guaranteed to get a sleeping person’s attention, went off.  Then, seemingly, a third alarm began to bleat.

“Sekhnet’s house of horrors,” I said grimly, to a cackle from Sekhnet.   

“Wake me up in five minutes,” she said, amid the cacophony of alarms.

I told her I would, if I wasn’t lucky enough to be unconscious in five minutes.   I wasn’t lucky enough, but she was soon enough up and out of bed, heading to the garden.