Peter and the Wolf

This past Sunday afternoon, I attended a family concert at the Minnesota Orchestra’s Sommerfest.  Peavey Plaza overflowed with people and music, food and drinks.  Children chased each other through the lobby while parents tried to catch them.  In the Orchestra Hall auditorium, I sat in the first tier overlooking the main floor where squirming little bodies gave the illusion of an undulating mass.

The one tall (6 feet 5 inches, according to Sam at the Inside the Classics blog) conductor I know of, Mischa Santora, conducted the Minnesota Orchestra in a program of Russian favorites — Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmilla Overture, short pieces based on Russian folksongs by Liadov that reminded me of poems, selections from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf with actors from Theater de la Jeune Lune acting out the story.  In summer, concert dress changes from white tie and tails for a conductor, to white dinner jacket and black tux pants.  Mr. Santora introduced each selection after the Glinka.  I thought the Liadov was a little too quiet and light for the children in the audience, but I really enjoyed these whimsical and lyrical pieces.  The Prokofiev was a joy and wonderment, from the actors introducing each character to the wolf on a mini-bike to the blue wading pool that functioned as the duck pond.  The music is fun, too, and after the first 3 pieces on the program that had an adult flair, it was refreshing to visit the world of child’s play and imagination.  Mr. Santora did an excellent job and the orchestra has never sounded better or more expressive.  It is sad that Theater de la Jeune Lune has disbanded due to financial difficulties and they will no longer be offering their unique brand of theater to Twin Citians.

I’d heard stories of how often conductors break their batons, but I’d never actually seen one break a baton.  Mr. Santora was conducting the Tchaikovsky and brought his baton down a bit too hard, hitting his music stand.  The baton snapped and the pieces flew into the viola section.  He didn’t miss a beat, and conducted the rest of the concert without a baton. 

When I was researching conductors and conducting, I wondered how attached a conductor might get to a particular baton.  That’s not the case at all.  Nor does a conductor have several special batons that he might use according to his mood or type of concert.  Batons are expendable.  They are a tool.  A baton can help the orchestra musicians see the beat, but it’s not a required tool for a conductor to use.  Years ago a conductor developed “tennis elbow” and his doctor advised him to stop using the baton and conduct without it.  So, how a conductor holds the baton, moves it, how the baton influences how he moves his hand and arm, can cause him injury.  Only recently I learned that the Minnesota Orchestra’s stage manager is an expert in making batons for conductors.  And he is kept busy…..

Now I need to consider how Evan Quinn deals with batons, especially in the second book of the Perceval series.  As a guest conductor, who makes his batons?  Are they available to buy in music stores?  Or perhaps I’ll have him change his thinking about conducting with a baton and let him conduct without one for a while….

Money, Money, Money….

During the last two weeks, I’ve been dealing with a service provider over billing errors.  The first invoice was correct.  On the following four invoices for the exact same service, they had either changed the name of the service or doubled it and charged me twice as much.  Insurance covers the service, so I’m not responsible for the entire amount.  However, four of the invoices are incorrect and I have disputed them.  I am waiting to hear the verdict on their review of two of them, but I’ve heard about the other two and the verdict was that their invoice was correct as is.  So, I’m in the process of drafting an appeal letter to continue to dispute the invoice. 

I bring up this experience with billing errors because I’ve been very suspicious that the billing errors are in fact a way for the vendor to get paid more than they are actually owed because people don’t always examine their invoices carefully.  Indeed, a friend has cautioned me that business consultants have been known to advise some businesses on how to do this.  And why would a business want to rip off a good customer?  Money. 

Think about it.  In America right now, the purpose of life is to acquire money.  We need money to live as much as we need clean air and water.  Money buys food, clothing, transportation, shelter, medicine, and household necessities like toilet paper, chairs, a stove, a refrigerator, a phone, etc.  As my father used to say, “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”  In order to feed ourselves, we must find a job that will pay us money.  That job will probably be with a company either privately or publicly owned.  The people who own the company want their company to make money for them, the more the better, so they are interested in cutting expenses in order to increase profit.  Which could mean cutting wages or eliminating raises….  Or double-billing a good customer….

A couple years ago, I began thinking about how money has metastasized throughout human life and how it affects human behavior.  People marry for money.  They kill for money.  They steal money.  They gamble to win money.  They invest money and gamble that way.  They acquire money to have power and influence.  The amount of money one has determines what one buys, what services one can have, where one lives, etc.  What would life be like without money?  How could money be completely eliminated from the planet?  Would we just replace it with another thing like money?  These questions led me to ask myself what money does, really.  It is a way to define value, what something (or someone) is worth.  So, in order to eliminate money, we’d have to find a different way to define value.

In Perceval, I decided to create in my 2048 world an international “Value Commission” consisting of representatives from all countries.  This commission would have a website where people could contribute their comments and ideas.  The purpose of the commission would be to re-define value and to identify the steps for eliminating money gradually from our world.  It would need to be gradual in order to protect all the people whose jobs depend on an economic system, e.g. banks, economists, financial advisors, etc.  In Europe, the first step had already begun, i.e. gradually phasing out the use of cash in favor of all-purpose bankcards.  How much money a person had would be on paper only, and money would be transferred by computer from bank to a retail outlet’s account or a landlord’s account, etc.  So, one of the first things Evan notices while on his European tour is that few people carry cash.  He must carry cash because he’s not in the European banking system.  In fact, in America, cash exists as it always has.  In America, the New Economic Party elite use money as the incentive for workers to produce.

Evan’s question, and mine, about this is: would people accept a different definition of value that did not involve money at all?  And the larger question: could people really imagine a world without money?

To be continued…..

Reading Like a Writer: “Two for the Dough”

Recently, a friend loaned me Janet Evanovich’s second Stephanie Plum novel, Two for the Dough.  Stephanie Plum is a 30-year-old almost novice bounty hunter who works for her bail bondsman cousin, Vinnie, in Trenton, NJ.  In this novel, her job is to find a certain Kenny Mancuso and return him to jail.  Throughout the novel, she works to achieve this goal, most often thwarted by other people — her Grandma Mazur who enjoys attending viewings at funeral homes for entertainment and a little slapstick; Joe Morelli, a cop with whom she has a long history (they dated in high school) and palpable sexual tension; Spiro Stiva, a funeral director caught up in criminal activity; and Kenny himself.

As a writer, I love to see how another writer presents the characters and sets each apart as an individual, the dialogue, character development and description. 

Stephanie is both the main character and point-of-view character.  Evanovich captures the attitudes and working class life of New Jersey in this character superbly.  She’s a tough cookie who has a hamster named Rex for a pet.  Evanovich shows the reader who Stephanie is, her behavior, in the context of relationships and action with other characters such as her family, the cops and the slime balls she pursues.  What she thinks about other people comes through in her thoughts about their appearance, voices, and what she knows about their backgrounds.  Stephanie’s world is a complex and rich one.  And she is unique.  Her view of the other characters in the story and how she responds to them makes them unique also.

The dialogue captures the rhythms, slang and attitudes of that area of New Jersey.  The novel is cinematic in its focus on dialogue and action, both of which rang true for me.  What I loved, though, was the comic action evolving organically out of character, dialogue and situation.  This was done brilliantly and made for some hilarious moments in the story.  Grandma Mazur, especially, has some wonderful scenes with corpses in caskets at funeral home viewings that would be over the top if her character hadn’t been set up so well beforehand. 

This novel is a plot-driven story so the action is far more important than character development.  I usually prefer more character development, digging deep into the main character for motivation, background, desires, etc.  But Stephanie is a worthy vehicle to drive the story forward as she works to deal with the conflicts and obstacles that arise in her path and to achieve her goal.

I also usually prefer more description, especially of the landscape of the place in which the story occurs and how it reflects the characters and their lives.  Evanovich is very stingy with describing the physical settings, giving just enough to differentiate scenes. 

Would I recommend this novel?  For pure entertainment and some good laughs, yes.  I enjoyed my reading experience and might pick up another Stephanie Plum novel in the future.

Rejection

After waiting ten months for a response, today I finally received a response: a rejection from a literary magazine that I’d sent an excerpt from Perceval.  Disappointment.  And to think I’d just read a quote from Michael Cunningham (The Hours) in the August 2008 issue of The Writer earlier today:  “A novelist is more than anything else someone who refuses to stop writing and who can stand disappointment.”

I don’t think it’s a matter of being able to stand disappointment as it is knowing oneself and how to deal with it.  I will allow myself a little time to feel the disappointment, maybe half an hour.  Then I put the rejection letter away (usually a form letter, by the way) and begin working on where I’ll submit the story next.  Wallowing in the disappointment, or pity, or revenge fantasies serve no productive purpose and definitely will not lead to publication anymore than writing a letter to the editor who sent the rejection.

The only remedy for rejection is to get back to work, whether it’s writing or marketing….