Lessons from the freeway

I live about 8 miles from my workplace, so it’s about 20 minutes each way everyday on the freeway, SPID to be precise.

During that time, I’ve had a lot of time to contemplate.

And it struck me the other day that life is a lot like driving on the freeway.

For example, on the freeway, you always want to avoid those big overloaded dump trucks with debris falling out at any time.

If you follow too closely behind, one of that debris might hit your windscreen and shatter it or if a bigger piece falls out, worse things might happen.

Or those old relics chugging along belching black fumes.

If you’re behind those, and if you’ve got the vents on outside air (which I prefer to do) be prepared to breathe in all that smoke.

Then there’re the huge 18 wheelers.

Luckily, most of the drivers of these monster trucks have gone to truck school and are courteous and do not try to flex their muscles.

I did have one scary moment once on a mountain road west of Kerrville when it appeared as if one of them was trying to run me off the road.

So stay clear of 18 wheelers if you can because size wise, you don’t stand a chance against them.

And then there’re those drivers who cut you off.

Once, I was in the fast lane and the driver in front of me was deliberately driving slowly.

So I changed to the next lane to overtake him and he immediately sped up so I could not get in front of him.

Knowing he was playing a game, I decided to bide my time and drove patently behind him and eventually he got tired of it and moved away.

So the freeway is full of hazards.

The key is to be on the constant lookout, to be alert.

I’ve found the best thing to do is to keep a distance between me and all the other vehicles—to create a so-called bubble.

That could be hard to do during rush hour but it works most of the time.

In life too, I’ve found the principle works well.

Stay away from the toxicity of the smoke belchers, the overloaders who will drop their trash on you, the inconsiderate people who are only out for themselves, the big bullies who know they’re bigger than you.

And especially those who are out to make your life miserable for no other reason than to have fun at your expense.

The good thing of course is that these are exceptions to the rules.

The good thing is that you don’t see smoke belchers everyday on the freeway, or overloaded dump trucks or inconsiderate people, or big bullies.

Because most of the time, people are remarkably courteous on the freeway.

Most of the time, driving home on the freeway is a pleasure, especially after a long day at work, a time for quiet contemplation and dreams, while listening to your favorite music.

Simon

After I returned from Germany in 1981, I spent two years in Petaling Jaya.

Petaling Jaya is a suburb of Kuala Lumpur and at that time, mostly a university town.

I had stayed there earlier with my brother Peter in 1975, after my Form 5 exams so I was familiar with it.

One of the friends I made when I was in PJ was Simon Lau.

Simon is a few years older than me and also from Sibu. His family ran and still runs a stationary store on Market Street in Sibu.

His younger brother Matthew was my classmate so I knew the family well.

But I only got to know Simon when I stayed in PJ at that time.

Simon is an extraordinary and inspiring human being.

Today, I suddenly thought of him as I made copies of a little booklet that he had given me, back so many years ago, for my students.

During my time there, Simon had gone to a seminar given by motivational speaker Dr. Denis Waitley and had taken a few pamphlets and booklets at the seminar.

And he had given one of them to me.

The booklet had a black cover and was about success and winning.

I loved the message in it and it went everywhere with me, to Boston, to Denton, and then to Corpus Christi.

A few years ago, I found it among my books and decided to share it with my students. Since then, I’ve been making copies of parts of the book for them.

It was Simon who taught me that money is not important.

His favorite saying was, as long as you have your health, you can beat any problem.

We hung out quite a bit but I remember one particular event, when he had moved out of his rental room.

The landlady had wanted to return his deposit and he had asked her to keep it, telling her he really appreciated her kindness and generosity.

That was a moment of revelation for me.

Yes, Simon not only talked the talk, he walked the walk. To him, it was all about being a good human being and not to look at money so heavily (as the Chinese would put it).

After I left PJ, we lost touch completely.

But every time I go back to Sibu, I always make it a point to stop by his parents’ store and ask how he’s doing.

I have actually scanned parts of the booklet and will post it in the near future.

Leo Brouwer

I mentioned in the earlier post that for years, I had tried to study Brouwer’s playing and what I discovered would fill a book.

Here’s a summary of what might be in that book.

First, phrasing. From Brouwer, I discovered that phrasing is all about energy.

A phrase is not just a bunch of notes. It’s a burst of energy and the key to phrasing is in knowing how to move that energy forward and then allow it to dissipate naturally.

Because musical phrases come from our speech patterns, it’s closely aligned to breathing.

There’re two distinct phases in breathing.

When we inhale, that’s the effort phase and when we exhale, that’s the release phase.

The important thing is that the release phase should be a complete letting go.

Because when we exhale, there’s no effort involved at all, and that’s how phrases should end, in a complete letting go.

And Brouwer is the only guitar player who plays that way.

Second, a focus on the melodic line instead of the metrical beat.

Otherwise known as linear phrasing.

Other players, especially older players play linearly too, but Brouwer is the only one who plays with rhythmic control.

This control is mostly in the subdivisions in the beat.

Williams is a master of rhythmic playing but even he rushes the subdivisions occasionally.

Third, a quality of aliveness. When you imbue your phrase with these natural flows of energy, of effort and release, you’re breathing life into your phrases.

They’re not just notes anymore but gestures, feelings, emotions.

Each phrase becomes alive with distinct characteristics.

So a phrase can become a violent outburst, or a cry, or a gust of wind.

In Brouwer’s hands, phrases become alive with the whole range of human emotions—from happy to sad, dance-like to humorous and comical.

The fourth thing is structure.

Classical music is a highly sophisticated art form and involves complex edifices, otherwise known as form.

Every musician knows these forms—sonata form, dance form, fugue form etc.

The skill of an artist is to know how to articulate these forms so that they become clear to the listener.

For example, a sonata is not just a simple song; it’s a mini drama with many characters.

There’s an intro, also called the exposition, then the conflicts between the characters, and then at the end the resolution.

All these have to be articulated so that they become clear to the listener.

Imagine a movie. It begins with a man walking along the road. That’s the intro.

And imagine a huge drama that ensues, with conflicts involving many twists and turns and then at the end, the man is walking down that road again.

The two scenes at the beginning and the end may be identical but the psychological contexts are totally different.

That’s structure.

It’s understanding that beginnings are beginnings and endings are endings and giving each one of them the appropriate weight and emotional underpinnings.

There’re other things in Brouwer’s playing that’re equally revolutionary and radical, like his articulation and how he uses it to create that sense of aliveness, or his technique.

But these are secondary elements. The four things I described above are the most basic and fundamental.

And they are what separate him from every other classical guitar player.

A short anecdote.

In 1988, I had just relocated to Corpus Christi. I decided that I would try to contact the maestro himself—Leo Brouwer.

Somehow I managed to get his telephone number from Alice Artzt in New York and I called him in Cuba.

Imagine my excitement when he picked up the phone.

I have forgotten what we talked about although I’m sure I would have told him about how much he had inspired me.

I remember however that he told me he would be in Monterrey, Mexico in spring of 1989.

Monterrey, Mexico is not that far from Corpus Christi so I told him I would go and meet him there.

I started making plans and the adjunct instructor at Del Mar at the time told me he would go with me.

But the night before we were supposed to leave, I got a call. Apparently the instructor had cold feet and decided to back out.

It was too late to try to find someone else to go with me and without a traveling partner; I decided it would be too risky for me to venture into Monterrey alone.

So I missed that one opportunity to meet the great artist.

However, as I tell my students, you don’t have to meet a person to study with him. All you need are his recordings.

In this sense, you can study with anyone you like, as long as you have access to their recordings.

John

In 1979, I won the New Zealand Federation of Guitar Societies National Cup. The competition was held in Hamilton each year.

As part of the prize, I went on a concert tour organized by the different societies.

That was how I met John Davey. He was, I think, the president of the society in Christchurch at the time and kindly offered to put me up when I was there.

And it was really providential.

Because that was how I discovered Leo Brouwer, the guitarist.

John had a small library of guitar records and among them was Brouwer’s debut album from DG.

By that time, I had outgrown most of the guitar players who were active at that time.

I found most of them lacking in depth and understanding of the music. Even or especially the famous players.

The problem with many guitar players is that we (and I include myself among them) came to classical music through the back door, so to speak.

We started by playing popular music and gravitated to classical from there.

And just because we can tinkle the strings and play the notes, we start thinking that that’s all there is to playing classical music.

But classical music is a highly evolved art music, filled with unwritten rules and conventions, things that can only be learned through complete immersion.

Most classical guitar players do not understand this or they do not bother, so they stay in a kind of musical limbo where they can play all the right notes but in a pop music kind of way with a heavy metrical feel.

Either that, or they start taking all kinds of freedom with the music, and pretty soon, there’s no rhythmic pulse in the music.

It’s for that reason that by that time, I had stopped listening to guitar players and listened only to piano players especially Glenn Gould.

Which is why I found Leo Brouwer’s playing so astounding and exciting.

Here was a guitarist who played with complete understanding of the music. His sense of rhythm and timing was especially a revelation.

I was so inspired by the record, John made me a cassette copy of the record which I still have today.

That record became a nightly ritual—I listened to it every night for years, trying to figure out what he was doing. And what I discovered, I can write a book about, but that’s for another day.

John and I became good friends after that.

Although he played the guitar, John was an architectural student and his girlfriend Jenny was a cellist.

John was a dreamer. I remember one day, he showed me the plans for a home that he had drawn for Jenny. The home was a cave-like structure built mostly underground.

I thought it was amazing.

The memories are a little sketchy but we kept in touch for a few years after I left New Zealand.

Again, I have no recollection of when or how we eventually lost contact.

Fast forward a few decades, and I found myself stuck at home, locked down by a global pandemic.

To pass the time, I began to google old friends and John was one of the first that came to mind.

I found him settled somewhere in Akaroa, a coastal town near Christchurch and messaged him on my iPhone. That’s the beauty of iPhones. If the other person also has an iPhone, you could message them anywhere in the world.

The iMessage went through and we arranged to talk on WhatsApp.

But like my conversation with Paul, it was like talking to a stranger.

We never bothered to reconnect again after that.

I just read an article about why friendships dissolve and one of the reasons is because of distance and separation.

Of course there’s no excuse not to write at least once a year, but when you’re young and life is a constant blur of activity, it’s hard to keep track of everything and every relationship.

So I plead guilty again to neglect of duty.

But the main thing is we did manage to reconnect for one brief moment, and that’s good enough.

Paul

I spent a year at Burnside High School in Christchurch in 1976 doing seventh form which would be upper sixth in Malaysia.

Burnside was a big school, reputedly the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere at that time.

While there, I became good friends with Paul Crooks.

Paul used to invite me to play bridge with him and his friends during recess. We were in the same form class (homeroom) or whatever they used to call it at that time.

Paul and I started hanging out together. I remember, in particular, a double date I had with him and his girlfriend at the time, Annette McKay.

We went to some kind of carnival or fair, I recall.

My date was Annette’s sister. Unfortunately, the sister and I didn’t hit it off very well.

The funny thing was, I actually got on really well with Annette, and was hoping the sister would have the same high spirit and energy as her, but it didn’t work out so that was the one and only time.

Paul and I used to kid round a lot.

I remember we used to talk about chartering a bus and filling it with girls and bringing them to Arthur’s Pass, our own personal harem, in a manner of speaking.

Needless to say, that plan never came to fruition.

But one of our plans did come to fruition. We both decided we would go to Wellington after graduation.

Paul planned to study journalism at the polytechnic, he was editor of the student newspaper at Burnside at the time.

I’ve always liked writing and had considered studying journalism but my heart was set on studying law at Victoria so I ended up going to the university.

In Wellington, we drifted apart.

I had switched to music and life became busy—no more silly high school talk of bringing a harem with us to Arthur’s Pass.

And of course, there were the girlfriends too.

So we drifted apart and I didn’t see him much while in Wellington.

But somehow, we kept in touch.

After graduating, I left to go to Europe and finally back to Malaysia.

We were still keeping in touch at the time and exchanged a few letters. In one of his letters, he even enclosed a copy of a computer magazine he had started called ‘Bits and Bytes.’

This was back in the early 1980’s so he was really ahead of his time.

I don’t exactly recall when we stopped writing. Perhaps it was when I left Malaysia to go to Boston.

Fast forward a few decades and one day, for no particular reason, I thought of Paul and began to wonder what had happened to him.

So I googled him and managed to find his phone number from a New Zealand school alumni site.

I was quite excited when he picked up the phone.

The conversation was brief.

He sounded reticent, but I found that he had gone to England, and then to Africa and had married a Nigerian, and was back in New Zealand.

It could be that too much time had passed, and both of us have moved far beyond our earlier friendship.

Or it could be that if a friendship is not maintained, it eventually dissolves and is hard to rekindle.

As I wrote earlier.

If you’ve neglected people, don’t expect them to receive you with open arms

That was the last time I spoke with Paul.

The story behind the story

I learned long ago not to take anything at face value—to always look for ‘the story behind the story.’

The other day, I had a sudden revelation about the Creed, a kind of ‘story behind the story’ epiphany.

Yes, of course it came to me while I was watching my favorite channel Daystar and one of its pastors who happened to be doing a series on the Creed.

After listening to the good pastor, I’m convinced that the Creed is not a prayer, it’s a control device in disguise.

Don’t take me wrong, I believe in the power of prayer.

Prayer has a way of tapping into some higher energy in the universe, and more than a few times, I’ve seen its power at work.

But there’re some prayers which are prayers (like the Lord’s) and some which are really attempts at control.

And the so-called Apostles Creed is one of them.

The product of the Council of Nicaea, the Creed codified the early church’s teachings and tightened control over its doctrine.

That’s why it reads like a legal document as it tries to cover every nuance of dogma and doctrine.

In fact, not too long ago, it went through another thorough revamp. Apparently, the powers that be decided that its wording was still not tight enough.

One of the changes was the addition of  ‘consubstantial’ to replace the phrase ‘one in being.’

I remember asking a priest, a Jesuit no less, about the rationale behind the new and improved Creed and he said, these things matter.

Yes, of course it matters.

Presumably, the Good Lord would be offended if the right legalese is not employed when it comes to describing the substance of the Son vis-à-vis the Father.

But of course, we all know that the ‘prayer’ is not directed at the Creator.

No, it’s directed at the prayee—to remind him of all these details of doctrine that he has to toe the line at.

Very subtle indeed.

But we all know religion was never designed to help its adherents, they’re tools to control the adherents’ thoughts.

The Christian church is amazing in its self contradictions.

On the one hand, it’s all about love, about kindness and compassion.

But if you do not believe those fixed doctrines of the church that are so clearly spelled out in the Creed, you’ll burn in hell, not for one day or one month or one year but for all eternity!

How seemingly normal sane people can reconcile these absurd contradictions in their minds is quite beyond comprehension.

Mr. Ou Baholyodhin

I admit I can still be a little naïve sometimes and blindly believe things that I read or hear about.

Take the case of Mr. Ou Baholyodhin.

I was introduced to him by my friend Ambrose.

Ambrose is a super enlightened individual when it comes to design and he’s a successful architect in Malaysia with many big projects under his belt.

Back quite a few years ago, Ambrose showed me a book in his library called ‘Living with Zen’ by Mr B.

I fell in love with the book straightaway.

It was written in the spare manner that I admire and I identified with the sentiments of minimalism expressed in the book.

In the book, Mr B mentioned that he had been downsizing to the point where he could fit everything he had into a suitcase.

And I believed him.

Until today, when I read one of his recent interviews (dated November 13, 2019) online.

And found out that he still has ‘3-4 boots, 6 pairs of leather shoes, and maybe 10 sneakers,’ besides his favorite footwear called Haavaianas, apparently some special kind of flip flops.

I can just picture him trying to fit all those into a suitcase, not to mention his clothes and all the other paraphernalia of being a fashion and design guru.

It must be a big suitcase.

I used to think of myself as a somewhat skeptical person, but evidently still not skeptical enough.

As they say, don’t believe everything you read.

Notwithstanding that, I still think ‘Living with Zen’ is a masterpiece of design writing.

Gratitude and bitterness

It has often been said that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference.

To which I’d add that the opposite of gratitude is not ingratitude but bitterness.

Ingratitude still acknowledges that you have received something, but bitterness indicates that you feel you have received nothing.

That’s why gratitude is so important if we do not want to fall into the trap of bitterness.

Because its absence or lack thereof usually ends up in bitter feelings.

Gratitude focuses our attention on what we have received.

Bitterness focuses our attention on what we have not received.

In an imperfect world, it’s all too easy to focus on the latter rather than the former.

We tend to take the things we receive for granted, hence the lack of gratitude, but the minute we do not get something that we’re expecting to get, we feel we’ve been wronged.

Luckily, there’s an easy way to avoid being trapped into bitterness.

Do not take anything for granted.

Focus on the things you have received instead of the things you have not received.

When we don’t expect anything and it happens to be given to us, we feel gratitude.

And if for some reason it is not given to us, well, we’re not supposed to get it anyway.

Case closed, no cause for any bitterness.

Bitterness

Recently, I’ve been thinking about bitterness.

It’s an inevitable process that comes with age and experience, I guess.

First, because you do not want to be trapped in its vise and become bitter yourself, but mostly because you begin to see it manifested everywhere.

And it starts to make you wonder why.

Why all this bitterness?

The answer, I’ve begun to realize, is mostly due to unreasonable expectations.

If you expect a certain thing from life, and you don’t get it, it’s easy to feel that you’ve been wronged and become bitter.

The key word here is unreasonable.

Are those expectations reasonable?

And most of the time, those expectations are not reasonable.

For example, if you’ve been behaving like an a-hole towards everyone and you still expect them to be nice to you.

If you’ve neglected people, and you still expect them to receive you with open arms.

If you haven’t been doing your work well, and you get fired.

It comes back to that central question.

When you feel you’ve been wronged, ask yourself, what have you done to deserve that treatment?

But of course, bitter people do not want to face that fact. They’ve been wronged and that’s all they want to feel.

No sense of responsibility, or accountability, or remorse.

Just a sense of grievance and bitterness towards everybody because they have not given you what you wanted.

In other words, an entitled mindset, where you feel you deserve everything without having to give anything back.