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HAVE A PLAN
"There's a difference between knowing the path
and walking the path."
—Morpheus
"All plans don't go as planned.
But have a plan."
—Robert Glasper
"Everyone has a plan until they get
punched in the face."
—Mike Tyson
FROM THE ARCHIVES
March 4, 1999
Informance @ EC Cabaret
San Francisco, California
R5-D4
I keep thinking about R5-D4.
He was all set for the big adventure, when out of the blue: poof. Bad motivator. Left behind.
A tragedy, but I bet it didn't even bother him that much at the time. After all, astromech droids are optimists by nature, and each of us is the hero of our own story. R5-D4 probably thought "Just a setback. No worries. This is only the beginning. Another opportunity will come along soon."
How could he have known that those fleeting few moments, during which he was the chosen one, were actually the peak of his role in the big adventure?
I bet he's still out there in the desert, wondering what the hell happened.
He probably thinks his best days are still ahead. Maybe he's right.
For all we know, he could be in great condition now.
Motivator repaired, fully operational. Ready to serve.
May the force be with him.
ADAPT
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive,
nor the most intelligent, but the one
most responsive to change.”
—Charles Darwin
FROM THE ARCHIVES - On MLK's Birthday
I wonder what Dr. King would think of American society in 2013.
Would he be pleased by the election and re-election of President Obama?
Would he be gratified that race relations have improved overall?
Or would he be heartbroken to learn that race, class and income disparities continue to divide us?
I hope he would be heartened by the awareness that—at least among many of us—his dream is still very much alive.
~DM
January 17, 1993
Dmitri Matheny & The SOMA Ensemble
Strength to Love: A Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.
To benefit the I Have A Dream Foundation
Yoshi's Nightspot
Oakland, California
Greg Bridges, master of ceremonies
Dmitri Matheny, flugelhorn
Harvey Wainapel, alto saxophone
Regi Oliver, tenor saxophone
John Heller, guitar
John Wiitala, bass
Eddie Marshall, drums
ON COMEBACKS
FAILING & FLYING by Jack Gilbert
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
TOTEM
ADVICE TO SELF AT MIDLIFE
THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS ~William Butler Yeats
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
WOODSTOCK by Joni Mitchell
I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, "Where are you going?"
And this he told me...
I'm going on down to Yasgur's Farm,
I'm gonna join in a rock and roll band.
I'm gonna camp out on the land.
I'm gonna get my soul free.
We are stardust.
We are golden.
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.
Then can I walk beside you?
I have come here to lose the smog,
And I feel to be a cog in something turning.
Well maybe it is just the time of year,
Or maybe it's the time of man.
I don't know who I am,
But you know life is for learning.
We are stardust.
We are golden.
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.
By the time we got to Woodstock,
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky,
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation.
We are stardust.
Billion year old carbon.
We are golden.
Caught in the devil's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.
BETRAYAL
"You're far too trusting."
—Grand Moff Tarkin
"A true friend stabs you in the front."
—Oscar Wilde
"I know all about the swindles and schemes in this dead-end town.
You got lied to, kid, by the people who are closest to you."
—Mitch Conner
NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY by Robert Frost
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE
still a one-man bomb disposal unit.
J'ACCUSE!
A man with the unique ability to create — out of pure energy — literally anything he thinks of!
Whether he chooses to be creative or destructive, the only limits are his own willpower and imagination.
How to ruin the brilliant concept that made this unconventional hero so great?
Have him carry the most banal, conventional weapon there is.
Give him a gun.
WHERE THE HEART IS
"Where we love is home,
home that our feet may leave,
but not our hearts."
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
"It’s a funny thing about coming home.
Looks the same, smells the same, feels the same.
You’ll realize what’s changed is you."
—Benjamin Button
"If you get far enough away
you'll be on your way back home."
—Tom Waits
AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT
“I think we musicians are emissaries.
Every time we go before the public,
we’re there to make converts.”
—Hazel Dorothy Scott
"Developing an audience feels like being a politician.
You've got to stand in front of the subway and
meet people and kiss babies and literally
convert people one after the other."
—Chris Botti
"An audience is the only group I can tolerate, and
the audience wouldn't be a group if it wasn't for me."
—George Carlin
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID
I don't say he's a great man.
Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog.
Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person. You called him crazy... no, a lot of people think he's lost his... balance. But you don't have to be very smart to know what his trouble is. The man is exhausted. A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man. He works for a company thirty-six years this March, opens up unheard-of territories to their trademark, and now in his old age they take his salary away. Are they any worse than his sons?
When he brought them business, when he was young, they were glad to see him. But now his old friends, the old buyers that loved him so and always found some order to hand him in a pinch--they're all dead, retired. He used to be able to make six, seven calls a day in Boston. Now he takes his valises out of the car and puts them back and takes them out again and he's exhausted. Instead of walking he talks now. He drives seven hundred miles, and when he gets there no one knows him anymore, no one welcomes him.
And what goes through a man's mind, driving seven hundred miles home without having earned a cent? Why shouldn't he talk to himself? Why? When he has to go to Charley and borrow fifty dollars a week and pretend to me that it's his pay? How long can that go on? How long? You see what I'm sitting here and waiting for? And you tell me he has no character? The man who never worked a day but for your benefit?
When does he get the medal for that?
~From Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
MATURITY?
"People like doing what they used to do,
after they've stopped being able to do it."
—Brick Pollitt
"Adulthood and what they call maturity is the
slow acceptance of what you will never be."
—Bryan Callen
"Nothing is permanent in this wicked world.
Not even our troubles."
—Charles Chaplin
SOUND THE CALL
Here are two photos of yours truly performing with the Interlochen Arts Academy jazz ensemble, taken nearly 30 years apart.
The top image is from our final "stud orch" concert at Interlochen's Corson Auditorium in Fall 1984. The bottom is from the academy's 50th anniversary tour to San Francisco's Kanbar Hall in Spring 2012.
Hard to believe that's the same person! (Even the horn has grown fat...)
THE NEO-LUDDITE
The Neo-Luddite is an activist technophobe who rejects innovation as evil. His anarcho-primitivist "Butlerian Jihad" is a sacred war against the machine. Is he a hero or a lout? Is resistance truly futile?
THE FUTURE
"If I want to walk out in the desert and heat up a can of beans on a fire, I still can. In those movies like Gattaca or whatever, the space age stuff is always all there is. But in the world there is never just one way of living. It's more like a big junkyard. Put it this way: I'm not afraid I'm going to end up on a space station in aluminium-foil underwear."
—Tom Waits
"And now the wheels of heaven stop
You feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
It is murder."
—Leonard Cohen
"The future is like heaven. Everyone exalts it,
but no one wants to go there now."
—James Baldwin
DISPLACED
and then you get to see things with fresh eyes, with new eyes."
—Amy Tan
A BRUTAL TEACHER
"Experience is a brutal teacher.
But you learn -- my God, do you learn."
—C.S. Lewis
"In youth we learn; in age we understand."
—Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach
"A learning experience is one that tells you,
You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."
—Douglas Adams