07 Nov 07

Cell Search

“Attwood,” said a female officer, “step outside of your cell in your shower shoes. You have been chosen to have your cell searched.”
“OK,” I said. I stepped out onto the run and continued to read my book.
Two guards entered my cell: the female and a male.
“Oh,” the female said, nose raised, sniffing the air, “so you’ve been smoking in your cell.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Like I can’t smell the smoke,” she said.
“It comes through the vents,” I said.
“Yeah, right,” she said.
I felt a flush of irritation and thought, No matter what I say I’m just another lying inmate to her, so I’d better say nothing at all.
“When did they move you from D run?”
“The last time I was on D run was on Yard 4.”
“I’m talking about Yard 1. You’re the one always hanging out on D run.”
Here she goes again, I thought. “I think you’ve got me confused,” I said.
“No. I remember seeing you always hanging out on D run. You were over there all of the time.”
“I stay in my cell reading and writing.”
Her face pinched with disbelief. I stayed silent.
“Where’s your TV at?”
“I don’t have one.”
“You don’t have one?”
“No. Like I said, I read and write all day.”
“Aren’t you getting out soon?” the other officer asked.
“Next week,” I said, and immediately the guards looked at each other with the same expression that said, He’s getting out next week so he must have sold his TV.
“So you don’t watch TV, eh?” she said, smiling knowingly.
“No, I don’t. I try not to waste my time,” I said.
“You’ve been down long enough to get a TV.”
“I don’t have one by choice.”
“Hmm,” she said. “It must be inconvenient to have us come along and disrupt your day.”
Why is she provoking me? I thought.
“What, are you tongue-tied now?” she said.
I ignored her. They eventually left my cell. Then, antagonising all of the prisoners and a few guards who knew I didn't have a TV, she had every cell on the yard searched for the TV set of mine.

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Copyright © 2006-2007 Shaun P. Attwood

06 Nov 07

Parting Advice from T-Bone

“One of the things,” T-Bone began, “you need to do is to sit down at the table with Mom and Pop and learn who they really are as human beings.”
“You’re right,” I said.
“How long have they been married?”
“Nearly forty years.”
“Can you imagine all the ups and downs they’ve been through over the years? Yet they are still together. They are successful people. Learn how they did it, so you can grow and obtain wisdom and knowledge and understanding. You’ve been through some things in the States and you didn’t connect with your family in the right way. I’m telling you as a man, you need to sit down with them over a cup of tea. Do you have the guts to do it?”
“I hope so.”
“And when you’re talking with them, if your heart doesn’t jump with pride, honour, and astonishment then you’re empty inside ’cause what they’ve done takes strength.
You also need to stay away from chicks who are party girls, and to focus on one woman. What are you gonna do if you meet some chick in a flimsy little outfit, a fishnet dress maybe, and she’s five-seven, nicely built, up on heels and with plenty of makeup on, and she has a bunch of X, and she comes to you and says, ‘Bring your pretty little butt over here, Jonny?’ You have to make a choice. She’s mesmerizing. She’s tantalizing. She’s sexy. Her breath smells like cinnamon and jasmine. Her bed is perfumed with myrrh and aloes like the harlot in Proverbs 7. Are you gonna go for the temptation that leads you down the path of destruction?”
“No!”
“Are you gonna allow her perfume and drugs to seduce you, to take you to the demonic realm?”
“I’m out of that lifestyle.”

To be continued…

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Copyright © 2006-2007 Shaun P. Attwood

4 Nov 07

The Royo Romance (19) Continued

Click here for Part 18.

I introduced Barry to Royo Girl, and said, “So how are your sons doing?”
“Jay just got a ticket for peeing in public.”
“Oh no!” I said.
“A two-hundred-and-thirty-three-dollar ticket.”
“What happened?”
“He went into a Circle K to use the bathroom and they wouldn’t let him, so he went around the corner and peed right in front of an unmarked cop car.”
Royo Girl and I laughed.
"That's an expensive pee."
The conversation got round to showers.
“Are the showers in here," Barry asked,"a column with a bunch of showerheads coming out and everyone’s running around naked?”
“No. They’re tiny cubicles with doors you can shut. Half of them don’t work, and they’re full of bugs. But at least there’s privacy, unless someone opens your door.”
“Has that happened to you?”
“Oh, yes. On Yard 4, Xena and George and Frankie were always trying to barge in the shower with me. And you see men going in the shower with men.”
“What?” Barry said.
“I can’t begin to describe all the stuff that goes on in here. There’s people who have sex with shampoo bottles in the shower, the bottles get stuck, and they end up at Medical.”
“I imagine you’ve seen it all,” Barry said.
“I’ve seen or heard enough.”
“And have you still not gone with a cheeto?” Royo Girl asked.
“No. But Xena was demanding a parting kiss before I leave, and when I told Kat, Kat said, 'We can go one better than that'.”
Watching Royo Girl and I talk, Barry suddenly said, “You two would be perfect for each other.”
We both blushed, but I felt more happy than embarrassed. Then I felt proud.
“He’s too wild,” Royo Girl said.
“But you’re the perfect calming influence on me.”
“I think she would be a good influence,” Barry said.
Turning to Barry, Royo Girl said, “He needs to focus on himself.”
“I’d rather focus on you.”
Flustering slightly, Royo Girl said, “He sometimes acts like I’m being mean or something.”
“I like it when you put me in check. I would thrive if I were with someone like you. Don’t be fooled, Barry, she has a wild side too. She has a tattoo on her tailbone.”
“They call them,” Royo Girl said, “tramp stamps these days.”
Barry and I laughed.
While they joked about tramp stamps, I examined the tattoos on Barry’s arms: a band of barbed wire, flames around seven skulls, and a green dragon below a moon.

I enjoyed the company of Barry. After sharing hugs, he left half an hour before the end of the visit.
“Did you put Barry up to that?”
“To what?”
“To saying we would be perfect for each other?”
“I didn’t even know he was coming. He must have formed his own opinion. Do you disagree with what he said?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I feel there is something between us. Something I can’t put in words.”
“But you put it into words on the blog.”
“Last time I let my feelings for you flow, you backed off. You don’t want a fawning man, you want someone who's tough.”
“But not too tough. Did you really say those things to T-Bone you blogged?”
"Yes. T-Bone knows how I feel about you. He’s encouraged me all along, even when you backed off he said you were coming to see me because you love me and we’d end up together somehow.”
“And how do you feel about me now?”
“Look what happened last time I laid my cards on the table. I’m not going to act like that again. I just hope we meet in England, and see what happens. I gave you my heart once, and I even blogged it.”
“I feel my intentions have been misconstrued at the blog.”
“I know you have good intentions and maybe you intend to visit me in England.”
“That’s not a maybe. I will – eventually.”
“And then what?”
“Who’s to say what the future holds. We will always be good friends.”
“Say we become more than that?”
“Why live in hypothetical worlds?”
“Good answer, but it doesn’t have to be hypothetical.”
“I knew you would say that, and that’s not quite what I had in mind.”
“Visitation is over!”

We stood up, and embraced. I was captivated by the scent on her neck and the softness of her skin. Her lips found mine with a passion I had not expected. The kiss seemed to confirm her feelings for me - or was I imagining things? I broke off the kiss but still held her close. We kissed again with the same passion and my mind wobbled. The second kiss crushed any doubts I had – and as I write this two hours later I’m still full of excitement.

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Copyright © 2006-2007 Shaun P. Attwood

Chadwick: An Ideology-Free U.S. Thanksgiving

During a career that spanned over 50 years, George Whitefield Chadwick was prominent among American composers from the 1880s until the 1930s. He composed in nearly every genre, including operas (7), orchestral music (17 works), songs (100+), and many choral and chamber works. During his life, Chadwick’s reputation was secured by frequent performances of his music—particularly by the Boston Symphony Orchestra—but his music is now seldom performed. His obscurity in the past 60 years is likely due to the modesty of scale of much of his work as much as to the nostalgic imagery, which seems out-of-sync with contemporary sensibilities.

Chadwick’s piano works and string quartets, for example, are on a small scale like Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words or Grieg’s Lyric Pieces—they are nineteenth century romantic minatures. Chadwick’s chamber music is written in the style of the ‘Character Piece.’ Each is a brief sketch of one particular mood or image. We have representational essays, like The Frogs, In the Canoe, and The Rill. This may not be important music, but it’s characteristic americana. And, on a nostalgic day of celebration like Thanksgiving in the U.S., these pieces are suitable—nostalgic in a way, but expressing a sort of nostalgia and romanticism that still has its eyes wide open.

This brand of romanticism resembles Edward MacDowell’s—and others in the generation before Charles Ives. Chadwick’s writing has been associated with the Realist movement in painting and the graphic arts, characterized by a down-to-earth portrayal of ordinary occurrences in people’s lives. To me, his miniatures hark back to a time when the American scene was not overrun with hubris. These modest pieces evoke romantic images, yes, but images undistorted by rose-colored glasses. They propound specific ideas but without insisting upon a particular ideology or a desultory rhetorical stance—something for which we can be thankful and to which we can still reasonably aspire.

[Chadwick began at the New England Conservatory in Boston as a ‘special’ student in 1872. ‘Special’ meant he could study with NEC faculty members—Carlyle Petersilea (piano) and Stephen Emery (music theory and composition)—without meeting Concervatory entrance requirements and without committing to completing a degree. In 1876, Chadwick was appointed to a faculty position within the music program at Olivet College. While on faculty at Olivet, Chadwick was affiliated with the Music Teachers National Association, founded by Theodore Presser and more than 60 other men and women who met in Delaware, Ohio, on December 26, 1876. Later, Chadwick studied in Leipzig at the Royal Conservatory of Music under Carl Reinecke (1824-1910) and Salomon Jadassohn (1830-1902). Two of his string quartets were written during his years in Germany. In 1897, Chadwick returned to Boston and became Director of the New England Conservatory of Music.]

• New England Conservatory of Music
  
• Music Teachers' National Association website
• Betz M, ed. George Whitefield Chadwick String Quartets Nos. 4-5. A-R, 2007.
  
• Betz M, ed. George Whitefield Chadwick String Quartets Nos. 1-3. A-R, 2006.
  
• Faucett B. George Whitefield Chadwick: A Bio-Bibliography. Greenwood, 1998.
  
• Kairoff P. American Character: Piano Music of George Whitefield Chadwick. (Albany, 2005.)
  
• Kohon String Quartet. Early String Quartet in the U.S.A. (Vox, 1992.)
  
• Pollard F. The Literary Quest for an American National Character. Routledge, 2008.
  
• Portland String Quartet. Chadwick: String Quartets Nos. 4 & 5. (Northeastern, 1994.)
  
• Portland String Quartet. Chadwick: String Quartet No. 3. (Northeastern, 1995.)

21 Nov 07

Moved to Florence

Jon has been moved to Florence (Not in Italy!) immigration holding centre. He is expecting to be there for three to four weeks. He has asked us to post his address for anyone who would like to write to him. He couldn't say goodbye to his friends at Santa Rita, and he is feeling quite lonely, but happy to be on his way home soon.

Shaun Attwood # A75693747
SPC Florence
3250 N. Pinal Parkway Ave
Florence
AZ 85232.

05 Nov 07

Wild Man

The closer I am to getting out, the more I'm thinking about when I first arrived at the Madison Street jail.

“Where they taking us?” Cody asked.
“The Horseshoe,” Wild Man said. “We’ll be stuck in filthy holding cells for days while they process us.”
“Why they call it The Horseshoe?” Cody asked.
“’Cause you go in at one end, and work your way round the cells in a horseshoe shape,” Wild Man said. “They kept me in there for a week one time ’cause I wouldn’t tell them my name.”

The van parked in a subterranean lot. A transportation officer allowed the women out first. The thirty or so male arrestees waiting to go inside the jail stopped heckling the prostitutes in the line and focussed on my female friends:
“Ooh, babies!”
“Nice ass!”
“Show us your titties!”
“Come and play with the bad boys!”
“This way, honey!”
“With those boobs, I’m surprised you ain’t got two black eyes!”
Shuffling toward the men, the women cowered. The last woman out of the van was Wild Woman.

From inside the van, Wild Man watched his fiancée. Other than an eyebrow reacting – one shot up and stayed up, while the other didn’t budge – he seemed unperturbed. But I knew that particular eyebrow formation meant he was about to do something in character with his name.

In a Liverpudlian brogue that sounded as if she were hawking phlegm, Wild Woman scolded the men, who responded by turning up the volume of their chant, “Show us yer boobs!”

“Get out of the van!” a transportation officer yelled.

Wild Man stooped out, stopped on the top step, and unfurled the physique of a bear. He cocked his head back, targeting the men over his Viking’s beard. “If you don’t pack it in and leave my woman alone, I’ll have any of you when we get inside those cells.” He pointed at The Horseshoe, and grinned. “If you think I won’t, just keep it up and see what happens.” Wild Man laughed in a way that said he really knew how to hurt someone. That shut up most of the men.
“You, get down those steps!” a transportation officer yelled. "Fuck you, pig!” Wild Man said, and stepped down.

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Copyright © 2006-2007 Shaun P. Attwood

La Catrina Quartet and Àlvarez: Collage Against Nationalism

J avier Àlvarez reveals influences of popular cultures that go beyond the borders of our own time and the place.”
[beyond the Borders of
Time
  and place;
     of anyone’s time
        and place — beyond
our ‘own’ ]
  —  John Adams.

Javier Álvarez combines conventional instrumental idioms with the acuteness of technology, elaborating an eclectic vision that originates as much from various non-musical disciplines as from music collected from other parts of the world.

At present Álvarez lives and works in Mérida, Yucatan. Born in Mexico City in 1956, he studied composition with Mario Lavista before coming to the United States in 1980 where he studied with John Downey at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Subsequently Álvarez moved to the U.K. where he continued his studies at the Royal College of Music with John Lambert. His first electroacoustic works were composed then—for example, Temazcal (1984). Mannam (1992) uses cítara, mixing rhythmic elements of traditional Korean music with materials and techniques of Mexican harp—this won second place in the Prix Ars Electronica in Austria in 1993. Most of his works incorporate sonic elements of other music, such as mambo (Mambo a la Braque, 1991). Papalotl (1987) combines piano and electroacoustic sounds.

This is not novelty for novelty’s sake. Álvarez’s textures are not ‘merely’ interesting or seductive: Their appeal for our attention is not strident. They have a point. He creates collages of vernacular music that emulate a folklore—a Borges-like abcediary of imaginary creatures—a factitious folklore so fantastical that it calls into question our notion of folklore itself. Álvarez’s transgressive textures work to undermine the very notion of cultural identity and ownership. In the process, he demolishes the exclusionary and disenfranchising politics of nationalism and tribal culture—affiliation and disaffiliation.

Metro Chabacano (1991), performed by La Catrina in Albuquerque on Sunday, is a case in point. Derived from Álvarez’s 1986 piece for string orchestra, Canción de Tierra y Esperanza, the composition was created to accompany sculptor Marcos Limenez’s kinetic installation art, to be displayed in Mexico City’s biggest and busiest subway station, Metro Chabacano. The piece was subsequently performed on tape there for a period of three months during 1991. Metro Chabacano has a continuous eighth-note ground from which short lyrical passages appear in each of the parts. The repeated notes confer a deceptive minimalistic simplicity, out of which the organic, unstoppable, inevitable individuality of each voice in the quartet flourishes. The effect is, on balance, an optimistic world view—albeit an elemental, fatalistic or ‘vegetal’ one, on a par with the experience of watching a garden grow or watching children grow up. La Catrina Quartet’s account of Metro Chabacano was simultaneously inspiring and poignant, in precisely that elemental way.

Because of La Catrina Quartet’s profile, they are well-positioned to facilitate Latino and minority students’ progress—students who might otherwise fall through the cracks of the educational system. It also is consistent with their devotion more towards ‘nurture’ rather than ‘nature’ in their teaching. As a Latino string quartet, they strive to offer young minority audiences positive role models in opposition to gangs and negative stereotyping, corrosive influences in youth culture.

I n a country where the ‘melting pot’ phenomenon is all but unavoidable, it is essential to show the younger generations of today that immigration can be a positive force, one that enriches our culture rather than impoverishes our society.”

  —  La Catrina Quartet.

As to the Quartet’s name, according to Mexican Folklore, ‘La Catrina’ is a name for Death. La Catrina can show herself in many different ways. Sometimes she is dressed in a elaborate, festive clothes. Sometimes she appears as just a skeleton, to take us away when we least expect it. Generally, though, in Mexico death is thought of as a natural guest on certain occasions, such as the Day of the Dead, or Día de los Fieles Difuntos. The memory of one’s “fieles difuntos” (‘faithful departed’) is the source of familial and cultural identity. La Catrina, with her mischievous smile, exhorts the living to seize the moment and, through music, to find life’s meaning.

Founded in 2001, the La Catrina String Quartet frequently performs new music by living composers and promotes and performs Mexican and Latin American art music in Mexico as well as in the United States and abroad. This summer La Catrina was string quartet in residence in San Miguel de Allende, México, where they collaborated with the Brentano Quartet for a performance of the Mendelssohn octet and the Brahms sextet Op. 36. Their residency duties included giving private instruction to string students from Mexico and the United States and teaching chamber music and strings masterclasses, as well as their collaboration with the Brentanos.

In the current season, the Catrinas will be featured in concert series in the United States and México. Currently, the quartet is working on developing an exchange program between the Conservatorio de Las Rosas, where they will be the Quartet-in-Residence beginning in Summer 2008, and Kent State University. This Fall the quartet relocated to Hickory, NC, where they continue developing their repertoire as well as commissioning new works and continuing with their commitment to bringing the string quartet out of the concert hall and into alternative venues.

[Daniel Vega-Albela was born in Mexico City and earned his Master of Music degree in violin performance from Western Michigan University, where he studied with violinist Renata Artman Knific. He holds a Master of Music degree in chamber music performance from Kent State University. From 1994 to 1997, he was instructor of violin at the Academia Yuriko Kuronuma in Mexico City, and in 1997, he joined the Conservatorio de las Rosas to teach violin performance and to play with the new music ensemble, the Ensamble de las Rosas.

New York native George Anthony Figueroa earned his Bachelor Degree from the University of Florida at the New World School of the Arts in Miami and currently holds a Master’s degree in violin performance from the University of Oklahoma. Figueroa has studied with Cathy Meng-Robinson, Ivan Chan, Yair Kless, Diane Pascal, Lucie Robert and Felicia Moye. He has participated in master classes with Monica Hughes, Charlie Castelman, Yuval Waldman, Fredell Lack and Lucie Robert. Mr. Figueroa holds a Master of Music degree in chamber music performance from Kent State University.

Born in Torreón, Coahuila, Mexico, Jorge Martínez studied viola at the Conservatorio de las Rosas where he graduated with honors, under the tutelage of professor Gela Dubrova. In 2003, he completed his Master of Music degree in Viola Performance at Western Michigan University. Mr. Martínez has been a faculty member of the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Mexico, as well as instructor of violin and viola at Crescendo Academy of Music in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Martínez holds a Master of Music degree in chamber music and vocal performance from Kent State University.

Born in Mexico City, Alan Daowz started the cello with José Luis Gálvez at the Escuela Nacional de Música and the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Morelia, Michoacán, where he obtained his Bachelor degree in cello performance. He received his Master of Music degree in cello performance from Western Michigan University, where he studied with Professor Bruce Uchimura. Mr. Daowz holds a Master of Music degree in chamber music performance from Kent State University. ]

• La Catrina String Quartet
  
• Chamber Music Albuquerque, Simms Center at Albuquerque Academy
  
• Ashbee E, Clausen H, Pedersen C, eds. The Politics, Economics, and Culture of Mexican-US Migration: Both Sides of the Border. Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
  
• Benhabib S, Shapiro I, Petranovich D, eds. Identities, Affiliations, and Allegiances. Cambridge Univ, 2007.
  
• Brodsky Quartet. Elegie. (Silva, 2000.)
  
• Cuarteto Latinoamericano. Memorias Tropicales. (New Albion, 1994.)
  
• Delanty G, Jones P, Wodak R, eds. Identity, Belonging, and Migration. Liverpool Univ, 2007.
  
• Gannon M. Paradoxes of Culture and Globalization. Sage, 2007.
  
• Marinissen A. Traces of Culture. (Bvhaast, 2003.) [Temazcal]
  
• May T. The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer. Amadeus, 2006.
  
• Phillips A. Multiculturalism without Culture. Princeton Univ, 2007.
  
• Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. Danzón. (Dorian, 1998.) [orchestra version of Metro Chabacano]
  
• Webb H, Mead P. Alvarez: Papalotl. (Saydisc, 1994.)