2018: My year—of books—in review

I was inspired to start sharing a list of what I've read from Jill Dolan, a teacher who shaped my writing and how I see the world and engage with it. I thought I'd share those reads, here. Some of them were published in 2018, and most of them are (age-)old. Perhaps some will resonate with you in your search for books to kick off the new year. (Listed in the order that I read them.)

The "Fantastique" fantasies of Hector Berlioz

I come reeling tonight from a performance of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, performed by the Columbia University Medical Center Symphony Orchestra, through which, I had the wonderful opportunity to reignite a dormant love of playing clarinet (not played since high school!). I thought I'd share, below, the program notes I was invited to write for the program, which, as it happens in the spirit of this Synapse, suitably has its own art-science (music-medicine) link!

The claims on the heart of Albert Schweitzer

"Like music a man's life means more than the sum of its parts. It is a composition with many themes and one transcendent meaning. This is a fact of all life and the life of Albert Schweitzer is not an exception but an example."

Dr. Schweitzer was organist, philosopher, theologian, and physician. After almost a decade in the other professions, he turned to medicine at age 30, against the advice of his friends and family who questioned whether "service" wasn't already found in the professions he was currently engaged in. Dr. Schweitzer was determined to serve once he turned 30, and had his eyes set on medicine. Upon receiving his medical degree, he traveled to Africa where he founded a hospital.

Age of Innocence at McCarter Theater

These flowers are less symbolic than the ones in Age of Innocence, but they sat on my windowsill in England. Of note: yellow roses.

It's hard to believe that it has been more than a month since I saw the stage adaptation of Age of Innocence and more than two months since I first read Edith Wharton's gorgeous novel. I promised myself and a couple of friends that I would share my impressions of the adaptation—directed by Douglas McGrath and performed at McCarter Theater—with special thanks to my friend Jess who had first recommended that I read the novel upon moving back to NYC (I am so glad she did!).

Age of Innocence sweeps us into the Gilded Age of the 1870s, placing us in a setting where the society has everything to do with the story. It begins as an old man exclaims, “If one had habitually breathed in the New York air there were times when anything less crystalline seemed stifling.” In the novel, we see events unfold through the eyes of our protagonist, the young Newland Archer, in real time. But in the adaptation, it is an old man—Archer as an elderly man—who reflects back upon his life and narrates. On stage, we know from the beginning that a lifetime will come to pass before our eyes. From the old man, we hear in his exclamation an exasperation with a city’s set customs that the man has lived through. But when reading that same line through the thoughts of the young Archer, we are privy to his naïve admiration for this city’s social propriety. 

On stage, the subtleties of scene embrace our senses, but miss that tool the narrator of the word has at her disposal: inner thought. So, when Archer spontaneously sends Countess Olenska, his forbidden love interest, a bouquet of “fiery” yellow roses rather than the usual pure white lilies for his fiancée, he remarks onstage, "What am I doing?!". On the page, Archer subconsciously justifies his actions—no expressed outcry, no pained expression. As readers, we are invited to speculate upon our protagonist's unexamined thoughts in our own minds, analyzing his intentions and desires. But as viewers, we can't indulge in back-and-forth speculation. For a point to come across, we must feel it—the colored cheeks, heart-quickening breathlessness, shocked expression, strained voice, and then there’s the old man—the older Archer—re-experiencing with alarm his actions alongside young Archer on the same stage. All of this makes it apparent that at that moment something is awry. None of our own flirtations with the possibilities of the page. Rather, the immediate sensory symbolisms of the moment.

The old Archer wears a white lily in his coat pocket, as does the young Archer—constancy for May. A vase of yellow roses adorns the piano, which turn bright red when Olenska enters the room—Archer’s passion for Olenska. May sits under a peach tree as she implores Archer to give her up if he loves another—ripe with innocent goodness. 

The sensory feast heightens an aura of dreaminess, of unreality—which is a theme of the story: Archer reaches for what might have been, an ideal of what could be, and savors the delight of that unreached ideal. Olenska embodies that ideal. She appears and the lighting is slanted, mystical—in the softness of moonlight, or the glow of dusk—and in one heartbreaking scene where the lovers unite but cannot be together, petals fall like snow outside the windows. The song, “Beautiful Dreamer,” haunts us throughout the play: first when Olenska and Archer sing together, again when Archer sings with May, and in the final scene when Olenska sings out her window 26 years later. The song, an auditory exemplar of dreaminess, doesn't exist in the novel yet in the adaptation it even plays a plot device: it is because of the song that May confirms that Archer loves Olenska, as he begs her to sing a song that he sang with Olenska, and the wooing words render May speechless mid-song. 

When is it not right to love? What obligations do we have to those around us, to our neighbors? How could we bear to hurt those who are good, even if it costs us our own happiness? These are the kind of moral questions at the core of the story. Olenska reflects Archer’s own sentiments back to him, “We shall hurt others less. Isn't it, after all, what you always wanted?” If Archer had to give up his respect for society and kindliness towards neighbors for his own happiness and for Olenska, the dream and love would break: “I can't love you unless I give you up,” says Olenska. Each sacrifice for the other and for those around them. 

Moral questions lend themselves better to reflection in the privacy of one’s (reading) room rather than in a theater. In this theater, we experience a vivid, beautiful, well-executed dream, but the dream suffers from a lack of trust in how real the events are: are they memories seen through rose-colored lens of an older narrator? Are they too sensual and exquisite so as to evade scrutiny of thoughts? 

Even if not in the theater, the time for analysis inevitably comes (probably in the lobby!). We have to grapple with what happens—what is dream and what is reality, and what is better, if there can be a “better”? While Archer lives in dreams and visions, that is not all. If that was all, the story would be tragic. In the ending scene, we want to snap Archer out of dream and into reality. But the reality is that Archer and Olenska stayed true to their values and themselves, their unrealized love made them better people, and this is rare and beautiful. What happened was not a romanticized reverie clouded by an elder’s reflection of youth. What happened unfolded in a real time, place, and manner. People tried to live out their lives as best they could, afforded to them by the limits of society—the story that we try to live out today as best we can.  

Being whole together: Yo-Yo Ma and Krista Tippett in conversation

An absolutely lovely discussion between Yo-Yo Ma and Krista Tippet, on On Being, "Music Happens Between the Notes," which I've excerpted below.  I listened to the podcast last month when it came out, and am so glad to revisit just as I begin to look into music and civic engagement. I'm excited by the ways that the arts can foster not just social connectedness or socio-emotional well-being, but the sense of civic participation. The state of civic participation and democracy worries me, for reasons obvious to us, not because I don't have faith in the goodness of the people, but because so much seems to rest on the people in face of forces of negative influence. Lincoln said in his first inaugural speech, "while the people maintain their virtue and vigilance, no administration,by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." I think musicians and artists and humanists share a similar kind of philosophy, to let the ideas and connections spread which bind us to do us good. I do hope it works.

Here's the except:

MR. MA: So it's not about how many people are in the hall. It's not about proving anything. It's about sharing something.

MS. TIPPETT: It's about being whole together, too, isn't it? Which includes all these things that could go wrong.

MR. MA: Absolutely. Rewind to September 11. On the morning of September 11, I was in Denver. At 9:00 my wife calls me and says turn on the television. Something bad is happening. I turn on the television. I'm supposed to go to Colorado Springs on the 11th and to Denver to play another concert on the 12th and the 13th in Phoenix, Arizona — three different orchestras. And in the wake of this horrific thing, every orchestra had to decide, do we cancel or do we play?

And what every orchestra decided was, we're going to play. We may change the program a little. We're going to actually be together and have a moment, literally, of being together. Music will be the way that we will come together, because we're asserting ourselves as a community, as a people, as a city, as whatever. And we need to be together. To this day — now, this is now, how many, 12 years later — when, if I go back to any of those places, not a single person does not remember vividly what that evening meant.

MS. TIPPETT: I think that's a wonderful image for some language you use of being a citizen artist; that this insistence that this must be at the table, arts, in music, as we define ourselves culturally and weight it as defining alongside politics and economics and the things we discuss that we sometimes seem to take more seriously.

MR. MA: Well, I think it depends how much room we have for what. And the thing is, again, what is it and why? What are we doing here? Who are we? And I often ask musicians, “Do you think of yourselves as the instrument that you play, as your identity? Or do you think of yourself as a musician? Or do you think of yourself as a human being? And what is the ratio between the three?” I think that the citizen part is somewhere towards the human part, because we're looking at how we fit in within society. And if we look at our Constitution, we have an ideal of what our nation could and should be like. So, how do we participate? I know I, for one, often feel frustrated and say, “There's so many things that are happening, and I have nothing to do with it. I'm not connected to it. Therefore, I can't care about it, because it's just a waste of time and energy, because it's all beyond me.” Now, that's kind of like giving up. It may be true.

MS. TIPPETT: And I think that's an experience so many people have, so many people who do different things in different corners.

MR. MA: But ultimately, if we are the democracy that we claim to be, it does require full participation. And that's the anomaly that I'm sort of trying to wrestle with in myself, too. As a musician, I'm thinking, OK, well what in the world can I do? Essentially it's like what my wife always says to me, “Don't just make lists. Just ask, what can I do to help?” And I think if we ask, if we even start to look, you will find lots and lots of needs.

MS. TIPPETT: Yeah. I love this language Rilke about living the questions. And I think there is something powerful about posing the question. You can't live into it unless you ask it.

MR. MA: Right. But once you ask it, you already put yourself in a position of slight vulnerability because you don't know the answer. And I think that by doing that, you can actually begin to see where the solutions may lie. At least you start to open yourself to someone else who might propose a solution that starts to lead us in a certain position. I think that's where the basis of a cultural citizen or a citizen musician comes in, because I think that as musicians, music actually very easily crosses spaces?

You go from people's earbuds, into concert halls, into living rooms, into cars; it can exist across a lot of different physical spaces and geographical spaces.

The Literary Vesicle returns!

Hey readers! Remember the "literary vesicle" of the synapse? Thought I'd bring back books to the synapse. Here are some I'm reading, and then some I'm hoping to read soon:

What is Populism? by Jan-Werner Muller
A Princeton pre-read. Muller demonstrates how populism must be differentiated from simply appealing to the popular masses. Populism is about excluding others to reinforce a "truer" notion of a (national) identity. Case examples include: yes, Trump.

A. Lincoln: A Biography by Ronald C. White Jr.
After reading Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama, I thought I'd explore the life and mind of one of Obama's greatest role models. I was also curious as to how Lincoln drew on the Bible teachings in the challenges of the Civil War, while maintaining an independence from the institutions of religion like the church.

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
In the midst of reading Lincoln's biography and stumbling upon this piece of fiction in the bookstore, based imaginatively around Lincoln's relationship with his son Willie, I decided to pick it up as a flight read. The supernatural aspects have derailed me at times at night, but that's more of a statement on my own vulnerability to supernatural thoughts than anything book-related.

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kamir
Picked up from my sister. The poetry is so easy to read that it doesn't really feel like poetry, but more like self-help or friend's tumblr for the broken-hearted and healing. Not a bad thing when you're looking for something raw.

Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
When Dr. Arnold Gold passed away, a New York Times obituary noted how he was deeply impacted by this book. The story features a young aspiring doctor who tries to balance the ideals of research (for the sake of discovery and learning) with medicine (for practical outcomes). To be honest, I'm not entirely captivated by the prose and it doesn't portray medicine in a very appealing light (not a bad thing, but intriguing considering its influence on Dr. Gold). I am only 1/5 of the way through...

Evicted by Matthew Desmond

So humane and eye-opening. One of those books that reshapes not only how I think about the particular topic of poverty and eviction by transporting me to real places, but also how I think about a field—in this case, my admiration for what sociology can look like at its finest. 

On my to-read list...
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See
Intern: A Doctor's Initiation by Sandeep Jauhar
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
Against Empathy by Paul Bloom
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thein