Cultural Convolution

It doesn’t seem right to be a Carnegie Mellon alumna and a diligent blogger not to write a post about Professor Randy Pausch. At the same time it would be hypocritical to write such a post because I have never met him in person nor was I familiar about his works until I read his book two days ago at the DC airport when my Southwest flight to Columbus was delayed three times due to thunderstorms in the city my plane was flying out from.

I’m sure most of us have already watch his “How to really achieve your childhood dream” lecture from 2007 in person, from the internet or from the news. It was transcribed into his book “the Last Lecture” which I ran into accidentally in the airport souvenir store while its Barnes and Noble offered me nothing I wanted to read in particular more than the William Somerset Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge” I was absorbed into yet mindlessly left it inside my baggage and checked it into the flight while I was talking on the phone with someone. I am a sucker for coming-of-age, breaking-into-the-society kind of books. The Razor’s Edge described the journey of a young American man who in WWI joined the army as a flight pilot in France and when he came back he realized that he could not simply just return into his old life. The façade of seeming peace and prosperity in France bourgeois society where men and women quibbled day in and day out about food, fashion and travel or in America, the country of unbounded dreams where men and women could make millions overnight if they pursuit a decent profession and put in the hours — all of these, was too unbearable for the young man who just couldn’t reconcile what he had seen and experienced with his post-war life regardless of the country he chose to live. He started to ponder about the bigger questions, questions that thousand years of philosophers pondered. And he found out that, as the writer had said, the path to enlightenment was as sharp and narrow as razor’s edge. This is the kind of book that I like to read mainly because I’m full of questions myself. Yet I left it in my luggage. But all of these, including the lack of purpose and moral messages in modern day fictions, only colluded to the overwhelming effect Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture has on me.

I was surprised to find myself tearing after the first few paragraphs of the book. There are many reasons for that. The fact that the writer of the book I’m holding now has passed away did have its effect, but it was his resilient humor and his honesty that have moved me. Although it might have been a new idea for people to think of me as someone who writes until the recent release of this blog, I have many previous projects (unpublished and crunched up in the virtual garbage can somewhere in my laptop) where I have explored various topics in life, including death. When I was reading Randy’s book, it suddenly occurred to me that there’s only one way to write a good “story” (in his case, that would be a “life story”), and that is to write honestly, with real passion. Randy did that, certainly because he was full of passion for life, for computer science, for his wife and kids and for his students. Not only did he not leave us sadden over his death and he made a point with it. I remember chuckling when I read in his book that he said “There are some formalities that one needs to follow even when one is busy, like trying to die.”

Again, since I do not personally know Professor Pausch, I will leave the memory pages to be filled by the students that he had inspired in Carnegie Mellon and further.I do have a story to tell here, however. That’s a story of Professor Roger Dannenberg, also a computer science professor at CMU. I thought of him when I heard about Randy Pausch. He also happened to be featured on the CMU homepage this week. I am happy to say that Carnegie Mellon does have many brilliant professors.

Professor Dannenberg taught me in the Computer Music class in the last semester of my senior year. At the end of my college career, I decided to take something that I would really like to learn, something I’ve always wanted to do just for myself, not for fulfilling a degree requirement or getting a good job. I picked Art History and Computer Music. I have always been fascinated by music composition. I have spent many free credits on learning various music instruments trying to find my niche long time before that. I did classical piano, jazz piano, drums and guitar, but none of these amounted to anything. My guitar instructor actually told me that I had disability in playing string instruments (his exact words, no kidding) when he realized that my fingers were built in such a way that I would never be able to press on the strings individually. When I learnt about the Computer Music class, I was jumping for joy for it meant I could actually start writing music. Coming to think of it, our school did give us a lot of opportunity to grow our interests outside of our specific majors if we can afford the time and hard work. Before that I’ve taken Sound Recording and Sound Editing from Professor Richardo Schultz, so I’m not a total blank page towards digital music. Despite my experience, I was thoroughly intimidated by the rest of the class. I found myself to be one of the few non-computer science majors in the class, one of the two girls who registered, and the only female who stayed till the end of the semester. Computer music sounded like the kind of easy-A class that geeks go to for fun but for me and my rusty programming skills, I was really thinking of backing out when I entered my first class seeing all these fresh faces that I’ve never seen before programming away feverishly on their IBM thinkpads (No, they don’t use any other brand.) I don’t remember exactly what happened on the first class but I remember talking to Professor Dannenberg afterwards about how concerned I was that I might not live up to his expectations set for the class at the end of the year. But he told me how delighted he was to have a variety of students from different departments in his class, not just CSs or EEs. Apparently, I was not the only one in this situation. He said to the class later that he had cooked up a unique grading scheme for all of us — we were to create our own projects based on our interests and abilities and his expectations for each person would be hence different, and there’s nothing for people who had limited programming knowledge to worry about, except putting in extra effort to catch up. At that same afternoon, I went to the Art History class. I somehow got assigned to some obscure Hellenistic art history project that nobody wanted to do. I have great respect for the professor of that class and I would love to listen to her lectures all day, but when it came to the project she warned me that I would not be able to find a lot of information on that topic (When a historian tells you that, you just ought to believe her.) and she had put that topic in the pool “just for fun” to see if any of the history junkie would like to explore beyond the current knowledge of humanity. It was not hard to guess that I dropped Art History and stayed with Computer Music.

Over the course of the semester, we learnt a great deal of things. There were also some really difficult topics that I was glad we were clearly told won’t be put in exams. That’s the good thing about Professor Dannenberg’s teaching style. He wanted us to give us a chance to learn but he also understood that you couldn’t force anyone to learn unless they wanted to. Well, since not all the lecture materials would be tested, some of the class will inevitably hand in the homework and disappear. I believe that I’ve always came to class and stayed till the end. And I think he noticed. Since everyone was working on different projects, there’s no way to say whatever that’s on the lecture today would be useful for the class for certain. Hence, the most exciting moment of a two, three hours long lecture late in the afternoon was when I found the golden nuggets here and there that I could use for my own project. Apart from the various examples about the scripts and commands that would easily funked up a simple crescendo, we would always have music appreciation at the end of the class. They were all 9 or 10 minutes of the most lunatic musical works you’d ever come across in your life. There was a collage of different styles of laughters, then there was one that has lots of silence only to be broken by a few jumpy wood-knocking noise here and there. One time it was a legendary recording from some twenty years ago by computer music artists who tried to mimic realistic instrument sound purely by programs. I couldn’t tell from the stale expressions of those computer science majors (which were more than half of the time hidden behind their long curly hair and full-blown beard) but I definitely loved his class.

Then we have this really cool project. It is a work in collaboration with another class which I have forgotten the name of. Basically that class created physical objects (like a fan, a tube that can be twisted, a few slabs of metal strips) embedded with sensors and whenever we physically bend, twist, touch, push or even pass wind in it, the computer that they would be connected to will produce a tone. And our class would be responsible for coming up with what kind of sound we wanted to give the object and how it should change based on the change in physical reality, and to write out a program that does exactly that. In a nutshell, Professor Dannenberg wanted us to create new musical instruments! And mine happened to be the most sensible instrument that the world ought to have made a long time ago —- a heart beat rate sensor that would change the choice of the song and the pace of the song according to your vital signs. (And I believe it has been realized in a billion dollar sort of way by Nike and Sony eventually in a wristband mp3 player.) Even though our counterparts in the other class dropped class before the presentation, I did have the program (however simple it may be) in my computer ready to go.

The most wonderful experience of the class, however, was our final project. With those tools and everything we’ve learnt in class, we each wrote a piece of music as our final composition. Whosever work got chosen would get a chance to have their piece played in the CFA music hall. I decided to create “Blue Cube”. I put hours into that work. On top of that I have chosen to update the current database with more digital instruments. It was a rather simple translation of software C language into Nyquist compared to some of the ideas the others were proposing as their final projects. I created two different hihats, the kick drum, the snare drum and some other instruments. It was a wonderful experience to listen to your own composition. Some of you reading might have a distorted image of me based on what I’ve said so far (or the simple fact that I’m Asian and I’m supposed to be good at math) but I wasn’t one of those people who “sail through college” or engineering school however much I tried. I had a lot of difficulty in my college times that I was started to lose confidence in myself academically at the end of my sophomore years. It might be a very common woe of college students: I honestly thought that I’ve picked the wrong major and it was gonna hurt me all my life. (I was hit pretty hard too given how far I’ve come down from high school) If I had any confident left it would have been through class like computer music and medical management — some oddball classes that no normal people would take if they have a choice. And the projects that I’ve done in this class really made me felt like I’ve achieved something.

Although Professor Dannenberg is a jolly good fellow, there is one thing he absolutely hates. And that is clipping. Clippings are clicks you hear in any audio signal that has amplitude over the maximum limit, and hence the device will automatically cut off the wave giving an irritating, disruptive sound to it. One of my instruments kept giving that clipping noise. I did a great deal of fiddling with it and eventually got rid of it (so I thought). However, when professor played it on his speakers versus my Averatec (aka Average Technology) laptop, he heard the clippings. He told me to delete that instrument since time was tight and deadline was approaching. I didn’t want to give up. I resubmitted again after a lot of editing on the programming side and editing of the waves with audacity. The clippings were still there. I decided to delete that instrument and resubmit, but my piece didn’t make the deadline.

As I sat in the music hall with Denis who looked as if he’s gotten in touch with the heart of this institute that he had exchanged to for a year through listening to the unorthodox and innovative (though not quite melodic) electronic musical compositions of Carnegie Mellon student, I was greatly sadden. Then Professor Dannenberg told me something I would never forget. He said that my piece was one of the best compositions in the class. In fact he like mine more than many other ones that were being played in the music hall and it was a pity that I didn’t make the deadline. But it would be unfair to the other students if he bumped someone else off the program. Certainly, he could have just been nice and said this to every student who didn’t make the final cut. But I knew it wasn’t. He might have forgotten me long ago but during that semester he had helped me a great deal and as sincere a person as he is, I didn’t doubt a word he said. Even if it was, it’s a win-win situation anyway. I felt really proud of myself afterwards, perhaps even more so than if I had my entry in the concert because one, my work was well liked and two, I showed myself that I’m not just some slob who just wanted to get a good grade from a easy class, and that I persisted till the end. I did get an A for that class that proved that his encouragement was not a lie. And I wrote Professor an email after the concert on the last day of my 4 years at CMU, stating that I might be extra sentimental in the email because it was my last year in college, but I really wanted to thank him for being a big part of the best semester I have had at CMU.

This is the story of me and Professor Roger Dannenberg. Another great professor who knew how to make the learning process fun and spark not only creativity but also self-motivation and confidence in students, even in someone as common as me. There are many great teachers around us that didn’t get appreciated enough. I would like to use this post to express my gratitude to those who have been inspiring me and helped me became who I’m today, and who I’ll be tomorrow.

Yesterday was the opening night for Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park” by the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. It was my second play after “The Long Day’s Journey into the Night” by the same company. Due to my limited knowledge in play making, I do not intend to write about the production apart from the fact that it was a very enjoyable performance. The story itself was very simple but it was nonetheless very amusing — a pair of newly weds who just moved into a tiny apartment in the middle of Manhattan. Facing all sorts of challenges in the beginning of their domestic lives together, the free-spirit wife and her straight-face lawyer husband started to doubt if they were even compatible . The title of the play comes from an argument between them when the wife accused the husband of being a dull, stuffed shirt for not walking barefoot in the park with her. The husband’s retort was simple and understandable: “It was seventeen degrees in February.”

Written in the twenties, it is amazing that the play still reflects the lives of many modern day couples. One thing, of course, has changed. And that is the cost to live in a tiny apartment in Manhattan — the actress suggested $125. I supposed the rent has gone up at least ten times since then. But no matter how much inflation has occurred between now and then, the dynamics of newlyweds, two people who have just decided to live with each other for the rest of their lives, will never change, because it is the period of time when each other’s decisions will have an influence to the other person’s life. Something as trivial as the time to go to bed, the food one prefers to eat, the leak in the closet, the hole in the ceiling, the size of the bedroom can spark whole new level of conversations untouched previously before the couple entered marriage. And it is the period in which each side are not yet familiarize with the idea of marriage well enough that they are prone to withdrawing their commitments, thinking that it is lucky for them to realize their incompatibility before two years, twenty years, or fifty years have gone by.

The play makes one skeptical if humans are capable of unselfish love. Despite the play ended with the two characters kissing each other in a precarious location on the window ledge exterior to their new home, forgiving each other for their foolishness, it seemed to be impossible for one to get over the haunting qualities of marriage because if all that havoc between the couples can be as easily resolved as this, there doesn’t seem to be anything that stops it from recurring again.

Flaubert Gustave is a French novelist. “Madame Bovary” is his most widely acclaimed work. His life story has been captured in Alain De Botton’s The Art of Travel. Here is an excerpt of the article.

“From his adolescence onwards, Flaubert insisted that he was not French. His hatred of his nation and its people ws so profound as to make a mockery of his civil status. Hence he proposed a new method for ascribing nationality: not according to the country of a person’s birth or ancestral origins, but instead according ot the places to which he or she was attracted…’ I want to buy myself a beautiful bear—a painting of one, that is — frame it and hang it in my bedroom, with Portrait of Gustave Flaubert written beneath it, to suggest my moral disposition and social habits.’ He said.

In Flabuert’s mind, the word happiness became interchangeable with the word Orient. In a moment of despair, he wrote to his friend, ‘My life, which in my dreams is so beautiful, so poetic, so vast, so filled with love, will turn out to be like everyone else’s: monotonous, sensible, stupid. I’ll attend law school, be admitted to the bar and end up as a respectable assistant district attorney in a small provincial town…Poor madman, who dreamt of glory, love , laurels, journeys and the Orient.’ The people who lived along the coasts of North Africa, Saudi Arabia , Egypt, Palatestine and Syria might have been surprised to learn that their lands had been grouped by a young Frenchman into vague synonym for all that was good.

‘I think I must have been transplanted by the winds to this land of mud; surely I was born elsewhere.” For Flaubert, the French bourgeoisie was a repository of the most extreme prudery, snobbery, smugness, racism and pomposity. The order of the French bourgeoisie world disgusted him. Central to Flaubert’s philosophy was the belief that humans were not simply spiritual creatures but also pissing and shitting ones, and that we should integrate the ramifications of this blunt idea into our view of the world. In Madame Bovary, the pharmacist Homais said:” At the end of the day, shit. With that mighty word, you can console yourself for all human miseries, so I enjoy repeating it: shit, shit.’

On his return from Egypt, Flaubert attempted to explain his theory of national identity:’As to the idea of native country, that is to say a certain bit of ground traced out on a map and separated from other bits by a red or blue line: no. For me, my native country is the country I love, meaning the one that makes me dream, that makes me feel well. I aid as much Chinese as I’m French, and I cannot rejoice about our victories over the Arabs because I am saddened by their defeats. I love those harsh , enduring, hardy people, the last of the primitives, who at midday lie down in the shade under the bellies of their camels and, while smoking their chibouks, pole fun at our good civilization, which quivers with rage over it.”

‘I’m no more modern than ancient, no more French than Chinese, and the idea of a native country—that is to say, the imperative to live on one bit of ground marked red or blue on the map and to hate the other bits in green or black—has always seemed to me narrow-minded, blinkered and profoundly stupid. I am a soul brother to everything that livesm to the giraffe and to the crocodile as much as to man.’