Confessions of a Leftie News Junkie

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve woken up at 3am to watch Morning Joe, I’d be a millionaire. Not to mention that I watch recordings of Deadline: White House and the Lawrence O’Donnell show pretty much every day. 

And it isn’t just what my brother and others call the “mainstream media”, I often check in with Fox News and lately Newsmax to see how the other side is spinning the news of the day. While I lie to myself about this being a sincere effort to be well informed from a variety of news sources, the truth is that the schadenfreude I feel from watching the right wing trying to spin the latest outrage gives me a dopamine high that is delicious.

So I am, perhaps more than most people, exactly the type of person that the media silos adore, an adherent to the notion that more is more, especially if it means I’ll have something wicked I can troll my brother with (whom I love dearly…go Bulldogs bro).

When 47 won the election, I was stunned to realize how much my expectations had been raised by the never-Trump Republicans who were my preferred pundits, only to be crushed by a grim reality that these smart, professional politicians didn’t see coming. So, I took a month off from the media, read a couple books, took longer walks, got reset mentally, and felt considerably better about things. Of course, I’m back now in the silo;)… but hey, that was a good month.

I keep flashing back to a scene in Star Wars Phantom Menace, when Liam Neeson is chasing that badass Darth Maul through the palace hangar with the laser walls that keep closing between them. It may be the only good thing about that crap-fest of a movie, but I’ll never forget how cool it was when Neeson had no choice but to sit and meditate while the laser wall kept him from pursuing Darth Maul. Then the walls go down, and the fight resumes. At the moment of maximum intensity, the wisest course was to sit quietly and meditate. Hmm…

The battle never stops, neither in Star Wars nor in our politics. And on this upcoming election day I can’t think of a better way to use musical art as an opportunity for repose, reflection, meditation, than with one of the great masterpieces of the 20th century, Morton Feldman’s 6-hour Second String Quartet. And to do so while raising a lot of money for the Portland Immigrant Rights Coalition might just be the biggest and most timely no duh in the history of duhs. 

So what does six hours of Feldman actually sound like? Quiet. Really, really quiet. Almost the whole piece sits somewhere between soft and barely there, and a lot of it is played with mutes on. Feldman takes a little cluster of notes and plays it. Then he plays it again, and again, until one of the notes slips over by a half step and the whole thing tilts. Call it a musical kaleidoscope. Just when you think you’ve figured out the pattern, it shifts, and you realize you’ve been listening for twenty minutes without once reaching for your phone. It’s the opposite of a dopamine high. It’s more like the comedown you didn’t know you needed.

Feldman was obsessed with old Anatolian rugs, the hand-knotted kind where a pattern repeats across the whole thing but never exactly, because a human made it and every batch of dye came out a little different. That’s the best way I know to describe this music. You aren’t following a story with a beginning, middle and end. You’re walking slowly across a really big rug. Feldman said that past a certain length you stop thinking about form and start thinking about scale, and he was right. Somewhere in the second hour the clock stops mattering.

You don’t have to stay for all six hours (though I’ll be seriously impressed if you do). Wander in, sit down, let your breathing slow to match ours, and leave whenever you like. The four of us onstage will be there for every minute of it, and honestly, I can’t think of a better place to spend Election Day.

The noise outside will be deafening. We’ll probably be able to see the airwaves around us quivering with the thrum of the latest updates from polling places in South Carolina and Iowa. And the political battle will absolutely resume for all of us after the music stops around 6pm on November 3rd at The Old Church. Look on us as an opportunity to do the exact opposite of what the media wants us to do, and find some peace through music by joining us for our Sonic Sanctuary performance. 

Can’t make it to The Old Church? We’ll livestream all six hours on the House of Scordatura YouTube channel and Facebook page. Put it on while you cook dinner, fold laundry or carefully avoid the news. Feldman doesn’t mind if you wander off and come back, and honestly, that may be the best way to hear him.

I’ll close by saying how wonderful it has been to have the support of The Old Church in this enterprise. Constance and her team have been fantastic, and we are very grateful to them. Big thanks also to RBC Wealth Management for underwriting this project. Thanks too to the arts groups who have helped us spread the word about this crazy-ass project far and wide: Milagro Theatre, Chamber Music NW, ChatterPDX, 45th Parallel, Portland Piano International and Fear No Music. Huge thanks to all!