Dear Reader,

Noticing and analyzing the details in the world around me help me in my musical practice. More importantly, those little details are key components in developing my learning practice. Sometimes, we notice details because they challenge our assumptions. Here are three assumptions from this week.

1: The L

While in Chicago for some New Morse Code time, rehearsal predictably gave way to Wikipedia spirals about the details of our world. One topic of interest: when and how did Chicago’s vaunted L develop and expand? I was surprised and delighted to find this 1915 map of the L system (thanks again, Transit Maps of the World!) in which the lake is…down!

Fascinating it is to think about how this map might challenge one’s notions of geography. That said, this transit map is not as large a conceptual jump as the Peters Projection!

(by the way, “nothing is where you think it is” is also what I say when I play an unfamiliar marimba)

After the epiphany that my “top and bottom attitude” was stifling, I wondered what were the assumptions about the world that were being made then that might have inspired a map like this? What was going on in Chicago, the world of transit, and perhaps the larger world, that would make this non-geographical representation a “good idea?” In this case, perhaps the city was expanding N/S so those longer lines needed more space? or perhaps their signs were oriented in a landscape format? Or maybe something more quotidian, given the challenge of printing and design in 1915. We can assume that these design choices are intentional, to a degree, but teasing out intentionality from a single text is a dangerous practice, a practice with which musicians are all-too-familiar.

I suppose it really doesn’t matter if the red line goes up or right, as long as I know which station is next in each direction, much the same as the Roman maps I shared a few months ago.​

Actually, here’s a Manhattan transit map from 1918 (before the IRT/IND/BMT merger) in which south is to the LEFT (bold move, and SORRY Brooklyn!)

(side quest: the current NYC subway map also is slightly rotated to keep Manhattan centered on the X/Y axis, tacitly indicating the primacy of Manhattan in the city’s conception of itself.)

2. Say Cheese

​A US appeals court ruled that gruyere (pas de accent grave) is a “common” name for cheese and shall not refer to cheese made exclusively in the Gruyère region of Switzerland and France. I cannot imagine a French dairy producer backing down, so I’m sure there will be more appeals here. Meanwhile, the FDA recently ruled that oat, almond, soy, and other non-dairy liquids may continue calling themselves “milk.” After Judge Roger Gregory punningly ruled that “like a fine cheese, this case has matured and is ripe for our review,” the judges wrote that “cheese consumers in the United States understand ‘Gruyere’ to refer to a type of cheese, which renders the term generic.” Regarding “milk,” the FDA argued that "although many plant-based milk alternatives are labeled with names that bear the term "milk"… they do not purport to be nor are they represented as milk.” To wit: “consumers understand plant-based milk alternatives to be different products than milk.”

What’s in a name? A lot, it turns out. Names, like maps, are key components of mental representations, containing connotations, denotations, heuristics, and encoded cultural memory.

(As a side bar, in both cases the judges ruled that the name no longer referred to a specific product because consumers were not behaving that way. Isn't that… the opposite of how the thought process should work?)

3. Nicky and Tacy Hit the Road

Speaking of names, I recently re-watched The Long, Long Trailer, in which Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz star as Nicky and Tacy, a definitely-not-Lucy-and-Desi couple that is definitely-Lucy-and-Desi who decide (well, she decides) to eschew a home purchase in favor of a MOBILE home. They choose an apartment of an RV (a 36-foot Redman New Moon**)** pulled by a delightful 1953 Mercury Monterey convertible, with the intent to tour the Western US on the way to Nicky’s new job as a civil engineer.

You can imagine what happens…

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Amidst the hill climbs, parking problems, and the idea that everyone in the film accepts Desi Arnaz as Italian, the details of the movie stuck out to me:

• Gas station attendants
• The price of rent?
• Driving cross country in a three-piece suit and an elegant dress
• The normality of finding nothing open in a small town after dark.
• 35mph = “too fast”
• Traffic cop at intersection outside of Piazza Venezia: just fine.

But perhaps one detail is more significant, and it’s an omission and assumption: gender norms.

2023 viewers to find Lucy’s (Tacy’s?) antic physicality and penchant for escalating fibs delightful and Desi’s primary-color emotional palette relatable. But, at the time, some argue that I Love Lucy killed precisely because Lucy adhered to post-war gender norms in the US: a stay-at-home wife in a suburban home charged with maintaining the household while the husband worked. Almost every episode’s plot included a quest from Lucy to rebel against the constraints of her role, which begs the question: did viewers empathize with Desi’s quest to ‘splain to his supposedly-subservient wife why her dalliances (usually undertaken to escape the typical roles set out for women) failed? Or did they appreciate the absurdity of these cultural constraints through Lucy’s antics?

For more on unspoken behavioral norms, I recommend Thomas Frank’s The Conquest of Cool, in which Frank argues that the advertising industry co-opted and mass-produced “counter culture.” On the way to his thesis, Frank gives one a terrific depiction of “the man in the grey flannel suit,” the standardized American worker bee of the post-war generation.

I didn't notice for years, but I find it helpful to practice this armchair-anthropology on nonmusical topics. Noticing, analyzing, comparing, organizing, and synthesizing outside of one’s “home” domain can be quite powerful.

Just like in music, sometimes what is not said in a text/movie/TV show is more important than what is. Omissions, or rather assumptions, are a strong indicator of norms, and norms are a powerful window into a cultural, personal, musical information: zeitgeist. And we arrive at those norms through details, which enliven a specificity of style, which leading towards powerful interpretations of the art we love.

Other Things:

1. Really excited that Robert Honstein’s new CD Lost and Found will be released next week. It was a joy to work with Robert on two pieces featured on his third disc: Down Down Baby, a tour de force work for cello and two cello operators, and Lost and Found, an alluring work for our beloved “janky marimba.” Alongside a powerfully mixed and mastered audio recording, we’ll also be releasing a new video of Lost and Found, rounding out a trio of Four/Ten Media productions for the disc.Pre-order it here!​
2. I’m so taken with Spektral Quartet’s latest release, Alex Temple’s stunning Behind the Wallpaper, featuring an astonishing Julia Holter. Check it out!​
3. On the AI front: Noam Chomsky argues that the ability to make assumptions is what makes humans human. In his eyes, the critical omission of AI is its inability to leverage a moral intelligence, a part of which is making assumptions and omissions (note: paywall)

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