This week was very busy for me. I had chamber music performances this week (sorry I didn’t record them! I think I will get the professional recordings soon). I played the last movement of the Mendelssohn c min piano trio in a performance on Thursday night and today (Saturday morning) for a masterclass. It’s a passionate movement that begins with a tumbling cello line, out of breath and crazed.

I chose to work on this piece because I actually played the first two movements when I was in high school. So, I wanted to finish the piece and get this glorious ending. My high school piano professor was in a professional piano trio that toured for many years and I remember him telling me that the ending of this trio is just so much fun to play. The flying fingers and rush of accelerating to the end is just so exhilarating. Mendelssohn’s music is…. a bit notey to be honest. He was a virtuoso pianist and he really shows it in the piano part. It actually works out so well because the piano excels at playing a lot of notes in a short amount of time but has a natural disadvantage to sustained long notes. In contrast, the strings excel at playing long sustained long notes. So while the strings play a luscious long melody, the pianist gets to fly around the keyboard, filling out the harmonies and the empty beats with arpeggios. Often this frantic frazzled feeling is unwelcome but here, it is quite fitting- though only if you stay in control and have all the notes under their fingers.

I watched a lot of great films when I took the Introduction to Film class at U of M, but nothing tops The Hole. Infamous Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang’s wildly inventive film is especially relevant as the United States enters a full year of quarantine. The Hole exists in a genre all its own — it’s slow cinema, a jukebox musical, and a horror film. Above all, it’s a commentary on human connection. 

The Hole was part of the 1998 “2000, Seen By…” project — an international film challenge to produce a film depicting feelings toward the new millennium. Despite an evacuation ordered by the government at the onset of a global pandemic, the two characters Hsiao Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) and “the woman downstairs” (Yang Kuei-mei) decide to remain in their apartment building. As the disease progresses and their world becomes deserted, they begin communicating through an unpatched hole in the floor which connects their two apartments.

There are only six characters credited in the film, four of them having only a few minutes or mere seconds of screen-time. This — along with the constant rain — emphasizes the loneliness and vast emptiness of the world the main characters inhabit, and makes this world more intimate for the viewer. There is very little dialogue throughout the film, so it relies heavily on visual cues. The drained color, long stretches of near-silence, and minimal camera movement are the palette with which Ming-Liang paints the feelings of isolation with perfection.

However, not all hope is lost for Hsiao and the woman downstairs. Hsiao still attempts to run the small market he owns, but eventually he finds spying on the woman downstairs to be more fitting entertainment. Though they initially despise each other (and seek to anger each other purposefully), the woman downstairs develops feelings for Hsiao. These desires are articulated in the most daring way possible for the film —  through unannounced flashy dance numbers in which the woman downstairs lip syncs to the classic pop music of Grace Chang. 

In these musical numbers, the world becomes colorful again. While reality is dark and dreary, the woman downstairs’ dreams are bursting with life. Even at the very end, when her situation becomes desperate, she slow dances with Hsiao in her fantasy world. All of these scenes take place in the apartment building, as if that is all that’s left in the universe. 

The majority of the songs in the film are about romance. The woman downstairs’ desire for companionship in what appears to be a hopeless environment is the essence of human nature. Hsiao and the woman downstairs represent something that is truer than ever now: in the claustrophobic universes our homes have become, we all need the kindness of one another. As rain invades the woman’s apartment, causing all her wallpaper to fall off, and the hole invades Hsiao’s apartment, they find comfort in knowing that there is still someone on the other side of the floor.

The Hole was already incredible before the pandemic. However, I’ve learned to appreciate it even more now. My apartment is my world, too, and I’m sure yours is as well. If there is anything to learn from The Hole, it’s that amongst the fear, mundanity, and sluggishness of isolation, hope exists. All that’s left to do is dream it.

Hello my children,

Hello all, welcome to another week’s programming. In preparation for the coming spring equinox, I would like to celebrate by examining the most ancient forms of magical mastery in recorded and recoverable history: golems and elementals.

It is important to first define what is different between these commonly interchangeable words. Golems are constructs formed out of the hands of human interaction and a desire to replicate what had been seen around them. Elementals, on the other hand, are naturally occurring creatures imbued with the raw energy of The Earthmother herself.

Golems are uniformly made out of physical materials by past and present folk: clay, wood, iron, steel, flesh, and rock are all common building blocks at which an elemental focus is surrounded. This is to say, golems are not and never have been composed of the same material as fire, wind, and water elementals because the common peoples of this land are capable only of working in terms of which they are naturally inclined. As the mighty angels above may spin silk out of clouds, and the humble imp below may tickle with glee as it animates fire to do its bidding, we are meant only to skip stones and arrange bark into our desired image. 

However, I of all should know better that a magician’s journey is to rise above the confines of our natural disposition in order to conquer what was, supposedly, never meant to be conquered. That is precisely what elevates us common folk, and that is what has led to our continued fascination with these four elements. What reason is there to study nature except to surpass and disallow ourselves from standing idly by as it consumes us all? We will not be the hunter, but instead the hunted.

That, in my humble opinion, is what first motivated the folk of this land to create golems. Such creatures are an early form of programmed magic with one intention only: to protect the creator and the creator’s property (be it innate or sentient). An easy principle to relate to, no? This is why golems have been found dating back thousands and thousands of years, and in the opinion of people smarter than myself, even to before The Court’s first ascension. Having performed some fieldwork under the guise of a ratcatcher, I can state with humble confidence that the prevalence of golem creation has predated every single empire, every city of high repute, and every magical stronghold on this continent. 

The interesting thing is that in one’s adventures, one can observe the evolving design philosophy of golem production. When first attempting to recreate their natural world, artisans had little artistic president as compared to modern, masterful proportions and sculptural technique. This is why that, when delving into tombs of forgotten horrors and riches, the easiest measure of age is the complexity of golem-like constructs within the tomb.

In order to create a golem one requires a magical focus of some kind– usually by crushing up and binding together refined magical residuum. I hope I need not explain to you the significance of residuum, but for the uninitiated, let me point to the green crystals found within these animated geodes. Pictured beside them are two examples of an object that constitutes a magical focus: one is a smaller unrefined geode found just 100 leagues from this university, and the other is a modern design of my own.

By pulverizing the crystal and suspending the dust in an arcane conductive medium, we are able to arrange our material bases in many more complex structures than any of our ancestors could have dreamed of.

I’m afraid I have run up time again with my ramblings. No matter, for I will have time to speak more about this subject as we inch closer and closer towards the spring equinox where we will find elemental power at its peak.

Until next time,

-The Magician