The SoupASonic

I walked by a neighborhood coffee shop on the Upper East Side the other day, and saw a "No Laptops Allowed" sign. For a moment, I felt chills, and just then, I realized that I was staring future in the face.

What does it tell you when a neighborhood coffee shop doesn't allow laptops? -- that their users tend to buy one drink (anywhere between $2-6) and stay for hours. That was certainly the case at alt.coffee in the East Village, until they decided to plug all of their electrical outlets shut, citing "insurance" concerns. Working on a laptop at a cafe combines at least three important life activities into one: caffeine consumption, people-watching, and work. With free wifi, the cost of that $6 latte is practically tax deductible, and getting work done actually feels like a vacation, not to mention that, while hooked into the internet, you can read more magazines, and hear more amazing music, than you could ever try to in your lifetime, almost without cost..

And yet, that model is increasingly becoming unsustainable for the coffee-shop owners. Some start charging for internet services (like Starbucks); others get rid of the internet entirely, others turn up the music so loud that you can't think... Other coffee shops simply close, or re-open "with a new concept". My neighborhood coffee shop on the Upper West Side (the old Columbus Bakery) re-opened with such a new concept, as a marriage of "Pinch" and "S'mac" - a pizzeria and a mac-n-cheese joint...

I tried at length to write a post about how musicians are similar to coffee-shop owners, how we all seek an intimate connection with their listeners and customers. But on closer examination, that comparison fails - the upfront hard costs of starting and running a coffee shop cannot compare with the fairly negligible costs of making music. Where the coffee-shops are trying to monetize their tables by shooing away laptop-laden cyborg freeloaders or asking for a fee, we try to woo them with free downloads, videos, and podcasts -- we *hope* they will monetize one day, and celebrate each of their purchases as we would the first steps of a child.

It's great to live in hope, in faith, in innocence -- just wish that they still lived in a coffee shop.

Ouch! I know what you're thinking -- "he's a wax figure!" or, perhaps, "they're both wax figures!" Alas, we're both very real -- and sure enough, that's me standing next to our very own President Bush, at the White House on Wednesday evening. Two hours later, I was at the Washington Greyhound station, waiting for the bus back to New York. Good times were had on both.

I met the First Lady, too. All thanks to a chance meeting with the brilliant conductor Alondra de la Parra at my beloved Cafe La Fortuna two years ago. As I remember, I was sitting in the rear terrace, working on my arrangement of Kayhan Kalhor's "The Silent City" for Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, when Alondra walked in with a photographer friend, and before long, she convinced me to perform with her young orchestra, newly renamed as the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas.

The orchestra was in Washington on Wednesday to cap its first international tour, which included performances in New York (at the Skirball Center, NYU), Dallas (at Meyerson Hall), Mexico City (three concerts -- one in the gardens at Chapultepec, another at the Belles Artes, and another at Sala Nezahualcóyotl). Our last concert, at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, was attended by the First Lady, and can be streamed in entirety here. (If you scroll your stream to 1:05, you'll hear my arrangements of two Piazzolla tangos.)

The tour -- especially our time in Mexico City, for which Inna came to visit -- was incredibly special. See a review from Dallas , and my photo collection from the trip to Mexico.

But you probably want to know about the White House visit?

We had no idea that the President himself would welcome us, as originally it was supposed to be a reception with (just!) the First Lady, and in either case both Abbas and Olmert were in Washington, with Israeli-Palestinian peace in the balance. But to our surprise, there he was, greeting us without a hint of fatigue, patiently posing for photographs with each musician, making conversation with each musician, telling interesting bits about his last visit to this or that person's hometown, thanking each musician for asking to take a picture. He apologized several times for the traffic jams that his visits cause.

I felt somehow shy about the honor of meeting the President, thought of how many troops aspire to this moment, how many days in the field, training.. And there I was. (Granted, I did spend 15+ years learning to play the viola...)

For a while, I was just taking pictures for everyone, waiting my turn. Eventually, it came to me, and then he said:

"You must be the most patient guy in the world. Where are you from?"

Upon hearing that I came from Moscow, he launched into a well-thought-out soliloquy about the beauty of Moscow, how it has changed, and how optimistic he was about Russia's progress, about his hopes for its growing middle class. He said that he liked Putin, but didn't appreciate his anti-American sentiment..

I didn't disagree. I felt honored that the President took time to speak with me and share his mind. The issues and opinions didn't matter -- it was the sheer luster of the moment, which lasted longer than I could ever imagine. Surely he had better intelligence than I.

I walked down the hall, and found Alondra speaking with the First Lady. Mrs. Bush was very charming, congratulated us on the concert and my arrangements.

I walked around some more along the more private parts of the Whitehouse, including the Queen's and Lincoln Bedroom. I walked to the State Floor, to see it all decorated for the Holidays. It was all very grand, but not the same opulent way as I've seen rooms decorated at some New York weddings. There was an aura of restraint, of space, a certain modesty. It wasn't cozy or intimate, though by no means were the rooms very big. See all of my pictures from the White House here.

So there it was, my first time at the White House, hopefully not the last. Two hours later, I took the Metro to the Greyhound Station, where I watched the talking heads endlessly rehashing the latest presidential debate, followed by a special on "Campaign Killers". I bought a turkey sandwich full of preservatives, and drank it down with a bottle of Dasani "electrolyte" water. On the bus, a man behind me snored louder than some can scream. By morning, I was home.

WARNING: I'm going to allow comments on this entry, for now. Any flaming comments will be deleted without further warning. This is not at all about politics or free speech, it's simply about a recollection of meeting the President and touring the White House. Please leave it be. Thanks.

There's one nice thing about having a flu -- immediately, you begin to see the world around you as if from a hidden camera, observing as though you don't exist. It's not the lack of care, it's just a common understanding that I need lots of rest to get better.

Sitting as I were at Barnes & Noble in Union Square, looking at mass-market murals of Orwell, Nabokov, Joyce, Shelley, Woolf and others having coffee on the walls, I couldn't help but notice one thing -- the lighting in their time was different. For some it was candelight, and later, the tinny gold-rose color of the early bulbs, then yellow... And now, permanent noon-light, infinite c-major, that wonderful energy-efficient glow hovers above at all hours, "productive white".

I'd be curious to read magazines from the early era of electricity, articles by those, who wanted to "take back the night", the mystery, the personal time of things and people unobserved, unaccounted.

I'm also infinitely curious as to what might happen in the future, and how this hue may change. In the little that I've experienced of globalization, one motive is persistent -- the yearning desire to spend more time with family, to watch TV and eat, talk, to celebrate every occasion, the little sliver of personal time still left.

There are several common ways to get between New York and Boston: plane, train, car, and once a year, bike. Then there are also bus options - Greyhound/Peter Pan, and the various Chinatown Bus companies.

If you're up for a really great alternative, try LimoLiner, a luxurious bus that goes between the New York and Boston BackBay Hilton hotels. For the same price as the Amtrak train, you get a business-class seat, with wifi internet access, a meal (in my case, breakfast), a concierge/attendant, XM Radio, a movie, more legroom than you can imagine.. I even video-Skyped my mom in Moscow! (Thankfully, there's a cellphone-free zone in the back of the bus for those of you who don't understand Russian.) After taking the Greyhound one way, this surely felt like heaven, or as close as they'll let me get to it.

...but there are just a few downsides:
-- poor schedule. the last bus leaves Boston at 4:30pm, just before the end of the business day; the last bus from New York is at 6:15pm. (Compare that with Greyhound's legendary bus leaving either NYC or Boston at 12:30am!)

-- the pickup/drop-off locations -- unless the Hilton is near your destination, it's a bit of a schlep from other transit options.

-- the internet signal drops off intermittently. Most notably, it dropped when we entered my old neighborhood, on 86th + Columbus in NYC.


Otherwise, I heartily recommend it, and, providing that the LimoLiner schedule and drop-off locations expand, I'm delighted to take it all the time. (Now if only they could do something about the NYC traffic...)

My LimoLiner breakfast:

Today is the rare kind of day, in which all of my so-called meta-careers were in action all at once. It was the kind of day which made me appreciate the varied paths I take, and at the same time jealous of people who sit in offices.

It began at the very reasonable hour of 8:30am with a fiendish rush to prepare sevaral film-demo CDs, while pretending to have a leisurely breakfast with Inna. (Breakfast is holy.) Alas, our new printer does a hackjob at printing double-sided, so everything took 4x longer, and had to be reprinted 10x... I chomped on oatmeal and slurped coffee in between flipping pages.

At 10, I was supposed to have been at a rehearsal by Ensemble 212 for my composition Long Island Sound, which we'll be performing this Saturday evening. With much debt to the printing fracas, I was 20 minutes late. No matter, though, we rehearsed my piece (even though the bass, viola, and percussionists were missing) all the same. It was a weird feeling, playing a piece I wrote 9 years ago, seemingly a world removed from what I'm doing now. The ensemble's bassoonist asked what the piece was about - ABOUT?! -- so now I have to come up with a story, put myself in 9-year-old shoes. I stayed at the rehearsal until 12:45, filling in for the other violist who didn't show up. But then I had to run...

At 12:50, I had to run to a bowmaker, to get my bow rehaired. Hadn't done that for a few months, seeing as I split so few hairs in Hungary.

At 1 and at 2:30, I had two meetings about potential film projects. The first was on a park bench; the second in a trendy cafe in midtown. Both meetings went great. Between meetings, I caught up on email, in the subway. After the meetings, I ran into Chipotle for a salad. Succulent...

At 4, I had to be at a rehearsal in Queens with the wonderfully openminded percussionist Ingrid Gordon and the happy-go-wacky reed performer Demetrius Spaneas, in preparation for a couple of upcoming concerts. I was late to this, too - but it didn't matter. We rehearsed my pieces, experimented with instrumentation, and chatted. For 3 hours, time stopped - well, until I got some frantic emails from London about a transcription project I'm doing, and from an ad agency about a demo.

At 7:20, I was back on the subway, writing emails and trying to keep my back straight. There's nothing quite as fun as taking three trains on the way home, and cursing the MTA while waiting for them. There's nothing quite as delightful as knocking over hipsters who can't hear "Excuse me" because their iPods are too loud. If there is any saving grace in the subway, it's the Chinese cellist who seems to play "Air on the G String" continuously. But he wasn't there today - instead, there was a drummer. Argh.

By 8:30 I was home. Luckilly, at least my home will be quieter, because earlier today, six of these diffusor panels arrived, and I'll be installing them tomorrow. I still have a million things to do - figure out housing in Los Angeles, order plane tickets, clean up, pay bills, and -- oh yes - finish sorting the receipts for taxes.

After a day of this, who'd want to listen to avant-garde music? Certainly not me. All I want is a hot bath and a long sleep.

"OVERSLEPT, SO TIRED. IF LATE, GET FIRED? WHY BOTHER? WHY THE PAIN? JUST GO HOME DO IT AGAIN."

well, that's entertainment! Strike up the Carousel Waltz. :)

The real reason to take a seat on the NYC subway is that the moment you sit down, a mystical shield appears around you, and instead of stepping on your toes people tend to apologize for so much as even looking you in the eye.