If you haven't read the "Unafraid in Greenwich, Connecticut" post by AQR manager Clifford Asness, check it out. Asness speaks out against Obama for trying to force hgedge fund managers to take his administration's bid for Chrysler bonds. Obama, recall, called the hedge fund managers "speculators" who were "refusing to sacrifice like everyone else."
"The President's attempt diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it to a labor union that delivers money and votes for him. Why is he not calling on his party to 'sacrifice' some campaign contributions, and votes, for the greater good? Shaking down lenders for the benefit of political donors is recycled corruption and abuse of power. Let's also mention only in passing the irony of this same President begging hedge funds to borrow more to purchase other troubled securities," Asness writes.
Obama's "irresponsible hectoring" might keep funds from investing in other programs "because of fear of getting sucked into some toxic demagoguery that ends in arbitrary punishment for trying to work with the Treasury."
Asness jokes that he should have called his post "Not Afraid Enough" and concludes, "I'm ready for my 'personalized' tax rate now."
Go, Asness!
http://www.stumblingontruth.com/
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Artaud, Part 2
A reader of my post on Antonin Artaud noted that the playwright went over the edge and died in a psychiatric hospital -- as Wikipedia puts it, "allegedly holding a shoe." I'll skip over the incorrect usage of "allegedly," which is reserved in newsrooms for crimes but is standard Wikipedian for anything outside the entry writer's parameters for acceptable behavior.
Yes, Artaud went over the edge. He still exerted a powerful influence in art. Artists do live near the edge. If you don't feel the shadows, if you're a creature purely of surface facts, you cannot bring exaltation into performance. I think that is Artaud's point.
Not all artists go over the edge. An artist can reach exaltation and still be a good businessman. Can an artist who is not economically successful be an artist? The lay person says no. I say yes. That's another post.
But an artist cannot be a machine.
My piano teacher, Aube Tzerko, used to say, "Something must happen! Scare the pants off us! Otherwise, go play the typewriter!" And he would sing at the top of his lungs, and make us breathe with the music, and shush us so we made the mysterious parts scary and play harmonies on his own piano to shore up a lifeless crescendo or make us feel a lilt or a rush or a songful line.
I have spent a lot of time on the high-tension line between living a responsible life and living the music. But Dionysus makes the people who disrespect him go insane; the most egregious offenders are torn limb from limb by his followers. Apollo, supposedly the cooler head, had his priestesses inhaling the smoke of laurel leaves.
People who try to do music as dutiful machines are boring and empty. They and their audiences wonder, "What am I doing here?" And no amount of egoism on the part of the artist will make up for it.
I've given a lot of attention to the supposed divide between classical and non-classical music. I have tried to determine exactly where it lies, if it should exist, if it does exist. Like other classical performers, I've experimented with dress and stage demeanor. At 13, I didn't want to be an automaton pianist; I wanted to be Jim Morrison or Mick Jagger. But is a performance by the Kronos Quartet performance more fun than say, one by the Beaux Art Trio because the funky Kronos clothing? Is Joshua Bell more fun to listen to than Andras Shiff because he moves around more? After some experimentation, I concluded that exaggerated movements do not produce exaltation. Martha Argerich sends shivers down the spine because she is what she is, not because she's trying to imitate pop culture.
Another teacher, a Russian, told me, "Everybody suffers. You have to let us feel it through your playing."
And that is the heart of the matter.
Yes, Artaud went over the edge. He still exerted a powerful influence in art. Artists do live near the edge. If you don't feel the shadows, if you're a creature purely of surface facts, you cannot bring exaltation into performance. I think that is Artaud's point.
Not all artists go over the edge. An artist can reach exaltation and still be a good businessman. Can an artist who is not economically successful be an artist? The lay person says no. I say yes. That's another post.
But an artist cannot be a machine.
My piano teacher, Aube Tzerko, used to say, "Something must happen! Scare the pants off us! Otherwise, go play the typewriter!" And he would sing at the top of his lungs, and make us breathe with the music, and shush us so we made the mysterious parts scary and play harmonies on his own piano to shore up a lifeless crescendo or make us feel a lilt or a rush or a songful line.
I have spent a lot of time on the high-tension line between living a responsible life and living the music. But Dionysus makes the people who disrespect him go insane; the most egregious offenders are torn limb from limb by his followers. Apollo, supposedly the cooler head, had his priestesses inhaling the smoke of laurel leaves.
People who try to do music as dutiful machines are boring and empty. They and their audiences wonder, "What am I doing here?" And no amount of egoism on the part of the artist will make up for it.
I've given a lot of attention to the supposed divide between classical and non-classical music. I have tried to determine exactly where it lies, if it should exist, if it does exist. Like other classical performers, I've experimented with dress and stage demeanor. At 13, I didn't want to be an automaton pianist; I wanted to be Jim Morrison or Mick Jagger. But is a performance by the Kronos Quartet performance more fun than say, one by the Beaux Art Trio because the funky Kronos clothing? Is Joshua Bell more fun to listen to than Andras Shiff because he moves around more? After some experimentation, I concluded that exaggerated movements do not produce exaltation. Martha Argerich sends shivers down the spine because she is what she is, not because she's trying to imitate pop culture.
Another teacher, a Russian, told me, "Everybody suffers. You have to let us feel it through your playing."
And that is the heart of the matter.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Artaud
I pretty much stopped listening to rock music in 1970 or 1971 when I began studying classical piano seriously. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison all died right around that time, and I missed them. Friends introduced me to assorted strains of non-classical music in ensuing years, but I preferred to spend my time elsewhere.
Recently, a new friend has undertaken to immerse me in the best of what I missed during my years on the other side of the divide. He and his 20-year-old son have the broadest knowledge of music that I have ever encountered, and my friend has cheerfully sent me everything from down-and-dirty country to the newest punk videos, for my edification and his own amusement.
Correctly identifying me as a snob, he has gone so far as to threaten me with a German industrial death rock club. So far, he has relented to my pleas for mercy. Partly to win a reprieve from industrial death music and mostly because I enjoy his passion for music, I have listened to everything he sends, from Beach Boys and Frank Zappa tracks to bizarre French rap. In return, I send him links to Leon Fleisher and Martha Argerich playing Brahms and Chopin. He says he enjoys them.
Once in approximately 50 songs, he sends me something I have actually heard before. Our tastes, oddly enough, are so similar that we think we are doppelgangers.
One recent evening, he had me listening to "The Crystal Ship" by the Doors, one of my favorite '60s songs. My erudite friend knew Morrison's life story. Embarrassed that I knew next to nothing about an artist who still touches me, I looked up Morrison's wikibio. I learned that he had been a voracious reader and that one of the books that had inspired him before his death in Paris at 27 was " The Theater and Its Double" by Antonin Artaud.
I ordered a copy, and was amazed at its clear explanation of why art today sometimes seems so oddly detached from life. Artaud wrote the essays in in 1938, but he articulated problems and feelings I have had for years, yet hardly dared to think, let alone express, even though I have gone to considerable lengths to wrestle with them.
Here is how the preface ends:
"If there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames."
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~marton/Artaud.html
Recently, a new friend has undertaken to immerse me in the best of what I missed during my years on the other side of the divide. He and his 20-year-old son have the broadest knowledge of music that I have ever encountered, and my friend has cheerfully sent me everything from down-and-dirty country to the newest punk videos, for my edification and his own amusement.
Correctly identifying me as a snob, he has gone so far as to threaten me with a German industrial death rock club. So far, he has relented to my pleas for mercy. Partly to win a reprieve from industrial death music and mostly because I enjoy his passion for music, I have listened to everything he sends, from Beach Boys and Frank Zappa tracks to bizarre French rap. In return, I send him links to Leon Fleisher and Martha Argerich playing Brahms and Chopin. He says he enjoys them.
Once in approximately 50 songs, he sends me something I have actually heard before. Our tastes, oddly enough, are so similar that we think we are doppelgangers.
One recent evening, he had me listening to "The Crystal Ship" by the Doors, one of my favorite '60s songs. My erudite friend knew Morrison's life story. Embarrassed that I knew next to nothing about an artist who still touches me, I looked up Morrison's wikibio. I learned that he had been a voracious reader and that one of the books that had inspired him before his death in Paris at 27 was " The Theater and Its Double" by Antonin Artaud.
I ordered a copy, and was amazed at its clear explanation of why art today sometimes seems so oddly detached from life. Artaud wrote the essays in in 1938, but he articulated problems and feelings I have had for years, yet hardly dared to think, let alone express, even though I have gone to considerable lengths to wrestle with them.
Here is how the preface ends:
"If there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames."
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~marton/Artaud.html
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
A 3-Year-Old at the Ballet
My 3-year-old son, Aubrey, celebrated my birthday with me at the American Ballet Theater's spring opening gala. He was, as usual, the youngest person at the performance. We lasted through two and a half ballet vignettes and three posturing politicians.
First came the New York senior senator, who said ballet was "just so special" because it attracts jobs to New York. He emphasized that he had voted for the Stimulus. I suddenly realized with perfect clarity that the Stimulus is above all about creating and building constituencies so that politicians can preen and collect reelection contributions.
Ensuing dance interludes were interspersed with speeches by Caroline Kennedy and Michelle Obama. The First Lady read from notes like a junior high school student, rattling off attendance numbers.
Aubrey was completely absorbed by the dancing. The only problem was that the man in front of us kept saying "shhhhh!!!" when Aubrey made occasional quiet remarks. During the senator's speech, Aubrey pointed out the always fascinating Metropolitan Opera lights, and the guy in front turned around with a lemon face and a "shhhh!"
First came the New York senior senator, who said ballet was "just so special" because it attracts jobs to New York. He emphasized that he had voted for the Stimulus. I suddenly realized with perfect clarity that the Stimulus is above all about creating and building constituencies so that politicians can preen and collect reelection contributions.
Ensuing dance interludes were interspersed with speeches by Caroline Kennedy and Michelle Obama. The First Lady read from notes like a junior high school student, rattling off attendance numbers.
Aubrey was completely absorbed by the dancing. The only problem was that the man in front of us kept saying "shhhhh!!!" when Aubrey made occasional quiet remarks. During the senator's speech, Aubrey pointed out the always fascinating Metropolitan Opera lights, and the guy in front turned around with a lemon face and a "shhhh!"
A little display piece for the ABT students featured guys in white leotards and young ladies in blue leotards doing wonderful jumps and moves and a bevy of little girls in red leotards posing and strutting. Aubrey watched attentively. Toward the end, he commented quietly, "I don't understand what the red ones are for." It was a beautifully perceptive critique, and probably one of the most lucid remarks heard in the hall that evening. The man in front gave us a particularly evil eye and another shhhhhhh!!!
Alas, I finally had to carry Aubrey out when he said something prickly was in his mouth.It was nothing I could fix in the theater, so I took his hand and began to walk him up the aisle. He said, "But I want to come back later," and flung himself on the floor crying. Once outside, I lifted him up on his beloved water fountain and told him he had done really well and that I was very proud of him. He was much relieved.
As we walked out, the manager shook Aubrey's hand and said, "Feeling better? Leaving us already?" and asked how he had liked the performance. "Awesome," said Aubrey.
Aubrey comes from a long line of strong supporters of the arts. He is going to be a maven at the minimum, and more than likely an extremely successful man. People who are aggressively hostile toward children at performances don't realize the damage they are courting. Thank goodness that most of the people who saw him were delighted and kind, and mindful that seeing Michele Obama reading from notes is nothing compared to the potential benefit of a young boy inspired by the beauty and grace of ballet who goes on to a lifetime of loving art.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Luck and Serendipity
As old as I am, and I am having a big-number birthday today, I discovered only three days ago that the iris has an exquisite fragrance. A big bed of violet-hued spring flowers is blooming in front of the elementary school I pass by each day, and the irises were so tall and lovely in their pale translucence that I stopped on the sidewalk. I had always thought they lacked scent, but something prompted me to test my assumption. I smelled one, and was suddenly transported to my childhood neighborhood, a place of beautiful gardens spread over hills and canyons by the sea. I had known the scent all my life.
My discovery reminded me of the concept of serendipity. The clearest definition is the experience of walking into a library looking for one book and unexpectedly finding another that fills a need or presents a new path.
Serendipity is not luck. I am in love with a guy (I will call him Mr. Wonderful, as my friends generally do after they hear me talk about him) who once wrote a proof that luck does not exist. There is an austere comfort in his assertion. Perhaps one can't be lucky, but conversely, one cannot be unlucky.
If luck does not exist, one can still widen or restrict one's spectrum of possibilities in life. And that's where serendipity comes in.
Serendipity is why the 20-year-olds are wrong when they wonderingly inquire why I still have books and CDs when, after all, everything is on line.
First of all, everything is not on line. Andras Shiff's masterly new Beethoven sonata series is not on line, at least not yet. When I checked two years ago, Gargantua & Pantagruel was not on line, although I see it now on a site called http://www.fullbooks.com/.
The algorithms of Google and Amazon and Youtube are indeed wonderful in dredging up and dangling before me "related" things. Yet the very presence of those algorithms leads to a severely restricted spectrum of serendipitous possibilities, contrasted with the wealth offered by a fine library or a great music store.
I was brought to tears last week when I discovered willy-nilly that Joseph Patelson's venerable music house on the street behind Carnegie Hall was going out of business. I was on my way to do an errand and on impulse told the taxi to stop so I could visit Patelson's. I wasn't looking for anything in particular -- I just like to go in sometimes and see what I can find. What a shock to see a sign in the window saying the place would close any day. Everything was 40 percent off. I went inside with low heart, and surveyed a multitude of gaping shelves. Clearly other musicians had beaten me, and the pickings were thin. The thought that at least somebody had bought the music gave me a grim satisfaction.
Just a few months ago, my clarinetist friend Erin and I had spent a happy hour at Patelson's discovering new clarinet-piano repetoire, by picking up music and flipping through pages. We brought back a beautiful Joplin piece that we're learning for our Kenner, Kinder & Liebhauer concerts for children. That side-by-side experience is not available on the Internet.
More to the point, we didn't know what we didn't know.
I realized in 1993 that newspapers were doomed when a single consulting firm did similar assessments at 80 percent of U.S. papers. Back then, the economics of the business were starting to sour, but were nowhere near as desperate as now. This diabolical firm employed the same method at all papers, rounding up a few editors and having them meet with a few members of the public to see what "the community" thought should be in the papers. The "findings" would be written up, and sections would be rejiggered in accordance with the desires expressed by the public representatives.
It was obvious that the enterprise was a bust. Readers do not know what they want to read, because they don't know what they don't know. It was my job as a reporter to find things out. When I realized that my superiors didn't want that kind of work to be done, I left the reporting business and became an editor and then a columnist, to escape the superiors.
Now, if I find something out, I try to trade it.
My discovery reminded me of the concept of serendipity. The clearest definition is the experience of walking into a library looking for one book and unexpectedly finding another that fills a need or presents a new path.
Serendipity is not luck. I am in love with a guy (I will call him Mr. Wonderful, as my friends generally do after they hear me talk about him) who once wrote a proof that luck does not exist. There is an austere comfort in his assertion. Perhaps one can't be lucky, but conversely, one cannot be unlucky.
If luck does not exist, one can still widen or restrict one's spectrum of possibilities in life. And that's where serendipity comes in.
Serendipity is why the 20-year-olds are wrong when they wonderingly inquire why I still have books and CDs when, after all, everything is on line.
First of all, everything is not on line. Andras Shiff's masterly new Beethoven sonata series is not on line, at least not yet. When I checked two years ago, Gargantua & Pantagruel was not on line, although I see it now on a site called http://www.fullbooks.com/.
The algorithms of Google and Amazon and Youtube are indeed wonderful in dredging up and dangling before me "related" things. Yet the very presence of those algorithms leads to a severely restricted spectrum of serendipitous possibilities, contrasted with the wealth offered by a fine library or a great music store.
I was brought to tears last week when I discovered willy-nilly that Joseph Patelson's venerable music house on the street behind Carnegie Hall was going out of business. I was on my way to do an errand and on impulse told the taxi to stop so I could visit Patelson's. I wasn't looking for anything in particular -- I just like to go in sometimes and see what I can find. What a shock to see a sign in the window saying the place would close any day. Everything was 40 percent off. I went inside with low heart, and surveyed a multitude of gaping shelves. Clearly other musicians had beaten me, and the pickings were thin. The thought that at least somebody had bought the music gave me a grim satisfaction.
Just a few months ago, my clarinetist friend Erin and I had spent a happy hour at Patelson's discovering new clarinet-piano repetoire, by picking up music and flipping through pages. We brought back a beautiful Joplin piece that we're learning for our Kenner, Kinder & Liebhauer concerts for children. That side-by-side experience is not available on the Internet.
More to the point, we didn't know what we didn't know.
I realized in 1993 that newspapers were doomed when a single consulting firm did similar assessments at 80 percent of U.S. papers. Back then, the economics of the business were starting to sour, but were nowhere near as desperate as now. This diabolical firm employed the same method at all papers, rounding up a few editors and having them meet with a few members of the public to see what "the community" thought should be in the papers. The "findings" would be written up, and sections would be rejiggered in accordance with the desires expressed by the public representatives.
It was obvious that the enterprise was a bust. Readers do not know what they want to read, because they don't know what they don't know. It was my job as a reporter to find things out. When I realized that my superiors didn't want that kind of work to be done, I left the reporting business and became an editor and then a columnist, to escape the superiors.
Now, if I find something out, I try to trade it.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Size
The question of how much size to trade nags all speculators from the humblest to the most billionated.
Michael Lewis turned the big swinging d**k style from an icon at Salomon into a household phrase -- a trader's household phrase, at least.
On the other end of the scale is the Sunday-driver trader who trades one E-mini futures contract, or one share of common.
I, very much a humble speculator, began giving the matter some thought when I began trading in earnest last autumn. Until last week, I had developed a taste for scalping with as much size as my margin would handle. However, a person I sometimes listen to on the subject of trading by reason of his long experience in markets told me that the strategy will lead to ruin.
On re-examining the issue, I came to a paradoxical conclusion:
It takes more guts to hold for the big swing with a small position than to takes to trade size for small moves.
Moreover, the existence of high-velocity moves that can occur within the space of a minute (see Friday at 4 pm for an example) led me to a related hypothesis:
The better strategy is to hold small for a big move so as to avoid being creamed by the odd fast move against.
These conclusions may apply in other areas.
Michael Lewis turned the big swinging d**k style from an icon at Salomon into a household phrase -- a trader's household phrase, at least.
On the other end of the scale is the Sunday-driver trader who trades one E-mini futures contract, or one share of common.
I, very much a humble speculator, began giving the matter some thought when I began trading in earnest last autumn. Until last week, I had developed a taste for scalping with as much size as my margin would handle. However, a person I sometimes listen to on the subject of trading by reason of his long experience in markets told me that the strategy will lead to ruin.
On re-examining the issue, I came to a paradoxical conclusion:
It takes more guts to hold for the big swing with a small position than to takes to trade size for small moves.
Moreover, the existence of high-velocity moves that can occur within the space of a minute (see Friday at 4 pm for an example) led me to a related hypothesis:
The better strategy is to hold small for a big move so as to avoid being creamed by the odd fast move against.
These conclusions may apply in other areas.
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