Author: admin

I was having the most wonderful conversation today with a man, a friend, who had asked me what I thought of his wife and him as a couple.

I told him I thought the two of them were perfect together because they complemented each other so well. Whereas he always seemed calm and centered, she was flighty and full of nervous energy. Somehow their two energies just fit together.

But it was more than that, I continued.

After knowing them both for a while, it had become clear to me that underneath his serene veneer, my friend was not at all as calm as he seemed. In fact, his air of quiet assurance was a way to deal with an inner feeling of alarm and nervous worry, whereas his wife was actually quite calm and centered underneath her appearance of nervous energy. And it was on this deeper level that their relationship truly worked well — still as a fitting together of complementary opposites, but not at all in the way one might at first think.

And then I woke up and realized that it had all been a dream — the man, the woman, my long answer to his question, our entire conversation.

Yet as I am thinking about it now, I suspect it wasn’t just a dream. I may simply have been reviewing, in my sleep, the hidden truth about every successful relationship: We are each our own opposite, and we fit best with someone who complements our own contradictory self.

Am writing this from the international Air France terminal at CDG airport in Paris. The flight has been delayed by two hours because of mechanical failure on the plane’s exhaust system, and they are getting us a nice new refurbished plane. I am not complaining mind you — I would much rather fly two hours later than try to set off across the atlantic on a jumbo jet with a busted tailpipe.

But it does provide occasion for a more in-depth exploration of this wonderful airport. Because yesterday was a holiday in France, everyone seems to have done their air travel in and out of Paris already, and the airport is refreshingly empty today.

An airport full of people can be a stressful experience, but an empty airport can be rather pleasant — especially here in Paris, where they have not caught the dread American disease that I fondly refer to as “let’s play loud non-stop music everywhere until people are ready to claw out their eyeballs in frustration”.

No, in France they are more civilized than that. And the espresso is better, IMHO. 🙂 If you need to be stuck in an airport for several hours, I highly recommend a french airport.

I love Manhattan, and I love Paris. Both are, of course, legendary in their magnetic power to inspire, to gather together great artists and thinkers. The two cities represent, each in its own way, a glittering vision of what a city can be.

Yet as a New Yorker walking around in Paris I am reminded of the immense differences. Manhattan is magnificent, but Paris is beautiful. Beautiful in a way that is hard to truly grasp unless you’ve been there. There is a gracefulness and elegance that pervades everything, from the architecture to the lifestyle to the conversational politesse.

Aesthetics matter to Parisiens in a profound and fundamental way that might not quite make sense to New Yorkers — and perhaps to Americans in general. And to be fair, Manhattan possesses compelling qualities that Paris does not. Our city has a drive, a sense of focus, a churning momentum and intensity of action, that one does not see in Paris.

It’s as though each city represents a different fundamental principle of human value, the way the gods of the ancient Greeks each represented a fundamental principle of human value.

Perhaps it makes sense to see great cities as a pantheon of gods, as constituting a kind of collective urban mythology. After all, why does anyone move to a place like Manhattan or Paris, if not to worship at its feet?

This evening my friend in Paris said that I should make the reservation for our dinner at a nearby French restaurant, and she was quite insistent that I do this in french (because it would be good for me).

I called up the restaurant and made a reservation for 8pm (actually for “vingt heures”, which means 20 hours, if you do it in french, because they are on a 24 hour clock). I stumbled a bit here and there, but I thought I was doing pretty well, until the pleasant sounding guy on the other end switched into english.

Please understand that for an American, speaking to French people in french and having them reply in english is a total fail. They probably think they are being polite (or, that is, I hope they do), but to us it’s like being punched in the stomach, the cultural equivalent of “you clueless American, how could a boob like you ever think you could speak to us in our own language and not be found out?”

If you know what I mean.

But then my friend realized it would be better to change the reservation for 7:30pm, and she told me to call the restaurant back. This time, I was resolved to go for the win.

When that same man got on the line, I plunged forward, speaking in french with a firm resolve, and a renewed assurance borne from my fear of failure. I was commanding, yet I was polite. I gave a clear and unambiguous account of myself and of the situation. I was very french.

And I was rewarded. This time, the man never broke into english, but rather continued the entire conversation to its conclusion in french.

Success! My life was validated. My entire reason for existing on this planet suddenly held meaning, flavor, resonance. I realized that from this moment forth in my life, there would be nothing I could not do, nothing I could not accomplish with my vast, almost God-like powers.

For I had ordered a reservation dans la belle langue français^†. And had been given a response — oh my foes and oh my friends — in french.

Yes! One for the win. 🙂

† It’s funnier if you read the comments

As I’ve been building a library to create music procedurally, so that I can use the Kinect as a musical instrument, I find that my focus is shifting. I am becoming fascinated by the idea of building music entirely from the ground up, starting with the most “blank” canvas I can.

Just as I was drawn in past years to construct a complete computer graphic modeling, rendering and procedural animation package — starting with nothing but the ability to set the color at each pixel of an image — I find the equivalent question in music to be equally compelling.

As far as I can see, the “equivalent question in music” is to start with, say, a place to write something like 40000 samples every second (big enough to contain any audible waveform), and then write computer programs that specify the sound waves to into those samples, adding those waves together to make suitable harmonics that represent one musical instrument or another.

Then on top of that, build the attack and decay of individual notes, allow multiple channels for harmony, add pitch bend and vibrato, write procedures to lay one voice against another in syncopated rhythm, and gradually build toward creating entire musical compositions.

I know this sounds like a lot more work than just using an existing software package, but it’s also a lot more exciting. Kind of like building your own car from the ground up, and then seeing whether you can drive it across the country.

(Warning: may contain spoilers)

I’m writing this around midnight, in Paris. I just saw “Midnight in Paris”, and now, at midnight (in Paris) I have to say that “Midnight in Paris” is no midnight in Paris.

It was funny, and clever, and beautifully shot, and filled with little bits of historical asides and knowing inside references.

But I remember a time when Woody Allen lived in a better universe, where there existed other beings beside himself, a world inhabited by exciting characters, like Annie Hall, who could challenge and thrill us (and him) with their beautifully imperfect and achingly rendered humanity.

“Paris at Midnight” has none of this. It seems to be about a man engaged to a one dimensional cartoon character, who suddenly finds himself plunged into a world where all of his heroes have turned into one dimensional cartoon characters, where he meets a female version of himself who also turns out to be a cartoon character.

In the end he is saved (apparently) because he falls in love with a Barbie doll.

Woody used to be better than this.

I was trying to explain some of the subtleties of New York culture to my Scottish friends today, and I found myself reminiscing about the old Empire Diner — a restaurant in Manhattan, now sadly closed, whose boldly retro decor, delightful drink menu and general sense of style quoted the old diners from the 1950s all with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

In particular I fondly recalled how the menu had a listing for “Soup of the Day” (for $3.00), as well as a listing for “Soup du Jour” (for $3.50). No matter which one you ordered, you would get exactly the same dish.

It was a fair exchange of value, in a typically New York way: The restaurant was quite happy to give you the option of ordering in french, and equally happy to charge you the extra 50 cents for the privilege of having done so.

This evening, on a visit to some friends in Scotland, dinner table conversation turned to Prince William’s recent marriage (a popular subject here). I was told that a number of young women in the upper classes have been giving rather catty interviews to the Press, talking down Kate Middleton in a most undignified way. Clearly they were miffed that His Royal Highness had opted to marry a commoner, when there were so many eligible young ladies from titled families to choose from.

Next our conversation turned to his father, Prince Charles. I was told that many people in the U.K. have still not forgiven the Prince of Wales for marrying Diana, after it came out that he had actually been in love with Camilla Parker Bowles the whole time.

So here we have Prince Charles being criticized because he did not marry for love, and Prince William being criticized because he did. So no matter what you do when you’re a prince, it seems that people are going to get upset at you.

It must be tough being in line to the throne of England. I am so glad I don’t have such problems. 🙂

“I don’t know whether I am Turing dreaming that I am a machine, or a machine dreaming that I am Turing!”

–The Tao of Programming by Geoffrey James

Yesterday as part of a Kinect-based music project with some friends I started diving into the Java programming library that lets you directly create your own sounds, by building the signal yourself.

So I found myself really down in the wonderful low level playground where a little bit of computer programming lets me directly create vibrato (there are two kinds!), harmonics, pitch slide, echo, formants (for making vowel sounds) and all the other cool musical things our ears can hear.

This part is all just laying paint. The really interesting and fun part is when we start to make musical instruments out of all this, by using the Kinect to watch what your hands and fingers are doing, and try to create a really expressive and nicely controllable result.

We’ve already decided it’s not going to be all “waving your hands in the air”. Except for the Theremin, musical instruments usually involve touching something solid, and people are good at that. So in some ways it’s going to have things in common with the finger painting program I talked about recently.

Except of course that the thing we’ll be painting is music. 🙂