Make Mine Music

I’ve always been a big fan of The Lord of the Rings, and I was compelled, even at an early age, by Tolkein’s strange and fantastic retelling of history. But it was more than a curious child’s first foray into literature. Tolkein’s world comes into being only when the gods begin to make beautiful music. They literally sing the Earth into existence.

For some people, life is a song and the world is ignited by music. There is music in the hum of the city, in the clicking of stiletto heels, in the rumble of the underground trains and the beating of the hearts of strangers.

The world is not full of music, it is music. For me, all of us are music indefinable.

Thanks mostly to MTV, modern music consists primarily of lip-synching strippers who are famous for songs they didn’t write, performed on instruments they cannot play. I don’t see anything inherently wrong with this (I am, after all, a man), but when I hear these entertainers described as artists, my stomach turns. It is true that the airwaves are dominated by ear candy, and what we call “pop music” certainly has its place. But in the fringes and, in some cases, even in the spotlight, real artists are delivering valiant, original music on a regular basis. For anyone interested and willing to invest the effort that is a part of nearly every worthwhile endeavor in this world, bliss is only a click of the mouse away.

Here are just a few of the gifted musicians who are decorating our lives one song at a time.

I own many more DVDs than I have any right to. Five of these are live performances by Björk. The other night, I popped in her Royal Albert Hall concert from 2001. One of the things that is so wonderful about her music is its ability to sound fresh with each listen. The song structures are just obscure enough to elude complete understanding. They are brilliant in their ability to comfort and confound, to mesmerize and to flatly awe. I adore her music for its commitment to honesty, but most of all its beauty, its soaring, nearly incomprehensible loveliness. My own music is a way of acknowledging that I aim to follow in her footsteps, to bring beauty to the world without reducing the dialogue to a few pretty notes. I am almost a complete failure in this regard, but I won’t always be.

When Beck released his album Sea Change in 2002, it was hailed as a masterpiece by critics. Beck Hanson’s music has always been a rich, diverse fusion of rock, country, and electronic influences. But nothing emotional was at stake until he stripped away the bells and whistles, revealing a crushing frankness and a bittersweet wit. If it isn’t quite as honest as Björk’s best music, it is only more fascinating as a result.

Before he was America’s John McEnroe for the new millennium, Ryan Adams was the driving force behind alt-country’s Whiskeytown, whose 2001 album Pneumonia may be the purest expression of the form by a band not named The Jayhawks. Alt-country takes country music’s impeccable taste and leaves behind its corny lyrics. Pneumonia features Adams’ most consistent and satisfying songwriting, and the arrangements are characteristically expert. No road trip should be deprived of this soundtrack.

I could go on forever, filling more volumes than Gibbon did when he wrote all that stuff about Rome. But let’s not talk about music. Let’s listen to it.

At the Blue Note and the Village Vanguard, where you can still rub shoulders with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. The masters of Jazz, one of our most magnificent art forms, are dying. See them while you still can. Let them bring you music.

At the Met, where Hei-Kyung Hong, a soprano with a voice as strong and as lilting as any I can imagine, sings several roles each season. Go see her before opera passes you by forever. Let her bring you music.

At Bowery Ballroom and Irving Plaza and Hammerstein, where the “next big thing” will only cost you a sawbuck or two. Catch them before someone else does. Let them bring you music. And beer.

At Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall, where the gigantic torch of classical music burns as brightly as ever. Let well-dressed, immaculately groomed violinists bring you music. Let them bring it to you and change your life.

There is enough music out there for all of us. The best songs, across all genres and eras, are the ones that sound awkward at first listen, with their strange chords and shifting tempos, but inevitably find the deepest corners of your soul. The best songs reflect versions of ourselves we didn’t even know existed. That can be intimidating. And exhilarating. And frustrating.

That’s music. Pass it on.

Mount Sinai Mosaic: Spring 2004

Taking Him Out to the Ballgame

It was the worst day of my life.

My family had gathered en masse at a local restaurant to celebrate my father’s 65th birthday, and my nearly-five-year-old nephew Zachary, shy and coached by my younger brother Jon, approached and stood, staring, at my side. “Go ahead,” said my brother. “Tell Uncle Michael what you told me.”

“I like the Mets,” said Zachary, an evil smirk crossing his face.

I shared a stunned, exasperated look with Jon.

“How did this happen?” I asked, half expecting to wake up, screaming and sticky with sweat, from this nightmare. “Who would do this to a child?”

We decided that Zachary had been poisoned by a friend at camp or school, some other lemming led blindly into the abyss of broken-hearted fandom. We wanted better for our nephew. He had a photo of the 1998 Yankees, the best baseball team I’ve ever seen in the flesh, hanging above his bed. He’d been born into the promise of greatness, endless World Championships at his fingertips. We‘d envisioned a navy blue and white clad Zachary, posters of Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada papering his bedroom walls, driving down to the Canyon of Heroes with his friends to watch the latest version of the Yankees parade through the streets of lower Manhattan. We’d dreamed of him playing baseball for his high school team, the number “2” ironed to his back in tribute to his Yankee hero. We’d even had the audacity to picture him in pinstripes, patrolling the outfield at Yankee Stadium or, God help us, taking over at shortstop.

And now this.

If he’d said, “Uncle Michael, I like the Red Sox,” I’d have hurt less. The Mets were unacceptable. If he liked the Red Sox, at least we could laugh at him. With the Mets, all we’d have is pity.

We decided to take drastic action. It was time for Zachary’s first ball game. We were going to the Bronx.

And so it was that my older brother David, his wife Melissa, Zachary, his younger sister Emily, Jon and I ended up on 161st Street and River Avenue to watch the Yankees play the Devil Rays on a Saturday afternoon. Why the Devil Rays? We needed a win for this to work.

We put on the full court press: caps at the Yankee store, genuine ballpark hot dogs, cotton candy, jumbo pretzels, and of course, peanuts and Cracker Jacks.

After we put on his new Yankee cap, I pretended to mistake him for Jeter. “Holy cow,” I shouted, “It’s Derek Jeter!”

“No, it’s not, Uncle Michael,” he said, removing the cap to spoil the illusion. “It’s Zachary!” We were off to a smashing start.

Jon and I patiently explained the ins and outs of Yankeeland to him: the Bleacher Creatures and Roll Call, the unique call and response between the players and fans; the rousing, 5th-inning “YMCA” led by the grounds crew; the 7th-inning stretch, complete with “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and Cotton Eye Joe.

Sometime in the middle innings (I was too delirious to remember which inning precisely), Zachary asked, “Are we winning?” We, not they. I was beside myself with glee.

When, apropos of nothing, he turned to me a short while later and said, “The Mets strike out,” I nearly had a stroke. It was working. There was hope.

As for the game, we couldn’t have asked for anything more: not one, but two Bernie Williams home runs to mark his 35th birthday, a dramatic, late-inning Yankee victory, and Mariano Rivera jogging in from the bullpen in the ninth to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”

I sang along with Frank Sinatra as we walked, exhausted, through the tunnels of the Stadium and into the cool, late summer air. “Start spreading the news,” I sang, oblivious to the sneering onlookers. “I’m leaving today…”

Zachary was trudging along, holding his father’s hand, hat pulled down over his eyes, shoulders slumped. He wasn’t even paying attention to the show his uncle was putting on for his benefit. Right then, he was just a tired little boy with a whole mess of new sensations to sort out: the sounds and smells of the ballpark, the rules of the game, the attempted brainwashing. It was obvious he needed to sleep on all of this.

As we said goodbye in the shadow of a building in which Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle had played baseball, I took off his hat and mussed his hair. “So, that’s baseball,” I said. “What do you think?”

“I’m tired,” he said. “Are you coming home with us in our car?”

I milled around for a little while after they left. The subway platform is always mobbed after games anyway, and I had some things to sort out myself. Maybe baseball isn’t our national pastime anymore, but no one’s sitting around planning the perfect trip to Madison Square Garden or Giants Stadium. There’s something different about baseball, something that makes us want to take more care of it than other diversions. Do we speak of basketball with the same reverence? Do we worry about the way our football players “carry themselves” on the field? Baseball’s just different.

Maybe it won’t be the same for Zachary’s generation, the way it just hasn’t been the same for us as it was for our parents. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try to pass on the joy of the Game. If he can’t appreciate the nuances until he’s older, and even if he never grabs hold of it the way I did, at least he’ll have that day, when his parents and his uncles took him to the ballpark to see the Yankees. The day Bernie hit two home runs on his birthday. The day he got his Yankee cap. The day he saw Derek Jeter for the first time.

Mission accomplished.

Mount Sinai Mosaic: Nov/Dec 2003

We're Not Special

Listen up. This is important.

We're not special.

I know this may be difficult for you to hear, given that your specialaciousness seems so sparkling and pervasive to you, but I think it's about time you heard the truth. Unless you can bend spoons, you are almost certainly not all that. Someone had to say it.

Here's where we're at: you have at your disposal hundreds, maybe even thousands, of puny details about the human digestive system. You can expound poetically on the wonders of neuroendocrine tumors. In any given room, you are the authority on perirectal abscesses and anal fistuli. Congratulations. You're a star!

Glamorous as it may seem to be the resident know-it-all, an unfortunate consequence of being medical students is that we haven't looked up from our books all that much. In the words of Ferris Bueller, "Life moves pretty fast—if you don't stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it."

One of the many perils of a life in medicine results from exposure to a gaggle of nosocomial infections that can threaten the very fabric of your character. The most serious of these ailments are the IRS (I'm Really Something) virus and hyperplasia of the ego, both of which can prove fatal to humility and general good will and can, even in their mildest forms, eliminate you from my inner circle. That should bother you.

The thing is we're medical students. We're supposed to know things about medicine. If you're reading as much as you say you are and you don't know a thing or two, well, maybe you need glasses. Having access to minutiae doesn’t make us special. It’s true that you could win millions on Medical Jeopardy, but you think I care?

"But we are responsible for human lives," you say. "We lay our hands on people." If those things made a person special, then airline pilots and masseuses would be revered as movie stars. Talk about happy endings!

Oh, and Alec Baldwin? He’s special.

What I'm trying to say is simple: in this day and age, honesty and integrity are just about the only things that can set a person apart from your average Joe. Sure, genius can make a fellow interesting, but I have yet to meet a genius in the flesh. When I do, you'll be the first to know.

Auto mechanics can replace your carburetor and change your oil. Plumbers can fish the hairballs out of your pipes. Doctors can perform splenectomies and prescribe the appropriate antibiotics for your staph infection. Big whoop! I can pat my head and rub my belly at the same time.

A physician at one of Mount Sinai's gleaming affiliates once told me that intelligence can actually hamper a good physician. A strong work ethic, he said, is prerequisite, but intelligence can be the kiss of death. If you don't agree, ask yourself this: would any intelligent person sign up for this?

Now, some of you may be thinking, “I’m special! I really, really am!” Well, maybe that’s true, but it probably isn’t because you’re in Medicine. Too many of us use this career (and it is a career, just like accounting) as a get-out-of-jail-free card. We volunteer to help the homeless, we donate blood, we dedicate ourselves to caring for the underprivileged. Our chests expand with self-satisfaction and our egos swell like floats at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, but do you really think we’re so different from everyone else? Doctors sometimes cheat on their taxes. Doctors lie from time to time. Some even pay cash money to see Sandra Bullock movies. We’re not special. You’ll be a better doctor if you just accept it.

So, if our school has chosen appropriately, we are the hardest working, most diligent bunch they could dig up on short notice. I'm impressed, as much with myself as with you.

There are millions of similarly gifted individuals out there waiting to take our places. We are not an endangered species. We’re not special. Say it with me.

Be generous. Be sincere. Be compassionate. We may not be special, but that’s no reason to stop trying.

Mount Sinai Mosaic: Aug/Sep 2003