When I was a teenager, my girlfriend had a piano, and just sitting and watching her play Rachmaninoff, Liszt & Beethoven made up some of the most mesmerizing experiences of my youth. By Kind Permission Of was to me, the pinnacle of human achievement, and I’d beg to her play the various pieces it samples. Her piano was in a room facing the road, by the front door, and if she was playing when I went around the corner to call on her, I’d stand outside the window and listen until she noticed me. Sometimes I’d be standing out on the street for 10 or 15 minutes listening before actually going inside and saying hello.

I’d mess around on her piano whenever I got the chance, making her wince at my timing as she gave me the easiest possible arrangement of a duet; or trying to imitate her father and pick out the melodies to Beatles songs with my right hand whilst my left played the closest approximation of the written chords that I knew. But, frankly, however much I enjoyed it, I was never much good. And so, at University, when spare time was limitless and I was exploring music in every which way with various bands I played with, from a really quite good jazz band down to some less well-advised ska and prog ensembles, I ended up buying myself an electric piano.

Not just any electric piano though, I did my research and talked to some fantastic pianists who played them, and ended up getting a second-hand Fatar SL-880 for far less than it was worth from a musician a couple of hours’ drive away in London, who had so much fancy equipment he was practically giving the thing away at a few hundred quid just to make space. Unlike more traditional keyboards, this has fully weighted hammer-action keys, which means it really feels and responds like an actual piano, and whilst I used to get a decent sound by running it through my computer, I now have a beautiful midi module which, whilst nothing like the real thing, provides a nice approximation of a range of quality pianos.

For the past three years, with varying levels of discipline, I’ve been teaching myself to play piano on that. Various friends, band-mates, girlfriends and so on have given me tips, but it’s mostly been a solitary affair with infrequent feedback, and so I’ve doubtless picked up some bad habits. Most of these – using the wrong fingering, pedalling too much – are noticed and subsequently resolved after I play in front of a more experienced pianist, but one I’ve noticed myself and, despite some effort, haven’t made many inroads on fixing as yet.

When I play, I nearly always play for my own pleasure. This doesn’t mean I don’t practise my scales, arpeggios and the endless horrifying pieces from Hanon’s The Virtuoso Pianist in 60 Exercises, but it has meant that I only learn any given piece just enough to make it sound wonderful to me. One of the most stressful experiences of my adult life was playing piano at a small exhibition in a church in London, and even in that I ended up making a couple of small slips during the recital.

I used to be a hero on Guitar Hero. My console was filled with 100% ratings on songs at the Expert level, and the rush of adrenaline as I got finally got through the solo and towards the end of a song without having made a mistake was exhilarating. Trying to play a piece on piano flawlessly approximates that, but knowing that there’s no real benchmark of 100% and that even if I hit every note at exactly the right time, I’m still far away from achieving the grace and feeling that I hear on professional recordings, takes away some of the joy from that. In the spirit of external motivation though, I’ve started recording my attempts, and sending them to a couple of friends, and I’m tentatively sharing one of these below.

I’d like to make a slue of excuses: that I’ve lost the sheet music for this piece; that I was tired; that the recording quality of an iPhone and some computer speakers is always going to be terrible — but having done that I also have to admit that this recording was probably the 10^th or 11^th attempt that evening, and probably the best of the lot.

Right now I can’t listen to this recording without all my focus on the mistakes. Hopefully not everyone will feel that way.

Xx

I train Capoeira at least three times a week, sometimes more if I have an extra evening free or if there’s an event happening or someone’s invited me to go and visit their group. It’s the high point of my week and it says something that even injured Capoeiristas will turn up to class just to see friends and be a part of the energy.

To an outsider, one Capoeira game will often look much the same as another – two people tudo de branco circling one another with flips and cartwheels and aiming kicks at one another that never quite seem to connect. To a Capoeirista, however, every game is subtly different, and the opportunity to play with someone from a new school, from a different background and mentality, with different moves and timing, is a much-loved experience, and also quite an adrenaline rush: as the scar on my eye can attest to, it’s during these encounters that those kicks or elbows are much more likely to connect.

And so, my visit to Brazil – birthplace of Capoeira – was always going to include visits to some schools there. In Niteroí, one of the founding Mestres of my group has his academy, and although he was ill and couldn’t teach, it was still an awe-inspiring opportunity to visit his academy and see the history on his walls – including photos of some prominent NYC Capoeiristas from 20 years ago.

On Ilha Grande, in talking to some locals, I learned there would also be a roda (the circle in which Capoeiristas play) on the Saturday night, and I was invited to join this. It’s difficult to describe the exhilaration of playing Capoeira by moonlight with a new group, on a beautiful Brazilian island, on the pier overlooking the beach, with a hundred tourists watching and taking photos, and the friends I’d made on the island offering support.

The first piece of advice I received from my Capoeira family when I told them I was going to Brazil was “wear a mouthguard”, but I didn’t see a single violent game when I was there. There was power, there was threat (I certainly had to move quickly to get away from a couple of kicks), but the focus was on enjoyment and creating a beautiful game for both the observers and the participants, and it’s that positive energy and focus that I want to retain and bring back with me to New York.

Here’s a video from the roda on Ilha Grande.

I can’t wait to go back.

Xx

In the mid 19th century, a Frenchman by the name of Jules Leótard developed the art of trapeze, whilst wearing some skin-tight clothing that would later be named after him. Given that he was constantly experimenting to see what was possible, he fell frequently and violently, and it’s a wonder that he didn’t die given that his safety provision was a swimming pool, as opposed to say, netting or giant crash mats. Quite how trapeze-diving hasn’t become an Olympic sport yet baffles me, but I went trapezing last month and even without the water it was a pretty awesome time.

Flying on a trapeze is simply a combination of timing and physics and, given that I’m constantly working on the first and enamoured of the latter, it was always going to be fun. A trapeze is, essentially, a pendulum: a surprisingly heavy metal bar suspended by two ropes from the ceilings. One climbs a ladder, leans thrillingly far out on a rather precarious platform whilst being held back by a helper, grabs the bar and on a given signal, jumps into the air and lets gravity do the rest.

The potential energy of a trapeze artist is at its maximum when the artist is about to jump, a value roughly equivalent to mgh (mass * gravity * height of the pendulum above its lowest point). The maximum speed is therefore simply (2gh)/2, which comes out to about 5.8m/s (a mere 13mph) in the space where I was practising. Note that mass is omitted in this second formula: the bigger you are, the exact same rate at which you fall. Jumping forwards to get a speed boost also does nothing, the only variable is ‘h’, the height at which one starts. Pendula are quite amazing in many other ways too: no matter how high you start their swing, they will ‘always’ (physicists beware) take the same amount of time to return to where they started (their period). If you ever need to make a measurement but only have a stopwatch and some string, a pendulum with a period of one second is one metre long. I learned most of what I know about penulda from Walter Lewin and if you haven’t yet seen his lectures…enjoy.

Simply flying on a trapeze, whilst fun, will soon take a toll on the arms and air-resistance will kill the fun before too long. So, instead, we move on to tricks. One fun trick which I’m not yet skilled enough to perform is to move between standing on top of the trapeze, to hanging underneath it by one’s feet. Other than the thrill of rapid inversion, this brings a second adrenaline rush in that it extends the length of the pendulum quite significantly, and therefore brings with it a very significant sudden acceleration (h is extended by the artist’s height, upping the maximum speed).

Most tricks, however, go the other way, and involve the artist pulling themself up onto, over and around the bar in various positions. This requires very little in the way of upper-body strength. A pull-up on a static bar requires overcoming gravity (F=gm), or simply lifting one’s body weight. On a trapeze there is an additional centripetal force of mv^2/r (where r, radians, is helping us calculate the angular acceleration) at the nadir of a downswing on a trapeze, in my case 5.8m/s as calculated above, this force is around 2/3 that of gravity. Despite this fact, most male first-timers on trapeze will always try to pull-up during their initial downswing – I don’t know why, muscle reflex maybe from pull-up bars maybe – which is the equivalent of trying to lift their own body weight plus two-thirds. They invariably fail to do so.

At the zenith of a swing, however, this centripetal force nears 0 and, furthermore, the artist has significant upwards momentum in their favour. Lifting one’s legs or body at this point requires far less effort than it would on a static bar, and there’s a feeling of approaching weightlessness if the timing is precise. Physics and timing, all you need in trapeze and all you need in life.

Here’s a video of my first time.

Not the most graceful, but it got better, and I even jumped off my trapeze onto a catcher the last couple of times.

Xx

Since moving to America, any time I’ve caught myself casually using American phrases or spellings, without no conscious attempt to make myself understood, I feel a small sense of shame and disappointment in myself. This was intensified to its zenith when I met some Brits on the weekend and was told my accent had “a slight American twang”. I’m so sorry.

Since moving to Brooklyn, I’ve experienced a variation on this mental post-hoc censorship , feeling that same twinge of shame every time I utter some phrase that could mark me down as a hipster. The classic “Oh, I don’t have TV”; the definitive “I don’t really go to Manhattan on weekends”; the pretentious “She‘s not famous here, most people haven’t heard of her”; or, most recently, “I only drink fresh orange juice”.

But, that last one, I stand by. As I once learned, to my dismay, and you’ll never be able to unlearn: mass-produced orange juice does indeed use real oranges, but after the juice is extracted, it is boiled and pasteurised and the resulting grey, tasteless liquid is then enhanced with artificial colours and flavourings to give it that fresh, natural taste. The only real remnant of the original oranges used is the water content.

Now I juice my own oranges, which works out slightly more expensive than buying Tropicana, although cheaper than buying the amazing machine pictured above, which I provide a link to in case anyone is feeling generous for my forthcoming birthday. My current manual approach, whilst slightly Zen, can sometimes be overly time-consuming, but is always rewarding. After this forced conversion, I’m a little scared to read or watch anything that claims to show how common items are produced, but my love of engineering and mass production soon wins out, and I end up staring for hours at endless YouTube videos of factories and conveyor belts.

The majority of the Discovery Channel’s How It’s Made series is currently on YouTube, and whilst nothing can beat the process of making mirrors, there’s still endless fun to be had in watching the “shower of salt” used in making potato chips (I’m so sorry), or the river of tomato puree used on frozen pizzas”.

What really pushes these videos from simply informative, up to endlessly entertaining, however, is the thought of seeing the voice actors reading the copy for the first time, pleading with the writers to drop the puns, before finally being told that theirs is a saturated market and that, if they won’t read such classics as the below, someone else will.

On bacon:

“Today, a quick trip to the store and anyone can bring home the bacon”

On mirrors:

“But first, let’s reflect on the history of mirrors”

On ice cream:

“The cones move into the boxes, ready to take a licking”

On paper:

“The main ingredient remains the same: imagination”

And finally, the ultimate-lead in to an episode, guaranteed to keep viewers sticking around:

“On tonight’s show: CDs, cheese, pantyhose and fluorescent tubes”

Sounds like a great Saturday night to me.

Xx

I’ve written a lot about the New York subway system since I moved here. The surprising shallowness of its foundations; the life-saving air-conditioned carriages; pre-boarding and route-planning stratagems; the weird and wonderful things I’ve seen; and the odd skills I’ve taught myself during my commutes.

But, one thing I haven’t yet mentioned, is the set of social mores within the transient communities that form on platforms and within carriages. It’s taken some significant adaptation on my part to fit in with this new culture. Gone is the wonderfully British system of guidance, whereby deviation from the norms is punished first by a stern glance and, in the case of an egregious trespass, an audible tut. The guiding principles on the Tube are shame, and a maniacal aversion to causing offence, and it generally leads to an efficient, well-oiled system.

Here, things are much more direct, reflecting the stereotypically-American air of outward confidence. Whenever a crowd forms around the doors of a carriage, with space available further inside, invariably someone will audibly complain and berate those trying to preserve their hard-won position into moving towards the dead-zone between doors. This, initially shocking behaviour, has many positive outcomes. Where there is a margin-case for offering a seat (is she pregnant, or just a little large?), a verbal exchange may be had, as opposed to the more British conundrum whereby the seated party must either fully commit to standing, making naught but brief-eye contact, or sit in perfect silence.

New Yorkers seem more adept at managing themselves on platforms, whilst waiting for a train to arrive. Whilst the occasional tourist will block the top of a stairwell to find a map, earning themselves eternal damnation and a possible trampling, there is in general an even distribution of passengers at all possible entrances to a train, and none of the clustering towards the platform entrances that is so common in London; where announcers are needed to gently chide passengers to move along at regular intervals. That said, I do miss some of the announcers from my regular Tube routes, some of whom I’m sure were stand-up comics in their spare evenings.

The downside to all this independent thinking, confidence, liberty, all men being created equal and other such values, is that it applies equally to well-mannered suits as it does to New York’s less sociable population. Some disregard the norms for the sake of art, such as the lady chopping onions with a pretty sharp looking knife below, or the countless musicians and artists that feel the need to practise their craft between Bedford Ave and Union Sq on the L line.

Others, however, are simply more unpleasant. A streak of reports of people clipping their nails on the subway surfaced late last year, and one encounters yet more unsavoury acts every couple of weeks. Artist Jay Shells created a guerilla campaign to eradicate some of the more unpleasant habits held by certain travellers:

Whatever the trespass, New Yorkers can be assured that offenders will suffer both verbal redress, and also be subject to a mass of subtle iPhone photographers that will publicise their misdeeds on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and perhaps even SeatHogs.com.

Personally, so long as they don’t turn off the AC in the carriages or close stations and lines as often as the Tube does, I can put up with a whole lot worse before I say a bad word about the New York Subway.

Xx

Recently, on Thursday evenings, when I should probably be practising the piano, brushing up on my maths and language skills, or training Capoeira, I have instead been found at another of the social sports leagues that pervade New York. The game of choice is kickball, a sport which I hadn’t even actually heard of before I signed up, and still didn’t know the rules to as I played through my first game.

Kickball is, essentially, baseball played with a large, soft ball that is pitched along the ground and kicked instead of batted. Given the significant quantities of alcohol consumed after every game, I was surprised to learn that it’s generally regarded as a sport played by children in elementary school, and not commonly found past age 10 or so.

Apparently, my team is particularly good at it, or at least, better than the others in the league. We’ve taken the yellow shirts the league provides, and added to them somewhat, with headbands, knee-high socks and eyeblacks. We have walk-out songs. We have a pre-game roar. We spend the week talking nonsense to eachother on Facebook and organising nights out. It’s all terribly geeky. And brilliantly fun.

Last week’s game was captured by a filmmaker, who, for some unknown reason, really wanted to come and film a game of kickball. Highlights are below.

Bring on tonight’s game.

Xx