Tinman: A Life Explored

By David Cope

Offering insight into the creative processes of a contemporary composer, Tinman presents 150 vignettes from author David Cope's life. Some of the notable individuals discussed in this innovative biography are John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Aaron Copland, Warren Zevon, Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, Douglas Hofstadter, Arthur Knight, Danny Glover, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Dorothy Freeman, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Philip Jos Farmer. Tinman offers a fond music journey including two encounters with Bach, Rachmaninoff's classic "Prelude in C-sharp minor," Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Pierre Boulez, and the sadness of Igor Stravinsky's death.

The title, borrowed from L. Frank Baum's book The Wizard of Oz, is an aphorism affectionately attached to Cope in the late 1990s. The reference reflects the many attitudes about his work with his computer music program, Experiments in Musical Intelligence; critics felt the results of this program lack heart.

Though Tinman covers many other aspects of Cope's life-from his love of the cello, to his days as a graduate student at the University of Southern California, and to his work as a composer, author, and teacher-the main theme centers on his search for self-identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 4, 2008
• ISBN: 9780595618828

David Cope

David Cope is currently Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Santa Cruz. His previous books include New Directions in Music (seventh edition), Techniques of the Contemporary Composer, Computers and Musical Style, Experiments in Musical Intelligence, The Algorithmic Composer, Virtual Music, and Computer Models of Musical Creativity.

Book preview

(1941–1956) 

1    

Afflictions 

a faint LLight appeared, a vague formless patch that wavered fOR a secoNd, blurrEd, aNd then died. EVERy aspect of the event was uncomfortable—an unwanted disturbance in the otherwise peaceful, velvet blackness. Time passed, and the unexercised mind stopped vainly groping for significance, and eased once more into the deep rapture of the night. This was the beginning …

1941–1953

I was born with two relatively severe physical afflictions. The first of these afflictions, asthma, gave me many problems during the first years of my life, and ultimately forced my parents to move our family from California to the more arid climate of Phoenix, Arizona, to keep me alive. This asthma also required me to frequently visit doctors and hospitals for injections of sulfa drugs, made all the worse because of my allergic reactions to these drugs. I believe that my later aversion to doctors and hospitals originates directly from these painful early-life experiences.

My second physical affliction involved a distended inguinal hernia that, since birth, had given the impression of my having three rather than two male marbles (as my mother put it). Since my body held few appendages of odd number besides one—two arms, two legs, two ears, ten fingers, and so on—I quickly deduced that I had an interloper masquerading as a marble. This interloper often caused me severe pain. I would curl into a fetal ball from the agony of this hernia and literally hallucinate, giving my teachers and friends the illusion that I had epilepsy or was attempting to speak in tongues. As with my asthma, my hernia often brought me to doctors for physical exams.

On one visit to a doctor in Goodyear, Arizona, at age eight or nine I accidentally overheard my parents and the doctor discussing my health while I sat in the waiting room. There was no mistaking what I heard that day—the doctor informing my parents that I would soon require an operation to correct my physical disability. I then retained this secret knowledge for several years, never quite knowing whether, when I fell asleep, I might wake up in a hospital bed a pound or two lighter, having been whisked away in the night for clandestine surgery. None of this actually occurred, of course, but the threat brought on by the secret knowledge of my condition seemed very real to me.

Finally one day, when I was in my early teens, my parents informed me that within several weeks I would be admitted to Phoenix General Hospital for a hernia operation. I remember feeling almost euphoric that what I had dreaded for so many years was finally about to occur, the fear of waiting and wondering finally over. At the same time, however, I was terrified at having to endure the pain and recovery that such an operation, at least at that time, implied. As I awaited the dreaded surgery, suicide often occurred to me as an alternative, even though I knew in my heart that choosing to die would certainly be worse than just facing the music.

Eventually the fateful day arrived, and with barely a memory of it now, I endured my time under the knife. I do, however, remember well the hours that followed my surgery, especially that my doctor and nurse explicitly forbade me to cough for fear of ripping my stitches apart or otherwise damaging my surgeon’s apparently frail repair job. Not so unbelievably, no matter how hard I tried, I could not escape incessantly feeling like I had to cough. The harder I tried to rid myself of this constant itch, the more I itched and the more I felt like I had to cough. As time wore on, however, the itch receded, my wound healed, and I had two, not three, male marbles.

he has hidden in his skull,

spine,

and pelvis,

all his vices,

all things touched and changed by the night,

thROugh deStructivE forces advanced from infinity to infinity,

aLl retAiNing thE same given position to one another,

and upon which they may not be investigated separately

for other purposes.

2    

As a Baby Piano 

Our hope iS that there is so little

meCHanism in a chiLd’s brain, that

somEthIng Can be

easily programmed, by abstracting

from our senses tHE common

impulses that clambeR

higher and higher.

1943 and 1959

My very first real memory dates back to when I was one or two years old. I remember seeing the underside of a piano, from what must have been a cradle, and listening to my mother practice. I have no idea what music she played at that time, though many of Frédéric Chopin’s nocturnes and polonaises sound so familiar to me even today that she may have been working on one or more of these works.

Later on, during my undergraduate college days, I remember walking down a practice-room corridor and hearing someone performing my music. I did not recognize what piece of mine this student was playing exactly, only that I had surely composed it. I knocked on the door of the relevant practice room and, after being invited to enter, I asked the student for the name of this work of mine she was practicing. My question received only a stunned silence. I asked again. Apparently thinking that I had lost my mind, this student demanded that I immediately leave the room. As I turned to exit, I begged to at least know the name of my work. She told me. I had apparently composed the Military Polonaise by Chopin.

To this end,

I comPosed It—

AN angry fight fOr a metaphysical abstraction,

to draw you nearer.

I was then scorned and thrown aside,

to which I do not think

too much ImportaNce shoulD bE AtTacHed.

3    

The Sky Is Falling 

The trees abOut me

sHivered With the first iNtimatiOn

Of THE stOrM that was sUddEnly upon me.

We may now conSider ThE grOund to hAve beeN cLeaReD,

AND are ready tO ProceEd to debate our questioN.

1946 and 1957

On the evening of October 9, 1946, my uncle invited me outside his house in North Hollywood, California, to witness the sky falling. I was five years old at the time, and even though I did not believe this preposterous notion, I was curious enough to follow him. I will never forget what I then witnessed. Indeed, the sky seemed to be falling. Meteors—in what has since become known as the finest meteor shower seen in North America since 1885—streaked in every direction across the sky, appearing in fact to be the stars themselves loosed from their positions in the heavens and raining down upon the earth. After freezing in fear for a second or two, I ran back inside my uncle’s house and hid beneath the nearest object I could find under which I would fit. The world did not end that night, but at least one small part of my world came alive.

During the International Geophysical Year of July 1, 1957 to December 31, 1958, at the age of sixteen, I joined Canada’s meteor counting team. Canada, it seemed, did not screen its members by age. My participation in this group involved spending one hour each night lying on my back in my yard staring at a single pie-slice quadrant of the night sky, counting and describing any and all meteors that appeared. As simple as this process may seem, it actually proved quite difficult. Certain types of aircraft, for example, can imitate meteor behavior, especially aircraft without telltale blinking warning lights. As stupid as it may sound, stars often resemble slow-moving meteors, especially during nights of high air turbulence, which can make such stars blink and otherwise appear to move. Occasionally, especially during those nights of little action, I even imagined seeing moving lights where none actually existed.

Most of the meteors I counted during my months of research proved routine, with my biggest thrills occurring when I visually measured extremely long-lasting trails across my quadrant. Once in a while, however, unique events occurred. On one night, for example, I witnessed a slow-burning fireball that hissed and burped across the sky with enormous difficulty, taking a full minute to finally disappear. This fireball changed colors several times, veered in direction twice, and even once appeared to explode. Another time, I actually heard a meteor become a meteorite—land on earth—with a resounding thud and resultant small quake beneath me.

My biggest thrill, however, came when I observed a meteor shatter into several pieces, with each piece becoming a meteor in its own right. This bit of fireworks caught me off guard, since my duty involved measuring the tails and directions of meteors. With several meteor trails suddenly occurring at once, I simply lost track of most of them. Unlike the hissing fireball, this and most other meteors I witnessed made no sound whatsoever.

In REaLitY,

thiS cropping out in our plantEd gardens

oCcupies Our WhOle miND,

by gradually cOmmunicating its motion to Death.

4    

Scorpion 

The taut pressure tightened,

and finally broke.

The vision shattered into a thousand Tiny dreamlets.

Peace returned slowly.

1949

After moving to Arizona for my health, my family spent five years in Goodyear, Arizona, named after the corporation that kept most of its citizens fed. We lived in a small condominium—though I doubt it was called that back then—whose yards were regularly irrigated with water from one of the neighboring dams. I mention this irrigation since it provided one of the many varied smells that to this day remind me of these early times of my life—rotting fish. The other smell that recalls this time of my life is spoiled watermelons, since our property backed onto a very large field of watermelons, many of which had avoided, for one reason or another, the harvesting that twice a year plucked them from their comfortable nests.

Another memory that haunts me from this early period of my life is that of a very large scorpion that lived beneath my bedroom floor. Every so often this scorpion would sneak out from its hole under my bedroom window and, I suppose, hunt for food and drink. As well, occasionally my sister Susie and I would witness one of these scorpionic ventures, and we would run off screaming into the watermelon fields and hide. Scorpions were—and I suppose still are—dangerous and venomous creatures, quite capable of stinging a person to death.

What made this scorpion most dangerous, of course, was knowing that it lay but a few inches away from my bed at night, no doubt plotting devious ways to enter my bedroom and slap its deadly tail into my flesh. Although our condominium floor was at least a foot of cement in depth, and the scorpion seemed as afraid of us as we of it, the darkness of my bedroom at night conjured all manner of irrational visions of this wretched and incredibly ugly creature extruding the poisonous venom from its stinger.

Neither my family nor I ever tracked this scorpion down. For all I know, it is still there, hiding and waiting for me to return with what I imagine to be demonic eyes and a quiet but determined ferocity.

Occasionally a vague patch of light floated pleasantly by,

a mere ecHo of its former sElf,

a soft memory of what his mind,

even in sleep,

BEGan to realize

was nonetheless the begINNing of somethING new.

5    

The Top of the Mountain 

Far away,

in a strange city of yesterday,

diamonds glistened in a glass window,

as He carried me away in spirit tO a gReat and high mountain.

I watched it all from the outSidE.

1950

I walked a great deal when I was young, using these occasions, I imagine, to buffer my seemingly ever-present teenage fears and crises. On one of my walks, I hiked to the top of a mountain in the Sunnyslope area of Phoenix, Arizona, near where I lived at the time. When I arrived at the summit of this relatively small mountain, I sat down, relaxed, and pondered the view of the city laid out before me. Unfortunately, my seating proved very uncomfortable, and I quickly discovered the cause—a small loose rock positioned at the very center of my backside. I removed the rock, which I then deemed the top of the mountain, and kept it with me as I returned home. The reason for my walk—the sadness of one of my classmates at the death of her brother—had not changed, but, as usual, I felt better for having had the time to think and at least momentarily separate myself from such vicissitudes of daily life.

Later that same day, I met my sad friend again. With no forethought at all, and not having the slightest idea of why I did it, I handed her the rock I had found and proclaimed: For the courage you have shown, I award you the top of a mountain. It must have sounded sincere, for she began to laugh and cry simultaneously. I pointed toward the mountain where I had gathered her prize, and together we wrote the name of the peak and the date in small letters on the underside of the rock.

After my life-threatening surgery in 1993, my son Tim came to visit me in the hospital. After the usual pleasantries, he handed me a rock. On this rock were the words: Top of Mount Dana, April, 1993. Mount Dana is a 13,000-foot-plus-high peak on the eastern ramparts of Yosemite National Park, easily one of my favorite mountains. I took the rock gratefully and thanked Tim for his thoughtfulness in having remembered my childhood story and going to such lengths to relive it for me.

Tim asked, What story?

THe elements of the spheres of the world,

havIng provEd as mortal to some

as a Frost to crickets

coming down unto you.

but maintaining

its present state

is

wrongful.

6    

Boxing 

The meAning of the word

holdS gReaT wratH, becauSe

he knOwS that

hE has weLl estAblished facts,

MAthematically proved theorems.

1950

When I was eight years old, my grade-school gym teacher decided that my classmates and I should learn how to defend ourselves. To prevent serious injury, he outfitted each of us with a set of boxing gloves so outrageously large that they looked like reddish-brown cantaloupes growing at the ends of our arms.

When it came my turn to box, I resisted. Misunderstanding my reasons, the gym teacher assumed I feared getting hurt. He busied himself explaining that the gloves made that nearly impossible and that I should not be afraid. My fear, however, was not for my own pain. My health since birth had been so precarious that I expected pain every day of my life. I feared that I would hurt someone else. As an empath, I knew that hurting someone else had the effect of hurting me more. I refused to fight.

My gym teacher, however, had ways to deal with problem students like me. He threw me into our makeshift ring with another student who he knew was not afraid to fight. Within seconds, this student, taking no pity on me whatsoever, began to take advantage of my lack of resistance, repeatedly slapping me about my head, shoulders, and upper body. Without knowing exactly what was happening, I felt some self-preservational instinct take over, and—crying so that tears rolled freely down my cheeks—I simply pummeled my opponent to his knees, and with one swift right cross, leveled him flat.

The many varied consequences of my actions occurred in rapid fire. First, the gym teacher was ecstatic—he had found a major talent hidden among his dainty grade-school crew. The students crowded around the ring divided into two groups, mostly around gender, I noticed, with one group applauding for blood and the other group appalled by what they had witnessed. My opponent lay still, not unconscious but clearly dazed by my sudden and unexpected outburst.

I freely cried and felt both elated that the bout was over, and dejected at having to actually hit someone with intent to inflict harm. My guilt was so horrific that had I been able to maneuver my gloves in that way, I would have hit myself in the face to even the score. I sobbed even as my gym teacher removed my gloves and repeated again and again that I had won and that I had no reason to be afraid. My continued crying must have convinced him to abandon any hopes for my successful career in prizefighting, however, because he nearly booted me physically out of class that day and never again asked me to engage my classmates in any form of pugilism.

statements giveN by aUthorItiEs,

expressions having the logiCal form of proposItions,

but not belief values,

since certain propositions,

where we shall finD thE first Atom

in this house of man,

are all consent,

inoscuLation,

and baLance of PARTs.

7    

Caterpillars 

The cateRpillar seemed tO be in a very

unpleaSant statE of mind,

and in an unknown worLd.

1951-1959

During my early teenage years, my family lived directly across from a cotton field. Most of the time, this location made very little difference in my life. From middle to late summer, however, as the cotton in this field ripened to full bloom, caterpillars grew rampant. Even though these caterpillars were primarily interested in feeding on the leaves of the cotton plants across from our house, they often became so plentiful that many millions of them wandered into our street and ultimately into our yards and houses.

The caterpillars posed no real threat. In fact, they seemed rather cute to most of us. However, they quickly reduced lawns to dirt, turned flowers into mulch, and left us to deal with a slick green slime whenever we stepped on them, accidentally or not. Unaccounted for, the caterpillars quickly became incredible nuisances, coating almost every available surface with their excrement and causing no end of twisted ankles when we tried to avoid them or when—after a few days of their omnipresence—we tried to stomp on them.

Our neighborhood, in an effort to rid itself of this scatological onslaught, yearly bought a supply of thick aluminum foil—large, extremely heavy coils of industrial-grade foil—which we then placed along the entire length of our street beside the cotton field. At each end of this foil—half buried so the pillars as we called them could not duck under—we erected small wooden ladders, which we angled up and into buckets half-filled with warm beer. The pillars would then encounter the foil, walk along it in single file, climb the ladders, and then unavoidably (though the beer certainly provided an added incentive) fall into the bucket and drown. We and our neighbors then took turns once each day pouring the resultant dead caterpillar sludge into the field, replacing the buckets, and adding fresh beer.

The remarkable thing about this yearly event was that it worked. Indeed, most of us never encountered a single caterpillar after we erected this great aluminum barrier. However, many of us kids would wander over to the foil and watch in amazement as, one after the other (again, usually in single file), the caterpillars marched to their deaths like lemmings. Some of us had a few bad dreams over it, but most of us just found it curious and went on with our lives.

Then progress intervened. Large Caterpillar tractors (ironic, that) were unloaded onto the field across from our house, workers bulldozed new streets and poured new house foundations, and soon the field completely disappeared. In its place, new houses sprouted where once the green leaves of cotton had grown. The traffic on our street increased, and virtually hundreds of new people somewhat randomly proliferated throughout our now expanded neighborhood. Most of the people on my block forgot one another’s names, and many of us mowed our lawns and drove to and from work without a single word to those around us.

The morAl is, that what we seek is a correspoNding

phEnomenon for minds, as for machines.

8    

Radio Show 

I was looking for a fan

and a Pair of white kid gloves,

when Up the street Came GallopIng A cLosed carRIage,

BurSting abruptly into noisE at a CorNer,

the UNiverSe holding theM down to their place.

1952

When I was in the sixth grade, my teacher helped our class produce a radio show. She provided us with scripts and held auditions for all the characters. This drama proved to be one of the high points of my grade-school career, and, since I loved listening to the radio programs of the time, the thought of playing one of the main characters thrilled me immensely.

The auditions went smoothly—after all, this was radio, and we only had to read the script in front of us—no memorization, no physical acting, and so forth. I received one of the coveted lead roles and, during rehearsals, hammed it up to the teacher’s and other students’ delight. So wonderfully did we enact this radio play that our teacher requested and got permission to have it broadcast over the cafeteria intercom during lunch. Every student in our entire school would hear our fine-tuned acting.

As the fateful day of our performance approached, however, our teacher noticed that one of the actors in our troupe had become nervous. He stumbled over his lines and otherwise began to confuse our tight performance. Finally, after several such mishaps, she pulled this student aside and told him he would have to be replaced for our on-air performance. Since the student was a friend of mine, I felt terrible about this circumstance. At the same time, I knew that our teacher was right and that replacing him with someone more adept at handling nervousness would be in the best interests of us all.

The someone our teacher chose to replace my friend was, of course, me. Even though I already had a part, I would play two characters. I was immediately gratified by the wisdom of her choice. However, my teacher had also placed me in a very difficult circumstance. I certainly did not want to lose a friend. Therefore, I pulled my friend aside and reassured him that this switch had not been my idea and that, if he wanted me to refuse, I would do so. He did not want me to refuse. Instead, he asked me to keep quiet about my being his replacement. His theory was simple—since we used stage voices for our parts, it was quite possible that the listening audience would not notice his being replaced. To keep my friend, I agreed to participate in his little plot.

We performed our radio play without a hitch. I used another stage voice for my friend‘s part and to both our astonishment, no one listening could tell it was I and not he. At first, the effectiveness of my sleight of voice thrilled me. After all, radio was magic, and I had participated in this magic to the fullest.

Then, however, I realized that the effectiveness of my role-playing had backfired. After school that day, everyone gathered around my friend, congratulating him on his incredible performance. My character, it seemed, had been interesting and certainly well performed, but my friend had stolen the show with the part he hadn’t actually played. As hard as it was to do so, however, I kept my mouth shut about it. It was, after all, good that at least I knew who had really stolen the show.

As time wore on and our radio play continued to garner the accolades of our classmates, I began to tire of the praise that my beaming friend received. No matter that it was I who had actually played the part, it seemed that it was his responsibility to reveal the hidden truth. He did not. I could not.

It is therefore not possible

to produce a set of rules

purporting to describe what a man should do

in everY conceivable set of circumstances.

9    

Identity 

We trAce fate in matter,

Mind,

MoraLs,

race,

retardatiONs of strata,

and thought, and charactEr, as well.

at first, I thought morning had come to the nervous system,

for chemical phenomena are at least as important as electrical.

1953

When I was about twelve years old, I publicly revealed what my parents had informed me was my somewhat small but important-to-me American Indian heritage. Word spread quickly among my classmates at school. Unfortunately, in the mid-1950s, being Indian, even part Indian, was not particularly popular, and I soon discovered that my revelation held many more pitfalls than advantages. For example, on several occasions during recesses that day, many of my classmates hurled insults toward me, including some that sounded threatening.

On my way home from school that same afternoon, walking along one side of an irrigation canal, I felt someone following me—a prescience of danger. Turning around, I discovered that indeed someone from my school was matching me stride for stride. Even though still at a distance of twenty or so feet, he looked huge and menacing. When he saw me facing him, he stopped, unsheathed a large hunting knife, and began slowly slapping its open blade against the palm of his left hand. I was at once angry and scared to death.

I have no idea what prompted me to do what I did next. On reflection, I might have noticed that my pursuer was larger and seemed faster than I, and guessed that he would track me down, had I tried to flee. Whatever the reason, however, I suddenly screamed wildly and ran directly at him. Seeing this Indian whooping and attacking him startled my stalker, and he dropped his knife and ran. After a few moments to let my adrenaline rush subside, I walked home to safety.

After school the next day, I did not take my usual route home but rather walked in the opposite direction toward the Phoenix Indian School. Hoping that I might find friendlier environs there, I arrived and found a group of youngsters about my age playing basketball and tried to join them. Friendlier than my classmates, these new acquaintances soon became perplexed by my presence. Why, they asked, was a white person interested in joining an Indian basketball game? I told them that I too was an Indian. I explained what had happened to me the previous day. Even though none of them seemed surprised at my story, they politely asked me to leave. I left. Neither white nor Indian, but a mix of many races, religions, and heritages, I apparently did not belong to any of them.

But, we also discover their hindermost faces,

or the fowls filled with their flesh,

and the rocket’s red glare,

hidden from me.

10  

Astronomy and Radio 

A second light,

a patchwork quilt oF blurrIng,

moving coloRS,

and This time a sound,

not particuLarly synchronous wIth the liGHT,

but nonetheless unmistakable.

He patiently waited for this light to disappear as well,

but the colors remained

suspended dead center in his line of vision.

1953

I loved all things astronomical during my childhood. For me, lacking a television, even though many of my friends had one, did not pose a hardship, since the night skies provided an ever-dazzling display of moons, planets, stars, galaxies, and nebulae to occupy me. Just sitting quietly in my backyard at night looking heavenward presented a kind of wonderment that no man-made contraption could ever quite equal or exceed.

I spent as many free hours as I could reading books on astronomy, scanning sky charts to identify the names of objects I had seen, and dreaming of the telescopes that I would someday own. Looking back on these early days of my life as an amateur astronomer still gives me great pleasure, and I have since tried to recreate this joy in my work in various ways. It has always seemed to me that we occupy such a small part of an amazingly beautiful and engagingly large universe that to spend it waging wars and thinking purely of our own seeming importance strikes me as a waste of time.

On one occasion—at around age twelve, I imagine—I developed an idea for a radio program, a simple four-minute daily show that would provide that day’s interesting astronomical events. Airing early in the afternoon, maybe during lunch hour, it would give listeners an opportunity to plan their late hours around that evening’s stellar display. I even went so far as to write several scripts for possible radio shows and read them to my impressed parents.

Finally, taken with the success my family audience had accorded me, I sent a letter to a local radio station posing my idea and providing them with my sample scripts that my mother had capably typed for a more professional appearance. I didn’t really expect an answer, but for once I had actually followed through on one of my ideas, and that pleased me.

Unexpectedly, however, I soon received a phone call from the station manager’s secretary, who asked me to hold while she put her boss on the line. To say that I was nervous would be an understatement.