Gazzaniga examines this question by reviewing the fascinating research that he and others have conducted on split-brain patients whose left and right brain hemispheres can no longer communicate with each other due to a separation (often surgical, employed to treat extreme epilepsy) of the corpus collosum, which is the body that transmits data from one side of the brain to the other.

(Technical sidebar: The Wikipedia article on split-brain provides a useful overview of how the right and left hemispheres of the brain work together, wherein the left hemisphere (typically considered analytic or logical) and the right hemisphere (typically considered holistic or intuitive) each controls and receives sensory inputs from the opposite side of the body. In split-brain patients, there’s a sort of cognitive breakdown in the way that objects are perceived or understood by one side of the body when picked up or perceived by the opposite hemisphere of the brain; studying this breakdown has allowed Gazzaniga to develop insights into the way the two hemispheres interact.)

From Jeffrey Foss’s review of the book comes these interesting insights:

Gazzaniga (with his teacher, Nobel laureate Roger Sperry) discovered the split in human consciousness that results from splitting the human brain into right and left hemispheres, a split that consciousness itself doesn’t even notice. We have accepted our internal divisions long, long ago, and have, over the millennia, used them to explain our capacity for good and for evil. But whereas we can actually feel ourselves being influenced by Mars or Satan or our combative instinct, no amount of soul-searching can reveal to split-brain patients the resulting rent in their very selves.

The explanation for this is quite simple. The left brain, where language processing occurs, is the mechanism of the soul searching itself, and cannot, in split brains, access or report the activity of the right brain and its input into the brain-as-a-whole.

The brain, split or unsplit, has no centre of control, no centre of consciousness, no centre period: no self. Gazzaniga marshals countless scientific studies of the brain that reveal it to be a rag-bag collection of specialized modules for everything from facial recognition and counting through to distinguishing self from other.

It’s quite amazing how these modules make us identify the thoughts and actions of our brain as our own, even when the cause is known to be external control of our brain via transcranial magnetic stimulation. It’s quite amazing, that is, to think that our sense of self is achieved by some dozens of such modules working in loose formation with one another — in the absence of any real self at all.

So, as Gazzaniga and the many scientists of his sort see it, they, you and I are but the imaginary focuses created by our nervous systems in order to better serve the evolutionary demand of our trillions of component cells to survive and reproduce.

I’m deeply drawn towards scientific research which reveals what I find to be essential truths about the nature of consciousness and self: namely, that we possess no particular, identifiable self as such, and that the myriad thoughts and insights that we attribute to a seemingly separate entity called “our self” are simply a collection of evolution-serving, neurochemical, electrical and biological processes that are in place solely to continue the species, and not for any particularly meaningful purpose higher than that.

I find these insights to be enormously liberating. It gives me the license to stop worrying about what’s happening; to loosen up my expectations over the way I think things should be; and to allow myself to just let go and let things unfold as they will, because “I” have no control to exert over the system. The universe is taking care of itself without any express input from “me,” so why don’t I just stop worrying about it?

• Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, by David Eagleman (2011)
• Freedom and Belief, by Galen Strawson (2010)
• Freedom Evolves, by Daniel Dennett (2003)
• How the Mind Works, by Steven Pinker (1997)
• The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation, by Matt Ridley (1996)

His preamble speaks of how much the news media look to outperform each other in their “showings of concern” for the unemployed. He quotes the official unemployment rate at 9.4%, but notes that it’s probably nearer to 17%. He says that the stock markets and the country’s corporate profit margins have largely weathered the storm of the recession, but that “unless jobs can be found, we wave goodbye to America the Beautiful.” He continues:

Not being an economist and never having been at ease in the company of flow charts, I don’t question the expert testimony, but I notice that it doesn’t have much to do with human beings, much less with the understanding of a man’s work as the meaning of his life or the freedom of his mind. Purse-lipped and solemn, the commentators for the Financial Times and MSNBC mention deficits, discuss the cutting back of pensions and public services. From the tone of the conversation, I can imagine myself at a lawn party somewhere in Fairfield County, Connecticut, listening to the lady in the flowered hat talk about the difficulty of finding decent help.

The framing of the country’s unemployment trouble as an unfortunate metastasis of the servant problem should come as no surprise. The country is in the hands of an affluent oligarchy content with Voltaire’s reading of its rights. During Ronald Reagan’s terms as president, the income that individual American families received from rents, dividends, and interest surpassed the income earned in wages. Over the last thirty years, the wealth of the emergent rentier class has been sustained by an increasingly unequal sharing of the gross domestic product; the percentage of GDP accounted for by manufacturing fell from 21 to 14 percent, and the percentage accounted for by finance rose from 14 to 21 percent. The imbalances become greater over time; as between compensations awarded to the high-end baskers in the sunshine and those provided to the low-end squatters in the shade, the differential at last count in 2009 stood at 263 to 1. With wealth comes power in Washington, so it’s also no surprise that the government, whether graspingly Republican or scavengingly Democratic, adopts the attitudes and prejudices of the monied sultanate. So do most of the nation’s news media, their showings of concern expressed in the lawn-party voices of the caterers distributing the strawberries.

According to Sunny Sea Gold, author of Food: The Good Girl’s Drug, “Food hasn’t been proven to be addictive in the same way drugs are; the science isn’t quite there yet.” But Gold, who overcame binge eating disorder, does believe that people can use food just like they would alcohol, drugs, or sex. “They can become dependent on food as a distraction, as a coping mechanism, and as something they comfort themselves with…I know I did” she adds.

I don’t have any doubt that certain people do have full-blown addictive behaviours around food. I know that I have had them in the past. Also, the author’s assertion that the science isn’t quite there yet is, I believe, now incorrect. Recent research using functional MRI has shown that the same parts of the brain light up in obese subjects when they consume extremely calorie-dense foods that do in drug addicts when they get high themselves. From that, I infer that food can incite similar neurochemical reactions in certain people that narcotics or opiates do in others.

My personal experience has been that when food has become a truly addictive substance in my life, I’ve needed to abstain from it as I would any other drug. Of course, you can’t abstain from food per se, but you can certainly undergo a nutritional detox wherein you eat whole, unprocessed foods with no added sugar, excess salt or fat for a number of days to see what happens to your body.

Whenever I’ve done that, I’ve undergone genuine withdrawal symptoms such as severe headaches, irritability, and even some joint pain. But the feeling that comes after even a few days of eating no added sugar, fat, and salt can be pretty remarkable. I feel uncommonly refreshed and well-rested when I awaken in the morning, and it doesn’t take me a half-hour of slow movement to work the stiffness out of my joints. My mind is clearer and sharper throughout the day, and I just feel better generally.

For someone in the throes of their addiction, this exercise is much easier said than done. That’s why psychotherapy can play an important role in this process. I’m sure it’s rare that someone who is addicted to food hasn’t developed their addiction through mindless eating behaviours tied to various emotional or psychological precursors. Some form of inward-looking talk therapy—or even substantive personal journaling—is required to break up the mental logjam in our minds, and to develop authentic awareness around the reasons why we’re overeating in the first place.

Anyway, the reason for my post here is actually to draw some attention to this provocative article he posted in that newsletter that describes the disparity in wealth in the US right now. I sent the link to my favourite lefty comedian Jimmy Dore in the hopes he might quote from it in a future episode of his political radio show on KPFK. (Update: He did indeed quote these statistics in a later episode, but it’s impossible to know if he got the idea from me!)

Some of my favourite highlights from that article are:

• 400 people have as much wealth as half the US population;
• the top 5% of US families saw their incomes rise by 73% between 1979 and 2008, while the lowest 20% saw a decrease of 4% and the remainder stayed mostly stagnant; and
• in 2007, the richest 1% of US households owned more than 33% of the nation’s private wealth, which is more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent.

Even if the statistics in this article were inflated by 100%, they’d still be pretty scary to me. They represent an unforeseen gap between the super-rich and the poor, and I haven’t seen any realistic solutions to address the issue. I’m not even convinced that tax reform would help very much, although generating more tax revenue from the super-rich would likely ease the burden of the enormous swath of citizens in the US who are in need of better health care, education and social programs.

I’m personally acquainted with several people whom I’d consider to be wealthy or at least extremely comfortable: one is a retired, successful entrepreneur worth probably $15M+; several are retirees who probably each hold assets in excess of $3M; and a number are physicians who make very good salaries. But that’s not the level of wealth I’m talking about here. It’s the extremely high-income families earning tens or hundreds of millions each year where I think the problem lies.

If there were a million multi-millionaires of the former ilk in the US (e.g. with $10M or less in the bank), I wouldn’t be surprised if trickle-down economics might actually work—there would likely be considerable liquidity, investment and entrepreneurship happening in that scenario. But I have trouble imagining that dozens of billionaires are of much constructive use to the economy at all, except inasmuch as the luxury goods and services sector is concerned. The extremely poor and even the middle class would have trouble accessing any benefits from that kind of wealth just sitting in the system, earning interest and paying dividends to the wealth-holders but generating no concrete products or services or value to society at large.

1. Eat when you’re hungry. Or more specifically, eat when your body is hungry.
2. Eat what your body (as opposed to your mind) wants.
3. Stop eating when your body has had enough. (My addition: if you’re bingeing, stop eating when your mind has had enough, a.k.a. when you become consciously aware that you’re bingeing.)
4. Eat sitting down, in a calm environment. This most emphatically does not include the car.
5. Eat without distractions. Distractions include reading material of any kind, radio, TV, anxiety-producing conversations, or loud music.
6. Eat with the intention of being in full view of other people. To illustrate this guideline, if you’re eating and someone walks into the room while you’re eating, you don’t hide the food.
7. Eat with enjoyment, gusto, and pleasure.

I suspect that I’ve gained probably 60 pounds since I first read this. So I can’t honestly say that the guidelines or her practices have actually helped me lose weight.

And yet…

Like all yo-yo dieters, I’ve “dieted my way up to” my current weight. I’ve been able to lose dozens of pounds at a time on various plans and approaches, but I’ve never successfully kept the weight off for more than a year or two, and for 15 years I’ve been unable to return to what I once considered my normal, healthy weight. I attribute this to my obviously dysfunctional relationship with food: I don’t eat for nutritive reasons alone.

Geneen Roth’s approach to this issue is strongly weighted in kindness towards yourself and in unmitigated self-acceptance. It’s also about eating with complete awareness and mindfulness, which if done properly should avoid mindless binges. There’s also a lot of meditation in her approach, with practices geared towards developing a clearer awareness of your own body and mind. This is important, since so many obese people are so adept at shielding themselves from their emotions—positive or negative—with food.

Whenever I’ve worked diligently with any of these guidelines in the past several years, I’ve often tended to say things like, “I’m starting to see my own mindset change for the positive in this regard,” or “I feel like I’m really starting to understand this.” And while this may be true for me at an intellectual level, I’ve clearly not yet had success in developing a more normal relationship with food and my emotions. But I recognize that this is a process, and a practice. It’s not something that can be flipped on like a switch.

One of Roth’s most recent books is called Women Food and God (google | amazon.ca | amazon.com | oprah.com), and despite being obviously directed mostly towards women, I’ve found her advice and insight to be nearly equally applicable towards men like myself. Here is a notable excerpt from the first 90 pages of the book:

Our work is not to change what you do, but to witness what you do with enough awareness, enough curiosity, enough tenderness that the lies and old decisions upon which the compulsion is based become apparent and fall away. When you no longer believe that eating will save your life, when you feel exhausted or overwhelmed or lonely, you will stop. When you believe in yourself more than you believe in food, you will stop using food as if it were your only chance at not falling apart. When the shape of your body no longer matches the shape of your beliefs, the weight disappears. And yes, it really is that simple.

You will stop turning to food when you start understanding in your body, not just your mind, that there is something better than turning to food. And this time, when you lose weight, you will keep it off.

Truth, not force, does the work of ending compulsive eating.

Awareness, not deprivation, informs what you eat.

Presence, not shame, changes how you see yourself and what you rely on.

When you stop struggling, stop suffering, stop pushing and pulling yourself around food and your body, when you stop manipulating and controlling, when you actually relax and listen to the truth of what is there, something bigger than your fear will catch you. With repeated experiences of opening and ease, you learn to trust something infinitely more powerful than a set of rules that someone else made up: your own being.

It is now clear to me that as obese people, we have needed to overeat in order to cope with whatever we perceive to be our personal weaknesses or traumatic life situations. Throughout our lives, these have been entirely necessary and valid reasons for overeating. However, in most cases they are no longer necessary for us to survive in this moment. Furthermore, we must stop identifying ourselves as psychologically, emotionally, or psychically damaged individuals who require something massive to be fixed before we can take off this weight.

In fact, we are totally perfect just as we are. Once we recognize that and learn how to trust our own instincts about how to eat for the sake of our body’s health and nutrition (as opposed to how to eat mindlessly in order to numb ourselves from the pain or frustration we might feel each day), then the weight will come off naturally, and even relatively easily.

What’s most difficult about this kind of approach is that most of us are completely self-identified as deeply flawed individuals who must be on a restricted diet in order to become healthy. If we have been dieting for a significant number of years (or have felt that we must go on a diet in order to lose weight), then this self-identification has likely become deeply entrenched and will be difficult to overcome. But it is absolutely possible to do it if we can learn how to invest unwavering trust in ourselves and in our own sound judgment. Admittedly this is not easy to do; especially if we have spent our lives telling ourselves that we have no self-control over our eating and that we will never be able to change.

I composed this article in response to a call for submissions to the Halifax Shambhala Buddhist Centre’s monthly publication, The Banner. The article was winnowed down from many recent writings I’ve done on this topic, all related to using mindfulness and meditation practices to help get through the daily stress of raising toddlers. This piece was published on page 12 of the April 2010 Issue of The Banner, available in PDF format (9.1 MB) here.

Update: An excerpt from this piece has also been included in the “First Thoughts” section of the Fall 2010 issue of Buddhadharma magazine.

I’ve been a full-time, stay-at-home dad since 2004; first with our daughter who’s seven, and now with our two sons, 2 and 3 years old. With both of our boys now firmly in the terrible twos, I’ve found myself questioning if I’m destined to keep any shred of my sanity by the time they reach school age.

Many toddlers require nearly constant supervision. They’re quick to shun their basement playroom full of safe toys, games, puzzles and train sets, choosing instead to empty the kitchen cupboards and drawers of the most breakable and delicate contents; to relieve the filing cabinet of its most important papers; or to raid their sister’s doll house and toy chest of her most prized treasures.

Child-proof drawer and cabinet locks no longer pose a challenge. Even our upper cupboards are accessible now they’ve discovered how to use the lower drawers as stairs to reach counter height. Cooking raises distinct challenges; I’m constantly on the watch to avoid potential cuts or burns arising from their sudden, unexpected appearance at the cutting board or stovetop. As beautiful and inquisitive as they can often be, they’re also indefatigable and incorrigible; nearly all of our verbal instructions to them are ignored as a matter of course. My wife and I refer to them not infrequently as our pair of Tasmanian Devils.

It is exactly these qualities which remind me that rearing children can be a most fruitful spiritual practice. I realize that the greatest frustrations in my day-to-day life arise from my children not acting according to my expectations. Even when my expectations are reasonable — say, not climbing directly onto our gas-fired stovetop to investigate the contents of a boiling pot — these boys still manage to dash them just by acting upon their utterly normal, curious impulses. When they erupt in a screaming tantrum because I’ve yanked them away from the computer keyboard which they’ve just decorated with a permanent marker, I have come to understand that their angry outbursts are a natural response to what they perceive as an unwanted and abrupt halt called to their ordinary investigations of the world around them. In their minds, I am the one with a problem — not them.

Meditation and mindfulness practices help us to train our minds to accept our lives just as they are in this moment; even the stuff that apparently drives us crazy. The wisdom of extremely young children is that they always live inherently in the present moment, never concerning themselves with what happened an hour ago or what might happen an hour from now. Whenever I successfully align my own expectations with that kind of time frame, I find myself instantly living more harmoniously with my sons.

I turn my attention regularly to my breath and on bringing my awareness back into the moment. I can imagine what it must feel like to be them: to be surrounded by giants who have complete control over their every move; to be forcibly removed from the only activities and places they haven’t yet fully explored; and to have little or no language skills with which to express their true desires at any given moment. When these glimpses of realization occur, the compassion I feel for them stops me in my tracks. It makes me squat down to their level to find out what they really want at that moment. It makes me realize that I can hold off on washing these dishes for a few minutes to play a short game with them. It reminds me that I can even let them help me measure out the ingredients for that night’s meal, accepting that I’ll need to do more clean-up than usual after the fact.

In short, I need to suspend my own expectations for the way I think things should be, replacing them with acceptance for the way things are. It’s a profound spiritual teaching, and I didn’t even need to go on retreat to learn it. I just happened to pick it up in my own kitchen from my very own toddler gurus.

The eminent gangsta rap superstar Snoop Dogg turned in a good performance of his own in Halifax last Sunday night. However, his backline didn’t measure up, the sound quality at the venue was awful, and the performances of both of his opening acts were almost entirely without merit.

Snoop Dogg, a.k.a. Snoop Doggy Dogg, a.k.a. Calvin Broadus, 37, performed at the Metro Centre in Halifax on Sunday, September 13th, 2009. He was preceded on stage by two acts: the first being a drummer who played accompaniment to a string of drum-and-bass/house tracks played from his laptop; and the second being a singer/guitarist who performed what seemed to be original compositions accompanied by a string of backing tracks which were also played from his laptop.

The first artist had good clear vocals on the mic, but the substance of his performance lost my interest after the first two tunes. I also indicted him on three counts of malfeasance in performance practice:

1. He performed live on stage with no other musicians than those found on the static, pre-mixed tracks on his laptop (in fact, there’s no reason not to suspect that he just launched an iTunes playlist for his whole set).
2. He played completely unadorned backbeats on the drums without a single improvised fill or solo of any description.
3. He played along with his laptop at seemingly random intervals and for random lengths of time in relation to each of the tracks played, showing neither awareness nor regard for what scant musical structure existed on those tracks.

The second artist deserves no further description other than his having been a unskilled singer who performed poorly-written tunes with infantile lyrics. When taken as a whole, Snoop’s opening acts were at best boring, and at worst an insult to the audience’s musical intelligence.

Snoop’s portion of the night was much better. He was introduced by a bonafide emcee with lots of pimp and circumstance (sic). The O.G. (Original Gangsta) emerged onto the stage with a bright orange hoodie, a glittering, jewel-encrusted microphone, and an angry look on his face. From that first moment on, the audience knew that Snoop came to play.

Snoop Dogg was backed up by a keyboardist, a drummer, a bassist, a DJ, and two other emcees. He took occasional breaks of no longer than one tune to refresh himself at the back of the stage, and during those breaks the other two rappers would step up and deliver. It didn’t take long before the venue’s sound started to break down the show, though.

Within the first 10 minutes of the roughly 70-minute set, it became obvious that Snoop had the only mic with sufficient volume and clarity to be heard and understood; almost all of what the other emcees said was unintelligible. Furthermore, the backup tracks under Snoop’s rapping were too loud, were distorted, and were also totally imbalanced from an EQ perspective: true, they had lots of nice, heavy bass, but there was also far too much midrange (which brings about a transistor-radio-like sound effect) and too little high range (which exacerbates that transistor-radio effect). That EQ imbalance made all of his music sound as though it was being played from the next room, and it didn’t allow those great low, buzzy basslines in Snoop’s music to punch through as they do so well on the studio recordings. His tracks often being produced by such artists as Dr. Dre, it would be understandable if the entire dynamic range wasn’t represented in the live show. But the sound quality at this venue was truly unacceptable and proved highly deleterious to Snoop’s performance.

Another major downside to the music was that almost every tune was played with a fully-produced backup track underneath it, meaning that the musicians were essentially just playing along with a record all night. Aside from how artistically banal this was, it forced the musicians to overplay severely in terms of volume and intensity just to distinguish themselves from the backup tracks, and this was distracting and unmusical. At its best, rap and hip-hop music are creative musical forms based on deeply funky grooves played by live musicians or sampled by DJs from live musical recordings. Snoop’s set paid precious little tribute to that tradition in terms of its musical production values, and so it severely disappointed the musician in me.

On the plus side, Snoop’s look, attitude and demeanour were very amusing and entertaining. He gave the suburban, mostly white audience a purported glimpse into the gangsta lifestyle, but it was also obvious that he wasn’t taking himself too seriously (after all, he has a family now and coaches his son’s football team). Snoop Dogg is also an excellent rapper in his own right, and he performs his raps with funky, rhythmic, and musical aplomb. It was only because of Snoop’s personal performance and his sincere engagement with the audience that paying for my ticket didn’t feel like robbery. There was certainly a number of significant factors that downgraded the enjoyment of this concert, but Snoop himself was well worth the relatively modest admission price of about $60.

This year’s festival ran from July 10-18th, straddling two legendary concerts for Halifax in the form of Paul McCartney on July 11th and KISS on July 18th. But our festival, the first programmed by our new Artistic Director Lulu Healy, was hot enough that I barely noticed those two other shows during the week. Lulu’s inaugural programme was absolutely fantastic this year.

Here are the performances I attended at least in part this year. Where noted, links open a short review for that given show.

Fri July 10th — Kenny Garrett at the Main Stage Tent (review)
Sat July 11th — Asia and NuGruv at the Main Stage Tent
Sun July 12th — Deep River Boys + Félix Stüssi 5 featuring Ray Anderson
Mon July 13th — John Abercrombie Trio
Tue July 14th — Two by Two + Greg Amirault
Wed July 15th — Oliver Jones
Thu July 16th — Dinuk Wijeratne with Sanctuary + The Bad Plus
Fri July 17th — Bell Orchestre + Joel Miller + Shuffle Demons + Kid Koala
Sat July 18th — CMW + Fred Hersch Trio + Harvey Millar

Other notable performances I didn’t get to see at this year’s festival include, but are not limited to, the following:

– Jane Bunnett
– Gord Grdina
– Coco Love Alcorn
– Luis Mario Ochoa and Hilario Duran
– Mike Murley and Guido Basso with singer Yvette Tollar
– Carlos del Junco with Sisters Euclid
– Haggai Cohen Milo Trio
– Jayme Stone and Mansa Sissoko
– Simon Fisk Trio
– Brandi Disterheft

As you can see, this year’s festival was an embarrassment of musical riches. I’m terribly proud to have played a small role in presenting it and I look forward to next year’s events!

His closing number featured a vamp which he continued for more than 45 minutes; according to the bassist whom I interviewed after the show, Kenny just kept bringing back the vamp until the crowd at the front of the stage finally stopped dancing and cheering. Kenny was delighted with the audience’s dedication and participation in his music that night, and he didn’t stop playing until the crowd had been completely exhausted. A tremendous opening night for the festival.

(Back to 2009 Atlantic Jazz Festival Synopsis)

This weekend’s performances by Alive and Well were presented by JazzEast at a new space called 1313, established by former JazzEast director Susan Hunter. Formerly known as the Deli Green Market on Hollis Street near Morris, 1313 has been effectively transformed into an attractive arts presentation venue. The room had a pleasant ambience which was greatly enhanced by the quiet, attentive audience. (According to Donnie Palmer, an attentive audience is a luxury seldom enjoyed by performers at the sole remaining jazz club up in Toronto these days.)

With respect to audiences, it’s worthwhile to note the social position most frequently occupied by jazz music these days: mostly, it’s background music in restaurants or synth-based “lite grooves” to create aural ambience in low-lit hipster nightclubs. However, the jazz played by Alive and Well is authentic jazz — the real deal — and it requires an attentive audience (which it received).

The entire night’s music was totally improvised; nothing about the programme was planned beforehand. Audiences were given over to an immersive sense of immediacy; they heard music which staunchly anchored them in the present moment. Those who listened and watched carefully were rewarded on many levels throughout the evening.

The particular musical qualities of each artist are worth trying to define, at least in part. Donnie Palmer played with a lush, gorgeous alto sound, and he rendered all of his lines with incredibly tasteful phrasing and a truly profound melodic sensibility. One was mindful that they were hearing a truly seasoned professional at the height of his career. As a jazz saxophonist myself, I was quite inspired by Palmer’s performance.

Skip Beckwith provided a great low end to the group. His sound on the bass was rich and full-bodied, and he possessed a clear, resonant attack. And while he had no trouble playing strictly in time and within the chord changes, Beckwith also demonstrated a remarkable deftness at slipping in and out of the time and the key — and then “nailing the one” at the top of the next chorus seemingly as if by magic. He also displayed fantastic listening and improvisational skills; his solos were not ones over which the audience conversed with one another.

With respect to the drums, Donnie Palmer likes to say that it takes a hell of a good drummer to be better than no drummer at all. Jerry Granelli fits the bill as a hell of a good drummer. He’s no ordinary jazz drummer, though. It would be more accurate to describe Jerry Granelli as an artist who uses drumsticks instead of paintbrushes.

To be sure, Granelli plays his drum kit like a melodic musical instrument. It is not uncommon to hear actual melodies issue forth from his drums and cymbals when he plays. Furthermore, he doesn’t so much “mark the time” on the drums as he plays tasteful, rhythmic phrases that perfectly complement whatever the other musicians are playing at that moment. He does this with an apparently effortless but intense focus and concentration; he really appears to hear everything that’s happening in every moment of each tune. And if this weren’t enough, Granelli separates himself further from the ordinary drummer by showing incredible restraint in deciding whether or not to respond to whatever he’s hearing at the time. Drummers — with all due respect, percussionistes — are not unknown to be an egotistical and loud-playing lot, and they rarely tend towards this level of engaged listening and interaction in a group.

Later that same week, 1313 opened its doors to celebrate Donnie Palmer’s 70s birthday. Alive and Well played one last short set before staff brought out several homemade cakes containing a combined total of 70 candles. Not long afterwards, I stood with Donnie Palmer offstage when Jerry Granelli and Skip Beckwith were leaving the venue to go home for the night. Donnie teased each of them for leaving early, but I heard their voices crack with emotion when saying good-bye to each other. Since Donnie lives in Toronto now, it’s hard to say when exactly this group will perform together again. After the others left, Donnie looked at me and shook his head with a sad smile. “Oh, we’re just a bunch of old farts,” he said with his typically bowed head but with tears in his eyes. After that, he put his horn away for the night and hung out with the audience and other musicians in the room before returning to Toronto.