This story is truly sad: a 10-year old boy in Oakland, CA named Christopher Rodriguez was accidentally shot and paralyzed while taking his first piano lesson at a music store. A stray bullet from a gunman robbing a nearby gas station went through the wall of the music store, puncturing his kidney and spleen and severing his spinal cord. He faces years of rehabilitation, and his parents still haven’t told him that he will likely never walk again.

Here is a blog, with links to news articles:

http://christopherrodriguez.blogspot.com/

This poor kid did nothing wrong, and his family can’t afford to work and be with him at the hospital at the same time. I guess it resonates with me because I am a musician, and because it is yet another very human reminder of how messed up this world is. It makes me so grateful to have the luxury of living in a safe environment, with a loving family, a healthy 2-year old and enough food to eat.

I can’t imagine what this family is going through right now. We will certainly make a donation to this family, and I certainly encourage everyone to donate if it is within your means.

I have a lot on my mind lately, and the problem is that I have no time to write anything down. Ironically, I wrote a few short entries in the span of a few days, but I want to make a promise to anyone reading this—and mostly to myself—that I will write an average of one entry per week, which seems reasonable, particularly if they are short and readable.

Between finishing Winter Songs, being with Dylan who has a stomach virus, getting over a cold, chores, AME and misc. other distractions, I can’t even find time to read, let alone listen to CDs I receive for AME. It is a shame, because I usually enjoy listening to what I receive, but I am considering not accepting unsolicited scores because I am having a difficult time finding time to compose. If I cannot compose, I start to feel ill. I am always happiest when I write every day (which involves some virtual performing as I usually sit in front of a keyboard), eat well, get some exercise, spend time with my family, and have a little down-time at the end of the day. If even one of those components is missing, I feel sick.

Here is something I think about: the distractions we have now are vastly different than what J.S. Bach or Mozart experienced. I’m not sure which is worse, distraction-wise, then or now—or can you even compare?

How ironic: in the Western world, we have cars, automatic dishwashers, generally clean food and water, laundry machines, electric lights, and elevators, and we generally live much longer (Elliot Carter is 100!), yet a composer today is lucky if he or she produces as much music in an entire career as Mozart did in one year.

Did Mozart have degrees? No. Did Beethoven have all the distractions we have now? Certainly not. Both composers worked within fairly limited systems, and limits encourage growth—any smart composer knows that—so they produced a lot of music. Granted, whole chunks of both Mozart’s and Bach’s music are crap and are only listened to because they are by the Gods, Bach and Mozart—there, I said it—but there are obviously many, many gems in those piles, works that have been and will continue to be cherished by millions.

What’s my point? I think you will find more gems per pound from these guys than from almost all modern composers. I think that this is because they had more consistency in their daily lives and less exotic distractions. Yes, Bach had a bazillion kids, and children are definitely a distraction—albeit a lovely one—but it’s just not the same. With technology, we have created one of humanities greatest ironies: time wasted and saved, all rolled into one. We have created a monster.

All of this leads me to believe that we all might be better off where we began, with organic family gardens and farms, no TV, no cars, close familial ties in smaller towns and the sound of a sharp pencil or quill pen cascading across a piece of parchment, with no way to cut and paste anything, unless you do it with scissors and glue.

Last night I found out that composer Jorge Liderman died of an apparent suicide on February 3. He was only 50 years old.

I never met him or knew his music well, but what I did know I liked quite a bit. I am deeply saddened that a composer who had so much going for him would end his life so early. This tragedy should be a reminder to all of us all to pay attention to cues from our loved ones and friends, to take time to reach out to those we care about, and to cherish those around us who dedicate their lives to helping us feel something new and unique through their art.

Within the composer community, it could have been any one of us. I know many composers who are depressed (in fact, probably almost all of them), let alone performers, and people from all walks of life. Some should not be depressed and are blinded by success, but others have every right, particularly those who write wonderful music and have two or three degrees, yet have few or no commissions, no solid teaching job and are constantly broke. Liderman was quite successful and should not have been depressed, but apparently, he was. Whatever the reason, it is a dark day in  the world of classical music.

Inevitably, Liderman’s death will probably generate more performances of his work, but it is so tragic that this is how it had to happen.

Lately I’ve been thinking that one of the major problems I have is feeling compelled to work with multiple databases. Facebook, MySpace and every other mainstream social networking site should work together via a central database, an all-purpose location for all of of our information. These sites should be shells rather than separate entities. Proprietary  networks are interesting, but extremely inefficient. I’m certain we could save billions, and perhaps trillions of dollars—and millions of hours—if everything we used in the digital realm subscribed to a central database.

It’s not just social networking sites, but credit card information and medical records as well. Everything should originate in a central location. As shocking as this may sound, I think the government should spearhead this, and force credit card companies, the medical establishment and even social networking sites to comply. Just imagine: never having to enter a credit card number again; never having to fill out a medical form at the doctor’s office; never worrying about where you can access your email, and where your records are stored. The possibilities are endless.

If all of our important pieces of information are stored in one place, the greatest danger would be two-fold: the government accessing our information without our permission, and the possibility of security breaches. Otherwise, it seems like a win-win situation.

Every day, I try to remember to take a moment to reflect on what I am grateful for. I know this may seem almost quaint—reflecting at all in today’s Twittering world, right?—but I often feel like we take for granted all that is wonderful, and all that we should cherish and protect.

Living in NYC, I am incredibly grateful to have clean water. As most of us know, this is and will become a bigger and bigger issue as each year passes. Sure, almost all water sources are not as clean as they could be, but what we have is worth protecting.I am grateful for clothes and a safe, warm place to sleep. This is a luxury most Americans take for granted, but there a lot of homeless people without a consistent place to sleep or even warm clothes. Although there are shelters and places where people can go for free clothing, many homeless people are not mentally stable or able to put two and two together, so they need help even finding out where to go. At the very least, when someone who is homeless on the street asks me for money for food, I at least offer something to eat. It’s pretty hard to be insensitive to this most basic need.

I am grateful for being able to work and my teaching job. It is such a luxury to have time to compose, time to learn and wonderful students to teach.

I am also grateful for my beautiful family, and Dylan, our newest member. I am especially grateful that he is healthy and happy.I am grateful for so many other aspects of my life, such as living in a safe environment, and to list them all would take an encyclopedic essay, but I think it’s so important to take a moment every day, particularly now that Thanksgiving is approaching, to remember that many of us have so much to be grateful for, and to remember to help everyone we can within our means.

Last night I was cleaning our kitchen, and since I had not given it a once-over in a while, I decided to clean our coffee machine. It wasn’t that grimy, but fresh is best, at least in my book, so I like to go the extra mile.

There I am lying in bed at 3AM, thinking, why can’t I sleep? I did not have a late-night snack or drink, I did not watch TV, and I only read a little bit, and what I read was tame. My composing has been going great lately, so I am not at all anxious about that. I should have been able to fall asleep easily, right?

At 3:30 AM, the thought crossed my mind: I wonder if caffeine can be absorbed through the skin? Then I found this Shower Shock soap, and that pretty much confirmed my suspicion. My fingers probably absorbed some of the caffeine residue on the machine while I was cleaning it.

Next time, I’ll clean it in the morning.

I blogged a while back about what I wished the iPhone would have, before it’s debut. Of course, almost no one—including me—anticipated how cool it would actually be: it’s even better than some of the, intriguing, whimsical ideas our Apple-loving community came up with.

As the dust finally settles, I am noticing that there are many features the iPhone doesn’t have, some frivolous, but some potentially very useful. A few are so important to me that I will hold off purchasing an iPhone until they are implemented.

To Do List
I haven’t seen much written about this, but I use iCal’s To Do List feature all the time. Am I the only one? Why is this not included? Some other features I could care less about (like the Stocks button), but this one is crucial to my personal workflow. I don’t want to have to access the web for my Do List (what if I’m on an airplane and think of something I need to do?), I want to use the one I’ve been using that’s attached to iCal.

iTunes Music Downloads
I should be able to download music from iTunes right onto the iPhone, and it should automatically upload to my computer when I sync.

Sharing Music
Some people have written that they want music sharing, a potentially great feature. I would love to be able to beam my music, right onto someone else’s iPhone. Obviously, copyright infringement is an issue (i.e. how many devices can be authorized for a piece of music), which is probably why this feature doesn’t exist yet. Modern technology could solve this if we charged monthly micro-payments to someone’s account as each tune is shared more than the basic amount. We could also prevent second generation sharing: if you share it with one person, that individual can’t then share it with someone else. Or, something could be shared for a limited amount of time, say, a week or a month, and then be disabled until you purchase it outright.

Personalized Ring tones
I would love to customize my ring tones. The available ones are fine, but every other cell phone allows this, why not the iPhone? Hell—I should be able to create my own ring tones, easily, right on the iPhone. Maybe someone out there can design an iApp to do this.

Portable iApps
They are being developed as I write this, but there are a few specific pieces of music-related software I would love to see, such as a metronome with a tap feature (like the Dr. Beat) and odd-meter capability. A tuner would also be nice. For all the non-music geeks out there, the most useful applications would probably be either productivity tools, such as something that produces MS Word files and/or PDFs and then beams or stores them, or file sharing software.

More Storage
The iPhone should not only be able to store regular files (like a portable hard drive) but I want it to also be able to play as many songs as the best iPod. Granted, it’s got a lot of storage already, but in this case, more is better.

Replaceable, Swappable Battery
Why did they build in battery that can’t be accessed by the user? We should be able to easily replace the battery once it’s drained.

Credit Card
Imagine swiping your phone to pay for a purchase, instead of carrying around a whole wallet full of credit cards. Don’t laugh: this is already possible in Japan via RFID tags. Some normal plastic credit cards in the US even incorporate RFID tags so cards can be waved rather than swiped. However, I think biometrics will eventually replace cards altogether, but this is a great idea nevertheless.

RSS News Reader
This is a great idea I saw on another wish list. This would alleviate having to surf the web for news text. It would be great to be able to access news and blogs via a continuously updated, easy to read list. It would also be great if read/unread and flagged/unflagged status could be synced with work and home computers. Offline support would also be nice, so material could be read when on an airplane and/or where mobile access in limited or impossible.

iChat
SMS but not iChat? What’s up with that? Maybe Cingular forced them not to implement this, but it really needs to happen. It’s only a matter of time before we can bypass phone companies and their ultra-expensive SMS options. Instant Messaging specifically designed for the iPhone would be very cool. Perhaps it could incorporate voice and video as well, over WiFi. Maybe Skype will tackle this.

Lower Price
This is a given: the price needs to eventually drop. This is a lot of money to pay for a phone, even this one, and it’s a huge barrier for millions of potential converts.

Different Service Providers
Some people are already figuring out how to “unlock” iPhones, but it will still be relieving when other service providers are able to sell them. I know, Steve Jobs and Apple had to do it this way, and the other phone companies couldn’t see the light or were too stubborn, or whatever, but we can all hope.

Better Camera
Sure, cell phone cameras have traditionally never that great, but why can’t Apple buck the trend and build in an amazing camera? Not a full-fledged professional camera, just something that produces prints that are reasonably good, not just pics that are really only good enough to beam to someone else.

Rotating Lens (or Lens on Both Sides)
Someone else blogged about this, and it’s an intriguing idea: “the camera lens is currently located on the backside of the phone which makes it easy to take pictures and preview them on the screen. However, it would be really useful if the lens were rotatable to allow you to point it at yourself. It would then turn the iPhone into a killer video iChat device.”

Voice Recognition
I saw this on another post: “this would allow you to interact with the iPhone while driving. ‘Computer: show the location of my next appointment.’” This could also act as a translator, alleviating having to include a bulky dictionary on your iPhone.

Voice Recording
Sometimes when I’m driving, I have an idea, but can’t pull out my phone. How about an iApp that translates your recorded voice into text and either saves it as a note or a To Do or sends it to you as an email message?

Hand-writing recognition
This would be a nice option and make text entry easier for some people.

Hold Music
It would be cool if you could pick a song from your phone (in my case, my music, since I am a composer) to act as the music someone hears when they’re on hold during call waiting.

GPS Technology
This is an ever-expanding market that is becoming more popular every day. GPS technology is so much more practical than carrying around geeky-looking maps.

Seamless International Calling
I don’t want to have to think about whether my phone will work when I travel from country to country, what each country costs for phone calls, etc. I should be able to easily choose options on the phone company’s website, how much I’ll pay, which countries I’m traveling to, how many minutes I need, billing options, etc., then be able to travel wherever I want, without worrying about anything, kind of like driving through an E-Z Pass toll booth on a U.S. highway.

Wireless TV/FM/AM Signals
This seems like a no-brainer. It would be amazing to be able to mingle TV, radio and web-based channels “webcasts“) and sites together in one, customized list. However, I do believe that FM/AM will eventually die out, as it’s so much more efficient to listen to what you want, when you want.

Portable Projector
Perhaps this could be something you could add as a clip-on device. Not everyone would need or want this, but I’ve seen it mentioned elsewhere, and it does seem pretty interesting.

Flash Support
As much as I hate Flash, many websites use it. It’s obvious that we should be able to see Flash on an iPhone.

Some of these ideas are useful to some and not others, but that’s OK: we all have different wants and needs. Hopefully they will be implemented sooner rather than later. Until then, I’ll hold off on purchasing an iPhone until Apple incorporates the iCal-based To Do list.

Any other ideas? Let me know…

I really love odd facts, or as I like to call them, factoids: strange, and usually useless trivia about people, places and things in our daily lives. Here, I have compiled a few amazing food facts that you might not know:

• Certain foods such as Blow Fish and Bamboo Shoots will kill you if not prepared correctly.

• Most of us eat seaweed on a daily basis without even knowing it.

• A Mouse would live longer on a corn flakes box than on the cereal itself.

• Cereal boxes uses Elmer’s glue for the milk on the front of the boxes.

• 90% of all ketchup is made by the same company.

• Honey is really bee vomit.

• Someone else has already drunk a portion of the water you drink, maybe several times over.

• Frozen food is sometimes better for you than fresh food.

• A banana is an herb.

• Bamboo and sugar cane are from the grass family.

• Tomatoes are fruits.

• Peanuts are legumes.

There. You probably knew these facts already, but if you didn’t, don’t say I didn’t tell you.

There are many important and famous composers, long since gone, whom I would love to have met. Sometimes I think many of the tidbits mentioned to me when I was a student could have come from some of these composers, passed down through many generations of student/teacher lessons. Out of simple curiosity, I decided to do a little research and see if I could claim any connection whatsoever to any of them.

Fortunately, I studied with a tremendously diverse, impressive body of teachers, all of whom I highly admire. This list includes Samuel Adler, Warren Benson, David Liptak, William Ortiz-Alvarado, Roberto Sierra, Steven Stucky, Frederick Fox, Eugene O’Brien, Joseph Schwantner, Christopher Rouse, Aaron Jay Kernis, John Harbison and Sydney Hodkinson. I had master classes with a number of others, but I actually took lessons with these composers.

William Ortiz-Alvarado was my first teacher when I was ca. fifteen, and I really only took one or two private lessons with John Harbison, which were more like hangout sessions. But I did sit in on a whole summer of master classes with Harbison and Bernard Rands at Aspen, so to me, those count as lessons. I also sat in on master classes with Jacob Druckman but never took private lessons with him, although I would have loved to. I took one lesson with Syd Hodkinson, but played in the new music ensemble at Eastman for many years, so I would say that I worked with him, even though technically, I really did not take private lessons with him.

Here is a list of how many years (in parentheses) I studied with each teacher:

Key: Eastman School of Music (ESM); Indiana University (IU); Cornell University (CU); Atlantic Center for the Arts (ACA); Aspen Center for the Arts (Aspen); Private (P)

Samuel Adler (1, ESM)
Warren Benson (1, ESM)
David Liptak (1, ESM)
William Ortiz-Alvarado (1, P)
Roberto Sierra (3, CU)
Steven Stucky (3, CU)
Frederick Fox (1, IU)
Eugene O’Brien (1, IU)
Joseph Schwantner (1, ESM)
Christopher Rouse (2, ESM)
Aaron Jay Kernis (summer, ACA)
John Harbison (2 lessons and master class, Aspen)
Sydney Hodkinson (1 lesson and new music ensemble, Aspen)

How could I have studied with Sierra and Stucky for six years when I was only matriculated at Cornell for four? I was in town for an extra year and took lessons, and they often overlapped when they were in or out of town, so we often just consulted with whoever was around at the time since there are only two composers on the faculty. I am guessing that took about three years worth of lessons with each of them.

There are other composers I’ve worked with who I never really studied with, such as David Dzubay (I played in his new music ensemble for two years at IU) and Bernard Rands at Aspen, whose advanced master class I took. I never discussed my music personally with Dzubay, and Rand’s advice was directed toward the group, but was still useful.

I originally entered Eastman as a percussionist. After a semester, I thought I didn’t have enough to do, so I went to Adler and asked if I could take composition lessons.

“Whaaat? Why would you want to do that? C’mon. You’re a fine percussionist! Just stick to percussion,” he said.
“Because I want to compose,” I said.
In a gruff voice, he said “If you want to take lessons, I’ll let you study with this really good doctoral student, on the condition that if you do OK with him, we’ll accept you into the department.”

I spent the next semester studying with a doctoral student whose name I can’t remember. I don’t think I learned much from him, but nevertheless, Adler accepted me into the composition department starting my sophomore year. I was proud, as I worked very hard that semester to impress the composition faculty. The piece I remember them hearing in the infamous Room 120 was Humanus Ex Machina for alto sax and three percussionists. They seemed to like it, but if I am remembering correctly, only Adler walked up to me afterwards and congratulated me, but as I learned later, composers often just walk away without thinking that your entire emotional state is riding on their stroking your ego. As you become older and more confident, you hopefully get over this, but this was a huge day for me, so I was very sensitive.

I ended up double majoring in percussion and composition at Eastman and spent five years trudging through a double major, but since I missed one counterpoint seminar, the fine type of my degree (but not the degree itself) says I graduated as a percussionist. To this day, I am disappointed that I missed that one class.

My first “serious” composition teacher was Joseph Schwantner. I will never forget how nervous I was right before each lesson. Joe was a pretty intense first “serious” composition teacher. One of his first assignments was for me to practice shading half and whole notes correctly! My scores at that time had few notes, but boy—did they look good! I remember spending one lesson making a small ruling device out of toy train set parts, a piece of a small plastic ruler and special glue. I think I still have it somewhere in my drawers. I’ll never forget trekking to New York City to visit a past girlfriend and searching around Manhattan for these parts to make more rulers, special Black Velvet pencils and “onion skin” paper. Ahhh: the days before Finale and Sibelius.

Admittedly, I was too inexperienced to really absorb the finer points of what Schwantner could have taught me. If I had my wits about me, I could have discussed his harmonic system, how he thinks about timbre, etc., but I wasn’t there yet.

After Schwantner, I studied with Warren Benson, David Liptak, Samuel Adler and Christopher Rouse. I would say that Schwantner, Rouse and Adler had the greatest influence on me, but all of them are imbued in my music somehow. People often tell me they hear Schwantner in my work where I don’t hear it at all. I often think certain sections of my works have a smattering of Rouse, but then others will say they can’t hear it.

Adler influenced me in a way that is more transparent: I wouldn’t say I was influenced by his music, but more his teachings and theoretical musings. One saying that has stayed with me to this day is his saying “you must love every note you write.” This, I learned later, actually came from Aaron Copland, one of his teachers at Tanglewood. I also remember his reprimanding me for using what he thought were “Jass” chords in my music.

A typical conversation would go like this:

“What is that? A JASS Chord? Take it out.”
“But it’s not a jazz chord. In context….”
“C’mon, that’s a Jass chord. If you want to write jass, go down the hall and study with those jass guys. We teach serious music in the composition department.”

And so the semester went.

What I remember most about studying with David Liptak was his insistence on my approaching composition from different perspectives. If I felt like writing directly to score for an orchestral work, he would encourage me to orchestrate (i.e., like Ravel) instead. I also remember him playing a record of John Cage’s 4′33″ (the “Silence” piece). That was pretty memorable, as we sat there silently, but in an Escher-esque way, there was, as usual no true silence, as we were listening to record static and the sounds of our own subtle movements in our chairs.

Warren Benson was intimidating. One of his legs was a little longer than the other, and although he wore a platform shoe, he walked with a cane and had a slight limp. He was usually a little late for lessons, and when he came walking down the hall, you couldn’t help but be a little frightened. He had some amazing stories about his travels, particularly to South America, which we all loved to listen to—the first few times. After the fifth time or so, it got a little tiring, but each time he would tell the story a little differently, so it wasn’t so bad. I remember him having a bag of tricks he would tell us to use, in particular, he would tell us to add variety to melodic lines by shifting octaves for individual notes. If nothing else, I could be assured that he would suggest this for every piece. Otherwise, his suggestions were usually pretty interesting.

I enjoyed Chris Rouse so much that I spent my last year (my fifth year) at Eastman studying with him. I think even Chris will say that I wasn’t a star student by any means at that point and hadn’t really “found myself” yet, although in my defense, I did present the first ever Composer Forum concert with all of my own music because no other students had anything ready, so I must have been doing something right, regardless of how good or bad. To this day I consider him a great friend and mentor.

Regarding that composers forum, I remember having everything ready, except one movement of a small piece for vibraphone in a series I was planning on writing called Prisms for vibraphone. I was planning on playing two, but had only written one. It was too late to pull it from the program, and rather than embarrass myself my announcing to the audience that it was cancelled, I put the music on the stand, played the first one, and proceeded to play the second as if I was reading off the music, when really I only read the first line or two and then improvised the rest. I think I even turned the page at one point to make it look like I was actually reading music. To my amazement, that was the piece Adler liked the best! That was intensely irritating. The one piece he liked the best was the one I hadn’t written down.

I was in school with a number of other talented students, although I wasn’t really close to many of them. I knew Carter Pann and played a piece with him by a composer friend named Howard Yermish, I think), and I was in one class with Kevin Putz, but we didn’t travel in the same circles or really know each other. I hung out with Christopher Theofinidis a couple of times, and Michael Torke was a few years before my time.

At Indiana University, I knew a few talented composers, a couple of whom I still know today. I played early works by Dan Kellog (who eventually left to go to Curtis) and Stephan Freund and knew Yotam Haber, who I still hang with now and then.

As for my teachers at IU, I really enjoyed studying with both Eugene O’Brien and Fred Fox. They were both two of the best teachers I ever studied with, for different reasons. Gene was meticulous, but also deeply perceptive about what you were trying to do. Fred was the one who taught me about sensitivity to formal structure. He also cured me of my liberal use of mezzo-pianos, the pseudo dynamic that almost all young composers use too much.

At Cornell, almost everyone seemed exceptionally talented, and I still count among my friends many of the composers I was in school with at the time, including Jim Matheson and Yotam Haber. There were two composers in my class, Joseph Phibbs, a very gifted British composer, and Damon Lee, who I’ve remained great friends with all along. Damon and I have a lot in common, including our love of cooking, good wine, and especially our love of beautiful women. We also have similar sensibilities, although our music is quite different.

Steven Stucky and Roberto Sierra were my teachers at Cornell. Both are exceptionally fine composers. Steve is one of the brightest composers I have ever met, and he would often say something profound (or at least enlightening) that didn’t quite register until days later, something like “well, you could do that…”, which meant that it would be pretty awful if I did it. He was a master of making you tap into your insecurities and become your own harshest critic, and although he always smiled, his focused seriousness didn’t make me feel any more comfortable. He would also take a long time to look at a piece, and then, as if by magic, find that one spot that you were not so sure about, without you having told him about it. Steve is also an incredibly gifted interviewer, as anyone who attended his recent New York Philharmonic interviews with famous composers knows.

On the other hand, Roberto was gregarious, a master multi-tasker, and more like a jovial, wise father figure with a serious side. Unlike Steve, who’s more like a fine Scotch, Roberto is like an exquisitely-made Pina Colada (although personally, he loves fine wines). Before I even got to Cornell, I remember him interviewing me in his office. WHile talking, he reached behind his head for a soft drink chilling on his windowsill, opened it behind his head and shut the window, the whole time talking to me about the composition program at Cornell, without losing focus or eye contact. He is a master orchestrator, and although he sometimes seemed to only passively look at one of my pieces, he was really paying attention. He knew exactly how an effect would sound, and always gave great suggestions for how to make something come across most effectively.

Now for the best part: figuring out whether I have any sort of attachment to these famous dead composers I mentioned earlier. To do this, I will make a sort of student teacher family tree for various composers I studied with. Stay tuned for a future blog entry where I’ll present the tree.

To balance out the ultra dry subject matter of my last post, I spent a few minutes having a little fun. I morphed images of two icons who I think, through time and space, are distantly related:

NOTE: this morph was pretty bad, so I removed it indefinitely. I’ll replace it in the future if I can get much better images of Babbitt and Yoda.

Let’s compare: both Milton Babbitt and Yoda are supremely wise and possess an intellect far beyond that of any normal human, both are really old (Babbit is still kicking at 91 and Yoda was an astounding 900 when he passed), both are short, both speak—or compose, in Babbitt’s case—in a way that is unintelligible to normal people, Yoda is a Jedi and Babbitt teaches at Juilliard, and both seem very serious in all of their portraits, but also possess an exquisite, dry sense of humor.

I’m not sure why I think this is funny, but I do. This is all in good fun, of course, as I have the utmost respect for both of these masters.