by Jeffrey Bell-Hanson

This new undertaking had its origin for me over eight years ago, during my last sabbatical leave from my academic position. There was no thought at the time of starting a blog. I scarcely knew what a blog was, and certainly had never read one (as far as I was aware). I was just standing on the street on a beautiful, clear Pacific Northwest summer evening looking at a blue sky crisscrossed with contrails, the thin white cloud-like lines that trace the paths of passing jets at high altitudes. I walked the two short blocks home and wrote this:

I caught myself looking up at the sky tonight. It is nothing that I have not done in the past, but I have allowed myself this year the luxury of looking more intently, longer, and with less distraction. I saw line after line across the sky, some thin, some thick. It seemed to me that these were perhaps not clouds at all, at least natural clouds, but rather the remains of contrails left by airplanes passing across the sky.

At first, the thought that these lines in the sky were phantom-like shadows of human passage crossed my mind. Then it occurred to me how inaccurate this characterization was, and how inapt the metaphor would be.

Contrails are not made up of phantoms; of nothing. They are not shadow. They are substance. They are air disturbed. They are moisture that was hiding in that air forced to change its position, its status, and its aspect, and to show itself.

What I found attractive at that moment was the romantic notion of the thing that in passing, leaves nothing of itself, but the effects of which can be seen in all that it touches in its pathway. It seemed to me an apt metaphor for both a teacher and a conductor. And so, I concluded…

Hopefully, I am, or will leave more contrail than shadow. I hope that I will, in the coming years, disturb lots of moisture, and cut a wide, but gentle swath in the air through which I pass.

Of course, that’s not really the nature of a contrail. While some of the white, icy fog that one sees from the ground is made up of moisture that was already there in the air before the plane went by, the larger portion is apparently a toxic soup of condensation from the engine exhaust, carbon dioxide that will help to further change the earth’s climate on our behalf, and residual droplets of jet fuel. No matter how attractive the image of the contrail was to me as a musician, a teacher and a conductor, it’s one thing to privately harbor romantic notions based on scientific fallacies. It’s quite another to announce them to the world. Having learned something about the actual nature of a contrail, it became obvious to me that to use it as a title would conjure up less than appealing images for some and perpetuate my own ignorance for others. It’s at this point that the quote with which I began that musing nine years ago seems most appropriate.

“It’s clouds’ illusions I recall. I really don’t know clouds at all.” (Joni Mitchell)

Accordingly, I have chosen a title for my cyber-soapbox that is much closer to my experience and that I do (I think) understand.

Beating in Air is a bit of wordplay that recalls a more common expression, “beating the air,” which means an effort without effect; a pointless pursuit. In a musical context this phrase, and more often its variant, “beating in air,” has multiple meanings. It has been used as a metaphorical description for a repetitive gesture that engenders much ado in a musical surface, but creates little or no structural motion. It has been used to describe the physical phenomenon of sound itself, especially in the way that its waves crash against our ear drums. And it has been used as a literal description of the conductorial gesture, one that creates no sound, but nevertheless embodies and imparts a musical conception.

The phrase, “beating in air,” therefore carries a tinge from its original version of something that is essentially futile. In fact, it puts me in mind of my recurring fantasy about performing a recital of works for solo conductor. Perhaps that’s just what this blog will be.

Yet the beating in air that a conductor does is useful when it becomes the object of the attention and cooperation of a community of skilled musicians. As they open their minds and hearts to her, and she reciprocates, her silent gestures can flower into a dialog. Where there is a dialog, all sorts of things can change.

Thus, my hope for this little region of the cyber-sphere: that in the fleeting moments you spend here, you will find something to pique your thoughts and set you off on your own flights of fancy or contemplation. Some of what you will find here will be about music and musicians. Some will be more about life in the world today. While I won’t promise not to be political, I will endeavor to ask questions more than I make judgments.

While I have rejected the image of the contrail as the best metaphor for what I hope to accomplish, I still hope to cut a wide, but gentle swath in the air through which I pass.