My Four Little Pieces were judged blindly by NMS piano faculty and a final adjudication committee consisting of composers Robert Carl and Kenneth Steen from the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, CT and Debbie Teason, a composer on faculty at NMS.

I, along with Ryan Brown and the winners of the High School division, Tonia Ko and Emily Cooley, will receive a commission to write a new solo piano piece for the Neighborhood Music School’s Renee B. Fisher Young Pianist Competition in either 2014 or 2015.

Congratulations to my fellow winners, and you can find a recording of my expanded set of solo piano miniatures, Eight Little Pieces, on the music page of this site.

Right off the bat, the post is a take-down piece aimed at John Cage’s legacy, whom Mr. Asia opposes with Igor Stravinsky, tearing down one to raise up the other, more or less. Basically, Mr. Asia constructs a scenario where Cage and Stravinsky are representatives of two inherently conflicting and irreconcilable sets of artistic values, and provides evidence that one of these sets – that embodied in Cage’s music, namely the Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano – is incontrovertibly inferior to the other. It is like he is arguing chunky peanut butter’s natural superiority to creamy peanut butter, and the public response has been accordingly bifurcated, with Cage supporters angered and Cage detractors affirmed.

Rather than take a side in this tug-o-war, I take issue with the symbolism of Mr. Asia’s piece, and I will use a pop culture reference to aid my rhetoric. In the famed HBO series The Wire (spoiler alert!), there are two characters, Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell, who head a gang of drug dealers in West Baltimore. At the outset of the show, the gang culture in which Barksdale and Bell are players, is defined by territorial conflicts, violence, betrayal and other forms of competition.

Over time, Bell, a more naturally inclined businessman than Barksdale, attempts to organize Baltimore’s gangs into a kind of confederacy, passing over the feuds that divide the smaller groups to create a stronger, more profitable criminal organization. Barksdale, however, disapproves of Bell’s plans and thwarts him, simply because he cannot ignore his instinct to be a gangster and fight for ‘corners’. In this analogy, Mr. Asia is Avon Barksdale, only interested in carving his own reactive space in the conversation surrounding living 20^th Century/Contemporary/Living Composers’ music.

Let’s face it, like the drug peddling gangbangers on The Wire, composers have a product – their music – and we want to share it with, if not literally sell it to, as many people as possible. Stringer Bell’s concern about his gang’s business applies to our trade – if feuding is counterproductive to building the largest audience possible, why not avoid it and support each other? After all, crushing other composers doesn’t make your own music sound better, and in the long run, as Stringer fruitlessly explains to Avon, the quality of the product, not the amount of bullets fired or territory seized, is what separates one purveyor from another.

Of course, Mr. Asia is arguing the poor quality of Cage’s music, as if the value of a musical object is fixed, easily measurable and necessarily universal. This is his most glaring misstep, because why should his response to the Sonatas and Interludes apply to anyone else? Moreover, Mr. Asia undercuts his conclusion by choosing Stravinsky as the antidote to Cage’s ‘unseriousness’, because Stravinsky’s poly-stylistic output, in itself, suggests there is no one true music. So, what is the point of placing one music above another, if an eminently masterful composer – that is, Stravinksy – refused to write music that sounded one particular way?

More demonstrative of my position is the fact that the most beautiful and compelling passage of Mr. Asia’s article – “Because, while art for most is not a matter of life or death, it does profoundly reflect our understanding and approach to ultimate values,” – has been lost in the discussion surrounding it. At least as it pertains to the network of responses I’ve encountered, most everyone wants to either agree or disagree with his opinion of Cage and his music.

Accept, then, Mr. Asia’s piece as a microcosm of my precise criticism – an idea capable of inspiring many and rallying awareness around the arts and music is suffocated by glib, overwrought palaver. Call me parochial, but I believe composers slamming other composers’ music, whether with bombast on the Huffington Post, or in hushed tones beside the Temple of Dendur after a CONTACT! concert, disserves both ourselves and our audience. Imagine a curious but otherwise unaware listener who stumbles upon the world of Living Composers. Will witnessing mudslinging and infighting, like Mr. Asia’s article and its associated discourse, make this individual more or less inclined to listen to Living Composers’ music or go elsewhere for their listening needs?

In light of the upcoming holidays, I will observe a short hiatus this coming week, returning on New Year’s Eve to complement champagne-laced toasts and ‘Auld Lang Syne’. For now, enjoy this compilation of the week’s posts, and the start of a new weekend tradition for my renovated ‘Observations’ page.

Observations 2.1 (12/15/12)

I imagine it will be weeks before the horrifying tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut will escape the forefront of any sensitive American’s mind. As a proud Nutmegger, yesterday’s slaying is doubly poignant in relation to the similar crimes that have, frighteningly, occurred in Oregon, Wisconsin and Colorado since this summer.

There is an obvious, politically charged response to yesterday’s events, but I am not going to address that here. My feelings on that subject are reasonable but decidedly valenced. It is my expectation that this shooting will prompt a national debate about gun control, mental illness and their interconnectedness – it is my hope that this vital conversation will be conducted respectfully and responsibly.

In order for that to happen, we cannot rely on social media as our principle forums for communication. I realize it is hackneyed to report on the disappointing level of condescension associated with the political rhetoric dispelled daily on Facebook and Twitter. However, the most ridiculous items I saw yesterday were not political aphorisms, but condemnations directed at those who did not seem to be grieving appropriately.

No one rejoiced in what happened yesterday, and we cannot let our anger blind us from the fact that people express their sadness in different ways. It is arrogant to accuse those who may gravitate to lighthearted subjects to soothe their pain of being unfeeling or disrespectful. There is an irony in the way the Internet has affected our communication as a people – it facilitates greater individuality, but does so by making us increasingly isolated from ideas and behaviors different from our own.

Online, we operate in spheres of continually reinforced idiosyncrasy, and, though, there is no inherent problem in this fact, we are not always aware of how insulated we become. The powerful self-selection concomitant with our use of social media allows us to avoid opinions we do not share, the consequence of which is manifest in the disrespect we show those whose behaviors and thoughts oppose our own. Incubating in a media world intentionally customized to our preferences, discordant actions and thoughts leave us so stunned, we, shamefully, tend to respond to them with distrust.

Observations 2.2 (12/16/12)

Yesterday, I made a caramelized onion, blue cheese and walnut tart to take to a friend’s birthday potluck. Cooking is one of my favorite things, particularly the act of making something completely from scratch. Generally, that’s what my mom did when as I grew up, and she’s the one who got me started in the kitchen, demanding I cook the whole family dinner before I was ‘allowed’ to go off to college.

Last night, as I teased the inevitable wonder of my tart to the party’s guests before we sat down at the table, I got to talking about cooking instincts, and styles, with my more culinarily-inclined friends. There are people who cook solely from recipes and there are people who are more improvisatory, people who bake more than cook, people who cook more than bake, and people who only make the same thing over and over.

I am mostly an improvisatory chef – for example, I did not use a recipe (except for the crust) to make the tart I brought to the party last night – and got that way through experiences living abroad and a great deal of trial and error. Although I refer to recipes on occasion, I try to cook as independently as possible because I am prideful of making things my own way.

If what we eat expresses who we are (i.e. “you are what you eat”, or Burger King let’s you “have it your way”), then what and how we cook does so more loudly and directly. As humans, we all have an evolutionary directive to provide our own sustenance, so why not respond to it in the most personal manner possible? So much of our cultural consumption involves substituting unique acts of individual expression with store-bought representations; the kitchen might be the last place where quick-and-easy commercialism can be successfully held at bay.

Now, I occasionally indulge in packaged, prepared, fast or frozen food options like most people, but I balance those instances with homemade soups, marinades and applesauce, among other items. Though supermarkets have obviated the need for us to hunt, forage and grow what we eat, there remains, through cooking, a space for us to express our identities in the food we eat. By this token, the tart I made yesterday isn’t only made of flour, water, butter, onions, blue cheese, walnuts, eggs and salt (literally, all the ingredients I used), it contains traces of me and my personality, as well.

Observations 2.3 (12/17/12)

It has been challenging for me not to dive head-first into the childishness that has erupted on the Internet in the days following the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Here’s what I’ve seen, so far: first, Facebook and Twitter users ridiculously criticized each other for not mourning enough, then a fraudulent statement from Morgan Freeman about the media circulated, the Westboro Baptist Church tried to steal the spotlight and (deservedly) drew retaliation from the hacker group Anonymous, and, finally, a frightful number of folks found it appropriate to criticize NBC for interrupting Sunday Night Football (and FOX for cutting into Bob’s Burgers) to broadcast President Obama’s speech at last night’s community vigil in Newtown.

Predictably, I’ll point out how we’ve clearly ‘lost sight of what is really important’ – i.e., how disappointing it is that so many people seem to have ignored the gravity of Friday’s massacre to get a word in and satisfy their egos. Yet, all this chatter is really quite fascinating. The vibrant, although not always pleasing, din of commentary surrounding this tragedy illustrates the immense complexity of the situation it has precipitated.

Most simply, we are in a time of national mourning – and, we participate in that not because it is compulsory, but because it is ineluctable.  However, as I wrote about on Saturday, our individual expressions of grief are different and, given our nation’s diversity, those expressions are incredibly variegated. Alongside our collective sadness lies the stream of issues that arise from this kind of attack and the fact that they unavoidably evoke passionate articulations of support and opposition. Calm, reserved grieving fits as appropriately into this conversation as wild, incensed confusion, so, aside from behavior that violates the extreme boundaries of civility, it is impossible, and meaningless, to say what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’.

With that said, of all the responses to Friday’s events that I’ve seen, I think the President’s address last night is most worth imitation. He was serious but not humorless, sympathetic but did not marginalize the incomprehensibility of those families’ losses, he was political but not aggressively or disrespectfully so. He is the most powerful man in the world and read every victim’s name giving time for their memory (or our imagine memory) to resonate in our hearts. In short, he acted reasonably and honorably in the face of charged and mixed emotions, something which I wish were more commonplace.

Observations 2.4 (12/18/12)

Today’s missive breaks no new ground because its discusses the absurd commercials that run this time of year, the ridiculous things companies try to get us to buy in order to participate in the ‘spirit of the season’. What has particularly irked me in the weeks since Christmas season opened are the ads espousing the virtues of the newest discovery in jewelry – chocolate diamonds.

Don’t let these gems’ tempting moniker fool you. Chocolate diamonds are, literally, nothing special. Before Kay, Zales, Jared and the Levian family got their hands on these stones, chocolate diamonds were use for industrial purposes. Yes, fellas, this means buying your sweetheart a chocolate diamond ring, necklace or bracelet is about as romantic as surprising her with an Ingersoll-Rand Air Compressor or Caterpillar Backhoe.

The subtext of the chocolate diamond craze is astounding. For generations, monopolistic diamond companies (i.e. the DeBeers empire) have reinforced the value of a diamond’s purity and flawlessness. This Christmas (and long before), however, the same commercial forces are trying to convince us to desire the exact opposite. I don’t know how many chocolate diamonds have been bought and sold, but jewelry stores’ attempts to apply worth to these previously worthless stones is a disappointing. Consider the chocolate diamond phenomenon another test of the theory that you can make anything seem important by repeating it loudly an continually.

Observations 2.5 (12/18/12)

Although this daily-blogging program is new in my life, I’ve been writing like this for a long time. In high school, my twin, father and I took over a movie review column (that still runs in The Ridgefield Press) our older brother had started when he was in high school, four years earlier.

My freshman year at Rice University, I wrote long, libertarian-themed articles (yeah, imagine that crap) for a small student magazine called The Rice Standard, which I continued to write for (this time culture and satire columns) when it was rebooted in an online format three years later by my twin. The following Fall, when I started my masters degree in Music Composition at the University of Michigan, I started writing concert and CD reviews for Sequenza21.com, and.

There is a deliberate tone to my music criticism, something I cultivated in my first music columns for RiceStandard.org, and then developed in my first month or so writing for Sequenza. I consider myself more of a reporter than a critic: I want to give an account of my experience so that those who weren’t at a given concert can imagine what their experience may have been like. Additionally, I try not to be negative unless it is absolutely impossible because I don’t want to shade someone’s opinion of a piece of music before they have a chance to listen to it on their own.

Like I’ve said, I have formed my critical perspective intentionally over time – I imagine my target reader as someone who cares about music, listening to new things and has somehow happened upon the world of living composers. My review might be their first window into the musical world of which I am a grateful member, and I would hate for an unnecessarily petty journalistic tone to turn them off from my, or any other composer’s, latest work. Of course, I would never misrepresent the quality of a piece I encounter (I’m not a cream puff like Rick Reilly or Gene Shallot), but I think it is possible to notice the merit in any musical work, even while respectfully exposing its flaws.

Observations 2.6 (12/20/12)

Before one night last week, when I happened to be listening to American Public Media’s ‘The Story’ while driving around town, I had forgotten entirely about the fear surrounding tomorrow, the day when the ‘long count’ Mayan Calendar ends, and, supposedly, so does the world.

That evening’s show refreshed my awareness of this rumor, particularly the commentary by Dr. David Morrison, who runs NASA’s Ask An Astrobiologist site, which (according to its homepage), “has received over 5000 questions about Nibiru and Doomsday 2012, with more than 400 answers posted.” Apparently, there remains an intense and vocal number of people in America who are convinced our planet and/or society will be destroyed tomorrow – some, according to Dr. Morrison, are so firmly persuaded that they plan to commit suicide to avoid experiencing the apocalypse.

Now, I have as many zombie-related or dystopian/post-apocalyptic stress dreams as the next person (probably more, even) and I don’t believe anything will happen tomorrow. This weekend, I don’t plan on mocking anyone who felt the world was going to vanish or be crushed by a secret planet, because people have always thought the world was going to end, and, probably always will. After all, since I went through puberty, the planet has survived end-times-fears from the ‘Y2K’ scare to Harold Camping’s farcical claim that the rapture would happen on May 21, 2011, not to mention concerns regarding imminent zombie outbreaks strong enough to prompt an official statement from the CDC.

With the exception of predictions of the end times as laid out in the Bible, these fears are motivated by pure superstition, an amazing fact considering how long it has been since sea monsters decorated the edges of our maps. Buttressed by science, technology, rationalism and logic, we still fear the unknown like Cro Magnon man must have feared the dark. Though the rising and setting sun no longer controls the horizon of our understand, we are prisoners to the impenetrability of the future. Shielded by the opacity of unalterable time, we can imagine tomorrow, or next year, possessing any possible outcome – love, prosperity, or the end of the world – and we will continue to do this, tomorrow and beyond.

Observations 2.7 (12/21/12)

This post marks a week since I embarked on this new writing mission. Independent of all of us, the time intervening from then to today has been one of the most trying and emotional – on a national scale – since, I think, the week following the September 11^th attacks. I can only speak for myself here, but I think, in turns, we have tried to confront and avoid, remember and reconcile, the events that redefined last Friday from an ordinary December school day into a seminal scar in American history. So, once again, I will discuss what happened in Newtown, Connecticut one week ago, today.

I am back home in Ridgefield, Connecticut (about 30 minutes south of Newtown) and the way I perceive what happened last Friday is starkly palpable to how I learned about the school shooting last week. Connecticut is not a large state, which means the echoes of what happened are unavoidable – your town hosts a vigil every day, you see a funeral for one of the adult victims when you drive to the grocery store, your Mom plays Mah Jongg with someone whose husband was at lunch with Adam Lanza’s father last Friday – and are more potent than what we access through the evening news or Huffington Post.

My father does communications work with Danbury Hospital, which treated those who last Friday’s wounded, and was called into service on the 14^th to help the hospital’s president, Dr. John Murphy, handle his public remarks. As one would expect, the hospital staff held a remembrance service that night, and, thanks to my father, I can close this brief contemplation with the Psalm Dr. Murphy read to his doctors and nurses after a day of loss, emotional overwhelm and physical healing:

Psalm 130

Out of the depths I call to you

Listen to my voice

Be attentive to my supplicating voice

If you tallied errors

Who would survive the count?

But you forgive, you forbear everything

And this is the wonder and the dread

You are my heart’s hope, my daily hope

And my ears long to hear your words

My heart waits quiet in hope for you

More than they who watch for sunrise

Hope for a new morning

Let those who question and struggle

Wait quiet like this for you

For with you there is durable kindness

And wholeness in abundance

And will loose all our bindings

Surely

I am back home in Ridgefield, Connecticut (about 30 minutes south of Newtown) and the way I perceive what happened last Friday is starkly palpable to how I learned about the school shooting last week. Connecticut is not a large state, which means the echoes of what happened are unavoidable – your town hosts a vigil every day, you see a funeral for one of the adult victims when you drive to the grocery store, your Mom plays Mah Jongg with someone whose husband was at lunch with Adam Lanza’s father last Friday – and are more potent than what we access through the evening news or Huffington Post.

My father does communications work with Danbury Hospital, which treated those who last Friday’s wounded, and was called into service on the 14^th to help the hospital’s president, Dr. John Murphy, handle his public remarks. As one would expect, the hospital staff held a remembrance service that night, and, thanks to my father, I can close this brief contemplation with the Psalm Dr. Murphy read to his doctors and nurses after a day of loss, emotional overwhelm and physical healing:

Psalm 130

Out of the depths I call to you

Listen to my voice

Be attentive to my supplicating voice

If you tallied errors

Who would survive the count?

But you forgive, you forbear everything

And this is the wonder and the dread

You are my heart’s hope, my daily hope

And my ears long to hear your words

My heart waits quiet in hope for you

More than they who watch for sunrise

Hope for a new morning

Let those who question and struggle

Wait quiet like this for you

For with you there is durable kindness

And wholeness in abundance

And will loose all our bindings

Surely

That evening’s show refreshed my awareness of this rumor, particularly the commentary by Dr. David Morrison, who runs NASA’s Ask An Astrobiologist site, which (according to its homepage), “has received over 5000 questions about Nibiru and Doomsday 2012, with more than 400 answers posted.” Apparently, there remains an intense and vocal number of people in America who are convinced our planet and/or society will be destroyed tomorrow – some, according to Dr. Morrison, are so firmly persuaded that they plan to commit suicide to avoid experiencing the apocalypse.

Now, I have as many zombie-related or dystopian/post-apocalyptic stress dreams as the next person (probably more, even) and I don’t believe anything will happen tomorrow. This weekend, I don’t plan on mocking anyone who felt the world was going to vanish or be crushed by a secret planet, because people have always thought the world was going to end, and, probably always will. After all, since I went through puberty, the planet has survived end-times-fears from the ‘Y2K’ scare to Harold Camping’s farcical claim that the rapture would happen on May 21, 2011, not to mention concerns regarding imminent zombie outbreaks strong enough to prompt an official statement from the CDC.

With the exception of predictions of the end times as laid out in the Bible, these fears are motivated by pure superstition, an amazing fact considering how long it has been since sea monsters decorated the edges of our maps. Buttressed by science, technology, rationalism and logic, we still fear the unknown like Cro Magnon man must have feared the dark. Though the rising and setting sun no longer controls the horizon of our understand, we are prisoners to the impenetrability of the future. Shielded by the opacity of unalterable time, we can imagine tomorrow, or next year, possessing any possible outcome – love, prosperity, or the end of the world – and we will continue to do this, tomorrow and beyond.

My freshman year at Rice University, I wrote long, libertarian-themed articles (yeah, imagine that crap) for a small student magazine called The Rice Standard, which I continued to write for (this time culture and satire columns) when it was rebooted in an online format three years later by my twin. The following Fall, when I started my masters degree in Music Composition at the University of Michigan, I started writing concert and CD reviews for Sequenza21.com, and.

There is a deliberate tone to my music criticism, something I cultivated in my first music columns for RiceStandard.org, and then developed in my first month or so writing for Sequenza. I consider myself more of a reporter than a critic: I want to give an account of my experience so that those who weren’t at a given concert can imagine what their experience may have been like. Additionally, I try not to be negative unless it is absolutely impossible because I don’t want to shade someone’s opinion of a piece of music before they have a chance to listen to it on their own.

Like I’ve said, I have formed my critical perspective intentionally over time – I imagine my target reader as someone who cares about music, listening to new things and has somehow happened upon the world of living composers. My review might be their first window into the musical world of which I am a grateful member, and I would hate for an unnecessarily petty journalistic tone to turn them off from my, or any other composer’s, latest work. Of course, I would never misrepresent the quality of a piece I encounter (I’m not a cream puff like Rick Reilly or Gene Shallot), but I think it is possible to notice the merit in any musical work, even while respectfully exposing its flaws.

Don’t let these gems’ tempting moniker fool you. Chocolate diamonds are, literally, nothing special. Before Kay, Zales, Jared and the Levian family got their hands on these stones, chocolate diamonds were use for industrial purposes. Yes, fellas, this means buying your sweetheart a chocolate diamond ring, necklace or bracelet is about as romantic as surprising her with an Ingersoll-Rand Air Compressor or Caterpillar Backhoe.

The subtext of the chocolate diamond craze is astounding. For generations, monopolistic diamond companies (i.e. the DeBeers empire) have reinforced the value of a diamond’s purity and flawlessness. This Christmas (and long before), however, the same commercial forces are trying to convince us to desire the exact opposite. I don’t know how many chocolate diamonds have been bought and sold, but jewelry stores’ attempts to apply worth to these previously worthless stones is a disappointing. Consider the chocolate diamond phenomenon another test of the theory that you can make anything seem important by repeating it loudly an continually.

Predictably, I’ll point out how we’ve clearly ‘lost sight of what is really important’ – i.e., how disappointing it is that so many people seem to have ignored the gravity of Friday’s massacre to get a word in and satisfy their egos. Yet, all this chatter is really quite fascinating. The vibrant, although not always pleasing, din of commentary surrounding this tragedy illustrates the immense complexity of the situation it has precipitated.

Most simply, we are in a time of national mourning – and, we participate in that not because it is compulsory, but because it is ineluctable.  However, as I wrote about on Saturday, our individual expressions of grief are different and, given our nation’s diversity, those expressions are incredibly variegated. Alongside our collective sadness lies the stream of issues that arise from this kind of attack and the fact that they unavoidably evoke passionate articulations of support and opposition. Calm, reserved grieving fits as appropriately into this conversation as wild, incensed confusion, so, aside from behavior that violates the extreme boundaries of civility, it is impossible, and meaningless, to say what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’.

With that said, of all the responses to Friday’s events that I’ve seen, I think the President’s address last night is most worth imitation. He was serious but not humorless, sympathetic but did not marginalize the incomprehensibility of those families’ losses, he was political but not aggressively or disrespectfully so. He is the most powerful man in the world and read every victim’s name giving time for their memory (or our imagine memory) to resonate in our hearts. In short, he acted reasonably and honorably in the face of charged and mixed emotions, something which I wish were more commonplace.

Last night, as I teased the inevitable wonder of my tart to the party’s guests before we sat down at the table, I got to talking about cooking instincts, and styles, with my more culinarily-inclined friends. There are people who cook solely from recipes and there are people who are more improvisatory, people who bake more than cook, people who cook more than bake, and people who only make the same thing over and over.

I am mostly an improvisatory chef – for example, I did not use a recipe (except for the crust) to make the tart I brought to the party last night – and got that way through experiences living abroad and a great deal of trial and error. Although I refer to recipes on occasion, I try to cook as independently as possible because I am prideful of making things my own way.

If what we eat expresses who we are (i.e. “you are what you eat”, or Burger King let’s you “have it your way”), then what and how we cook does so more loudly and directly. As humans, we all have an evolutionary directive to provide our own sustenance, so why not respond to it in the most personal manner possible? So much of our cultural consumption involves substituting unique acts of individual expression with store-bought representations; the kitchen might be the last place where quick-and-easy commercialism can be successfully held at bay.

Now, I occasionally indulge in packaged, prepared, fast or frozen food options like most people, but I balance those instances with homemade soups, marinades and applesauce, among other items. Though supermarkets have obviated the need for us to hunt, forage and grow what we eat, there remains, through cooking, a space for us to express our identities in the food we eat. By this token, the tart I made yesterday isn’t only made of flour, water, butter, onions, blue cheese, walnuts, eggs and salt (literally, all the ingredients I used), it contains traces of me and my personality, as well.

There is an obvious, politically charged response to yesterday’s events, but I am not going to address that here. My feelings on that subject are reasonable but decidedly valenced. It is my expectation that this shooting will prompt a national debate about gun control, mental illness and their interconnectedness – it is my hope that this vital conversation will be conducted respectfully and responsibly.

In order for that to happen, we cannot rely on social media as our principle forums for communication. I realize it is hackneyed to report on the disappointing level of condescension associated with the political rhetoric dispelled daily on Facebook and Twitter. However, the most ridiculous items I saw yesterday were not political aphorisms, but condemnations directed at those who did not seem to be grieving appropriately.

No one rejoiced in what happened yesterday, and we cannot let our anger blind us from the fact that people express their sadness in different ways. It is arrogant to accuse those who may gravitate to lighthearted subjects to soothe their pain of being unfeeling or disrespectful. There is an irony in the way the Internet has affected our communication as a people – it facilitates greater individuality, but does so by making us increasingly isolated from ideas and behaviors different from our own.

Online, we operate in spheres of continually reinforced idiosyncrasy, and, though, there is no inherent problem in this fact, we are not always aware of how insulated we become. The powerful self-selection concomitant with our use of social media allows us to avoid opinions we do not share, the consequence of which is manifest in the disrespect we show those whose behaviors and thoughts oppose our own. Incubating in a media world intentionally customized to our preferences, discordant actions and thoughts leave us so stunned, we, shamefully, tend to respond to them with distrust.