You Say You Want a Resolution?

With less than five days left in 2007, I’m sure I’m not the only one beginning to give some thought to my New Year’s resolution. Should I resolve to spend more time with family or to take up a new hobby? To reconnect with old friends or to make some new ones? To work out more or to eat less? These are the questions that many of us will be asking ourselves over the next few days in an effort to pick the perfect resolution for 2008.

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that the trick to choosing a New Year’s resolution is to be as specific as possible. The year I resolved to try a new class at the gym, for example, is the same year I took up yoga, which has been a part of my workout routine ever since. The year that I resolved to “be more productive”, however, not a whole lot changed. Rather than resolving to simply “be healthier” or to learn a new language, try resolving to go to the gym at least four times each week or to sign up for Italian 101. My attempt at productivity would have been better served by a resolution to write for at least one hour every night. The more detailed the expectations you set for yourself, the more likely you’ll be to meet them.

If you’re still unsure as to what your New Year’s resolution should be, here are a few suggestions that you may not have considered:

Don’t dine in the same place more than once. While returning to your favorite restaurant again and again can be a comforting treat, there could be a new favorite out there waiting for you to stumble upon it. For a full year, resolve to try a restaurant you’ve never been to each and every time you dine out. With over 200 restaurants on the UES alone, you’re sure to uncover several new favorites.

Stop complaining. As anyone who has ridden a crowded subway or stood on a long check-out line in Manhattan can attest, New Yorkers like to complain. Help to make the city complaint-free by taking author Will Bowen’s 21-day challenge. In his book A Complaint Free World: How to Stop Complaining and Start Enjoying the Life You Always Wanted, Bowen challenges readers to stop complaining for 21 days, which he explains is just the amount of time needed to break a habit. Try it and see for yourself if he’s right.

Have some class. Resolve to study the Victorian novel, make your own jewelry, or sculpt a bust of your spouse by enrolling in the 92nd Street Y’s Winter-Spring session of classes. From drawing to dancing, piano to pottery, the Y offers something for everyone – and for reasonable prices.

Pick up after your dog. I include this only because of a rather unpleasant episode a few weeks ago involving dog poo, my running sneakers, and a new throw rug. Help to keep the UES dog- and people-friendly by picking up a pooper-scooper and resolving to clean up after your dog no matter what.

Read more. Take advantage of the New York Public Library’s four UES locations by resolving to apply for a library card - and then use it on a weekly basis.

Give back to the community. Resolve to volunteer, even if for just one or two hours every week. Some of the many organizations on the UES looking for volunteers include Goodwill Industries, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, Lighthouse International, Ronald McDonald House, The Children’s Aid Society, and the New York Public Library.

Cut back on cab fare. If cabs have become a part of your daily commute, resolve to limit yourself to only one or two cab rides per week. You may have to leave your apartment a bit earlier, but you’ll save money and get a workout on your walk to the subway.

Get to know your neighbor. I’ve lived in my apartment for a year and a half, and I have yet to even see every tenant in my eight-apartment building. Unless you and your neighbors stick to the same schedule, you probably have yet to learn their names as well. This year, resolve to get to know at least one or two of the people with whom you share a front door by sticking a note in their mailboxes or simply knocking on their doors (preferably with baked goods in hand).

Here’s to sticking to your resolution this year – whatever it may be!

Malcom's Law

According to Malcolm's Law: No sweat, no gain. There may be a modicum of so-called talent involved, but to be beyond great at any skill, that is not enough.

Malcolm Gladwell was lanky and had big feet and talked with his hands in an impassioned yet subdued manner at the 92nd St. Y one recent evening.

He talked fast and delved into complex ideas that go against what is generally accepted in society. And, he was humble in a most pleasant way. Success, he said, is 10 percent talent and it is 90 percent hard work. "Mozart, you know, had a demanding father. He was 5 and his father lied and said he was 7. By age 10 he had practiced as much as a 25-year-old would have."

The equation for success goes a little something like this, said Gladwell. You've either got to spend 10,000 hours honing a certain skill... or 10 years mastering a certain task to pass through the threshold of good.

"There's a danger of glorifying precocity in children," he said. "If you encourage children to think talent is innate, that can cause big problems later and lead to self-destruction and the need to constantly feel they must protect that talent. If you train them to think success is a function of hard work, if they fail they will say that they need to work harder."

So, added the commentator, we should bet on the one who loves what he is doing so much he cannot stop?

Yes, responded Malcolm. "If you look and watch – and I watch obsessively, I admit it! – then you will see the way that Tiger Woods just loves the golf course. He is deeply fascinated on the

course."

Gladwell in his work as a staff writer for The New Yorker knows a thing or two about this. He typically goes through 15 drafts for any given writing assignment, he said, drafting and honing and crafting and such.

Another of Malcolm's ideas? Let go of the elitist outlook. Enough already. "If I were ruler of the world and could do 10 things to make the world a better place, on my extended list, no one would ever be allowed to ask, and no one is ever allowed to tell, where they went to college." This would solve so many problems, he said.

"You would think that when we graduate and enter into the real world, we would abandon all these proxies, no? But they continue to matter. Where did you go to college?" In Gladwell's mind, why does it matter?

Perhaps this was one of the most refreshing aspects of Malcolm Gladwell's talk. Intelligence for the sake of intelligence and feeding curiosity. Gladwell attended a school where an IQ of 145 or higher was required. His father was a mathematician.

He is a studied and well-read man. But, to hear him speak is to listen to a man genuinely intrigued by the world and engaged in analyzing its norms, often questioning them. He did not utter or suggest that his ideas were right, per se, or better. He simply put another opinion on the table.

I can imagine this man slumped over his desk with a furrowed brow reading aloud and laboring over every word. How do they appear on the page? How do they sound?

And there is something in this that makes me very, very happy.

So, what's it going to be for you: 10,ooo hours or 10 years? Because I know you will be better than good.

Here, some music to get you going on these colder days: Here and Here

A bientot,

YGAT

Argentine Art Auction Tonight!

Boy, oh boy. Sure hope you get this in time. Support the young artists from Argentina at this Auction tonight sponsored by a non-profit run by a friend-of-a-friend:

The non-profit org, ProyectArte, aimed at supporting underprivileged young artists from Argentina holds its 5th annual auction esta noche at the Consulate of Argentina from 6-9.30pm. Where? 56th st and 5th Ave.

Stop by and nosh on complimentary hors d'oeuvres, Argentine wines, and... live tango!

Learn more here www.proyectarte.org

Andale!

YGAT

Spell of Gladwell

Tomorrow, the event for which you literary buffs have been waiting. That man with the floppy hair, who, through his book, "Blink" basically said, forget whatever academic decision-making process you learned and trust your instinct when it comes to decisions speaks tomorrow night. By all accords it will be one of the events this season. Don't miss it!

What: Malcolm Gladwell
When: 8:00p.m.
Cost: $26
Call: 212-415-5500

See you there!

YGAT

What's the Buzz?

So it was tonight that my favorite Fifth Avenue department store, Takashimaya, had its annual post-work party for vendors. I am not a vendor. But, my friend is. Would I go? Well, sure.

It was all champagne and platters of cut-up pieces of seasoned meat and fish on the sixth floor where the delicate, exotic blooms are displayed. I was the only one in the crowded room sporting a fluffy zip-up colored ... cream. Everyone else was clad in black and gray thigh-high jumpers and silk ties.

It's easy to get wrapped up in your daily routine and stick like glue to the computer screen in your office. Too easy.

A mentor of mine used to say that the best editors have their fingers firmly placed on the pulse at all times. They step out of their offices and take to the streets. They open their eyes, and ears, and shake hands, engage in conversations, maybe even eavesdrop a tad. Because bright ideas that radiate heat aren't typically found hidden beneath the keyboard.

Don't take your finger off that pulse and catch this event at Takashimaya:

The Gurhan Trunk Show: December 13, from 11:00am to 6:00pm, when the award-winning master goldsmith Gurhan Orhan presents his holiday jewelry collection.

See you there.

YGAT

Compositions Decomposed

When the Metropolitan hosts a lecture, they mean business. There was the lectern. Perched behind it, speaker Alex Ross, music critic at The New Yorker, spoke into a microphone. There was a curtain, a hardwood floor, and little else. It was reminiscent of a university classroom, set in an auditorium. I kept recalling how fantastic those art history lectures were ... you know, the ones with the colorful slides and juicy stories.

Ross had wiry thin hair, appeared young, and was by turns sheepish and fiery as he read from the essay he prepared, "The Art of Fear" covering classical music created by Strauss and Shostakovich in the 30s and 40s under totalitarian regimes.

We live in a multi-media circus, with lights flashing, text running, and music streaming at us most of any given day. Our senses have adapted to the deluge of information flung at us, and perhaps come to expect it. As readers consume more media through the Internet we become accustomed to the story package. An article is no longer just a few graphs of quotes and background information. It's that plus video, plus a photo gallery, plus podcasts and blogs. It's surface and in-depth, take your pick. Text or image, a-la-carte.

So, a lecture where one is reading an essay about music, albeit a masterfully crafted one, leaves a little to be desired.

I kept thinking, 'Hey, we're talking about critics who called Shostakovich's work cacophonous and rife with discord. How about a sampling of that sound?'

Wouldn't it have been illuminating and engaging to have heard a few bars. Or to have seen some slides of the mastermind at work? Perhaps a video clip?

Whispers of the Met's attempt to rival MOMA with showy displays of modernism and an embrace of the contemporary have been bandied about lately. But, with lectures such as this, the museum still rings of classicism and sleepiness. To be sure, classicism steeped in respected tradition. But lacking in the zing department nonetheless.

I went to the lecture a fan of Shostakovich, eager to learn more about his music and dealings with Stalin. One listen to this music tells the story of diverging from all that was known before, of risk, of a Russian artist preparing compositions for Stalin's totalitarian regime that possibly contained a deeper message for the public masked in what critics called dissonance.

Yes, sure, there were details of these things mentioned at the lecture. But, this was no Guggenheim Works & Process where you see something or hear something and then have a speaker translate it and explore it with an audience. And, this was no 92nd St. Y where the hall is ever packed and anticipation is palpable before a speaker appears on stage. Nope. Sleepy. Old-school. One-dimensional in a three-dimensional world.

"I'm sorry honey, I know it wasn't what you expected," a frail, grizzle-haired woman in front of me said to her husband just after the lights went on and the scattered attendees prepared to exit.

A-haa, so it wasn't a reflection of my age that I was feeling somewhat dissatisfied.

Walking down the stairs to the left of the auditorium exit, a woman was gesticulating, searching for words to express her thoughts. "I just wish there had been more ... examples," she said to her friend who looked as puzzled as she that just like that, the lecture was over and done.

Perhaps, had the audience been invited to scrawl questions on slips of paper (as they do at Y lectures) or had a microphone been passed around, had people somehow been encouraged to interact, (pinot and cheese reception anyone?), someone might have asked the question rambling through the auditorium, "Um, excuse me, is this all there is?"

YGAT