Nighthawks and Blogposts

Today, September 16, 2025, is the twentieth anniversary of my blog Mixed Meters -- yes, two full decades have passed since.  There's little incentive for me to post here these days.  My small corner of Blogspot has been getting fewer hits and comments than ever before.  It has become quite the lonely place.

This painting, Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, depicts another lonely place.  It shows three otherwise normal-looking but mysterious customers sitting in a diner, at the counter, on which we can see coffee cups, napkin dispensers, salt and pepper shakers but not much else.  We wonder about their relationships.  Do they all know each other?  Does the single man feel jealous of his twin who is showing off his lady friend?  No incel, he.  And why don't the men take their hats off when they're inside?  Maybe they have receding hairlines.

Nighthawks happens late at night, somewhere in a city.  Why are they drinking coffee so late at night?   There's a server person in a white uniform doing something mysterious.  Two large coffee urns are behind him.  I assume one of the urns contains decaf - or these people will never get any sleep tonight.  The server and the urns represent the brightest part of the painting.  I suppose that painters think about light and shadow quite a bit, so that must be important.

And there's a door leading to the back but no obvious way to enter the diner from the street.  How did they get in there?

The rest of Nighthawks shows the barren outside, visible only because of light from inside.  It reminds me of a studio backlot.  Across the street is a generic storefront with completely empty display windows, save for one mysterious object - a cash register?   Upstairs we see apartment windows with shades half drawn.         

Above the diner itself is the most relatable and realistic part of Nighthawks - a good old capitalist American billboard hawking cigars for 'only' a nickel.  (Phillies cigars are still sold although the price has risen.  I would assume, anachronistically, that Hopper was paid for product placement.) 

Nighthawks, a cultural touchstone depicting isolation and loneliness, has become the inspiration for many parodies.  It calls out for a back story to explain what brought these people together.  It calls out for a future story to imagine what happens to them next.  It calls out for cast changes; new actors from every fictional universe brought in to play the different roles.  It calls out for artistic style changes, swapping Hopper's Philip Marlow-y noir-ness for every other possible artistic style.

Several years ago I started collecting Nighthawks images as I noticed them online.  My thinking was that I could use them someday for an easy Mixed Meters post.  'Someday' equals 'now'.  These are but a small sample of the available Nighthawks parodies.  Don't believe me?  Do your own research. 

If you click on any of these Nighthawkian pictures they should enbiggen themselves.  If you hover your mouse over them, some information about them should appear.  

My profound apologies if you're trying to read this post on a cell phone.  Twenty years ago it was assumed that people read blogs on their desktop or maybe on their laptop.  Back then I delved headfirst into HTML programming.  I set fixed column sizes.  I futzed with things I didn't understand.  Then I promptly forgot everything I had learned.  That didn't matter much because everything I had learned started changing faster and faster.  If you've read my palaver this far and you have simple-to-understand suggestions for how to make twenty years of my posts easier to access online, please get in touch.

"I don't know how, but word got out about this place."

These days however I am twenty years older and wiser - enough to know what a waste of time it would be for me to attempt rewriting the code.  Mixed Meters' infamous tag line ("Life is too short to listen to ugly music") may not be true at my age - because I do actually enjoy listening to a lot of what you, dear reader, might regard as really ugly music.   It is absolutely true, however, that my life is too short to re-learn HTML for one project.

Besides Nighthawks, I still have other ideas for new posts; some easy, some difficult.  My question is 'Where will I find the energy and motivation to make a few of them happen?'  Is there a reason to keep posting if I only do it once per year?  Is there a reason to keep posting if I get zero feedback?  

One post that would be simple and long overdue, would include pictures of our current pets.  We now have three cats - Lisa and Maggie (our two Simpson girls who have yet to appear on Mixed Meters) and Doctor Pyewacket (who has gotten lots of coverage here since Leslie found him in the bushes.) 

It has now been three years since we lost our dog Chowderhead, the big red beast.  He lived to be sixteen.  I've posted many pictures of him here, but he deserves a proper online farewell.  Someday he may get it.

Obituaries have become quite common among the recent Mixed Meters posts.  One that hasn't been written yet is for my friend Tom Brodhead, who passed away last year.  Tom was a brilliant composer, painter, computer programmer and Charles Ives expert who valiantly fought cancer for 15 years.  He only lived to be 56 years old.   Mortality is all around us.

I still take a lot of pictures, usually searching for the perfect abstract composition.  To that end I have another blog called Mixed Messages.  It has been almost 18 months since I posted anything new there.

The one thing I do try to do as often as possible is to compose music.  Hey, years ago I actually trained to do that.  They gave me a degree and everything.  I had wanted to become a professional composer but I lucked out by failing in that quest.  Now I compose for my own pleasure.  When (if) I finish anything new I'll announce it here.  Plus this heads-up: someday I hope to post my music to Bandcamp.  Until then, you'll have to satisfy yourself with my YouTube.

My previous blog post - exactly one year ago, on MM's nineteenth anniversary - announced a massive musical work of mine which you're welcome to listen to.  It's entitled Music From Inside My Head.  The entire work is eight and a half hours long; it took me two and a half years to finish.  There's a lot more to be said about it and I could, if I chose, say everything I can think of to say in one massively huge blog post.  That post would still take considerably less time to read than it would to listen to the entire work.  (Hint, start by dipping your toe in: just listen to a random twenty minutes.)

One post I am not likely to write would be about our current president.  For a while last fall I thought about writing "Notes for Donald Trump's obituary" because everyone has to die sometime, right?  And it doesn't hurt to be prepared.  

But in this new age of political assassinations, name calling, ad hominem revenge and thought control, I would have first needed to remind everyone that I actually wish him a long life, if only because I believe that his supporters will not break free from his clutches until he himself confesses just how much evil he has wrought and willingly accepts his punishment.

"This place is packed!"

Which only goes to prove that I live in my own little bubble.  Leaving the bubble has become far more frightening than it was twenty years ago.  Why bother?   I'm old enough to have realized that nothing I do will change the world.

"Not you, too, Larry. Pumpkin-flavored?"

Music From Inside My Head

(This post honors Mixed Meters' nineteenth anniversary.)

I recently finished an album called Music From Inside My Head.  

I spent two and a half years working on it.  Music From Inside My Head lasts eight and a half hours and consists of two tracks.  

The first track is entitled Filling Blank Space Daily - 2022  The music in this track never repeats.

Filling Blank Space Daily - 2022 by David Ocker 

from the album Music From Inside My Head

© 2022, 2024 - 14,948 seconds

The second track is called Filling Blank Space Daily - 2022 Backwards - it has the exact same music as track one, only backwards.  (The effect is probably not what you imagine.)

Filling Blank Space Daily - 2022 Backwards by David Ocker 

from the album Music From Inside My Head

© 2022, 2024 - 15,578 seconds

If you have questions, I suggest that you first read the video notes I wrote for YouTube.  You'll have to hunt for them.  What you need to find is "...more", then click on it.  Here's a treasure map to make your hunt easier: 

Those two little YouTube essays might answer your questions.  If not, please leave a comment.  Heck, I'd be happy if you leave a comment even without a question.  Double heck, I'd be happy if you listen to Music From Inside My Head for twenty minutes.

William Kraft Centenary

Today is a big day for my friend composer William Kraft, who passed away in 2022.  It's his centenary.  Better known to his friends and colleagues as Bill, he was born in Chicago on September 6, 1923, exactly 100 years ago today.  

Last year I wrote two Mixed Meters articles in his memory, one about his music and the other about my personal memories.  I've written about someone's first 100 years only once before.  That was Bill's very good friend David Raksin, whose second century began in 2012.

Here are four videos about Bill.  

The first is a PBS documentary A Concerto for Mona made to accompany the premiere of his piano concerto.  In it he speaks, quite eloquently, about his music and about being a composer.  There are scenes of Bill hunting for good sounding instruments in a junk yard.  There are shots of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  The sound and video are maddeningly independent.  And this 14-minute video ends with over four minutes of credits.  Are you ready for some seventies television?

Here's another television clip, somewhat later, which shows Bill playing timpani with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  Someone edited the tape to show only the moments featuring Bill's timpani playing.  Also, it's a very cool Dvorak mash-up.

After Bill passed away, I made two short memorial videos.  These use pictures of him that I had taken through his office window.   The first is a collage of still shots:

  

The second shows Bill actually composing.  I believe it's his piece Songs of Flowers, Bells & Death.  You can faintly hear him through the glass checking harmonies.  Eventually he notices me and reacts in a very  Kraftian fashion.

  

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Fun but irrelevant fact: did you know that the word scofflaw was invented in 1923, the same year Bill was born?

Wesley "Scoop" Nisker

Can you remember anything you did on June 13, 1964?  I can remember getting a lesson about life on that date - with an assist from my first cousin Wesley Nisker.  Wes passed away recently at age 80. 

Wesley "Scoop" Nisker (1942-2023)

Along with my parents and other family members, I was attending Wes's college graduation at the University of Minnesota Memorial Coliseum (seating 56,000).   We had driven nearly 300 miles to attend.  It was a big event in my young life.  I was 12 years old, Wes was 21.

Anyway, a group of family members were walking to the ceremony through a parking lot with the huge stadium looming above us.  I piped up enthusiastically, saying how excited I was that Wes was "finally completely finished."  

"No, David," someone explained, "Wes has just reached the beginning."  Then a pause before the punchline  "Why else would they call it a Commencement?"  

I was dumbstruck.  I had no answer to this.  The huge importance of a college degree had already been heavily impressed upon me of course.  Until that moment, I had never ever considered that I might have a life of some sort beyond the seemingly endless years of school which completely consumed my own future.  This new notion seemed both obvious and bizarre.  My mind was blown.  I've never forgotten that moment.  

Wesley and our Grandmother

Imagine, hypothetically, just then, back in 1964, that the sky had opened and a mysterious voice had revealed the future and told us all about Wes's life for his next 60 years after commencement.  We would have been confused.  Probably we would have understood phrases like "he'll move to San Francisco and get a job at a radio station".  On the other hand "he'll become a teacher of Buddhist meditation" wouldn't have meant anything to a group of Midwestern Jews during the mid-Sixties.  

"A what, now?" we'd ask.  
"A spiritual leader," the voice might explain.  
"You mean, like a Rabbi?"  

Years later, when adult Wes told his actual life history on stage or in books he would mention starting out as the only Jewish boy in a small otherwise all-Christian Nebraska city.  Despite the isolation, his parents (my Aunt and Uncle) still wanted him to be bar mitzvah (call it Jewish "commencement").  He would talk about how his parents hired a "circuit rabbi" who arrived by Greyhound each week to teach him the rituals.   This unique, solitary religious upbringing helped to spark his life-long search for spiritual meaning and identity.  It was the beginning of his origin story.  Here's how he wrote about it in his book "If You Don't Like the News, Go Out And Make Some of Your Own":

"My bar mitzvah lessons involved memorizing long passages of Hebraic script that made no sense to me, in preparation to join a Jewish community that, in my home town at least, did not exist. My entire rite of passage and spiritual initiation were thus almost completely devoid of meaning." (on page 3)

Wes Nisker and his father Jack

I grew up in a different midwestern town, a slightly bigger one with more Jews, one state over, only 75 miles from where Wes spent his childhood.  After high school I also escaped to higher education in Minnesota and eventually lost my use for Jewish faith.  Then, after college, we both left the Midwest  and happened to catch similar trade winds, washing ashore in California.   And that's where we both stayed.

Wesley offers a toast - Thanksgiving 1953
(that's me on the right)

When Wes and I lived in the Midwest, our mothers - who were sisters - kept their families in close touch.  They managed to get us together for holidays and birthdays multiple times per year.  If Wes and I had remained Midwesterners we might have stayed much closer.  I'm pretty sure that neither us would have been the slightest bit happy about living out our lives in the land of cows, corn and conformity to which our Grandparents had emigrated from the other side of the globe.  

Baby Wesley with his sister Jan

Other than the incredibly general similarities which brought us from the Midwest to the Left Coast, our lives were extremely different.  Wes landed in the Bay Area during the late 60s in time to become a hippie; I arrived in Los Angeles in the mid-70s to attend an institution founded by Walt Disney.  Wes got a job doing irreverent anti-establishment news broadcasts on an alternative rock station (which is where he earned his nickname "Scoop").  I got a job working for Frank Zappa.   Wes traveled to India and eventually became what I dubbed a "traveling rebbe", on the road teaching meditation seminars, although I doubt he traveled on buses.  I did different stuff.  

Wesley steadies his nerves
before getting married in 1966.

Wesley and I ended up with very different lives.  We were separated by nine years, although the difference in age seemed less important as we got older.  The Bay Area and L.A. are only about 500 miles apart, but Wes and I followed our life paths as part of very different social groups.  One might sometimes think that we lived on different planets.   

Even so, our early family ties kept us in contact, more or less.  This was a lot harder once our parents passed on.  We met up infrequently, mostly to remember the old days and share quick generalized catch-ups on the lives we had chosen.  He never stopped being my very hip older cousin.  There's a small part of me that never stopped wanting to be like him somehow or other.

Jack, Esther, Rose and Wesley Nisker

As the only child of Wes’s doting Aunt Edythe, I inherited a trove of family pictures.  The trove includes many photos of Wesley during his Nebraska and Minnesota periods.  The pictures run from Wes's early childhood into middle age when he had started his own family.  

Mudita Nisker, Edythe Ocker, Wesley Nisker
in Sioux City Iowa

If you know and love his commentaries about political life and about spiritual life and about just plain life, you might enjoy seeing these snaps of Wes.  But let's face it, I'm really writing about him for my own personal reasons.  He was someone who knew me for my entire life.  He seemed to be someone trying to come to terms with time and change and self-acceptance.  His death makes me think about my own eventual death and leaves me with an unresolved regret that we weren't closer.  I would have loved to have known him better.

David, Leslie and Wesley in 1992

I don't remember ever telling him my Commencement Revelation story in which he played the lead role.   Had I done that, I can easily imagine him responding with a story - or a joke -  possibly about how death was also commencement.   Here's a quote from his book Crazy Wisdom:

"If life is a joke, death is the punch line. If life is a tragedy, death means the show is over and we can leave for home. If we have many lives, as believed in the East, then we must also have many deaths, so we might as well get good at dying." (page 203)

Wes was extremely good at finding correlations between science and spirituality and then finding thought-provoking ways to share what he had found.  While the notion of rebirth never became part of my own beliefs, I figure it's important to try to keep an open mind about such matters - even though, to me, it's a notion from a whole different universe.  

Wesley Nisker - plays guitar, leaves for Europe

So, Wesley, if you're out there - and by some chance you're reading this post - why not get in touch.  Let us know how you’re getting along in the great beyond.  You could blow my mind again by sending a sign from whichever afterlife you've landed in - like a new book or a commentary or maybe a new radio show.  Possibly you'll call it “If you don’t like this heaven, go out and make one of your own.”

Wesley Links:

Wes's Website (with lots of video, audio and writings)

Wes's YouTube channel 

Wes's articles for Inquiring Mind (a journal he co-founded)

John Cage and the Music of Sound (one of those articles)

A Liberal Scoop of Wit and Sanity (an article about Wes which begins with the line "SCOOP NISKER once shot William F. Buckley with a water pistol.")

An obituary by Rod Meade Sperry

Terrence McKenna interviews Wes in a park:

Posts about Wes's and my mutual family on Mixed Meters:

My Mother, My Worm

Reagan Says Give Chesterfields for Christmas

Marion Shuman

Bernard Shuman

Also:

What Is It Like To Be Dead? (far and away the most read Mixed Meters post ever)

Young Wesley Nisker - high school musician (with his sister Jan)

Many of these pictures were colorized using the artificial intelligence at palette.fm 

A visit to Oaxaca, Mexico

At the end of January Leslie and I, along with our friends Jim and Mark, spent three and a half days in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico.  We toured.  We shopped.  We ate.  We took pictures.  I myself took over 1500 pictures and most of them are here in this post. 

After the initial cityscapes and landscapes, feel free to keep scrolling.  Farther down you'll see pictures of:

• Monte Albán, 
• Murals & Graffiti, 
• Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán, 
• Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, 
• El Árbol del Tule, 
• the organ (1735) of San Jerónimo Tlacochahuaya, 
• Mitla, 
• Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl 

Click on any picture to see an enlargement.

Hover over pictures for a bit more information.

Many of the headers have links to relevant websites.

Landscapes

Monte Albán 

Original Wall at the bottom,
reconstructed wall (with small stones) above

Wall Carving on the Observatory.  Our guide told
us that these carvings are cited by Erick von Daniken
as evidence of alien visitations. 

Murals and Grafitti 

Templo de Santo Domingo de Guzmán

  

Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca

El Árbol del Tule 

Organ of San Jerónimo Tlacochahuaya 

Mitla 

Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl

Besides all the touring, we shopped and ate our way around the city of Oaxaca.  We returned with mezcal (I liked the 8-year old barrel aged), beautiful handwoven rugs using only natural dyes, and a passel of alebijes, colorful, fantastical folk sculptures.  

The food was excellent, including my first ever taste of a grasshopper quesadilla.  Alas, we didn't get to eat at Pollo Estilo Kentucky, but they seem to be doing great business.  Maybe I'll get a chance to try it on a future trip.