The latest Harvard Magazine has a fascinating profile of Fred Ho, Harvard Class of 1979. Ho is a Marxist baritone saxophonist who likes to spend his time naked and recently helped train security forces for the newly installed king of Cambodia.
My favorite part of the profile was the juxtaposition of the following two paragraphs. This one appears near the top of the article:
Ho is an uncompromising Marxist. He currently believes that the capitalist patriarchy should be replaced with its opposite — a matriarchy — as a necessary transition stage toward true communism. His music and radical politics, both discovered by the age of 14, are inseparable and dominate his life. “All music is political,” he explains, “whether the artist is conscious of it or not. I subscribe to the interpenetration of ideas and material life. I talk the walk.”
And this one appears near the bottom:
Ho earns a moderate living making music because he has only himself to support and because he is a well-organized businessman who competes in the open market for arts funding, frequently winning awards, commissions, and artist-in-residence positions at schools or art colonies. (He recently returned from working with musicians in Alaska as part of the CrossSound Festival.) He cannot apply for grants because his company, Big Red Media Inc., is a for-profit venture.
I can only imagine his personal statement.
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