Music of the Tigers

I just came across a column that  finally makes some sense of the voting in the Democratic primaries in various states.  This is David Sirota’s article in In These Times “The Clinton Firewall“.  He points out that for states where there has been a head-to-head matchup between Clinton and Obama–where the Hispanic vote is not a large factor–the primary predictor of the outcome is the percent of the population that is African American.  Where the Black population is quite low [<6%] the White population seems not to be threatened by the idea of a Black president, and Obama does well.  Where the Black population is large [>17%], the polarization of the White population is overwhelmed by the support of the Black population.  But in between, the polarization of White voters gives an edge to Clinton.  Not surprisingly, a significant part of the Clinton strategy is to remind voters that Obama is Black in order to increase the polarization of White voters.

Sirota goes on to explain the roles that the mainstream media has had in obscuring this phenomenon.  He names two approaches of mainstream media–”the ostrich”, who ignores that race is an issue, and the “minstrel show producers”, who portray African Americans as less than human but entertaining.

Among “ostriches” for example, he cites a pundit who sought to explain the voting results by the pattern of migration of German and Scandanavian immigrants from the Nineteenth Century.

The soundbiting of Rev. Wright is just the most egregious example of the “minstrel show producers”.  More significant is the way that pundits contrast “regular people” and black people.  Or contrast “working class” with African Americans, as though there is no overlap.  There are lots of other examples.

The final paragraph of Sirota’s newspaper column summarizing the In These Times article:

Some will read this and  go on pretending the Race Chasm doesn’t exist, while others will keep insisting that the black vote is irrelevant.  Both sides will claim they aren’t prejudiced.  But racism, whether from ostriches or minstrel show producers, is racism–and it will persist until we recognize it and reject it.

[Warning: This is a post from Nerd World.]

Over the years, I’ve come to make a distinction between two kinds of diversion: puzzles and problems.  To me, a puzzle is an intellectually stimulating activity whose only goal is the completion of the activity.  Naturally, many of these diversions are actually called puzzles–for example, crossword puzzles or jigsaw puzzles.  Others don’t use the word “puzzle”, but certainly are–the current favorite is Sudoku.

But, even within this category, there are some activities that are more engaging than others.  I read that Mary Leakey, one of the anthropologists of the Olduvai Gorge project, spent her time as a child solving jigsaw puzzles with all the pieces turned over so the picture doesn’t show.  She claimed that this was an early indication of her astounding ability to piece together fossil hominid skulls from hundreds of pieces.

I’m not nearly so visual.  But I do love words, so one of my favorites is cryptic crosswords.  It’s a type of crossword, but one where each clue has to be solved, rather than deducing a synonym to fill in the blanks.  It’s perhaps easiest to explain using an example.  Here’s a clue:

He’s about fifty and lives in the room upstairs, but is strong and healthy (8)

The number at the end tells the length of the word.  Each clue will have a definition in it someplace, and another way of deriving the word from some kind of wordplay.  It might be hidden, or an anagram, or a pun, or–in this case–a combination of pieces.  One trick is that numbers often turn into Roman numerals.  So, fifty is L.  Next: “He’s about fifty”, so we put the letters of HE around L, we have HLE so far.  “The room upstairs” is the ATTIC, so we put what we have so far inside it: AT(HLE)TIC and get ATHLETIC–strong and healthy.  If you want to try one, they’re published monthly in The Atlantic and Harper’s Magazine.

The distinction that I’m trying to make with the diversions that I call “problems” is that they’re much more open-ended.  And they can lead to interesting discoveries.  Let me take an example. 

Suppose you have a chain where the lengths of the links are the successive numbers starting with 1.  Suppose you have four links: 1″, 2″, 3″, 4″.  Connect the two ends.  Now, the question is: Can you place this loop of chain over two posts, so that the links don’t bend in the middle. Like this: 0==========0.

 In our example, we can.  2+3=4+1–the posts are 5″ apart.  What happens when we try a chain with five links?  Well, 1+2+3+4+5 = 15, so we can’t divide that evenly in half.   If we continue trying longer and longer chains, we find that 5 and 6 don’t work; 7 and 8 do; 9 and 10 don’t; 11 and 12 do.  At this point we see a pattern.  Here’s where it turns into a problem [rather than a puzzle].  What’s the underlying explanation of why this works? The place to start is the algebraic formula for the total length of the chain.  The sum 1+2+3+….+n [up to some number, n] is equal to n (n+1)/2.  So, if n is a multiple of 4, then when we divide by 2, there is still another factor of 2 for us to use to divide the chain in half.  [And this works when (n+1) is a multiple of 4 also.]  It’s a bit harder to trace through what happens when n is even, but not a multiple of 4 [like 6, for example].  This is one of the situations where the length of the chain is an odd number, so we can’t divide it in half.

Actually, the original version of the problem had three posts, arranged in an equilateral triangle and asked what was the shortest chain that could be looped around the three posts without bending any links.  To just find one example is a “puzzle” in my lexicon, but to find some formula or explanation that gives all, or most, of them–that’s a “problem”.  And this one leads in some interesting directions, which I’ll postpone for the future.

[If you’re trying to figure it out, one thing that has to be true is that the length of the chain has to be evenly divisible by 3–that’s not enough, but it rules out some cases.]

Before I go on with this post, a quick quiz:  In what year did the U.S. Supreme Court declare that laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional?  [The answer is at the end of the post.  For extra credit: What was the first state to recognize that antimiscegenation laws violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?  When?]

I just heard of the death of Mildred Jeter Loving.  Mildred Jeter was an African-American woman living in Northern Virginia.  She met, and fell in love with, Richard Loving, a White man from the same town; the Washington Post describes them as “childhood sweethearts”.  They married in Washington, DC, when she was 17 and he was 23.  They moved back to the town in Virginia, and were arrested for violating the laws banning interracial marriage or cohabitation as man and wife.  They pleaded guilty to the charge, and were sentenced to one year in prison.

However, the judge suspended the sentence for 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the state and not return for 25 years.  They moved to Washington, DC.  There, they filed suit to have their convictions overturned.  And this suit eventually ended up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Court ruled unanimously that the antimiscegenation laws of Virginia were unconstitutional, and, as a Supreme Court case, this decision applied to all states.  [Here’s the answer to the quiz: June 12, 1967.  Consequently, some interracial couples celebrate June 12 as Loving Day.].

 In summarizing the decision of the Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren writes:

The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. […] To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

Here a link to the whole opinion, which, though a bit long, goes into the whole logic of the case.  In particular, it refutes the claim of the Commonwealth of Virginia that, since the punishment was applied equally to citizens of both races, that the law was not discriminatory.

Here’s the obituary from the Washington Post, and another article of appreciation from the same paper.

Finally, the answer to the extra credit question: California was the first to make that ruling, in 1948.

I’m getting ready for my annual trip to the convention of lesbian and gay square dancers.  This year it’s the twenty-fifth annual convention, and it’s in Cleveland [Touch a Quarter Century].  So, of course, I’m looking forward to seeing lots of friends–I’ve been doing this for fifteen years, so I’ve met lots of people over the years.  In fact, Jeremy and I met at a square dance convention–this year is our tenth anniversary.

But I’m also thinking of the people I won’t be seeing.  Not because they’re no longer alive–though there are far too many of those friends–but because they can’t get into the U.S.  Not because they’re criminals or dangerous, but because they’re HIV positive, and the U.S. government found out.

The U.S. is one of only 13 countries that completely ban incoming travel by HIV+ visitors.  [The others are: Armenia, Brunei, China, Iraq, Libya, Moldova, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and Sudan.  Interesting group, hmm?].  Some friends have tried bringing their HIV medications along with them, hoping their bags weren’t searched.  They guessed wrong, and now they’re permanently banned from the U.S.  Other friends have just skipped taking medications for the duration of their trip, hoping that it wouldn’t have too bad an effect on their health. 

This travel ban is the legacy of a conscious disregard of the advice of the National Institutes of Health and the Center for Disease Control at the time that this was originally discussed in Congress.  Indeed, the original version of the legislation made a distinction between AIDS and HIV; but Jesse Helms [remember him?] sponsored the “Helms amendment” that added HIV infection to the list of excludable conditions.  For people who are keeping track, the only contagious illness that the CDC recommends for exclusion is infectious tuberculosis.

The ban does include the possibility of waivers for travellers attending important events–the Olympics, the UN Special Session on HIV/AIDS, etc.  It was done on a case by case basis, in a fairly informal way.  It did, of course, mean that the prospective visitor was permanently on the list of people who needed waivers to visit the U.S.

Last year on World AIDS Day [December 1], the Bush administration announced that they were ”streamlining” the process of granting travel waivers for HIV+ people.  But, after all the fanfare died down, it became clear that the proposed process has become more bureaucratic, more intrusive, and, ultimately, more restrictive.

By the way, the UN recommends the abolition of travel bans on HIV+ people.  [Here’s the Policy Statement.]  It looks like Congress will consider this issue at some point, but it may have to wait until after the election. 

In the mean time, there are indications that China will rescind it’s ban before we do.  Now that’s a competition that I hate losing.

This morning we had a final run through with the orchestra.  The basic task is to get through the whole piece with no interruptions [and no “do overs”].  Orff’s Carmina Burana is divided into sections, but within the sections, the different numbers join together with no break.  This often means an abrupt change of tempo, mood, even harmonic structure.  But that’s all part of getting the performance into shape.  As a chorus member, it’s my responsibility to map my way through the score.  People who grow up with the notion that one doesn’t write in books really need to get over that in order to particpate in music; my scores get so marked up by the end of one time rehearsing and performing that I often end up getting another score the next time the chorus is preparing for a subsequent performance.

We got through the run through in very good shape.  The conductor seemed quite pleased, and thanked the chorus for giving 150%.  Then he added that he was going to ask us for 200% in the performance in the afternoon.  On of the real concerns of having a rehearsal and a performance on the same day is that we shouldn’t leave the performance in the rehearsal–that is, we shouldn’t sing so much that our voices can’t do a good performance.

We reassembled for the matinee performance and the chorus director gave us a few reminders.  We worked on some of the tricky spots, and warmed up our voices.  Then we lined up, and filed on stage.

Then we all came together and did the best we could.  There were some little slips–someone’s attention lapsed for just a second, and that’s all it takes to do an “inadvertent solo”.  And, there were a couple of times that the conductor did something slightly different–which led to a certain tentativeness on our parts.  At the end, the audience seemed quite appreciative.  One fellow, who had sung with the chorus in seasons past, stayed to compliment us as we left the stage door.  He said, in part, “Boy, that was loud!”.  And we really did give as much as we could.  However, as  our director says, “Never sing louder than beautiful”.  And I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself for taking care of my voice during the performance.

Along the way, someone remarked that the current situation where people are more likely to hear classical music from a CD [or on the radio] than a live performance.  And the current production process usually ends up with a CD that is technically flawless.  And there are people who think that in the process of taking bits and pieces from several “takes” and assembling it into one performance robs the performance of some essential bit.  And that’s the essential part of a live performance.

Finally, I’ll pass along a comment from a couple of the orchestral musicians about the piece…”Well, it’s not music, but it sure is entertaining”.

Today, I spent a total of 5 hours rehearsing among the Chorus, with the Orchestra, soloists, and children’s choir.  It’s usually a fairly big adjustment to move into the hall where we’ll performing.  The space is far larger than our usual rehearsal space.  So the ways of singing that work for a  smaller space aren’t quite right for larger one.

Even more, the conductor is now farther away.  So, the issue of coordination become much more evident.  It’s a bad habit of amateur singers to listen to the accompaniment [usually piano] rather than to follow the conductor.  In the larger hall, with the conductor much farther away, it was a real problem.  It wasn’t until we really focused on the baton rather than on the echo of the sound from the hall that the music really started coming together.

The orchestra for the Orff contains two pianos, a huge amount of percussion, as well as the usual strings, woodwinds, and brass.  Given the size of the orchestra, it would take a chorus of 200 to provide the appropriate balance of sound levels when they’re going full blast.  But, we’re only 100 or so, so there are times when we just can’t produce the volume of sound necessary.  So there was a significant amount of time spent on adjusting the orchestra to what we could do or, contraiwise, encouraging us to sing out–when asking the orchestra to quieten would significantly change the character of the music.

One additional problem was that the stage is a traditional proscenium.  So, in some ways, it seems like we’re singing from the back of a cave. 

But, as our chorus motto explains: “Whatever happens, we planned it that way.”

I sing with an amateur chorus, but one that occasionally performs with professional orchestras.  It’s quite an honor; one that we try to live up to. 

The process of rehearsing for a concert with an orchestra is a bit unusual–compared to other kinds of music making.  We spend a long time rehearsing with chorus director.  That’s where we’re working on ensemble, diction,  expression–trying to get the general shape of the piece pulled together.

Then, we’re turned over to the orchestra conductor, usually for a final rehearsal or two just before the concert.  We hope that the conductor and the chorus director have been communicating, because there isn’t a lot of time to make major changes.

At one point in the past, at the first rehearsal with the conductor, we spent over an hour on the first five pages of the music [out of almost 200].  I came away a bit shocked by the difference in what he wanted from how our director had prepared us. We talked about it afterward, and all of us were really astonished.

But that was then.

This week, we’ve had two rehearsals with the orchestra conductor, as we’re headed for a performance of Karl Orff’s Carmina Burana.  It’s a tremendously exciting piece to hear–though occasionally a bit repetative.  It’s based on a series of medieval poems about Fate, Spring, Eating and Drinking, and Love.  The music is quite twentieth century–interesting rythyms and pungent harmonies–while still trying to suggest medieval music.

Fortunately, the conductor and the chorus director seem to have been communicating effectively.  So there were only a few tweaks in pronounciation and expression from these rehearsal.  And the chorus has a good idea of how he conducts in those spots where the music shifts gears–those are the places where wrecks can happen.

Today is rehearsal with orchestra; then performance tomorrow.  It’s an exciting time.

For the past year or so, I’ve been going to the wine tasting that the local wine shop has every weekend.  [Schedule].  As a way of focusing my attention, I’ve started to write tasting notes for myself–partly so that I can remember what it was that I tasted, and partly to really pay attention to the wine.

Along the way, the guys at the shop have been very helpful with my efforts.  They usually have the descriptions of the wines that the vintners have produced.  Over the months, I’ve come to notice that all the words that “experts” use to describe wines are, in fact, similes–it tastes like black current, it smells like hay.  As I’ve been working on this, I’ve noticed that English really has remarkably few words for smells and tastes–at least appealing ones–that don’t have metaphor packaged inside.

By contrast, the vocabulary for the visual spectrum is quite large.  There is hardly a shade of color that doesn’t have it’s own word, and I don’t hear them as metaphors–what’s a mauve, or a teal [well, OK, there’s a duck, but they’re not this color], or an ecru.  I’ll admit that I’ve had my fair share of conversations along the line of “What would you call that green over there?”…[or blue]  Somehow the colors in that part of the spectrum elicit both the finest distinctions and the most argument about what the color actually is.  In your mind, how green is turquoise?

On the other hand, the words for smells and tastes don’t come to mind as readily.  Back a few months, I was tasting a pinot noir [Wild Hog, 2006, to be precise] and I perceived that there was some herbal note that I just couldn’t put a word to.  I was really struggling, and expressing my frustration, when one of the guys asked me if it was OK with me to suggest a word.  I said yes [and thanked him for asking, since I’m trying to develop a personal vocabulary for my perceptions] and then he said “dill”.  I said–effectively–eureka!–or I would have said whatever the Greek for “You’ve got it!” is.

Maybe what I’m really complaining about is that I’ve never taken the time to develop the ability to put smells and tastes into words, in the way that I can with sights or sounds.  On the other hand, if we all didn’t struggle with this vocabulary, I don’t think that there would be all these courses for people to help develop their wine-tasting skills.

A few years ago, Jeremy and I were in the Amador county [California] and we went wine-tasting at Renwood Winery.   The winery produces some very tasty zinfandel.  In order to help people perceive the various elements that are present in their wines, they had set up a “smelling bar” of wine glasses with various fragrant things that might be characteristic of a good zin…raspberries, cherry jam, chocolate, tobacco, pepper, and, from here, I think that I’m remembering something green…maybe mint?….  By going around this bar, I was able to get a noseful of the pure scent, so it was easier for me to catch a hint of it when I was smelling a glass of wine.  But this comes back precisely to my point…here, the metaphor is being made concrete.  The wine smells like chocolate literally.   First, I’m smelling the chocolate; next, I’m smelling the wine–the same scent is echoed in both. 

Many years ago now, I was taking a long car trip with a woman friend, and we were having one of those “car conversations”–those long discussions that one has on a long trip, at least in part because everyone understands that there is the time that it takes to talk about something complicated.  At the time I was single, and she asked me about my erotic life–she knew I’m gay, and she also knew that I was sexually active. 

So I explained that there are a whole variety of places where gay men can go to connect for sex.  I explained that, depending on the venue, it’s quite uncommon to know very much about one’s partner-of-the-moment.  She couldn’t believe that it would be possible to do this.  After a while trying to puzzle out what the confusion was for her, it became clear that the thing that makes these places work is that everyone understands that “yes” means yes and “no” means no.  So it’s possible to engage in some activity on the briefest of acquaintance without worrying too much about the activity becoming something that is unpleasant, or worse.  Usually, it’s enough to say “This isn’t working for me” to extricate myself from a situation.  And part of that freedom is that everyone knows that there are plenty of other guys around–so if this one didn’t turn out so great, I can try someone else.

On the other hand, I met some real friends and lovers at sex clubs.  When I was living in Massachusetts, I would occasionally go to the bathhouse.  Once, I met a guy, and we went back to his “room” for some great sex.  And that was that.  A month of so later, we crossed paths again at the bathhouse, and we wanted to connect again, but neither of us had a room yet.  So we sat around and started talking about who we are.  It quickly became clear that we had a lot in common.  After a while, he got a room, and we adjourned for some more sex.  He invited me to stay over at his place, so that I could drive home in the morning–it was a bit of a way.

The next morning, a Sunday, he asked me to drop him off at the Quaker meeting.  At that point, we started to understand just how few “degrees of separation” there were between us.  I asked if he knew my first boyfriend, who was active in the Friends for Gay and Lesbian concerns–and of course he did.  He found out the college where I was teaching, and he told me that his best friend from high school was one of my colleagues–in the same department.  Later I told her about meeting him, she said that she wondered if we would run across each other, because we were “the smartest and sleaziest people she knew”.  I took that as a compliment.

To return to the friend on the car trip, she explained that, in general, relations between men and women are not characterized by this kind of straightforward communication.  And it does seem that there are a lot of messages telling men to believe that when a woman says “No” it means maybe, and when she says “maybe” it means yes. 

I suppose that the best way to tie this up is to refer to “What part of No don’t you understand?“

I think that the standard answer to the question: What’s a good choice for a first opera to see?–is usually either La Boheme or Madame Butterfly, both by Puccini.  They’re both fine examples, full of gorgeous melody, and definitely evoke an emotional response.  But really, the characters are kids–it’s easy to imagine that if it were being composed this decade, La Boheme would have ended up with a title like “Slackerz”, or, I suppose to be literal, “Slacker Girl”.  And Butterfly is supposed to be fourteen at the start of the opera!  Not that any fourteen-year-old in the world could sing the role.  And the problems of the operas are the problems of young people–first love and loss.  It’s not that they don’t move me, but–to the extent that I’m identifying with the characters–I’m looking back at a stage of my life that’s long gone.

For younger newcomers, however, they’re right on the money.  I’m going to indulge in an opera queen moment.  [Don’t worry, it’s mostly a pose for me; for the real thing, try Parterre Box.]  When I first moved to San Francisco and started going to San Francisco Opera, I saw a performance of Madame Butterfly with Catherine Malfitano as Butterfly.  My friend and I were sitting next to a couple of thirtysomethings, who said that this was their first opera.  They were very dressed up, and appeared to have begun the evening with a nice dinner.  By intermission, they were hooked.  And, at the end, I was crying, my friend was crying, and the young woman was crying hard enough that mascara was running down her cheeks.  But that night, mascara was running down all our cheeks.  The point is, in part, that she didn’t have to look like a young girl, but she had to be able to act a young girl.

And that acting is largely through the voice, rather than through the body.  Or, perhaps I should say, that the voice is ahead of the body.  There’s an Italian expression about opera: primo la voce–first, the voice.  We’ve come away from the notion that only the voice matters; but opera companies can still make the news when they base casting decisions on how a singer looks.  On the other hand, some roles, like Salome–who has to be able to do something with the dance of the seven veils–and even Billy Budd–he needs to have some of that doe-eyed innocence–seem to require certain physical types.  But anyone who can respond to the singing of Billy Holliday or Edith Piaf or k.d. lang–to name three–knows how singing can convey emotion.

So, you want to invite a friend to their first opera.  They’re old enough to have experienced love, rejection and betrayal, success and failure, hope, despair, and [let’s say] at least five of the seven deadly sins.  In other words, they’re an adult. I have two recommendations: Puccini’s Tosca and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.  Why?  First the Mozart.  It’s a comedy, in the old fashioned sense of ending with the marriage of Figaro [the Count’s factotum] and Susanna [the Countess’s maid].  But the central characters of the opera are the Count and Countess Almaviva.  They’re already married.  Indeed, someone said that they’re the only married lovers in opera.  But, at the start, the Count has fallen out of love with the Countess, and he’s trying his best to seduce Susanna.  She’s more than a match for him.  And she knows that the Countess hasn’t fallen out of love with the Count.  Indeed, we all know that–the aria where she tells us is ravishing [Here’s Kiri Te Kanawa, Dove sono].  Skipping over various subplots, Susanna writes to the Count, telling him to meet her in the garden at night, then Susanna and the Countess exchange clothes, so the Count ends up trying to seduce his wife.  He realizes that he’s been tricked, but more than that, that he does love his wife [and we all think that she’s worth a dozen of him].  He apologizes in an aria that some people say is the real “end” of the opera; but then there are subplots to tie up and the wedding of Figaro and Susanna to celebrate.  All this is just to say that this is a bittersweet comedy, and as such, is suitable for mature audiences.

Now for the tragedy.  In Tosca, the main characters are adult professionals, who all have work to do–indeed, we meet Mario Cavaradossi [a painter] at work in a church where he’s been commissioned to paint a portrait of the Madonna.  An old friend and escaped political prisoner [Angelotti] set the plot in motion–Mario tells him to hide at Mario’s villa.  But Floria Tosca bangs on the door as the men are working out the details, and she thinks that Mario is having an assignation with another woman.  Tosca is jealous!  She’s also the premier diva of Rome, where the opera is set.  The Baron Scarpia, head of the secret police and villain extraordinaire, sets a trap that catches all of them.  I’ve seen productions where Scarpia is played as a sadistic slimeball; but it’s much more effective if his surface is completely urbane, sophisticated, witty [and evil].  Think Sean Connery instead of Karl Rove–not that I’m saying that either of them is evil.  Scarpia knows that Cavaradossi is sheltering Angelotti, so arrests him.  Things go from bad to worse.  By torturing Mario, Scarpia gets Tosca to agree to give herself to him, the thought of which she abhors.  That evening, having gotten Scarpia to write out a safe conduct for her and Mario, Tosca stabs and kills Scarpia rather than giving in.  She races to the prison to tell Mario–Scarpia said that he needed to stage a fake execution at dawn and then Mario and Tosca will escape.  But Scarpia has double-crossed them, the execution is real.  Tosca leaps to her death from the parapet rather than being taken by the police.  On top of this almost grand guignol plot, there is incredible music, including two of my favorite arias.  One, when Tosca is having dinner with Scarpia, and bemoaning her fate…Vissi d’arte — I lived for Art [Here’s Maria Callas].  And the other is Cavaradossi in prison, thinking back to the nights that he and Tosca had spent in love…E lucevan le stelle — The stars shone [Here’s Placido Domingo.]   The legendary canard hurled at this opera is that it’s a “shabby little shocker”.  But, frankly, it’s one of a small handful of operas that I’ll go see, just about wherever and whenever.

Whether your choice is comedy or tragedy, I don’t think that you can go wrong with these two.