Yearly Archives: 2002

Music ed

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Went out this evening with my sibs and my sister’s boyfriend to Maggie’s, a jazz lounge, art gallery and restaurant about which I must write more later. While listening to three sets by John Noubarian (piano) and Ben Heywood (guitar), we got to talking to a couple of attractive, similarly-named women (Tamara and Tammy) about… well, all sorts of things, as conversations with strangers are wont to progress… but for the purposes of this entry, I’ll focus on a certain topic related to music.

The comment arose that a lot of musicians are teachers. I missed the exact details, because I was sitting at the wrong end of the table, but I believe Tammy’s a teacher and less-active musician, and Tamara’s an active musician who used to teach. (Could be wrong on all counts, though.) The rest of us are somewhat active musically–Chris belongs to a band, my sister’s in a choir and seems to know most of the members of the Winnipeg music scene, my brother plays baritone and piano from time to time, and I play trumpet occasionally and basically enjoy the abilities of others–but none of us teaches in any way. I’m not sure I agree with the statement as presented, but the inverse is true in my experience: I know a lot of teachers who are musicians, but only a few musicians who teach. (Granted, my view may be tainted: more than half of the members of the big band I used to perform with are teachers.)

I’m subscribed to two weblogs that regularly discuss teaching or playing, Teacher: Year One and scottandrew.com, but neither has mentioned the other topic except in passing. (dive into mark deserves mention here too–while not explicitly about teaching, it’s the site from which I’ve learned the most, most often how to push the envelope and use HTML the way it’s meant to be used.) And a number of the musicians and teachers I know don’t have any particular talent in the other field.

So all of this makes me curious: are there more teachers who are musicians, or musicians who are teachers? Subject taught is irrelevant, but order is important–an English teacher who plays violin may consider herself a musician first, and a pianist who teaches music may consider himself a teacher first.

Comments are welcome, as always; you can post directly to this entry or send your thoughts to me via e-mail.

Aliterate

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I saw Rebecca Blood’s comment on reading and didn’t think much of about it–I read what I enjoy, and it so happens that some of what I read could be considered should-read material. But then I read the Globe and Mail article she referenced and realized that it’s true: I have become aliterate. I have that stack of books by my bed (and on my bookshelf, and on my coffee table) that I’ve been meaning to read, some for a couple of years, and it just keeps getting taller; like my writer friend, it’s a rare occasion when I don’t walk out of a bookstore with at least one volume. I’m reading her pre-publication novel right now which is quite good, but the 300-odd pages have languished by my bed for a week and a half now–not without a second thought, because I’ve wanted to pick it up a couple of times and I’ve promised the author feedback, but I wind up getting distracted or putting it off or not having the time or using any and all of the other excuses in the article.

It doesn’t help that my brother, who’s finished the last exam of his undergrad university career and is riding the train towards home as I type, messaged me yesterday about Life of Pi. I told him I had it on my shelf and would lend it to him, but realized later that I had no idea what he was talking about–I was going to give him The Joy of π (which is interesting, but hardly the same).

This disturbs me more than I can express. What am I doing right now? Writing about not reading, instead of picking up a book and doing something about it.

If I don’t show up here for a while, it’s partially because I’m home for Christmas and New Year’s, but with any luck, it will also be because I’m hip-deep in a pile of books that I’ve finally gotten to.

The View from the Porch

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For the last couple of weeks I’ve been looking for The View from the Porch, an essay by J. Michael Straczynski from departed site psycomic.com. Even The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine doesn’t have it. The closest I’ve gotten is about.com’s annotated list of articles, which summarizes the article: JMS expresses his views on the importance of the front porch to American society. As a bonus side story he also talks about his childhood love of comic books.

It’s frustrating, because this is the kind of thing I’d normally make a copy of, and moreso because I thought I had when I saw that Psycomic was going away. I’m hoping, in the spirit of yesterday’s post, that someone else may have kept a copy they’d be willing to share.

Thank you for your support.

It’s all out there, just hard to find

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Seth Spitzer (Mozilla Mail/News developer extraordinaire) has a new take on the infinite monkeys idea. Unfortunately, there’s a flaw in his example of applying his theory to video: discovering Star Wars Episode 2, Star Wars Episode 3 or better yet Star Wars Episode 7,8,9 isn’t a good thing; discovering good versions of them is.

You’ve gotta like his warped sense of humour, in any case: I know there’s a good joke to be made about carving a pumpkin’s eyes first and mouth last (so it can see what you’re doing, but can’t scream)…. Is anyone else thinking of Harlan Ellison?

Merry Christmas to you, too

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How cheery:

208.60.211.93 - - [16/Dec/2002:22:52:54 -0500] "GET /blog/archives/2002/10/27/itll_all_end_in_tears_i_know_it.html HTTP/1.1" 200 3203 "http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=how+will+it+all+end+%3F" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 95)"

(For those of you who don’t read Apache logs, someone’s searching on Yahoo! for the phrase how will it all end ?. I kind of wish the post he found was a little funnier….)

Jaseroque

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One message David [Salo] got the other day from a high school student said that hearing the languages in [The Fellowship of the Ring] spurred an interest in linguistics, and could David recommend any colleges with good linguistics programs?

Now that is just cool. Wizard cool, if I may say so. The kid may well change his mind–but I doubt he’ll ever regret his interest.

Dorothea Salo, Influence

That kid reminds me of… well, me, although I was more taken by Jabberwocky. (Friends may find this heretical, but I only read The Lord of the Rings in university.) Perhaps because both parents are language teachers (between them they speak French, German, Spanish, and Slovak), or perhaps just because I have a predilection towards the trivial and the transmundane, I enjoy discovering versions of familiar works–music, poetry, books, etc.–in different languages, even those I don’t understand.

Which is why I was glad today to find a version of Jabberwocky that I’d never seen: a translation into French by Frank L. Warrin. (The page also includes Robert Scott’s German version, which I’ve loved for years: Es brillig war. Die schlicten Toven / Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben….) I’d love to hear Stephanie’s rendition of either… bien sûr avec son accent vaudois.

The M-Dot Chronicles

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What is M-Dot? A producer of hot formed titanium parts and aircraft tailpipes? The state of Michigan’s Department of Transportation? Minnesota’s? An artist who uses Adobe Illustrator? The international symbol for the Ironman Triathlon (which can be worn as a badge of honor only by those who complete one of these races)?

None of the above (although the last is close). Ahem. The last one is exactly it. Silly me. Croptop has started a weblog.

(Yes, I’m aware that this is a lot longer announcement than the one for Mike’s, but he’s also posted two-thirds as many entries as Mike in only four days.)