Cool web site: Free Albums Galore. I haven’t downloaded anything yet but I did the RSS feed to my google page so I could keep an eye on it.

Also, I was perusing the Clavier magazines my sister-in-law mailed me and ran across this NPR show I hadn’t heard off:
From the Top. It seems to be teenage musicians performing and talking to the host: Christopher O’Riley.

I had a conference with the chair of my department today.

Okay it wasn’t exactly a conference.

I was sitting on the floor outside my classroom while they did their student evaluations (teacher out of the room). The chair walked past me and said hi. This is exactly the second time I have seen him this term.

He asked me if I had my teaching assignment for next year, yet.

I had no idea what he was talking about so I said, “I guess not.”

He said that the executive administrator would be letting me know what it was and kept walking.

Administrating in the halls. Just like some churches I’ve worked in. Heh.

For all my resolutions not to teach anymore, I was given pause. I guess I was just figuring that they weren’t going to ask me back.

I guess they’re not exactly asking. More like giving me my next assignment.

After the student evaluations were taken to the office by a student, I told the class that I hadn’t received the evaluations from the previous term yet. But I had waited until after they had filled out their evals to tell them that little gem. Also, that it was distinctly possibly I wasn’t going to keep teaching. But I would like to hear things they wanted to tell me. They could tell me right now, I said (silence) or email me sometime if there was something they thought I could do better. I told them I could understand if they wanted to wait and email me after I had turned in grades. Heh.

They looked grim. They probably had just finished panning my teaching and the class. Anyway, I had fun.

Instead of playing recorded music for them before class, today I sat down and played an entire Mozart piano sonata for the lovely fuck of it. I have been in sort of a Mozart mood and played Mozart all morning at home anyway. I had fun. It felt like busking.

And also at one point today, I got them clapping cross rhythms: twos against threes. It actually worked as an example of polyrhythms (this illustrated the genius of African drumming which was partly the topic for today). I like getting them to do stuff.

Anyway, I’m done with classroom teaching. I have to give a final next week. if possible (and it usually is) I will stay at the college and finish grades before I come home.

I don’t know why I have been in such a weird space lately. I sometimes feel like I am losing my mind. But that’s a pretty familiar feeling I guess. Onward. Upward.

Here’s the GVSU Livejournal. No new ratings for Steve on Rate your Professor web site.

You know you can watch Gonzalez squirm live on C-Span, right?

Of course you have to click on it right now (Wed April 19 2007 10:00 AM).

As the fine denizens of London Town know, each tube line has a distinct personality and range of mood swings. The Victoria Line for example, breezy and reliable. The Jubilee Line, the young disappointment of the family, branching out to the suburbs, eternally having extensions planned, twisting round to Greenwich, and back under the river out east somewhere. The District and Cicle Line, well, even Death would rather fork out for a taxi if he’s in a hurry. Crammed with commuters for King’s buy valiums online Cross or Paddington, and crammed with museum-bound tourists who don’t know the craftier short cuts, it’s as bad as how I imagine Tokyo. I had a professor once who asked us to prove that the Circle Line really does go around in a circle. Nobody could. I was dead impressed at the time. Now what impresses me is that he’d persuaded somebody to pay him to come up with that sort of tosh.

from “Ghostwritten” by David Mitchell

Around 4:30 AM, a repeat of the BBC World Book Club featuring one of the last interviews with Kurt Vonnegut came on my radio. Dam. I couldn’t sleep through it. Vonnegut said his experiences in Dresden left him radically antiwar. And that he didn’t know how he wrote such a book as Slaughterhouse Five,only that he was “lucky.”

Then in the 5 AM NPR Morning Edition, there was a bit on Douglas Feith who was an architect of the Iraq debacle and is now safely defending it as a prof (at Georgetown?).

The combination of Vonnegut’s radical love of life and hate of war with a pompous Bush war advocate (still defending the choice to go to war) was too much for me.

I got up and made coffee.

I fussed about with this site today. I managed to link in some MP3s, sheet music and lyrics. Also, family links and David Byrne. I am having to go in and edit html language in order to do this. I still can’t fix the glitch in Explorer. Bah.

I seem to be in a very burnt out mood.

I spent time with Mozart and Prokofiev piano sonatas today. That helped.

It is an ancient and unresolved debate here, whose core is the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution of 1789. The much-misinterpreted text guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” — a defensive measure against assaults by the young state on its citizens. That may apply to muskets, but not to AK-47s.

The view from Spiegel: “America’s weapons, America’s Tragedies” by Marc Pitzke

How to live without a car — little fantasy of mine

This explains to me why there was a delay between reponses to the first shooting and the second. Seems like the police were being very reasonable in their investigation. They thought they had the shooter for the first incident. Maybe they did?

Between Virginia shootings, police chased a false lead

By Shaila Dewan and John M. Broder, International Herald Tribune Published: April 18, 2007

Wet burps in opera singers…. “Italians reveal hidden perils of opera singing” by John Hooper in Rome Tuesday April 17, 2007 The Guardian

Some lovely stuff in “Ghostwritten” by David Mitchell. I’m about half way through this, Mitchell’s first book. It’s structured like the previous book I read by him, “Cloud Atlas.”

By that I mean that each section starts a new story with new characters and ideas. The difference is that in “Cloud Atlas” it quickly became apparent that every story was related somehow. Not so in “Ghostwritten.” But he still is keeping me engrossed. In fact, I can’t really see how he will tie it all together but supect that he will.

Anyway in the fifth section of the book called “Mongolia” the point of view suddenly switches to that of some kind of spiritual parasite that can switch from body to body. This unnamed narrator is searching for a story that he/she thinks will reveal her/his own story. Consequently he prompts his various hosts to get others to tell stories.

Example: (warning, this is a bit long but worth the read)
Now: long, long ago, the camel had antlers. Beautiful twelve-pronged antlers. And not only antlers! The camel also had a long, thick tail, lustrous as your hair, my darling…..

At that time the deer had no antlers. It was bald, and to be truthful rather ugly. And as for the horse, the horse had no lovely tail, either. Just a short stumpy thing.

One day the camel went to drink at the lake. He was charmed by the beauty of his reflection. “How magnificent!” thought the camel. “What a gorgeous beast am I!”

Just then, who should come wandering out of the forest, but the deer? The deer was sighing.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked the camel. “You’ve got a face on you like a wet sun.”

“I was invited to the animals’ feast, as the guest of honor.”

“You can’t beat a free nosh-up,” said the camel.

“How can I go with a forehead as bare and ugly as mine? The tiger will be there, with her beautiful coat. And the eagle, with her swanky feathers. Please, camel, just for two or three hours, lend me your antlers. I promise I’ll give them back. First thing tomorrow morning.”

“Well,” said the camel magnanimously. “You do look pretty dreadful the way you are, I agree. I’ll take pity on you. Here you are.” And the camel took off the antlers and gave them to the deer, who pranced off. “And mind that you don’t spill any, erm, berry juice on them or whatever it is you forest animals drink at these dos.”

The deer met the horse.

“Hey,” said the horse, “Nice antlers.”

“Yes, they are, aren’t they?” replied the deer. “The camel gave them to me.”

“Mmmm,” mused the horse. “Maybe the camel will give me something, too, if I ask nicely.”

The camel was still at the lake, drinking, and looking at the desert moon.

“Good evening, my dear camel. I was wondering, would you swap your beautiful tail with me for the evening? I’m going to see this finely built young filly I know, and she’s long been an admirer of yours. I know she’d simply melt if I turned up in her paddock wearing your tail.”

The camel was flattered. “Reallly? An admirer? Very well, let’s swap tails. But be sure to bring it back first thing tomorrow morning. And be sure you don’t spill any, erm, never mind, just look after it, all right? It’s the most beautiful tail in the whole world, you know.”

Since then many days and years have passed, but the deer still hasn’t given back the camel’s antlers, and you can see for yourself that the horse still gallops over the plains with the camel’s tail streaming in the wind. And some people say, when the camel comes to drink at the lake he sees his bare, ugly reflection, and snorts, and forgets his thirst. And have you noticed how the camel stretches his neck and gazes into the distance, to a far-off sand dune or a distant mountain top? That’s when he’s thinking, “When is the horse going to give me back my tail?” And that is why he is always sad.

from “Ghostwritten” by David Mitchell

According to Eileen who taught school for years, it is very normal to be burned out at this stage of teaching. I pointed out to her that I only teach twice a week and she taught everyday. But she insists that it’s normal even for me.

After teaching yesterday, I went to my “perch” office and copied down the point totals for each student at this point in the course from the online Blackboard system.

I like to hand in their grades the day of the final. Since my position is very tentative at GVSU I’m not absolutely certain I can use my “perch” office right after the final exam next Wednesday. But now I have enough info that I can figure out each person’s grade and fill out the bubble sheet (!) and hand it in.

I have to have students do student evaluations on Thursday. Interestingly enough I haven’t received the evaluations results from last term yet. It’s starting to feel like I am working for the government. heh. I  used to be interested in what these evals had to say, especially because I was so fascinated that I received so many comments about my appearance (negative ones).

I used it as a sociology experiment and last term I taught every class with my uniform: black suit and tie, long hair in a bun. I wondered if that would bring forth comments from students on their evals. I am still wondering but caring less and less. Fuck school. But not the students.

I begin to trust my own gauge of students more and more after having taught several terms and compared my reactions to them with their written evals.

Also students do sometimes give me indications on their written work what they are finding helpful and/or confusing. Very nice.

On another college/journalism note, I find the recent coverage of the killings at Virginia Tech revealing. It seems that journalists as usual (at least on NPR and the internet) have lost a grasp of their first responsibility to report “who, what, where when and why” and substitute smarmy emotional “I” centered reporter bias stuff. Good grief. It was almost like the NPR reporters were trying to talk the students and teachers they interviewed from Virginia Tech into a response they expected (“Aren’t you going home so you can be with your family and feel safe?” “No. I’m staying here with my friends” then later I heard this same reporter in a different report  say that many were going home so they could be with family and feel safe. I think that reporter should go home to her family and feel safe. Fuck a duck.)

I’m still waiting to find out (maybe this has been reported) if there is a clear connection between the first shooting in the dorm and the later mass killing in classrooms. It seems to me that is a basic important part of the story. But what do I know?

I also note that our society has all kinds of weird stuff around death. sooprise, I know.  We don’t remember that we all die. And we use all sorts of fake shit to insulate ourselves from the reality of a brutal and tragic death.

The cynic in me also noted how Bush jumped all over this one in an attempt to generalize this incident into national tragedy. This may be a national tragedy but leaders should be sources of honest comments at this time especially. Nothing disillusions people (at least this is true for me) more than dishonesty at a time of grief. But Bush has demonstrated he has no idea how to strike the right note in times of crisis over and over again as president. Just my opinion.

I had to temper my cynicism a bit when they delayed the Gonzalez hearings, but maybe that is political as well but just from the Democrats side. Good grief.

I try to remind students how much technology shapes their expectation of recordings.  I remind them that techology can make musicians sound more accurate note-wise and intonation wise. I ask them to report on their experiences of listening to live performances of musicians whose recordings they have heard.

I also teach them how a recordist can pan tracks from left to right and adjust the amplitude of these tracks to create a three dimensional field of sound.

This kind of rambling can leave me wondering just how full of shit I am. Or at least how relevant to my listeners.

Enough.

Today was my penultimate lecture (music theory word… next to last). I talked about recording a bit today. It felt disjointed. On the drive home I was feeling pretty incompentent as a lecturer. Then I kept thinking of how many ideas the class seemed surprised about.

I talked about Les Paul and Sound on Sound. I even linked my first myspace.com site on my Blackboard site. I found one that had a recording of Les Paul and Mary Ford’s hit,  How high the moon. Napster didn’t have this historic recording. It’s historic because Les Paul is using the basic dubbing recording technique to record himself and his wife playing all instruments and doing all the singing. Here’s the link.

Oops. Gotta skate. more later maybe.

Cleary University in Howell Michigan. She is getting paid 30K plus expenses. Obscene. Here’s the link to the story.

[M]ost M[ain]S[tream]M[edia] pundits are lazy, ill informed and in thrall to the specious arguments of the powerful people they are supposed to critique. 

from “The Politics of Pundit Prestige” by (my hero) Eric Alterman

Hey! Explain to me why this story: “Sadr ministers quit Iraqi cabinet” (ahem. BBC link) isn’t in today’s New York Times. It’s not like there was a lead time problem. This was all over the internet yesterday.

I understand that Sadr has pulled people from the government before, but still. It looks like more civil war to me.

I couldn’t be that Thomas Friedman and his buddies over at NYT are still backing the losing horse of the adminstration. You know. Trying to be reasonable and everything.

Eileen and I watched “Panic in year zero” last night. Whewie. This is truly one of those movies bad enough to laugh at.

Church was weird as usual yesterday. The children “flowered” the cross during the offertory. The priest was out of town. The high point for me was when I asked the flute and violin player to play a short ostinato canon of the first four measures of Eugene W. Hancock’s tune for “We walk by faith” (He didn’t give a tune name. Clever.) I improvised over them and we stopped on a lovely little dissonance. Cool.

I thought of this during the hymn before the gospel. So during the gospel reading I explained it to my flexible flute and violin players. And then we did it as “traveling music” for the return of the gospel procession.

Simple fun stuff.

Rob Hodson brought me his new book to buy. “Interaction, Improvisation, and Interplay in Jazz.”

I thought I had it reserved on Amazon.com. But he had a party last week to celebrate it’s availability and invited me. (I didn’t go) which made me check to see why my copy hadn’t come. No record that I could find on Amazon. Screw it. He offerred to bring me a copy Sunday. I had him sign it for me. I think the topic looks interesting.

After church, Eileen and I drove up to Whitehall for the postponed annual Hatch (her fam) Easter Egg Hunt. We listened to This American Life and On the Media on the way up and back. I had pulled down their latest shows for my MP3 player in the morning.

Today I have to grade concert reports and do a Final Exam review sheet for tomorrow. So it goes.

After playing in public yesterday I feel like I am regain a bit of my psychic energy or something. It was good experience despite the fact that most everyone was listening to the Lutheran pastor yelling where they were to stand and pretty much ignoring us. (He apologized later…. I told him I didn’t mind. I didn’t.)

I even mentioned to the two people clapping after one of our numbers (that would be Mike Fegel and Pat Bergeron…. always good when you know the names of the entire listening audience. Heh.) that they sounded like the crowd on Fractured Fairy Tales. They smiled good-naturedly. I wasn’t sure they knew what the fuck I was talking about. But one kind piped up that I was dating myself. I admitted it. He wasn’t clapping. heh.

I have been thinking about several of my songs (Naked Boy, Elephant, Ghostdance) and how I would like to perform and record them with more drive and energy. I think we did this. Thank you, Jonathon Fegel.

“When I played my own music,” he said, “no one could say I played wrong notes because only I knew the piece. So that was my starting point toward becoming a composer…” Huang Ruo

“Chinese Composer Talks Cello, All Dialects” by Allan Kozinn NYT 4/14/07 There are couple of MP3s of this guy’s cello concerto at the NYT article. Interesting. He also has an album on Naxos which is on Napster. I’m listening to it right now and am liking what I hear. It’s kind of traditional contemporary but there is use of some Chinese sounding idioms that make it very charming to my ears. First impression.