Sometimes, in my past life, people would ask me about the town I grew up in, and this little fact was a quick way to paint a picture – From elementary through high school, the school district never gave us a day off on Martin Luther King Day, but we did get 4 days off each school year to coincide with the opening of deer hunting season.
Clone
Been thinking about teachers lately. Bad ones. More specifically, private teachers and the effect they can have on one’s experience in music school. Whatever my thoughts now on whatever regrets I harbor, part of me is still trying to wring something useful from the experience. It feels odd when I look back on it. You might have 4 or 5 classes in a given semester, participate in a large ensemble or two, have a regular chamber group, and do some ad hoc stuff on the side. Yet this person you see for only a few hours a week can have a bigger influence on you than all that stuff put together. Their methodology, opinions, personality, and biases often drown out the information you get from these other sources.
Anyway, the bad private teachers assume you want to be just like them; the worst of them get hostile when they find out you don’t want to.
Shitfire
I know two things about Lake Havasu City: the London Bridge is there, and its namesake body of water (a reservoir that’s built up behind Parker Dam) is popular with spring-breakers. In my head it’s grouped with about a dozen other rest stop towns and cities sprinkled around Arizona – convenient places to stop for food or gas on a roadtrip, but offering no reason to venture off the main drag. It’s not that the traveler forgets that people live, work, go to school, and have families in places like this- do the usual things that everyone does- it’s that there’s no reason to think of it in the first place. You pick the cheapest gas station, find the least offensive fast food joint and continue on your way. It’s jarring when the routine is broken.
Route 95 was closed that night when I passed through. I suppose I could have tried to navigate through some side streets to find a way to bypass the car accident but it would have been complete guesswork, driving in the dark on unfamiliar roads. I took the lead of most of the other drivers in front of me and turned off into a park to wait while the road was cleared. In an instant the scene changed from one of chaos to one of unexpected sentimentality. In one moment I was caught up in sirens, flashing lights and pissed off drivers, in the next, a little league baseball game. Like I said, jarring. Lord knows what the players and spectators were thinking as a parade of headlights entered a parking lot just beyond the outfield fence. I do remember what I was thinking about: my Pap, and a little league game of my own.
Classical or Pop?
Dear Melvin (age 11 and 1/2),
Thank you for your letter and your question. Let me tell you, if you plan on spending any time in a music school when you grow up, it is a question you will encounter many times. It’s a good way for a professor to kill time in class, to “start a dialogue,” and, on the surface, it seems important and thought-provoking and something all good musicians should spend time pondering. It’s none of those things, but that’s beside the point.
So, dear Melvin, what is the difference between classical music and popular music?
If you hear a piece of music and ask, “Who wrote that?” it’s classical.
If you hear a piece of music and ask, “Who sings that?” or “Who’s playing that?” it’s pop.
Yours truly,
Dave