is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Good Music, Bad Letter-of-Law.
Good Music, Bad Letter-of-Law.
Here's Hans Blix (TCNTUNWI) running into his exposed heart.
Today I got the new Deathray CD in the mail, remember Hot Dana? The songs are already charming me. Looking at the liner notes I see that the album is divided pretty evenly between songs written by Dana Gumbiner and songs written by Greg Brown (who is, I think, the lead guitar guy whom I spoke with briefly and then declared to be a gentleman, at the Fountains of Wayne show at Du Nord).
I�m not sure it matters who wrote a song, but I always look anyway. Much has been said about this historical time�s obsession with authorship. My thoughts on it are not all that complex, and right now I�ll limit myself to the question of authorship of song lyrics. On the one hand, we tend to dismiss people who don�t write their own songs, but yet no one would think to criticize Ella Fitzgerald for such a thing. On the other� I�m not sure that knowing who wrote something tells us anything we need to know. About that written thing. I think this especially given all the good songwriters I know whose biographies have very little to do with the content of 90% of their songs. If anything, the author-obsession adds to our imagining of someone else�s life instead of our own. And maybe we don�t need that. Maybe it doesn�t matter who writes songs? Or at least it doesn�t really matter what a writer intended when she or he wrote something. I�m pretty sure I�ve grossly misinterpreted the Loud Family song �Way Too Helpful,� but yet that song means a lot to me for what it means. To me. I don�t care if my interpretation of it would make Scott Miller MAD. Even though he�s some kind of singular brilliant! An unfinished thought.
But it�s an unfinished thought that explains why it is so objectionable (to me, at least) when songwriters introduce their songs with long explanations of what the song is about or what the conditions were that enabled the song to be written. Either the song communicates that (if that�s even what you want), or it doesn�t. Your verbal exposition IS. NOT. HELPING. Indeed it is hindering.
Like that time I saw the Low Millions when they opened for Butch Walker, and they were playing songs off an album called �Ex-Girlfriends,� and yet the lead singer-guy (who is, I�m told, Leonard Cohen�s son) still felt compelled to explain to us what that means. All the songs on the album are about ex-girlfriends! Oh! Before it was way too formulaic, but now I like this song!
Actually, I mostly liked their songs (and also am ill-qualified to judge said songs, really) because Chris was sitting next to me making up impromptu words to the tunes and singing them at me.
Anyway.
When I was at Du Nord that evening when I saw Deathray play, Chris and I were standing close to the front near the stage for awhile watching Deathray. At some point Chris leaned down from his tallness to whisper in my ear that he wished he sang like that guy up on the stage. He began to lean back away up into the higher air but I pulled his ear back down to my level and told him I�m glad he sings with the voice he has. I really am.
But he�s right, there�s something compelling about Hot Dana. (Ha. I�m making him sound like something you�d get at a patisserie. Or some bad-silly trick your sibling plays on you when you are 8 years old. Or a controversial sexual position. Or a mnemonic device (How Odd That Dudes All Nurture Animus. Or: Have One Theory Declared Antinomy Not Antithesis.). But he�s just a guy. He�s kinda handsome and he sings well. But maybe the lights were good, or the beer was good, and my memory is kind. In any case there is no disputing that Deathray is a band worth seeing, with CDs worth buying. So go consume them. Those of you in the Bay Area should sign up for their email list so you will know when they are nearby. In case you don�t just sense Hot Dana approaching. Greg was also cute, and was wearing un gentil chapeau. Beyond that I can say nothing because too much time has passed. I think I remember there being a slightly hippy-ish keyboardist who made me want to make needless slightly mean jokes. But that could have been another band.)
Their songs strike me as Rousseau-like, in my own particular version of what that means (since there are as many Jean-Jacques Rousseaus as there are readers of Rousseau). What I mean is that the songs tend to shove what seems like an impossible combination of light and dark, or sometimes pessimism and optimism, into the same space, as if to dare them to duke it out. And they do. And I�m guessing that the winner of the duel gets named by each listener on his or her own, as dictated by her or his tendency toward light or dark.
Today�s the day when I pushed my students to admit that the term �human nature� is a term for our own laziness. It is that past which we think we need ask no more questions. There is no such thing. Though we do have tendencies. Toward both light and dark. Possibility is always multivalent.
So, a part of a song from Dana, and part of one from Greg (both of whose authorships we must be certain to credit!):
Dana: Please/ Please be what I need this time/ Because I�ve been wrong before�. I can�t deny it/ I�m terrified/ When everyone�s so blameless from the start/ How can I depend/ On intuition/ When everyone�s an expert on my heart/ And everyone�s a villain after dark.
Greg: I�ve got my less than/ My not quite enough/ I�ve got rats in the basement flat/ And my good stuff/ And even though I get so lonely/ Waiting for that call/ Nowadays you can�t be too sentimental/ You can�t be sad at all/ There�s nothing left to kill.
And the album�s called �Believe Me.� Plus their album art is a series of photos of POLAROID CAMERAS! Someone out there owns many more versions of this lovely fading (in and out) technology than do I.
Sometimes I start to think that I wish I was doing music review work again. But then I remind myself about what that was like. At one point I was told by an editor that I had too many ideas, and that I had to tailor my writing to a sixth-grade reading level. I said, �ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT SOMEONE WRITING MUSIC REVIEWS OF UNKNOWN ALTERNA-BANDS FOR AN ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA HAS TO WRITE FOR AN AUDIENCE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL?� I didn�t even touch on the �too many ideas� part. I know adult literacy is in crisis in this country. I know. Hell, a huge percentage of college freshman at UC BERKELEY do not understand the most basic workings of English grammar. And they are students at a very good university. I know! But if public vehicles for writing never ask anything of anyone, nothing will be given. When it came to the music reviews in question, was this lowering-of-expectations not a self-fulfilling prophecy, with me being asked to contribute one more point on an endless downward spiral?
I had one moment of transcendent success, when I wrote a review of the SF band Film School that was not �normal� in content or form. The editor liked it so much that he published it. But then he got in trouble with his editor. And, whether he realized this or not, it made him hate me. And then he never ran a couple of reviews I had written for him that were very obedient to all the rules. And that was about the time that I was no longer entertained by the challenge of trying to say something interesting from within the rules anyway.
Speaking of rules. Man! This morning I showed up in class and one of my students said, �we were talking before class and�� I snapped, �THAT�S NOT ALLOWED!� She laughed and continued. �We were wondering whether we could turn this class into a Monday-Wednesday class with 1.5 hour meetings, because it�s hard to get a good discussion going in only an hour. (Man! That is exactly the argument I made to the chair of my department when I was told I�d be teaching MWF. And she said she had to give me this schedule, but that if all my students agreed and it posed no scheduling problems, I could change it. But then she added that getting a new room assignment can be tricky.) Everyone in the class agreed that this was preferable and they all could do it easily by adding a half hour at the beginning of class.
So I asked the registrar about it. His first response was very terse: �1.5 hour morning classes are not allowed MWF.� I thought he misunderstood me to be asking for three 1.5 hour classes. So I wrote back and clarified that I wanted to change from MWF to MW. He wrote back: �It is not possible, nor is it permitted.� OK. But that�s not an explanation, it�s an answer in command form. And since I�m at an institution run by the Quaker tradition of consensus, if I can�t reward the consensus reached by my class, I should at least be able to explain to them why. So I asked the registrar to explain what the rule was and how it was applied, and added that I was asking because I do care about rules and like to know how they work, because I teach legal philosophy! Now, I thought I was doing this in a polite way, a way that demonstrated concern for the rule and offered reasons for that concern, but that's not how it translated. Dude totally exploded all over me. He has not been more disrespected in all the 20 years he has worked here, apparently. It was a Very Long email, this one. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that it doesn�t matter that there is no way that my small group of students would infringe on the law�s intent, nor would they set a precedent for future misuse. No, that matters not one whit. Spirit of the Law has flown, my friend. We have here the Letter, and, well, can�t you read? So now I�m sitting here a bit shocked that even though that rarest of human things, a unanimous human agreement, was reached by my students and I, we cannot abide by it. Because there is a rule. And someone with power. Such a terrible thing to have to say to a class in the midst of reading Hobbes and Rousseau! It makes me sad.
Though of course I can't say it to them in that way, because that would be petty and unprofessional of me. As of now I'm not sure how to explain it them.
So I guess that was the hazing that yesterday I declared to be missing from my introduction to Haverford! At least I didn�t end up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning.
12:07 a.m. - September 15, 2005
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